A new Mike Tyson documentary (creatively titled “Tyson”) is making waves at Cannes, and now appears headed for one of the most high-profile deals at this year’s festival, with Sony currently in negotiations to pay top-dollar for the U.S. distribution rights to the film. ↵
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↵The movie was a labor of love for director James Toback, who personally funded the film’s budget. Below he talks about what drew him to the Tyson project:↵
FirstCuts: Sports Films Make Debut at Cannes
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↵↵Fight fans will no doubt balk at Toback’s assertion that during his best three years Tyson was “the greatest fighter who ever lived” (boxing’s senior rank-ophiliac Bert Sugar placed Iron Mike at #27 on his most recent all-time list, and even that is generous in my book). I also notice watching this clip that Tyson seems much foggier and on the whole inarticulate than in his recent interview with Jeremy Schaap on E60. As Toback points out, the film was shot last year while Tyson was at the Wonderland rehab center in Hollywood, and it shows. ↵
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↵↵Tyson isn’t the only legendary sporting coke-fiend getting a sympathetic treatment at Cannes this year. “Maradona by Kusturica” is Serbian director Emil Kusturica’s virtual love letter to Argentinian soccer great Diego Maradona. The movie, showing out of competition, evidently indulges in the gravest excesses of Maradona-idolatry, including a sequence devoted to an actual Church of Maradona in Naples and the director, Kusturica, appearing in the film to proclaim himself “the Maradona of cinema.”↵
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↵↵And in the midst of all this hero-worship comes news from Spike Lee that he’s about to start shooting a Michael Jordan documentary that he plans to debut at Cannes next year. The film is being funded by the NBA and single-produced by Lee’s production house. So, ah, lemme get this straight - an MJ doc directed by Spike and financed by the NBA? Something tells me that’s going to be a rather sympathetic portrait of the man. I’m seeing Bugs Bunny as narrator talking about Jordan’s great generosity of spirit. ↵
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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
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