From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell.

You can also hear the show at KCRW.com.

My guest writer, director, James Tobac, makes intensely personal films,

maybe the most intensely personal filmmaker of his generation.

His fiction, films, and documentaries all tend to be about his own interests,

and his newest film, the documentary Tyson,

combines a number of those complications.

Jim, first of all, thanks for coming back.

Thank you for having me.

I've been missing you.

And I can't think another filmmaker whose films are so intensely personal, so much about him,

even the documentaries.

And just to think that you were able to find a documentary subject that collapses into so many of your own interests.

Well, one of the reasons I was drawn to Mike Tyson as I was 23 years ago when we met in the

middle of the night at the Museum of Natural History while I was shooting the pickup artist

is precisely that we had so much in common despite the fact that he was a 19-year-old kid from Brownsville,

who was about to come heavyweight champion,

and I was a 30-whatever-year-old director

making a movie about a white sexually obsessed pickup artist.

But the many layers of connection we felt that first night turned out to result

...