Director Spike Lee calls Mike Tyson the most honest human being he’s ever met, explaining that while most people don’t tend to display the dark parts of themselves, Tyson faces them with an emotional nakedness.
Tyson’s staggering honesty about his life of drug abuse, boxing fame, womanising, acting career and criminal activities is laid out without hesitation or appeal for pity in the DVD release Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth. The programme, which originally aired as an HBO special, features Iron Mike in a one-man stage show filmed at the Imperial Theatre in New York City and directed by Lee.
The stage show existed long before Lee got involved. Tyson’s wife, Kiki, wrote it after the couple saw Chaz Palminteri’s one-man show, A Bronx Tale.
“I said to my wife, ‘Baby, I can do this.’ Because this is basically what I do when I’m in Europe and Asia. I’m on stage, but people ask me questions and I tell them about my life, and everything that happened,” Tyson says. “She started writing about me. At first she’d write from a wife’s perspective. You know, like, ‘He wasn’t that bad.’ I said, ‘No, baby, that’s not it.’
“And so I told her who I was back then, and she wrote in her own uncanny way and it came out to be real successful.”
The show looks at how Tyson grew up without parental supervision (never knowing for certain the identity of his father), the disastrous marriage to actress Robin Givens, his beast-like approach to opponents in the ring, his rape conviction and how acting roles have introduced him to an audience that never saw him fight.
Over the years, Tyson took a lot of punches, but no one ever hit him in the ring with the same explosiveness as events in his life. “You can heal from a punch, a broken jaw,” Tyson says. “But emotional scars don’t heal. They are always inside you.”
Tyson, 47, is able to publicly face his demons because he’s at the most positive place in his life. He continues to fight a winning battle against drug addiction, loves and (more importantly) respects his wife and strives every day to be the best father possible to his children.
The one-man show isn’t some cathartic form of public therapy. Getting clean and sober was Tyson’s first step to this better place in his life.
He hopes anyone who sees the show will know that while it is hard to get up when you have been knocked down so many times, the ability to rise up and change your life is out there. One just has to take the first step.
Tyson continues to work on being more open and accessible. He often gets stopped on the street by young fans of movies like The Hangover who tell him they like his acting. It’s their parents who have to tell them about Tyson’s boxing days.
Acting roles — especially in the one-man show — have allowed Tyson to show off his sense of humour — something he never revealed during his boxing days. Tyson couldn’t show his funny side while he was boxing because that would have worked against his image as being the scariest man to ever get into a ring.
His association with boxing should grow again as his Iron Mike Productions is looking to put together fight cards. It’s all part of Tyson’s story that continues to unfold beyond what’s featured in the DVD. — By Rick Bentley, The Fresno Bee/MCT



Watson terrible at small talk


Actress Emma Watson says she is terrible at making small conversations with people and has a “ridiculously short attention span”.
The 23-year-old, who features on the cover of Wonderland lifestyle magazine’s February issue, also said she was genuinely a “shy, socially awkward and introvert”, reports eonline.com.
“I feel like I’ve been given a lot of credit where it isn’t due that I don’t like to party. The truth is that I’m genuinely a shy, socially awkward, introverted person. At a big party, I’m like Bambie in the headlights,” Watson told the magazine.
“It’s too much stimulation for me, which is why I end up going to the bathroom! I need time outs! ... I get anxious. I’m terrible at small talk and I have a ridiculously short attention span,” she added.
The actress said that she was “extremely self-conscious in public”.
“I feel pressure when I’m meeting new people because I’m aware of their expectations. That makes socialising difficult. Which isn’t to say that when I’m in a small group and around my friends, I don’t love to dance and be extroverted. I am just extremely self-conscious in public.”
The Harry Potter star accepted that she has never had any desire to go off the rails and do something crazy like “get drunk and get tattoo”. “I love tattoos. But I love them on other people. In fact, I have a Pinterest account and a whole board of tattoos that I like but I would never want one for myself. I don’t think I could pull it off. My own self-image would not allow it,” Watson said. — IANS


John Legend is  
always romantic

Model Chrissy Teigen says her husband, singer-songwriter John Legend, is always romantic. Legend, 35, is planning something special for Teigen, 28, to celebrate their first Valentine’s Day together as husband and wife, report usmagazine.com.
“John’s always the sweetest thing. I’m happy cooking at home, but John will be planning something sexy elsewhere (for Valentine’s Day). He’s romantic year-round, not just the holiday,” Teigen said. — IANS

Simpson “proud” to be slim

Singer Jessica Simpson says she is “proud” of her slim figure. She recently posted a black and white photograph, in which she is seen standing with her hands on her curves, and captioned it: “Too proud to sit down! Behind the scenes of my new commercial. Thanks weightwatchers.”
She wore a tight-fitted ensemble for the shoot, and kept her blonde hair down in waves, reports usmagazine.com. The 33-year-old, who gave birth to son Ace in June 2013, is the spokeswoman of the Weight Watchers company that offers various products and services to assist weight loss and maintenance. — IANS

Johansson finds technology ‘crazy’

Actress Scarlett Johansson doesn’t endorse social media or digital platforms because she wants to protect her “personal life”. Johansson has given her voice to the operating system named Samantha in the Oscar-nominated film Her. “All of it drives me crazy. I don’t understand this need to ‘share’. We almost exploit ourselves in order to feel seen,” the 29-year-old said in a statement. “I don’t have a Facebook or a twitter account, and I don’t know how I feel about this idea of, ‘Now, I’m eating dinner, and I want everyone to know that I’m having dinner at this time,’ or ‘I just mailed a letter and dropped off my kids’. I’d rather that people had less access to my personal life,” she added. Her follows the life of a heartbroken man who becomes intrigued with a new, advanced operating system, which promises to be an intuitive entity in its own right, individual to each user. — IANS