From the can to Cannes: the reinvention of Mike Tyson
“Tyson”, directed by James Toback, will combine parts of more than 30 hours of interviews with highlights of Tyson’s boxing career. Tyson plans to fly from his suburban Las Vegas home to France this week to attend the film’s debut.
“I look at it now and I’m embarrassed I did it,” Tyson admitted yesterday. “There’s a lot of information people didn’t need to know.”
Tyson, who turns 42 next month, says he has been off drugs and alcohol for the past 15 months after abusing both for years.
“I don’t know who I am. That might sound stupid. I really have no idea. All my life I have been drinking and drugging and partying and all of a sudden this comes to a stop. I never thought I would live to this age.”
Now that he’s here, he finds himself on an unlikely and unpleasant path forward, although one that could prove cathartic.
The film, which interposes interviews with Tyson conducted last year while he was in rehab with fight clips, has forced Tyson to relive and reconsider a life that shames him.
But exposing Tyson’s embattled and seemingly impossible relationship with his former self is central to new plans to reintroduce the former heavyweight. The film, along with a memoir that is still in its early stages — Tyson is collaborating with the author Larry Sloman, who has ghostwritten autobiographies for Howard Stern and Anthony Kiedis, the lead singer of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers — are two parts of an effort that Tyson’s advisers hope will reintroduce him to the public and propel him to some semblance of a post-boxing career.
Toback said he believed the documentary would see Tyson in a more sympathetic context.
“I just showed it to Warren (Beatty) and Annette (Benning), and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him choke up over a movie,” he said. “Her too.”
But does the public have any appetite left for Tyson? Muhammad Ali, an Olympic hero with political cachet, has been feted in his post-boxing life. Tyson, on the other hand, has been (unfairly perhaps) dismissed as a mere fighting machine.
It was 22 years ago on a Saturday night at the Las Vegas Hilton when the left hook from a 20-year-old Brooklyn kid full of fury landed on the temple of Trevor Berbick at 2:35 in the second round.
“The day I won the title I got so drunk and high,” he said, lighting up a miniature cigar.
This was the point of demarcation in Tyson’s life because what had come before was poetic: 13-year-old black kid from the ghetto streets is taken in by Cus D’Amato, a legendary fight man in upstate New York, who turns him into the heavyweight champion of the world. But what came after was vulgar: Bengal tigers in the backyard, prison and bankruptcy. It is well-trod territory that is covered in the documentary, but with a sober Tyson reflecting on his foibles.
He said he was born an addict and doesn’t blame his affliction on the trajectory of his life. He disdains talking about his own boxing career. Other than the man sitting on the couch, there is no sign that the home is inhabited by the former heavyweight champ: no trophies, no pictures, no memorabilia.
“I don’t need to remember that,” he said.
The group of people Tyson is surrounded by now is an important part of the latest chapter in his story. Don King, the flamboyant fight promoter whom Tyson accused of bilking him out of millions of dollars, is long gone. The key people are Harlan Werner, 40, who has worked with Ali on licensing and marketing since he was 19, and Damon Bingham, who is Ali’s godson and the son of the photographer Howard Bingham, Ali’s best friend. Both Werner and Bingham were heavily involved in the documentary, and both have producer credits.
A now-vulnerable Tyson will reflect upon his mistakes, including an unhappy marriage and bitter divorce from actress Robin Givens, a three-year prison sentence for rape, and squandering $400m on his way to bankruptcy.
Tyson, who went 50-6 with 44 knockouts, became the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history in 1986 at age 20 and was the undisputed champion from 1987 until 1990, winning his first 37 fights in overwhelming fashion.
“I didn’t know how to be any other way,” Tyson said. “I felt like one of those barbarian kings just coming to conquer the Roman Empire. I was crazy.”
Toback has directed several sports-related projects. He met a teen Tyson in 1985 while directing “The Pick-up Artist” in New York and cast him in two movies, “Black and White” in 1999 and “When Will I Be Loved” in 2004.
Toback interviewed Tyson last year in Beverly Hills and Malibu while Tyson was in a nearby rehab clinic.
“I want to take drugs every day, drink every day. But I don’t because I made that commitment. I just say, ‘I’m not getting high today,’” Tyson said.
“I’m not promising them I’m not getting high tomorrow. I’m just trying to figure it out. I’m in an abysmal world trying to figure it out.”
The film is expected to be released in cinemas later this year.
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