Mike Tyson's Documentary: directed by James Toback

Via: www.telegraph.co.uk




And who did I see on TV - late last night on Larry King's CNN show, a program about Domestic Violence in the wake of the whole Chris Brown debacle was Robin Givens giving her 2 cents about her experiences with Mike Tyson and his brutal treatment of her during their very short lived marraige.



I don't ever think that these kinds of shows pop up without a good premeditated marketing buildup leading up to something else. I learned recently that there is going to be a new Mike Tyson documentary to be released on DVD on March 30th. It's said to be a very different portrait of the man who was regarded by many as nothing more then just a menacing fighting machine in his prime.

"...Mike Tyson is reclining on a leopard-skin-print couch. He speaks softly, as if in a trance. His eyes brim with melancholy. "I wish I was smarter," he says, in his lisping, sing-song voice. "I am not an animal any more. I don't like the person I've become." He seems startlingly vulnerable. At moments, he cries. Later, he is discovered admiring a Pacific sunset, while reciting Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol."

The film (directed by James Toback ) explores the boxer's troubled youth: the impoverished childhood, the insatiable sexual appetite, the stormy marriage, the rape conviction, the violence, the debts, the drugs, the ear-biting incident with Evander Holyfield in their 1997 bout). And it's all told exclusively from Tyson's perspective, the film promises to show us an unseen side to the former world heavyweight champion.

Director James Toback: "He had just gone into rehab, (Tyson was convicted of cocaine possession in 2007). "And the meditative consciousness he was in seemed an ideal time to start this film. I rented a house in the Hollywood Hills and he would come from rehab and go back at the end of the day." Some scenes feel like eavesdropping in a psychoanalyst's chamber. "I'd run the camera for 15 minutes as he sat there silently, knowing that if I ran it long enough he'd come up with something he'd been unconsciously resisting."