Mike Tyson
The “Scary Movie 5” Interview
with Kam Williams
Born in Brooklyn on June 30, 1966, Michael Gerard Tyson is an all-time boxing great who, in his prime, struck fear in the heart of any opponent he squared off against. He compiled an impressive record of 50 wins, 5 losses and 1 disqualification for biting off an opponent’s ear over the course of an incomparable career in which he became the first undisputed heavyweight champ to hold the WBA, WBC and IBF title belts simultaneously.
Iron Mike has weathered a host of woes and controversies outside the ring ranging from allegations of spousal abuse to a rape conviction to the death of his 4 year-old daughter, Exodus, to declaring bankruptcy after frittering away over $300 million in prizefight purses. Today, he is a very happily-married man, with a couple of children, Milan and Morocco, by his third wife, Kiki.
Mike is currently on a 36-city tour of the country in “Undisputed Truth,” a one-man Broadway show which is part comedy/part confessional and covers all of the above and more. Here, the pugilist-turned-actor talks about his latest movie, Scary Movie 5, co-starring a rogues gallery of controversial celebrities including Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Katt Williams and Snoop Dogg.
Kam Williams: Hi Mike, thanks for the interview.
Mike Tyson: What’s up, Kam?
KW: I really appreciate your taking the time to speak with me.
MT: It’s all good in the ‘hood, my friend.
KW: Ray Hirschman asks: What interested you in Scary Movie 5?
MT: Whew! It’s a franchise that’s going to last ‘til the end of time. I wanted to be involved with that. I don’t care how silly it comes across. It’s more so for us than for kids. It’s adults acting stupid and silly.
KW: What was it like working with this cast?
MT: Everybody was great. Ashley [Tisdale] was awesome. I got an autographed picture of her for my niece.
KW: Children’s book author Irene Smalls asks: How did you get into acting?
MT: Just from messing around with a friend, Jim Toback, the director of The Pickup Artist. I always used to see him in New York and talk to him when I was younger, like a teenager. Anthony Michael Hall brought me onto the set of one day in about ’86, and Jim and I became acquainted and then good friends, and he started putting me into his movies, first Black and White, and then we did Tyson. He thought I was an interesting character. After that, I did The Hangover and got bitten by the acting bug. I have a lot of friends who’ve won Oscars, and they started telling me I could do it, too.
KW: I remember your doing a great job in Black and White opposite some famous daughter. Who was it, Jennifer Jason Leigh?
MT: That was Bijou Phillips. She was awesome in that film.
KW: And Jim’s documentary, Tyson, was riveting from start to finish.
MT: I’m just very grateful for his friendship. He’s a remarkable dude.
KW: Larry Greenberg says: When we talk about comedy, you hear words that could refer to boxing like “timing” and “punch line.” Do you see any similarities between the two?
MT: I don’t know. People tell me I’m a comedian, but I don’t approach acting from that perspective. I do know that everything in life has to do with your timing and perception. You have to be comfortable with the rhythm that you’re in. You can’t just jump into a fast rhythm if yours is slow. You might have to pick up the pace but in your own particular way. It has to do with personality, too.
KW: Richie the intern was wondering how the play‘s coming along?
MT: We’ve been doing just great, selling out every night. And I couldn’t believe the reviews. I couldn’t believe it was me they were talking about. They’re saying “Remarkably funny!” and “Moving!” I was like “They’re talking about me?” The biggest honor I had so far was when the comedian Jeff Ross told me he liked it and said, “You’re one of us, now” That was just amazing.
KW: Fight fan Mike Ehrenberg asks: Who was stronger, Razor Ruddick or Bonecrusher Smith?
MT: Bonecrusher was stronger, but Razor Ruddick hit harder.
KW: Mike also asks: What was the hardest punch you ever took in the ring?
MT: Wow! A bunch of guys really rang my clock. Gee! Razor Ruddick… Lennox Lewis… Evander Holyfield… They all did a number on me.
KW: Finally, Mike is curious about how you think you would’ve matched up against some of the other heavyweight greats in the ring?
MT: I have no idea. I just did what I did in my era, basically because of my admiration for the guys who came before me. That’s how I’ve always looked at it. I never thought of boxing like, I’m going to be the greatest fighter ever and make a lot of money. Instead, I thought I was going to win because I learned from the best. I carefully studied the videotapes of all the fighters from the past, dissected their styles, and entered the ring with their spirit.
KW: Harriet Pakula-Teweles says: Champ—you’ve had a long and varied career that involved lots of press coverage. What’s the thing you’d most have us remember about you?
MT: Overcoming my adversities.
KW: When you look in the mirror, what do you see?
