For Tyson, it's all about the ear and now

By Steven Zeitchik

So we're finally back from Gallic shores. Three Weeks In France - it sounds like a Julie Delpy movie, or a potentially revealing psychological experiment. Alas, it has been our life. But with June upon us and the Democratic nomination, well, in exactly the same position it was when we left the country, we'll return to a more regular posting schedule -- you know, nightly updates at 2:00 am and the like.

There's a lot to catch up on -- Indy, SATC (the version not shown with French subtitles) and ThinkFilm thoughts, among others -- but we'll have at them once we settle in a little more. In the meantime, here's a post-Cannes item, this one about an unheralded gem, James Toback's "Tyson."

Seeing the ear-nibbling one embraced by Thierry Fremaux on the Riviera was hands down the surreal moment of the festival -- and that's a list that includes two hours of Charlie Kaufman. But the real juice came at a small media lunch with Toback.

Tyson has always been the quintessential tragic figure who just happens to be a sports champion, which makes him a perfect subject for a documentary. And Toback has always been a man obsessed with a certain kind of fragile masculinity, which makes Tyson a perfect subject for James Toback. (The two met on the set of "The Pick-Up Artist," of all places; chew on that next time you dig that Robert Downey classic out of your DVD collection.)

One of the most newsworthy things Toback said at the lunch is that Tyson's rape conviction and three-year imprisonment was a legal sham; the boxer, he believes, was entirely innocent. "The actual facts of that case are a movie in and of itself," Toback said. "He was absolutely set up there, and the extortion went awry."

Those comments, it turned out, were only the undercard.

In the famous 1997 lobe incident, which is positioned here as Tyson's understandable reaction to Holyfield repeatedly headbutting him in middle of the fight, Toback said, "He (Holyfield) is the dirtiest fighter of his era. And sometimes the dirtiest fighters are the ones who present themselves as good Christians."

The movie cuts together an extended interview with chronologically arranged archival footage -- home videos, highlights, TV interviews -- and pointedly uses no talking heads or outside commentary, heightening the intimacy. If slightly boosterish and apologetic, it also shows the best of what documentaries can do when they're not throwing light on a whole new subject-- that is, taking a well-known subject and recasting it. Is there a more exposed sports figure in contemporary times than Mike Tyson? And yet Toback's exploration is riveting, recontextualizng even as it reminds us what we may have forgotten.

In fact, the film takes such a sharply different view in its retrospection that Tyson himself was apparently taken aback. According to Toback, when the prizefighter saw the finished cut, he told the indie director, "'It's like a Greek tragedy, except I'm the subject.'"

Indeed, Tyson's tendency to see an evolution in himself so extreme that he doesn't even believe he's the same person is a big theme of the film. "He looks back at this past (the one portrayed in Barbara Kopple's 1993 doc "Fallen Champ") not as something that's a continuous leading to the present but that's almost a document of a stranger," Toback said.

In one of Tyson's many moments of his trademark street eloquence, he tells the camera that the very act of trying to understand his life and career -- or any life and career, for that matter -- is innately doomed. "The past is history," he says. "The future is a mystery." Perfect.

Comments

[Matt Stevens]

Look, I agree that tyson was set up on that rape charge. The guy was jobbed and it's a travesty of justice. But Holyfield was not headbutting Tyson in their fight. Holyfield was beating Tyson senseless with his fists and anyone that watches the fight can see that, hands down. There is no controversy here. Tyson flipped out for no reason (other than he was losing) and bit Holyfield to be DQ'd and therefore avoid getting knocked out again. It's that simple. It needs to be noted that the commentators watching the fight, two of which were hoping Tyson would win, saw no evidence of headbutts. So enough already with the stupid lie.