Documentary "Tyson" Examines Why, Against All Odds, He's Still Alive
"If, as the novelist Joyce Carol Oates once wrote, 'boxing has become America’s tragic theater,' then one might cast Mike Tyson — the former world heavyweight champion and self-professed 'baddest man on the planet' — as the leading man.
"Yes, against all odds, Mr. Tyson is still alive. A pudgy 41-year-old who is millions of dollars in debt to the Internal Revenue Service, he has been living in the Las Vegas suburbs for about three months. And he is sober — 15 months now, he says — after years of drug and alcohol abuse. But this was not an envisioned outcome just a few years ago. In Mr. Tyson’s own words, 'I never thought I’d 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. This week Mr. Tyson and his new advisers will fly to the south of France for the Cannes Film Festival, where a new documentary about his life, 'Tyson,' will make its premiere. Directed by James Toback, the film, which interposes interviews of Mr. Tyson conducted last year while he was in rehab, with fight clips, has forced Mr. Tyson to relive and reconsider a life that shames him."
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