James Toback

James Toback, screenwriter and the director of nine films, was born on November 23, 1944 in New York City to a successful garment manufacturer.

A 1966 graduate of Harvard College, Toback later taught creative writing at City College of New York in the early 1970s.

Taught writing at the City College of New York (CCNY) in the early 1970s. The James Caan character in The Gambler (1974) was also a college teacher, a professor of English literature at New York University, though scenes from the movie were filmed at CCNY (now known as City University of New York).

He suffered from a gambling compulsion that still plagues him, which was the subject of his autobiographical screenplay for the Karel Reisz film The Gambler (1974) that starred James Caan as a New York University literature professor who was a compulsive gambler. The film was a success and launched Toback's career in movies.

He graduated to writer-director with his movie Fingers (1978), a gritty, urban melodrama influenced by Martin Scorsese's early New York pictures starring early Scorsese collaborator Harvey Keitel as a debt collector who has ambitions to be a concert pianist (the latter a determinedly non-Scorsese theme).

Fingers (1978) revealed Toback's obsession with former football great and blaxploitation movie star Jim Brown, one of the more potent mainstream avatars of African American pride and defiance to the culture at large in the late 1960s and early '70s.

Love & Money (1981) and Exposed (1983) were flops, though he did redeem his reputation later in the decade with the popular The Pick-up Artist (1987) (which starred Downey, Jr.

and was produced by his friend and fellow-womanizer Warren Beatty) and his highly acclaimed documentary about the meaning of existence The Big Bang (1989).

After reaching those heights, Toback's career again swooped downward, and none of his projects reached the screen until the late 1990s, when he wrote and directed Two Girls and a Guy (1997), starring, once again, Robert Downey, Jr. .

In 1992, Toback's talent as a screenwriter was recognized when he was nominated for an Academy Award for for Warren Beatty's star vehicle Bugsy (1991), a modest box office success which was directed by Barry Levinson.

Was an uncredited script doctor on Disclosure (1994).

Was an uncredited script doctor on Bad Boys (1995).

Wrote uncredited revisions to the script for Warren Beatty's political comedy Bulworth (1998).

Long before making the controversial Black & White (1999) and Harvard Man (2001) (both of which return to his theme of gambling), Toback spent two decades after Fingers (1978) on a career rollercoaster.

In a year 2000 appearance at the National Film Theatre in London to screen and discuss Black & White (1999), his film dealing with relations between "wiggas" (Caucasian black-wannabes) and African Americans (with a cast that included former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson playing himself, counseling another African American to commit murder), Toback admitted that he revered black culture as an antidote to the sterility of middle-class white existence. Toback said that he was bored with his life and his wife after graduating from Harvard, and he saw Jim Brown as a symbol of the freedom he wanted to achieve. His explanation and the portrayal of a homosexual character in the film (played by frequent Toback star Robert Downey Jr. ) did not go over well with the members of color in the audience, but Toback was undaunted by their hostility and remained in good spirits.

After experiencing a career renaissance at the turn of the millennium, Toback has written and directed only one more picture, the underwhelming When Will I Be Loved (2004).

Retrospective at the Oldenburg International Film Festival in 2008.

He cultivated a reputation as a 'ladies man', f.e. in a 1989 Spy magazine article, but his manipulative methods in trying to have sex with young actresses were far more sinister: Since 2017 Toback has been accused of sexual assault or sexual harassment by 395 women, according to 'The Guardian' [April 10, 2017].