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James Toback
Toback in 2009
Born (1944-11-23) November 23, 1944 (age 79)
Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
Occupation(s)Film director, screenwriter
Spouse(s)Consuelo Sarah Churchill Vanderbilt Russell (1968–1969; divorced)
Stephanie Kempf
​
(m. 1992)​

James Toback (/ˈtoʊbæk/; born November 23, 1944) is an American film director and screenwriter. His screenplay for Bugsy won the 1991 Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for best screenplay of the year[1] and was nominated for both the Academy Award for best original screenplay and for the Golden Globe best screenplay award.[2][3] Toback's documentary Tyson, which he directed and co-produced, was featured at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, winning a prize in the festival's Un Certain Regard section.[4] That film was nominated for best documentary awards in several United States competitions.[5] In 2009, the San Francisco International Film Festival selected Toback for its annual Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting.[6]

Filmmaker Nicholas Jarecki examined Toback in a 2005 documentary The Outsider: A Film about James Toback. Interspliced with a narrative tracking Toback's 2004 whirlwind creation of When Will I Be Loved, Jarecki puts a "Who is James Toback?" question to multiple luminaries who know Toback through their collaborations in his work and in his personal life.[7] For Toback, work and personal life sometimes blend. His first major film success was authoring The Gambler in 1974. It won a Golden Globe Best Actor nomination for James Caan as a compulsive gambler heavily in debt to the mob.[8] In The Outsider, when asked how he first met Toback, Jeff Berg, Toback's agent at that time, answered, "He walked into my office. We had never met each other and he asked for a loan of $275,000 because he had some pressing gambling obligations that had to be satisfied."[9]

In late 2017, Toback's public image took a heavy hit. The so-called "Weinstein effect" that followed media reports of film producer Harvey Weinstein's abusive conduct with women gave rise to a flood of #MeToo revelations and allegations, and many of these named Toback.[10]

Early life

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Toback was born and raised in Manhattan, New York City, the only child in a well-to-do household. His mother, Selma Judith (née Levy), was a president of the League of Women Voters and a moderator of political debates on NBC.[11] His father, Irwin Lionel Toback, was a stockbroker and later vice president of Dreyfus Corporation.

Toback graduated from The Fieldston School in 1963 and from Harvard College, magna cum laude, in 1966. At Harvard, he edited the undergraduate literary magazine. After college, Toback worked first as a journalist. An assignment from Esquire to write about football great and actor Jim Brown led to Brown's invitation to host Toback for an extended stay in Brown's Hollywood Hills home. Brown said that "along with both of us liking girls, I just like his intellect."[12] Afterward, Toback wrote a book about his experiences as Brown's house guest: Jim: The Author's Self-Centered Memoir of the Great Jim Brown (1971). At the time, Toback was lecturing in the English Department at City College of New York.

Film career

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Toback at Cannes in 2013

Toback credits actress and friend Lucy Saroyan, his literary agent Lynn Nesbit, and Nesbit's contact in film Mike Medavoy with getting his first film script The Gambler to director Karel Reisz and then to Paramount Pictures.[13] For a year, Toback attached himself to Reisz "as his acolyte"[14] in "the perfect mentor-protegé relationship"[15] and he later described Reisz, who also directed Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The French Lieutenant's Woman, as "my one-man film school."[13] The Gambler opened in theaters in 1974.

Toback's directorial début was the 1978 film Fingers, with Harvey Keitel cast in the lead role of Jimmy "Fingers" Angelelli. In her review of Fingers, influential New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael celebrated Toback's "true moviemaking fever."[16] Toback followed Fingers with Love and Money in 1982. He wrote and directed Exposed in 1983, The Pick-up Artist in 1987, and the documentary The Big Bang in 1989. Bugsy released two years later, with Toback's screenplay winning an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.

