James Toback | |
|---|---|
 Toback in 2009 | |
| Born | James Lee Toback (1944-11-23)November 23, 1944 (age 81) Manhattan, New York City, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Occupations |
|
| Spouses | |
James Lee Toback (/ˈtuːbæk/, born November 23, 1944)[1][2] is an American screenwriter and film director. He was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1991 forBugsy. He has directed films includingThe Pick-up Artist,Two Girls and a Guy andBlack and White.
In 2018, theLos Angeles Times reported that 395 women had accused Toback ofsexual harassment orassault over a 40-year period. Toback denied all the allegations.[3][4] In 2022, 38 women filed a lawsuit in New York accusing him of sexual abuse.[5] The suit eventually involved 40 accusers[6] and, on April 9, 2025, resulted in a verdict and order against Toback requiring him to pay $1.68 billion to the women.[7]
Toback was born and raised in Manhattan, New York City, the only child ofJewish parents Irwin Lionel Toback and Selma Judith (née Levy).[8] His father was vice president ofDreyfus Corporation.[9] His mother was a president of theLeague of Women Voters and a moderator of political debates on NBC.[9][10] His grandfather, Joseph Levy, was the founder of a clothing chain and real estate empire. Toback grew up in the Manhattan apartment building calledThe Majestic with his parents, who lived four floors below his grandfather.[11] He befriended future film producer,Ed Pressman, who lived in the same building and later produced Toback's film,Harvard Man.[12]
Toback graduatedsumma cum laude from Harvard University in 1966.[9] He was an editor forThe Harvard Crimson.[13]
Toback spent three years teaching English atCity College of New York and developed a gambling addiction.[14]
An assignment fromEsquire to write about football great and actorJim 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."[15] 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), whichSalon described as "essentially a series of wild parties and orgies".[16] SociologistCalvin C. Hernton reviewed the book forThe New York Times and wrote, "James Toback reveals as much about himself in this book as he does about his subject, Jim Brown."[17]
Toback's first major film success was with writing the semi-autobiographicalThe Gambler, released in 1974. He credits actress and friendLucy Saroyan, his literary agent Lynn Nesbit, and Nesbit's contact in filmMike Medavoy with getting his the script to directorKarel Reisz and then toParamount Pictures.[14] For a year, Toback attached himself to Reisz "as his acolyte"[18] in "the perfect mentor-protegé relationship,"[19] and he later described Reisz as "my one-man film school."[14]
Toback's directorial début was the 1978 filmFingers, withHarvey Keitel. In her review ofFingers, film criticPauline Kael wrote of Toback's "true moviemaking fever."[20] Toback followedFingers withLove and Money in 1982,Exposed in 1983,The Pick-up Artist in 1987, and the documentaryThe Big Bang in 1989.
In 1991, he wrote the screenplay forBugsy, which won the 1991Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for best screenplay of the year[21] and was nominated for both theAcademy Award for best original screenplay and for theGolden Globe best screenplay award.[22][23]
FilmmakerNicholas Jarecki examined Toback in a 2005 documentaryThe Outsider: A Film about James Toback.[24]
Toback's documentaryTyson, which he directed and co-produced, was featured at the 2008Cannes Film Festival, winning a prize in the festival'sUn Certain Regard section.[25] That film was nominated for best documentary awards in several United States competitions.[26]
In 2009, theSan Francisco International Film Festival selected Toback for its annualKanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting.[27]
Over his career, Toback's film direction has ranged from the large-scale and spectacularExposed[28] to the small-scale and single-settingTwo Girls and a Guy,[29] one of three Toback films that castRobert Downey Jr. in a featured role. TheOldenburg International Film Festival selected Toback and his work for its 2008 "Retrospective."[30] Other directors have since re-made two Toback films. French directorJacques Audiard's 2005 remake ofFingers asThe Beat That My Heart Skipped won numerous Best Film awards. English directorRupert Wyatt re-madeThe Gamblerin 2014.
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."[31]
In 2005, criticRoger Ebert, who pannedThe Pick-up Artist but praised some of Toback's other films,[32] said of Toback's directorial style, "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."[33]
Film historian and longtime friendDavid Thomson noted that "Jim is a member of a generation of young men who fell upon film with enormous creative excitement and did some very, very good work that has had a profound impact on cinema... But I do think that in that work in general, there is too much ignorance about how women see and feel the world and too little place for women in the work."[34]
Toback has been accused ofsexually harassing young women.
An article in a 1989 issue ofSpy magazine detailed how Toback would "hang out on the streets of theUpper West Side in New York City, and approach women. According to the story, he would in rapid-fire fashion tell them that he was a Hollywood director and offer to show them hisDirectors Guild of America card. The pitch invariably ended up with an invite to meet privately—sometimes at an outlandishly late hour—to talk about appearing in one of his films".[35] The article, attributed to a pseudonym byline, was actually written by two women who had their own alleged encounters with Toback.[36]
A 2002Salon article noted Toback's reputation as a womanizer andpickup artist.[16]
On October 22, 2017,Los Angeles Times columnist Glenn Whipp reported that 38 women have accused Toback of sexual harassment orassault. Toback denied these allegations, saying he had not met the women, or that if he had, it "was for five minutes" about which he had "no recollection".[37][38] The alleged harassment occurred at meetings framed as interviews or casting auditions in places such as hotel rooms, movie trailers, or a public park where Toback asked questions pertaining to the women's sex lives and rubbed his crotch on them or masturbated.[37][39] Accusers include actressesRachel McAdams,Selma Blair,Terri Conn,[40]Caterina Scorsone,[41]Julianne Moore,[42]Becky Wahlstrom,[43]Cheryl Hines,[44] and musicianLouise Post.[40] Toback claimed he was taking medication at the time of the alleged assaults that made it "biologically impossible" for the alleged actions to occur.[45] In January 2018, Whipp reported that since theTimes published its article in October 2017, a total of 395 women contacted the newspaper and said that Toback had sexually harassed them. The accounts stretch over a 40-year period. Toback has denied all these allegations as well.[3]
In April 2018, Los Angeles County prosecutors declared they would not be pressing any charges against Toback. In one case, the victim did not turn up for an interview, and the rest were beyond thestatute of limitations. Two of the declined cases involvedmisdemeanors, three involvedfelonies.[46][34]
In December 2022, a civil lawsuit was filed against Toback through the New York state Supreme Court after theAdult Survivors Act suspended the statutes of limitations for cases involving sex offenses for a one-year period.[5][47] The lawsuit involves 40 of his accusers.[6] Toback issued a blanket denial, did not attend the trial, andacted as his own attorney. He did not show up for pre-trial hearings, leading to adefault judgment against him. On April 9, 2025, a verdict was reached with an order for Toback to pay $1.68 billion to the accusers.[7]
Toback is married to Stephanie Kempf, who had edited Toback's first documentaryThe Big Bang in 1989.[48][49] Toback had married Consuelo Sarah Churchill Vanderbilt Russell in April 1968,[1] a marriage that ended in divorce after a year.[48][50]
| 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-titledAn 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
Unproduced scripts
James Lee Toback was married to the former Consuelo Sarah Churchill Russell on April 26. He has had feature articles published in Commentary, Esquire, and is at work on a film adaptation of The Possessed.
...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.
...[T]he piece would have essentially the same impact if performed onstage.
