The new-ish poster for James Toback’s “Tyson” is admittedly not great, but it’s still a movie we really want to see. Toback — whose Tarantino-loved 1978 film “Fingers” we recently missed a rare screening of at the Lincoln center (we kicked ourselves) — recently talked to Filmmaker magazine about the documentary and his good friend, the befallen boxer Mike Tyson.
It sounds like the director and his subject built an intimate relationship of trust over the years and this is probably why “Tyson,” is apparently so blunt, raw and candid.
“Neither of us ever shies away from [the painful memories] for a minute,” Toback told the magazine. “All of our late-night conversations over the years dealt with death, madness, murder, revenge, love, frustration, sex. We might not speak for six months and then at three in the morning the phone would ring, and it didn’t matter if I was calling him or he was calling me, and it would be as if we were picking up on a conversation that ended three minutes earlier.”
How did you convince him to tell these intimate details about his life on tape? It required no convincing at all. I think it’s because he is a natural performer. I think he would have only done this film for me, which he has said on a number of occasions because of the nature of our history together, but there was no hesitation in doing it. The hesitation would have been doing it with someone who didn’t get it.
Here’s the documentary synopsis:
Tyson is acclaimed indie director James Toback’s stylistically inventive portrait of a mesmerizing Mike Tyson. Toback allows Tyson to reveal himself without inhibition and with eloquence and a pervasive vulnerability. Through a mixture of original interviews and archival footage and photographs, a startlingly complex, fully-rounded human being emerges. The film ranges from Tyson’s earliest memories of growing up on the mean streets of Brooklyn through his entry into the world of boxing, to his rollercoaster ride in the funhouse of worldwide fame and fortunes won and lost. It is the story of a legendary and uniquely controversial international athletic icon, a figure conjuring radical questions of race and class. In its depiction of a man rising from the most debased circumstances to unlimited heights, destroyed by his own hubris, TYSON emerges as a modern day version of classic Greek tragedy.
“Tyson” is due in theaters via Sony Pictures Classics April 24. The trailer features some of Queens rapper Nas’ new track “Legendary,” that was exclusively written for the film.