20 Responses to “Tyson (2009 Documentary)”

1. 

   Handsome Dan

   May 28th, 2009 at 8:25 pm

   Actually, Mike Figgis made TIMECODE; Toback had nothing to do with that one.

   Haven’t seen TYSON yet, but its interesting that he raised pigeons when he was young – I wonder if he’s a ON THE WATERFRONT fan?

2. 

   bigtotoro

   May 28th, 2009 at 8:51 pm

   Vern, the thing about music is at best you get about six years in the presence of the muse. Now, when you’re Stevie Wonder and your six years is Where I’m Comin’ From>Music of My Mind>Talking Book>Innervisions>Fullfillingness’s First Finale>Songs in the Key of Life, that’s pretty god damned good. Or The Beatles (entire career 1963-1969). Or Prince 1982-1988. After that, you can still make a good record if you have learned the craft of making a good record. But the likelihood of transcendent art is very small.
   That’s what I like about Clint. You can see the nail holes and saw marks where he went out to the shed to craft his latest picture, whatever it may be. Even when I’m not totally on board with a picture (Million Dollar Baby) you can tell that it was honestly, competently, and professionally written, acted, directed, and shot.

3. 

   Ian

   May 28th, 2009 at 8:54 pm

   When I was watching this, I kind of thought of Mike as like one of Michael Vick’s pit bulls; a sweet, intelligent dog that was raised in a cold, abusive environment with no choice but to fight. It’s noteworthy how many he times he describes himself as being afraid. Cus was the only real positive influence he ever had, the only person he trusted or felt close to, and after he died I don’t think Mike ever had a chance.

4. 

   A.J. MacReady

   May 28th, 2009 at 9:11 pm

   You know what – speaking solely about music – in my opinion there is one dude who has been making consistently good music for 30 years. And I know there’s gonna be people who disagree but that’s cool. That man is Tom Petty. Basically if you like his kind of music, he’s been pretty goddamn solid for roughly the whole time he’s been around. His sound may have changed a bit, but then it always did; some people love his “Damn the Torpedoes” era and others the “Full Moon Fever” era, but if you really look at it close it’s obvious that his sound had evolved or changed somewhat from one point to the other. Same thing with where he is now. But again, if you dig the kind of music he plays, he’s never made a bad album – they range from simply “good” to “fucking fantastic”. And I just realized I’ve gone off about Tom Petty forever on what is basically a site about flicks. Oh well. I guess it’s cause I love the guy’s stuff. Sorry all –

5. 

   Chris

   May 28th, 2009 at 9:32 pm

   This is a great doc, really amazing how Tyson just splayed himself open and was so honest about his life. Pretty crazy stuff. And little interesting bits of trivia, too, like how he has gonorrhea when he won his fight against Trevor Berbick to win his first belt.

6. 

   Carlos

   May 29th, 2009 at 12:15 am

   Going back to the Clint Eastwood/Gran Torino reference, I was wondering if you were ever going to review Changeling? Or maybe you saw it and didn’t find much to write about. Just wondering. Anyway, cool review of the Tyson doc. I’ll check it out when it plays near me.

7. 

   B

   May 29th, 2009 at 7:22 am

   “So, you get old and you cannot hack it anymore. That’s your theory?”
   “Beautifully fucking illustrated.”

8. 

   Jamie

   May 30th, 2009 at 4:07 am

   Did anyone else catch the THRILLA IN MANILLA documentary (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1330059/)? I caught it on UK television earlier in the year, thought it was pretty decent. The press (including the imdb page) set it up as being pro-Frazier and anti-Ali, but I didn’t think it came across as quite that clear-cut. Ali certainly impresses as a showboat and a bit of a dick early on, but seems to have regretted in later in life. Frazier is entertaining, but between him and his son’s testimony, you get this feeling that the bitterness over the fight has tainted his whole life…

9. 

   Mr. Subtlety

   May 30th, 2009 at 12:37 pm

   Although its definitely interesting to consider the inevitable decline of any great athlete, I left the movie feeling more in line with Ian, above. Like Tyson was this sort of lost kid, sensitive and maybe a little naive. He was just sort of directionless and scared, until someone came along and helped give him focus and meaning and connection. And then… having that life-defining focus ripped away so young, he just sort of floated away in the whirlwind of celebrity.

