Werner Herzog on Mike Tyson

I had occasion, you know well, of interviewing Mike Tyson, who said, the past is just us in funny clothes. Well, Tyson, I like him a lot and I advised Paul to have him on his program at the New York Public Library. And I also asked Paul now, please take it seriously. I said to Paul, don't speak just about boxing and about jail and about all these sort of things. Speak with him about the Roman Republic and speak with him about Pippi and the Short. The Frankish Kings. Frankish Kings. Clovis and Pippi and the Short. And you asked in an audience... No, you told me, you asked the audience in this very sophisticated... I remember, yes. No, it wasn't just I asking. You said, you turned to your audience at the New York Public Library and asked them, who knows about Pepin and the Short? Clovis, you might. Charlemagne, you probably would. And of course, nobody knew. And that's when Tyson started to speak about Clovis and Charlemagne and especially about Pepin and how incredible... And he got so involved in saying the Frankish Kings and he got so excited. I said, but why do you love the Frankish Kings? And he says, they really knew how to kill. And I remember very clearly also that he got so excited when we showed him a first edition of Machiavelli's The Prince in the rear book room at the library. And he looked at the chief curator and he said, I think there's an earlier edition. And he was absolutely right. Yes. And when I said to him on stage, you seem so immersed. I didn't use the word consolation there, but there's something similar. You seem so immersed in all this literature. He said, a home without books is like a body without a soul. And I was stunned, of course. And then two or three days later, a journalist called me up and said, do you know that that line isn't Tyson's? It comes from Cicero. And the journalist was saying that to me to say, look, the fraud. And I said, but it's Mike Tyson quoting Cicero. Exactly. Yes. And what is so wonderful about it is when you look at where does Tyson come from, I think he was a semi-illiterate. And his mother a prostitute. And they live in one single room. And her clients are in that room with him. And while they were at it, he would go through the pockets of the men through the trousers that were over the chair. And before he was 11, I think he was 40 times arrested already. And on and on and on. And now this man has his fervent hunger for literature, for history. I find it absolutely not only astonishing, it moves me very deeply.