In 'Tyson,' boxer gives filmgoers an earful

James Toback, filmmaker, and Mike Tyson, fighter, met on the set of Toback's The Pick-up Artist back in the mid-1980s.

The shoot was at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York. And by the wee hours, after cast and crew had long gone, Toback, a Harvard grad steeped in philosophy, was talking Heidegger and Kierkegaard, dread and nothingness, with Tyson.

And Tyson, a gangbanger from Brooklyn who had done time in juvenile jail and would become the youngest world heavyweight champion by year's end, was listening, asking questions, fully engaged.

"He has a very curious mind," Toback says. "It was clear to me that he was very self-analytical, even if he was still finding ways to articulate his ideas."

Three decades later, the retired boxing icon articulates and articulates in Tyson, a documentary portrait culled from 50 hours of interviews Toback shot in 2007. The film, playing at United Artists RiverView and the Showcase at the Ritz Center/NJ, examines the highs and lows of Tyson's life and career - or, more accurately, it lets him self-examine them.

There is Tyson, face emblazoned with a Maori warrior tattoo, seated on the couch as if addressing an analyst, ruminating and recalling: the staggering succession of knockouts, the world titles, the hundreds of millions of dollars earned, the hundreds of millions of dollars lost. He talks about meeting heads of state. He looks back at the night he ripped his teeth into Evander Holyfield's ear - twice - in 1997's controversial "The Sound and the Fury" bout.

Tyson discusses his short-lived, tabloid-ready union with actress Robin Givens - and the rape charges brought against him by a Rhode Island beauty queen that resulted in a three-year prison sentence. (He maintains his innocence.)

And he confesses how behind everything he does, deep down in his soul, there runs an undercurrent of fear.

"That was the thing that surprised me most, talking to him," says Toback, who brought Tyson to town for last month's Philadelphia Film Festival / CineFest '09. "The fact that fear was behind everything. That his entire life was a response to his ongoing, pervasive, deep-rooted fear, in and out of the ring."

Toback adds: "Near the beginning of the movie he talks about being bullied as a kid, and how once he learned to fight he was never going to let himself be bullied again. And then, in that scene, about 30 seconds go by, and then he says, 'Because if anyone tried to humiliate me again, I would kill them.'

"And you feel at that moment that he almost would like someone to come over and try to."

Toback, 64, was nominated for an Oscar in 1992 for his screenplay for his friend Warren Beatty's gangland epic Bugsy. Toback's directing work includes the Harvey Keitel cult classic Fingers, and several films with Robert Downey Jr., including The Pick-up Artist and Two Girls and a Guy. A lifelong New Yorker, the writer-director has always had a fascination with sports and sports figures. The 1971 book Toback wrote with football legend Jim Brown - Jim: The Author's Self-Centered Memoir of the Great Jim Brown - does in print what Tyson does on film: allow its subject to tell his tale, unchallenged by opposing voices or views.

Tyson's take on his own history might not be the way his boxing rivals, or his ex-business partners, or his girlfriends saw things. But if the film isn't an objective record of Tyson's history, it nonetheless resonates with emotional truth.

"You always have the feeling with Mike that he's saying exactly what's on his mind, with no censorship," Toback notes. "Early in the movie, he talks about the multiple voices that he's hearing, the 'chaos of the brain.' And that's when I feel you start to listen to somebody seriously - when you're getting what's really on that person's mind, instead of a manipulation, or an attempt to get you to think this way or that way."

Tyson, now 42, is credited as a producer on the film, although Toback says that the fighter, who declared bankruptcy in 2003, wasn't in a financial position to contribute to its production costs. (Toback says he used about $2 million of his own money, plus investments from other backers, including Denver Nuggets star Carmelo Anthony.) The filmmaker says Tyson also didn't exert any influence on what went into the movie, or what stayed out. This is Toback's edit, and his star didn't even see the film until it was completed.

"The first time he saw it was in my editing room, and he was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed in a white T-shirt, white pants, and white sneakers," Toback says. "And then, when it ended, he was just quiet for about five minutes. Finally, he said, 'It's like a Greek tragedy. The only problem is I'm the subject.'

"So he was looking at it, and looking at this strange figure that was himself. . . .

"He said something else then, too. He said, 'I always wondered why people are scared of me, or thought I was crazy. Why are they saying that? And the first time I saw it tonight, I thought: I'm scared of him, too.' "