In the three decades since Bugsy Toback has directed seven more films, including his prize-winning Tyson. He wrote the screenplays for all seven. Over his career, Toback's film direction has ranged from the large-scale and spectacular Exposed[17] to the small-scale and single-setting Two Girls and a Guy,[18] one of three Toback films that cast Robert Downey Jr in a featured role. The Oldenburg International Film Festival selected Toback and his work for its 2008 "Retrospective."[19] Other directors have since re-made two Toback films: The Beat That My Heart Skipped, a re-make of Fingers, in 2005, and Rupert Wyatt's re-make of The Gambler in 2014.

Critical reception

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Toback's films have drawn a mixed response. Many if not most of the films deal with gambling, danger, sex, and death, topics that Toback's cast members examine through intense heady dialog, in a story often punctuated by violence and sometimes leavened by humor. Film executive Richard Albarino is quoted as saying of Toback, "He never wrote or made anything he hadn't experienced first. He can't write fiction; he can only write diaries and dramatize them."[20] Owen Gleiberman, chief film critic for Variety, called Toback's 2017 An Imperfect Murder "a thrift-shop psychological X-ray that demands to be taken on its own Tobackian terms. But even on those terms, it spends too much time telling us things that it should be showing us." Critic Roger Ebert, who panned The Pick-up Artist but praised Toback's other films,[21] said of Toback that as a director, "He's alive. He's in your face. He's trying. He's trying to do something amazing. And to see somebody trying to do that even if they don't always succeed is much more interesting than to see somebody who is not even trying to do it in the first place."[22]

Alleged sexual misconduct

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See also: Weinstein effect

In early October 2017 The New York Times and The New Yorker reported allegations that film producer Harvey Weinstein had harassed, assaulted, and raped multiple women and had bought the silence of some with financial payoffs.[23][24] Shortly thereafter, the Los Angeles Times reported that 38 women had accused Toback of sexual misconduct.[25] Toback denied the allegations. In a 2018 follow-up, the Los Angeles Times reported that nearly 400 additional women had contacted the newspaper claiming harassment.[26] Toback denied these claims, also. Only five allegations were presented to authorities as potential crimes. Los Angeles County prosecutors dismissed the charges, citing the statute of limitations. [27]

Personal life

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Toback and his wife Stephanie Kempf, married since 1992, live in New York. Kempf had edited Toback's first documentary The Big Bang in 1989.[28] They have one son. Toback had an early and brief first marriage to Consuelo Sarah Churchill Vanderbilt Russell,[29] the granddaughter of John Spencer-Churchill, 10th Duke of Marlborough.

Filmography

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Year Title Director Writer Producer Notes
1974 The Gambler No Yes No
1978 Fingers Yes Yes No
1982 Love and Money Yes Yes Yes
1983 Exposed Yes Yes Yes
1987 The Pick-up Artist Yes Yes No
1991 Bugsy No Yes No Nominated- Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay
Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay
1997 Two Girls and a Guy Yes Yes No
1999 Black and White Yes Yes No
2001 Harvard Man Yes Yes No
2004 When Will I Be Loved Yes Yes No
2017 The Private Life of a Modern Woman Yes Yes No Later re-titled An Imperfect Murder

Documentary films

Year Title Director Writer Producer
1989 The Big Bang Yes Yes No
2008 Tyson Yes Yes Yes
2013 Seduced and Abandoned Yes Yes Yes

