Brute force

Q: When you first met Tyson back in the '80s, what were your early conversations about?

A: Boxing, sex, orgies and insanity. And insanity most of all, because he was fascinated by the subject. I was telling him about the LSD flip-out I had when I was 19. He's got a far-ranging mind, and I think he was kind of fascinated by that.

Evander Holyfield, left, and Tyson in the match that resulted in Tyson's suspension and the withdrawal of his boxing license. (Larry McConkey/Sony Pictures Classics)

Q: Why did you want to make a documentary about him?

A: When we shot Black and White [a Toback film in which Tyson has a small role as himself], there's a scene where he's talking about his incarceration. There was something about the calm, meditative way he was speaking, and his physical presence as he was saying it, and I thought, I could expand this Mike Tyson – shot similarly to the way we're looking at him here – into a film. I mentioned it to him and he said, "Any time you want to do it, I'll do it." That was 1999.

Q: I'm assuming you could have pitched this doc to a studio at any point in the last 10 years and gotten the go-ahead. Why did you finally do it?

A: Bennett Miller [the director of Capote], whom I became friendly with, was obsessed with doing a Tyson documentary. And he kept saying to me, "You gotta set it up for me." And I said, "Well, I'm planning to do that [myself]." He said, "Well, do it — but if you don't do it, you gotta set it up for me." I talked to Mike about it and he went to see Capote, which he thought was terrific, and then he just said to me, "Look, I'm only going to do it with you. If you want to do it, we're going to do it, but I'm not going to do it with anyone else." And I think if Bennett Miller had not constantly been dogging me about it, it might still not have been made. I almost felt I have to do it, and I felt bad that Mike was saying, "I'll only do it with you," and I thought I'd better do it.

Q: Were you consciously trying to move away from the standard media depiction of Tyson as a monster?

A: No. Actually, I feel that the picture that I wanted to portray was just of a guy who's ready to reveal himself and let the audience respond the way they would if I were introducing him at a party. Now, obviously, I respond in a very positive way to him, but I wasn't trying to impose that view. And actually I was surprised – I still am surprised – that people are responding as highly favourably [to the film] in the numbers as they are.

I felt there would be a much more divided response to the movie, and to him, particularly because so many people are antagonistic going in. I had no idea the movie would convert so many people, particularly women, who have a really negative view of Mike. And almost 100 per cent switch as they're watching the movie. I was guaranteed in my mind 30 to 40 per cent of the audience would say, "Sorry, f--- this guy and the movie and you for making this movie." I just expected that. And the fact that it's been the number one movie on Rotten Tomatoes every day, I would've bet 20 to 1 against.

Q: A lot of people probably don't know his back story and that of course elicits sympathy — the fact that he was bullied as a child, that he was so insecure, that he grew up in poverty. He tells it in a compelling way.

A: That I think is true. The fact they go in with that negative anticipation, they then start to be sympathetic, then empathetic, and then in many cases they say, "I wanted to give him a big hug at the end." If they didn't start so negatively, it wouldn't be so strongly positive at the end. It's that innate sense that many people have of a desire to be pleasantly surprised about human nature in places they don't expect.

Mike Tyson in 1996. (Jon Levy/AFP/Getty Images)

Q: Also, I don't think many people have heard Mike Tyson speak for an extended period of time.

A: That's right. I cannot tell you the number of people who've said, as if they expected a baboon, "I can't believe he speaks so well." They literally expect a monosyllabic goon, and the fact is that he has a fresh, direct sense of language. He actually has his own voice.

There are a lot of very well-educated people who speak a kind of political jargon which is grammatically effective to a degree, and passes for literate, but in fact it's empty. And Tyson literally says exactly what's on his mind, with his own flavour. And even when he's using a word that doesn't correspond to a dictionary definition – as is the case one of the two times he uses "skullduggery" in the movie; he uses it once in the dictionary sense and once in his own sense – even then you feel he's kind of inventing language to suit his idea of the way he wants to say something. And that too is sort of endearing, because you feel you're listening to someone who's trying to speak truthfully to you instead of in phrases that are just passed on.

Q: There are moments of incredible fragility. He cries when he discusses his former trainer-manager Constantine "Cus"D'Amato, his mentor who died in 1985. Was it tough to get Tyson to open up?

A: No, I used a kind of psychoanalytic method. I felt that if I addressed him directly with a question-and-answer dynamic, it would not work. And I thought the way to do this is to stand behind him and off-camera, so I had the physical relationship to him of an analyst [to a patient]; I raised subjects and then just let him go in a stream-of-consciousness way. And I didn't rush him at all.

So, frequently I would ask a question, raise a subject and then not say anything for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, including long silences, just let the camera run on the silences and then all of a sudden his voice would come up. And those are the things he said that shocked him when he saw the movie, because it's as if those things were not normally in his consciousness.

Tyson knew he had to deliver, he knew that this was a movie that was being made, but he was put in such a relaxed environment that these things just flowed. Most of the interesting stuff in the movie wouldn't exist if I had faced him and interviewed him.

Q: Tyson is different from many other documentaries in that he's the only interview subject. You don't talk to anyone else in his life or any commentators. Why did you do it this way?

A: Well, it was supposed to be a personal movie. I thought at first maybe it should be about our relationship. My alternative notion was a movie in which there were two people on camera, he and I talking, but I thought that's going to end up loaded towards me. And then I thought, Well, I'll make this like a Tyson self-portrait, in the way that if Gauguin or Van Gogh were painting themselves, you're not going to have six other people working on the canvas. It's just the way Tyson sees himself.

Tyson, left, and director James Toback arrive at the premiere of Tyson in West Hollywood, Calif. (Angela Weiss/Getty Images)

Q: In the film, Tyson refers to Desiree Washington, the woman he was convicted of raping, as "a wretched swine." Have you received much criticism about his dismissal of her?

A: From some people, yes, but again, like the rest of the movie, it's not an advocacy. This is his view of what happened. I could have put in – although it would have broken the whole feeling of the film – [prominent U.S. lawyer] Alan Dershowitz, who's been around a long time, who said that in 40 years of observing criminal cases, this is the single worst miscarriage of justice he's ever seen, it's the single most obvious blunder in a courtroom he's ever seen, and he said any lawyer who reads this case and doesn't say this was a railroad job should go back to law school.

I didn't put that in. The degree to which Mike expresses his anger about it is convincing to me, even if he hadn't already said to me over the years, "This is bullshit." But then, that's up to the viewer, as is everything else. They can take Mike at face value or say, "I don't care what he says, he wouldn't have been convicted if he wasn't guilty." Although that would be a rather naïve notion, to think that conviction always equals guilt.

Q: That opening montage of Tyson decimating Trevor Berbick to become WBC heavyweight champion in 1986 is quite breathtaking in its combination of artistry and savagery. Where do you rank him in the pantheon of heavyweights?

A: I think at his peak, he was the greatest heavyweight ever. Certainly if you put all the great heavyweights – John L. Sullivan, Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali and Tyson – in a room and you showed the highlights of all the great heavyweight fighters and said to each one, "Which guy at his peak would you least want to fight?" I would bet that every single person in the room would say Mike Tyson.