Mike Tyson Asks, “You Ever Hear About The Toad?”
Recently Ken Burns stated that Muhammad Ali was not only the greatest athlete of all time, but also essentially the locus for America in the latter-half of the 20th Century. Every major issue or story or facet of American life—race, religion, politics, war, class, sports/entertainment, healthcare—intersects with Ali at some point in a not-trivial manner. His refusal to go to Vietnam, conversion to Nation of Islam (and reclamation of his name), his celebrity status, United States loving and hating this man as they pit him against other Black men, his Parkinson’s diagnosis, and more. Since his arrival as Cassius Clay to his death in 2016, few major topics arrived in the American zeitgeist that didn’t have some connection to (or wasn’t able to be demonstrated by) Ali.
Another Black pugilist that could also fit such a defining bill is Mike Tyson, and not for totally positive reasons. Tyson’s biography is a complicated one full of a lot of tragedy and betrayal, rage and misfortune, horrible acts committed by him and to him, and more. From headliner to sexual assaulter to prison to punchline to oddly celebrated misfit, it’s a hell of a journey that suggests that darker and more problematic aspect of American life as it continues to wrestle with race, gender, class, sex, celebrity, justice system, drug use, entertainment, education, and much more. Perhaps one day Burns will get to profiling Iron Mike’s rise, fall, and slightly stooped elevation.
Something that won’t appear in a Ken Burns’ documentary, though, is an animation about the first time Mike Tyson smoked the venom of the Sonoran Desert Toad. The words “first time” are already sounding some alarms, of course. THE HANGOVER star recounts his cosmic experiences on the hallucinogenic, while director Fraser Munden and his team at Thoroughbread Pictures appropriately animate a mindfuck of a trip. It’s a gorgeous two minutes that is equally full of tranquility and chaos.
The short already appeared in an even more truncated form as part of Tyson’s podcast, Hotboxin' with Mike Tyson (PUMP UP THE VOLUME’s dark prophecy come to pass). For more information about this trip, its connections to Tyson’s odd but almost inevitable comeback, and what the short was trying to portray, check out this great write-up by Munden. Perhaps he can make the animated four-part documentary on Tyson that uses the peculiar icon as the lens through which 21st century America is viewed?