Sweeps Punch : NBC LOOKS FOR A KNOCKOUT WITH DOCUMENTARY ON MIKE TYSON

It’s no secret that made-for-TV movies based on true stories garner huge audiences. Last month, two versions of the Amy Fisher story on ABC and CBS drew a combined rating just a few points shy of a Super Bowl.

On Friday night at 9 p.m., beleaguered NBC is hoping for sweeps points with “Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson.” It marks the first time the network’s movie division is presenting a documentary or nonfiction film.

“Fallen Champ” grew out of a meeting between executives from TriStar Television and NBC that included NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield and Ruth Slawson, senior vice president of miniseries and motion pictures. Tyson’s picture on a newsmagazine cover spurred a discussion.

“It was sitting there (and I felt) this was a real interesting story,” Slawson said. “We had been exploring new ways to tell dramatic stories and this just lent itself to it. My concern was what story were we going to tell and how were we going to tell it to give an objective view of this man’s life and history.”

So instead of commissioning a fact-based movie with many pitfalls, NBC decided to go with a documentary.

Enter Diane Sokolow. She and her husband Mel, a squash champion who had been her co-producer on several movies and miniseries for NBC, had followed Tyson’s career closely.

In February, 1992, as Mel Sokolow lay in a New York hospital dying of cancer, the two watched a news report on Tyson’s rape trial.

Said Diane Sokolow: “When the jury was about to go out, (Mel) said to me, ‘You know something, Diane, this is a Jimmy Cagney movie. This is a kid from the gutter, who becomes champ of the world, and he’s about to go to jail.’ ”

When Sokolow resumed her career after her husband’s death, she shared that anecdote with several colleagues at TriStar, who unknown to her, already had conducted discussions with NBC. The project got the go-ahead, and Sokolow sought out Barbara Kopple, a two-time Academy Award winner for best documentary feature, to be the film’s producer and director.

“Barbara and I have tried to work together for many, many years,” said Sokolow, who served as executive producer on “Fallen Champ.” “We had many meetings over the years, trying to find the project that we could best do.”

“I’ve always made films about men,” said Kopple, whose 1977 documentary, “Harlan County, U.S.A.,” about the bitter and violent struggle between Kentucky coal miners and management, is among the classics listed on the National Film Registry. “I like being part of the all-boys world for a minute. It’s like peeking under a blanket where you’re not supposed to be and coming away with some small bit of understanding.”

Kopple began her research in May, began shooting in June and delivered the film to NBC on Nov. 16. She found the process “much different” from her theatrical films and “one of the most wonderful, easy experiences that I’ve ever done in filmmaking.”

“Fallen Champ” is a mix of new filmed interviews, video clips, fight footage and interviews, including previously unseen looks at a teen-age Tyson in 1982 and 1983.

Among those seen are actress Robin Givens, Tyson’s former wife, telling a television interviewer: “If Michael has $50 million and is supposed to have $70 million, that’s a problem;” Atlantic City casino and hotel tycoon Donald J. Trump (who praises Givens as “one helluva fine lady”) and a disconsolate Donald Washington, father of Tyson’s rape victim, Desiree Washington.

“Fallen Champ” details Tyson’s descent from a seemingly unstoppable fighter to his 1990 knockout by James (Buster) Douglas, in one of boxing’s biggest upsets. Also depicted is Tyson’s increasingly out-of-control behavior, when he falls under the influence of promoter Don King after the deaths of his original manager Jim Jacobs and father-figure Cus D’Amato, who took Tyson into his home and helped him become the world’s youngest heavyweight champion.

Tyson’s defenders include several ministers and Louis Farrakhan, the controversial Nation of Islam leader who tells a “Free Mike Tyson Rally”: “You bring a hawk into a chicken yard and wonder why the chicken got eaten up. You bring Mike to a beauty contest, and all these fine foxes parading around Mike. Mike’s eyes begin to dance like a hungry man looking at a Wendy’s beef burger.”

Beginning the project with what she described as a “rudimentary” knowledge of Tyson, Kopple said she learned a great deal about the former champ, currently serving under appeal a six-year sentence in a “high medium” security facility in Indiana.

“I learned that some of the things we do in society to each other is very harmful,” Kopple said.

“What I felt about what happened to Mike Tyson is he became a meal ticket for so many people. Most of the people I talked to had agendas. There were very few people who sincerely cared about Mike Tyson the person without getting anything back from it.”

“Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson” airs at 9 p.m. Friday on NBC.