Acting roles

References

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  1. ^ "17th Annual Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards - 1991". Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Retrieved July 21, 2022.
  2. ^ "The 64th Academy Awards - 1992". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved July 22, 2022.
  3. ^ "Golden Globe Awards - James Toback". Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Retrieved July 22, 2022.
  4. ^ "Un Certain Regard Tyson Directed by: James Toback". Festival de Cannes. Retrieved July 21, 2022.
  5. ^ "Tyson (2008) Awards". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved July 22, 2022.
  6. ^ Bigelow, Catherine. "Big Screen: SF Film Society Awards Gala." 7x7.com. 5 May 2009. 24 July "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-05-25. Retrieved 2011-10-15.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link).
  7. ^ Mick LaSalle (April 7, 2006). "'The Outsider' Documentary. Directed by Nicholas Jarecki". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved July 22, 2022. Jarecki gets insightful comments from Woody Allen, football great Jim Brown, Brooke Shields, Harvey Keitel, Norman Mailer and especially Robert Downey Jr., who has made three Toback films and could almost be called Toback's screen alter ego.
  8. ^ "Golden Globe Awards - James Caan". Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Retrieved July 22, 2022.
  9. ^ Nicholas Jarecki (director) (April 22, 2005). The Outsider: A Film about James Toback (Motion picture). New York City: Green Room Films.
  10. ^ "The Weinstein ripple effect: Famous men accused of sexual harassment and assault". CNBC. November 22, 2017. Retrieved July 22, 2022.
  11. ^ "Paid Notice: Deaths TOBACK, SELMA". The New York Times. October 8, 2006.
  12. ^ Spike Lee (director) (March 22, 2002). Jim Brown: All-American (Motion picture). Home Box Office (HBO).
  13. ^ a b Toback, James (March 2014). "A Hollywood Mis-Education". Vanity Fair. New York: Conde Nast Publications. Retrieved July 25, 2022.
  14. ^ David Poland (interviewer) (January 2009). DP/30 @Sundance: Tyson, director James Toback (video). Park City, Utah: DP/30: The Oral History of Hollywood.
  15. ^ Alec Baldwin (host) (September 30, 2013). Here's the Thing: James Toback (podcast). New York City: WNYC.
  16. ^ Kellow, Brian (2011). Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark. New York: Viking. p. 254.
  17. ^ Brody, Richard. "Movies: Exposed". Film Society of Lincoln Center. Retrieved July 26, 2022. ...back in Paris, the director unfolds a breathtaking bag of tricks as the violence ratchets up. Tensely pendular tracking shots and deft full-circle pans mesh split-second action with a repressed romanticism; after a tautly efficient car chase, the inevitable conflagration yields a majestic, paranoid stillness.
  18. ^ McCarthy, Todd (September 7, 1997). "Reviews: Two Girls and A Guy". Variety. Retrieved July 27, 2022. ...[T]he piece would have essentially the same impact if performed onstage.
  19. ^ "Retrospective: Previous Honorees". Oldenburg Film Festival. Retrieved July 26, 2022.
  20. ^ Kellow, Brian (2011). Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark. New York: Viking. p. 270.
  21. ^ "James Toback: Reviews". Ebert Digital LLC. Retrieved July 26, 2022.
  22. ^ Roger Ebert. The Outsider: A Film about James Toback — Bonus Features/Deleted and Extended Scenes/Extended Ebert (DVD). Red Envelope Entertainment.
  23. ^ Kantor, Jodi; Twohey, Megan (October 5, 2017). "Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 14, 2017.
  24. ^ Farrow, Ronan (October 10, 2017). "From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein's Accusers Tell Their Stories". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on October 10, 2017. Retrieved October 10, 2017.
  25. ^ Whipp, Glenn (October 22, 2017). "38 women have come forward to accuse director James Toback of sexual harassment". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 22, 2017.
  26. ^ Whipp, Glenn (January 7, 2018). "395: the number of women who have contacted The Times with allegations of sexual harassment against James Toback". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
  27. ^ Stevens, Matt (April 9, 2018). "James Toback Won't Face Sex Crime Charges in Los Angeles". The New York Times. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
  28. ^ Benson, Sheila (May 11, 1990). "Movie review: Big Bang". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
  29. ^ Marin, Rick (January 16, 2000). "SPRING FILMS/OUTSIDERS; His Life Is a Movie, and He's the Star". The New York Times. Retrieved November 6, 2013.
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