Interview with TYSON Director James Toback at The Rumpus
My interview with Tyson director James Toback just went live at The Rumpus. An excerpt:
James Toback started his career in 1978 with a movie called Fingers, starring Harvey Keitel, about a gangster who succeeds in following his more spiritual, delicate side and becomes a concert pianist. In a similar way, Toback’s latest film explores the complicated psyche of Mike Tyson, who turns out to be much more introspective, intelligent, and spiritual than most people have imagined; plus it tells an incredibly dramatic story of personal transformation. Tyson started out as a tough kid in the Bronx, breaking into houses and stealing from stores, and then got into boxing in the reformary. Soon he was discovered and adopted by the trainer Cus D’Amato, who took him in and started him on his spectacular boxing career. That career was interrupted by a conviction for rape (which both Tyson and Toback insist was false), and followed by an equally spectacular decline into drug addiction. Toback caught Tyson in a confessional mood after he emerged from rehab, and the result is a startling film.
Toback was in San Francisco to receive the Kanbar Award for Excellence in Screenwriting from the San Francisco International Film Festival, so I met him in a room set up for the interview in a Union Square hotel. He was imposing, over six feet tall and very broad, and dressed sharply in a black suit with a black collarless shirt. He spoke with a gentle lilt – but it was the somewhat menacing lilt of New York City, where he was born. When he sat down at the interviewing table, it suddenly seemed very tiny with his bulk behind it.
The Rumpus: Has Tyson seen the film? What does he think of it?
James Toback: The first thing he said when he saw it was: “it’s like a Greek tragedy; the only problem is, I’m the subject.” The second time he saw it, which was at Sundance, he said, “people were always saying they were scared of me, and I always was bewildered: why? Actually, seeing the movie this time, I’m scared of this guy.”
So I think he looks at it as both a version of him, and somebody who is a stranger. Because when he looks at the lost early period of his life, and even his early period as a boxer, he’s so removed from that now that it’s like looking at a photo album of a childhood, almost. There’s such a distance between him now and him then. Boxing was almost everything, and now it’s been nothing for four or five years. He’s on the other side of the river now, looking back, and I think it’s a very strange experience for him, because the movie is basically his commentary from this side of the river talking about himself on that side.
posted: 09 May 15
under: The Next Frame