   I actually think of Tyson more like Michael Jackson than any other athlete I can think of. They both kind of got pushed into this life and then got super-beyond huge just at the point where there was no one left around them to give them any real advice or help. You can’t really live in the kind of crazy world that they do and not go crazy yourself.

   Watching “Tyson” was also weirdly kind of like watching “The Fog Of War” where these two guys who had been living in their own insular worlds for the majority of their careers… all the sudden they’re old and hated and have to shift their perspective and try to imagine how the world sees them. They both seem genuinely shocked in some ways by the things they had done, which at the time just seemed like the most natural things in the world. And yet, both are also in some ways way too deep into their lives to quite offer a wholesale apology. They have to try to argue that on some level they were right, even if its pretty clear to the rest of us that they aren’t.

   Since we’re talking about music too, I’d just like to say that I thing musicians decline for a slightly different reason than athletes. Classic musicians push the envelope and create something new and exciting, which inspires further generations. However, once you’ve done that, its hard to do it again. Most people never create something truly original. If you can do it two times in your career you’re incredibly lucky. Most classic acts keep writing great stuff, or at least entirely professional stuff (Tom Petty, sure. Dylan, maybe. Rolling Stones, perhaps. Stevie Wonder, Prince, etc.). Its not like the quality of their work really declined, it just became increasingly irrelevant as time went on. The things which were fresh once just became quaint, and the music lost a lot of its edge. Then they were just writing decent tunes, and other generations stepped up to be the new game-changers. Even the folks who reinvented themselves over time (Prince, the Clash, Elvis Costello) never really were able to recapture the zeitgeist of their early work again. Its not because they stopped being great, its just that being “Classic” is at least as much about time and place as it is talent. A lot of really legendary acts (Tupac, Biggie, Nirvana, Beatles, Sex Pistols) died or flamed out before they became irrelevant. Those who didn’t… well, they either shamed themselves with terrible reinventions or just sort of diminished respectably.

10. 

    Mr. Majestyk

    May 30th, 2009 at 2:25 pm

    I’ll always prefer someone who produced a body of good work over a long career than someone who produced greatness young and then flamed out. In my opinion, greatness is overrated.

11. 

    RRA

    May 30th, 2009 at 3:50 pm

    Mr. Majestk – which current directors would fit that bill?

12. 

    Mr. Majestyk

    May 30th, 2009 at 8:41 pm

    I thought we were talking about music, but how about Renny Harlin? He’s never made a few masterpiece, made a few real clunkers, but you know you’re going to be entertained most of the time. He takes the work he’s offered and makes the best of it. I don’t know, I guess journeymen directors are kind of rare these days. You get your auteurs who make prestige pictures and/or indie films and then you get your music video/commercial guys who get a few high-profile studio gigs and then get replaced by the new crop. You don’t see a lot of guys like John Badham, Don Seigel, or Peter Hyams who don’t really have much of a personal style but they work in a lot of genres and rarely embarass themselves. They direct without calling a lot of attention to themselves. I miss guys like that, because you can kind of stop thinking about the style of the movie and just watch the damn thing.

13. 

    ws

    May 31st, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    While I do think great athletes have a short period of glory before their inevitable decline, I just don’t buy that when it comes to artists. When athletes decline it’s because their minds and bodies can only function a certain way for so long. When, say, a movie director declines, it’s mostly because of the system – they can’t make the movies they want to make, or in their previous movies they were surrounded by good producers and a good crew and they had a good script to work from and now they don’t have that anymore. Or, they have wildly self-destructive impulses. Or, the system just breaks them and they give up. (I remember in an interview, Tarantino talked about this phenomenon where certain directors make an extremely personal movie that, for whatever reason, bombs and gets bad reviews, and after that they become hacks and mostly direct star vehicles.) But, there are so many people working in the arts who are well in to old age who are doing great work that it makes me think that the idea that an artistic decline is something that’s naturally going to happen – that’s inevitable – is a lot of bullshit. And sometimes that kind of mythological thinking can even obscure the good work that artists do later in their careers.

14. 

    aaron w

    May 31st, 2009 at 2:35 pm

    for me peter weir is that kind of director. from “picnic at hanging rock” to “dead poet society” to “master and commander” he’s always been a masterful, thoughtful and interesting director.

15. 