MT: Me? I see an old, broke-ass black guy taking care of a bunch of kids, living life, taking them to school, and all that stuff, who’s asking himself: What the hell is this? But I wouldn’t give it up for the world because I love my wife. I never expected to have a life like this. No chaos… no confusion… no lawsuits… no violence… no going to jail…
KW: I’m originally from Bed-Stuy, too, from around Nostrand Avenue and Eastern Parkway.
MT: I know where that’s at. That’s an awesome neighborhood! Bed-Stuy, do or die! I’m from Franklin between DeKalb and Willoughby. Do you remember the Welfare place at 500 DeKalb?
KW: Sure, I’m older than you. I was born in the early Fifties.
MT: Oh, so you know what’s really going down. My mother used to have us waiting with her in that long-ass line when we were kids. But we moved to Brownsville when I was 10.
KW: The Ling-Ju Yen question: What is your earliest childhood memory?
MT: Being in the hospital at about 5 years of age, after I drank some Drano. I remember it like it was yesterday. My mother had a bunch of people over the house, and I drank it because no one was paying me any attention.
KW: Yeah, children would prefer to be praised than punished, but they’d rather be punished than ignored.
MT: No doubt about it. That’s life. That’s our nature as human beings.
KW: What is your favorite dish to cook?
MT: Artichokes.
KW: Lastly, if you could have one wish instantly granted, what would that be for?
MT: That my daughter could still be with us.
KW: My condolences, Mike. Thanks again, and best of luck with all your endeavors.
MT: Thank you, Kam. Okay, brother.
To see the schedule for Mike Tyson’s one-man play Undisputed Truth, visit
To see a trailer for Scary Movie 5, visit
Pain & Gain
Film Review by Kam Williams
Michael Bay is a director whose name has mostly come to be associated with mindless, stunt-driven action flicks such as Armageddon, Bad Boys and the Transformers franchise. His latest offering, however, Pain & Gain, represents a relatively-cerebral departure in that it tones down the special effects and pyrotechnics in favor of credible plot and character development.
Based on a true tale that transpired in Florida back in the Nineties, the alternately comical and gruesome crime caper revolves around the felonious exploits of a trio of bodybuilders who hatched a kidnap for ransom plot that went terribly awry. The mastermind of the ill-fated scheme was Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg), an ex-con employed as a personal trainer at Sun Gym in Miami.
A regular there was Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), an arrogant businessman from Colombia with an oversized ego and a temper to match. That condescending attitude makes it easy for Daniel to consider extorting cash from his client, especially given how rich the guy is.
So, he enlists the assistance of couple of equally-buff cronies, recently-paroled Paul (Dwayne Johnson) and steroid-addicted Adrian (Anthony Mackie).
But the seat-of-the-pants plan has little chance of success, despite the pea brains of the operation’s assurances that “I know what I’m doing” because “I’ve watched a lot of movies.”
One complication is Born Again Paul’s reservations, since he’s turned his life over to Jesus. Meanwhile, Adrian himself is very distracted himself by a case of juice-induced erectile dysfunction.
Nevertheless, the three still proceed with the conspiracy, abducting Victor and taking him to an abandoned warehouse where they torture him mercilessly to figure out where his fortune is hidden. The grisly goings-on are repeatedly presented as humorous onscreen, effectively masking the fact that the participants in truth landed stiff prison sentences for their evil deeds.
Credit the convincing performances by the leads, especially Dwayne Johnson (cast against type here as a fairly sensitive soul), for actually inducing the audience to empathize and laugh at the wacky antics of some despicable miscreants. Ditto Tony Shalhoub who plays such a dislikable victim that he makes it easy to roots for his captors.
A reminder ripped right out of the tabloids that while crime does not pay, it sometimes serves as fodder for lurid headlines and hilarious hijinks.
Very Good (3 stars)
Rated R for graphic nudity, bloody violence, crude sexuality, drug use and pervasive profanity
Running time: 129 minutes
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
To see a trailer for Pain & Gain, visit
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
Film Review by Kam Williams
Annoying Narration Ruins Jay-Z Produced Romantic Romp
When a gangsta rapper like Jay-Z decides to dabble in filmmaking, it only makes sense that the flick might remind you more of his genre of popular music than a typical movie. That’s precisely the case with An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, an unorthodox romance drama produced by the incomparable hip-hop icon.
Written, directed, edited, scored, narrated by and animated by Terrence Nance (How Would You Feel?), the surreal adventure co-stars Renaissance Man Nance opposite Namik Minter as friends in a platonic relationship on the verge of turning venereal. The ambitious, multi-media undertaking not only mixes cartoon and live-action images, but it also walks a fine line between drama and documentary.
While the protagonists try to sort out their feelings, the picture poses some thought-provoking questions, such as, “How do you balance logic and emotions?” Unfortunately, the film is afflicted with a fatal flaw, namely, a virtually non-stop narration of the play-by-play which starts to get on your nerves after about five minutes.
