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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

People: Tyson speaks; we’re all ears


Mike TysonAssociated Press
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
The Spokesman-Review

Mike Tyson considers it a miracle that he lived to tell his tale. And he’s telling it – in graphic detail – in a new documentary.

The 41-year-old former boxer got a prolonged ovation at a Cannes Film Festival screening of “Tyson,” directed by his old friend James Toback (“Fingers”).

In the film, which blends old video footage and TV interviews, Tyson talks about getting beaten up and stolen from when he was an overweight kid.

He covers his career’s low points, like biting Evander Holyfield’s ear in 1997 and spares no details in describing his sex life.

But Tyson insists he is innocent of the 1991 rape of an 18-year-old beauty queen for which he served three years in prison.

“I’ve been abusive to women before in my life,” he acknowledged, but added: “I thought (the conviction) was wrong, I thought it was unfair.”

Toback, who has known Tyson for 23 years and gave him small parts in “Black and White” and “When Will I Be Loved,” said he talked to him in a soothing, hypnotic voice to get him to open up for the film.

Something does not compute

A quick update on Kenny Chesney‘s complaint about an online vote deciding the entertainer of the year (which he won) at Sunday’s Academy of Country Music Awards:

Academy officials insist people could vote only once per computer, contrary to Chesney’s claims of mass balloting. And he actually campaigned for fan votes on his MySpace page.

Who stole the mink?

A New York City college student claims Lindsay Lohan took her mink coat without permission and kept it more than two weeks.

Maria Markova said in a lawsuit filed Monday that the golden sheared coat disappeared from a nightclub and that she next saw it on Lohan in a photo in OK! magazine.

Lohan, meanwhile, is soliciting corporate sponsors for her “Mo-Rockin’ 22nd Birthday” bash, described as a “Moroccan themed party … at a five-bedroom Malibu mansion,” calling it “a unique branding opportunity at an internationally media-worthy event.”

Dirty Harriet, we presume

Clint Eastwood confirmed Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival that he won’t be back onscreen as Dirty Harry, saying he “would not be on the police department at my age.”

So who’s taking it on? “I am,” joked Angelina Jolie, his co-star in the new “Changeling.”

A little dirty laundry

The British tabloid the Sun has posted a bizarre 1999 video of a 23-year-old Angelina Jolie confessing to taking “coke, heroin, ecstasy, LSD, everything,” calling bondage sex “just a cool thing” and admitting to the deaths of several pets: a mouse she dyed blue, a hamster that caught pneumonia after she took it into the shower and a lizard left too long in the sun.

The birthday bunch

Singer Ron Isley (the Isley Brothers) is 67. Singer Leo Sayer is 60. Comedian Al Franken is 57. Actor Mr. T is 56. Actor Judge Reinhold is 51. Actress Lisa Edelstein (“House”) is 40. Actress Fairuza Balk is 34. Rapper Havoc (Mobb Deep) is 34. Actress Ashlie Brillault (“Lizzie McGuire”) is 21. Actress Sarah Ramos (“American Dreams”) is 17.