HBO's press tour presentations this year were quieter than they've sometimes been. They don't have a big, splashy new drama series to talk about — in part because they still make a limited amount of original programming and don't have a lot of room when they're happy with how things are going. They have a comedy series with Stephen Merchant, but since we haven't seen it, most of the questions touched in one way or another on how tall he is.
Their best panel featured Larry David and Greg Mottola talking about Clear History, a straight-up comedy film David wrote and Mottola directed, in which David is initially unrecognizable under makeup. But they also paneled Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, directed by Stephen Frears, which sounds like it would be about Muhammad Ali but is actually about the Supreme Court. If I'd been titling it, I'd have called it something else, because it's a little jarring to realize Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight is mostly about white guys. (And Thurgood Marshall, played by Danny Glover.) Lincoln has the same issue, but at least it's called Lincoln. Take note — Frears continues the trend of celebrated film directors working on made-for-cable movies, as Steven Soderbergh did with Behind The Candelabra.
They also presented Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth. It's HBO's film of Mike Tyson's one-man Broadway show, directed by Spike Lee.
The panel felt tense from the beginning, because it started with a question about how loose the script was, given that it seemed unlikely that Tyson — not trained in theater — was presenting a Broadway-show-length monologue scripted to the last word. In a lot of ways, assuming things are loose and improvised is a compliment in this room, and if anything, we love hearing people say they make it all up as they go. But it clearly felt to Spike Lee like it wasn't a serious endeavor but just Mike Tyson Talking. "This is legit," he assured us. It already felt like we as a room and Spike Lee as a director were talking past each other a little bit.
Spike Lee and Mike Tyson have known each other a long time. Since at least 1986, Lee says. They "blew up at the same time," he remembers, and they were both from Brooklyn. And Spike Lee is happy to tell you how much he respects Tyson.
Mike Tyson is the most honest human being I've ever met in my life. Because most – I'd said it this morning. But most human beings are not going to display the dark parts of themselves, the demons they have, to the world. I mean, that's just not human instinct. And when Mike — when you see this, and if the people saw the play, he's out there on this stage naked, sharing his experience, his ups and downs, to the audience. And it's traumatic. And to do that without thinking about how — whether people are going to love me or like me or hate me, that's not — he doesn't care about. He says, "I'm going to tell you the truth. This is my life, and do it with it what you will." And when he — and it's the most courageous thing I've ever seen in my life. Because I couldn't do it, and most people couldn't do it, where you just go up there, no b———t, no lies, no spin, and talk about the great things you've done and about the not-so-great things you've done. And tell them both with honesty.