Granted, this could just be an age thing, since the Hip-Hop Generation is already used to hearing incessant, mindless, staccato-style chatter in their favorite songs. So, it might not be that big a jump for them to have to listen to a non-stop voiceover for the duration of a movie. Nevertheless, the slick poetry slam approach definitely didn’t do it for this critic.
Another annoying aspect of the experience was how the audience is addressed directly by the disembodied voice, as in “You arrive at your home,” “You empty your pockets,” “You have no bed and no money,” “You possess no means of personal transportation,” and so forth. Granted, Jay McInerney effectively employed the 2nd person in his best-selling novel “Bright Lights, Big City,” but it simply fails to work here as a cinematic device.
Ghetto psychobabble strictly for the attention-deficit, Jay-Z demographic.
Fair (1 star)
Unrated
Running time: 93 minutes
Distributor: Variance Films
To see a trailer for An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, visit:
Norwegian Anthropologist Replicates Polynesia Settlers’ Migration in Oscar-Nominated Seafaring Epic Kon-Tiki
Film Review by Kam Williams
At the beginning of the 20th Century, the conventional wisdom was that Polynesia had been settled by Asians arriving from the Far East. But it’s one thing for a pompous professor to simply sit in an ivory tower and speculate about who might have discovered the island group some 1,500 years ago, and quite another to go about proving a theory correct by attempting to replicate the putative pioneers’ perilous feat.
While doing research in the Marquesas on the Isle of Fatu Hiva in the mid-Thirties, a Norwegian anthropologist named Thor Heyerdahl (Pal Sverre Hagen) came up with a novel idea about the roots of the natives. After studying the local fauna and flora, watching the flow of the tides, and listening to aborigine folklore about their ancestors’ arduous trek towards the setting sun, he reasoned that the region must have been settled by tribes migrating there from South America.
Then, when his iconoclastic notion was roundly ridiculed by scholarly colleagues back in academia, Thor decided to prove his detractors wrong by mounting a 5,000-mile expedition from Peru to Polynesia. And although he knew nothing about sailing and couldn’t even swim, he did have the sense to assemble a team capable of assisting him in the dangerous endeavor.
The plan was to build a balsa wood raft identical to the type used by indigenous people in pre-Columbian times, painstakingly following their methods of construction down to the smallest detail. And since they would not be able to steer this vessel christened the Kon-Tiki, Thor estimated it would take about three months for the currents and winds to take them to their destination.
His intrepid crew was comprised of four fellow Norwegians and a Swede, including childhood friend, Erik Hesselberg (Odd Magnus Williamson), the navigator; radioman Knut Haugland (Tobias Santelmann), a decorated World War II veteran; Torstein Raaby (Jakob Oftebro), another radio expert; Herman Watzinger (Anders Baasmo Christiansen), an engineer; and Bengt Danielsson (Gustaf Skarsgard), the Swedish steward.
Co-directed by Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg, Kon-Tiki faithfully chronicles their historic, transoceanic voyage. Despite the fact that most of the picture’s dialogue is English, it somehow earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film category earlier this year.
The men set sail in the spring of 1947, encountering storms, shark attacks, ship rot, insubordination and a host of other challenges en route. The deliberately-paced production repeatedly harks back to a bygone era when much of the Earth’s surface was yet to be explored.
Replete with breathtaking Pacific panoramas shot on location, Kon-Tiki is worth watching for the captivating visuals alone. However, the storytelling is solid, too, with all adding up to a fitting tribute to the enviable exploits of the legendary Thor Heyerdahl.
Excellent (4 stars)
Rated PG-13 for violence
In English, Norwegian, Swedish and French with subtitles
Running time: 118 minutes
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
To see a trailer for Kon-Tiki, visit
Ken Burns
“The Central Park Five” Interview
with Kam Williams
Ken Burns has been making films for more than thirty years. Since the Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Ken has gone on to direct and to produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made.
The late historian Stephen Ambrose said of his films, “More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source.” A December 2002 poll conducted by Real Screen Magazine listed The Civil War as second only to Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North as “the most influential documentary of all time,” and named Ken Burns and Robert Flaherty as the “most influential documentary makers” of all time.
In March, 2009, David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun said, “… Burns is not only the greatest documentarian of the day, but also the most influential filmmaker period. That includes feature filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. I say that because Burns not only turned millions of persons onto history with his films, he showed us a new way of looking at our collective past and ourselves.”
Ken’s films have won ten Emmy Awards and two Oscar nominations, and in September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Here, he talks about his latest film, The Central Park Five, co-directed by his daughter, Sarah, and her husband, David McMahon, which premieres on PBS on April 16th.