    Vern

    May 31st, 2009 at 4:14 pm

    Also I would say Scorsese and Cronenberg are in that club of directors still making great and challenging movies decades into their careers. Especially Cronenberg because his last couple have been a new approach for him and yet up there with his best work.

16. 

    Andy C.

    May 31st, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    I think Cronenberg will be good and interesting until the end. The guy is just so smart and always makes what he wants to make. He’s a great artist.

17. 

    BlackFrankWhite

    May 31st, 2009 at 6:20 pm

    James Toback is one of the most intelligent and brave directors out there. His movies are not pleasant or easy to watch because they deal with anti-heroes and they will always take you to the darkest places, not giving a fuck how you feel about it. Jim Brown’s best role was in Toback’s “Fingers” (which also starred Harvey Keitel). He also provided the brilliant script for “Bugsy”. Say what you say about “Black and White”, it’s no Huggis’ “Crush”. This guy should not be confused with the lame Mike Figgis. If you don’t take my word for it you can check out this conversation between Toback and Tarantino:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HElQrO-FBIM

    Regarding rappers not aging well, I think it’s too soon to tell because Hip Hop is only 30 years old (first single “Rapper’s Delight” by Sugar Hill Gang in 1979) and shit can still happen. It’s true that most 80’s giants (Slick Rick, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, KRS-1 and Ice Cube) are not doing too well these days. I hope Dr Dre will drop his long awaited masterpiece this year and change this sad picture. As for 90’s giants I think they are still fuckin with the muse big time: Jay Z’s “American Gangster” or Eminem’s “Relapse” (with almost 100% chronic beats by the good doctor) are two recent examples.

    Regarding Southern Rap, I think it saved Hip Hop in the last decade. The east and west didn’t bring anything new to the table since forever. Lyrically I felt for a long time that, except from rare cases like Scarface or Devin the Dude, the south was inferior to east and the west. The last albums by T.I and Lil Wayne proved me wrong.

18. 

    Mr. Subtlety

    June 1st, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    In some ways, its kind of odd to compare movies/music in terms of their authors, because the way they’re produced and the way they’re consumed is so different. Directors do seem to age much better than musicians, or at least have longer professional lives a lot of the time. I think this may in part be due to the fact that movies are a huge-scale effort which involves the work of a ton of people, some of whom are far more visible than the director. Most serious musicians these days are writer-performers, so unless a director is a writer-director-star they’re much more a part of the product rather than the product itself (even directors like Cronenberg or Gilliam, who make a major imprint on any film they touch, have actors, cinematographers, composers, editors, and often writers to collaborate with. Hence, they’re never quite so indistinguishable from the product itself as musicians are.

    Because music is also so much about the image and vision of a single person, it also hinges upon hipness, freshness, and creativity in a way we don’t really demand from movies in the same way, it seems to me. Hence, musicians have a much harder time making consistently great but also fairly similar albums and staying relevant than directors do.

19. 

    Josh

    June 1st, 2009 at 12:14 pm

    Vern, did you really not like 8 Diagrams? or were you just using Wu-Tang as a generic reference? I thought it was the best thing they’ve put out in awhile, especially Stick Me for My Riches and Rushing Elephants. Life Changes, the ODB tribute track at the end is pretty good too. I mean, shit, the whole album’s at least decent (with a few exceptions) and definitely has some great tracks.

20. 

    Mr. Subtlety

    June 1st, 2009 at 12:26 pm

    Mr Majestyk — by the way, I definitely agree with you that I’d rather see someone who was consistently great than someone who had one great idea and then sort of flamed out. On the other hand, I think its hard to keep from saying the same thing over and over unless you grow a little as an artist, try new things, etc. Its a fine line to walk to seek to get better and keep from becoming complacent, while at the same time not reinventing yourself into something artificial to keep the public’s interest.

    like my above post, I think this job is easier for directors than musicians. But still, look at guys like Billy Wilder, Arthur Penn, even the likes of Chaplin and Hitchcock. They built their reputations making a long series of fantastic films, covering a range of styles and material in each case. But by the end of their careers, they didn’t really have anywhere to go anymore. They sort of said all they could really say using the tools that they had at their disposal, and their last couples films range from decent to pointless.

    My point is, I’ll always take sustained craftsmanship (Hitchcock) over a flash of genius (George Lucas). But even committed craftsmen have to adapt and work to keep their muse.