James Toback
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| James Toback | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 23, 1944 New York City |
James Toback (born November 23, 1944) is an American screenwriter and film director.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Toback was born in New York City. His mother, Selma Judith (née Levy), was a President of The League of Women Voters and a moderator of political debates on NBC.[1] His father, Irwin Lionel Toback, was a stockbroker and former Vice-President of Dreyfus & Company.[2] Toback graduated from The Fieldston School in 1963 and from Harvard College, magna cum laude, in 1966.
[edit] Career
After graduating from Harvard, Toback intended to become a novelist but turned to journalism instead. Given an assignment for an article in Esquire on football legend Jim Brown, Toback moved into Brown's Hollywood mansion and ended up writing an autobiographical memoir Jim: The Author's Self-Centered Memoir of the Great Jim Brown, an analytical documentation of his complex, intellectually and racially provocative, orgiastic experiences. In 1974, his semi-autobiographical original screenplay The Gambler (1974), was directed by British filmmaker Karel Reisz and starred James Caan as Axel Freed, an English professor and death-obsessed compulsive gambler. Toback used the experience on the "The Gambler" as preparation for his directorial debut Fingers starring Harvey Keitel. Fingers is a dark, wounding psychological drama which inspired Pauline Kael to compare Toback with Dostoevsky, Conrad, and Orson Welles. It was remade twenty-eight years later as The Beat That My Heart Skipped, a French film directed by Jacques Audiard. It remains the only original American movie ever to be remade as a French film.
Toback followed Fingers with Love and Money (1982), a measurably less successful effort, distinguished primarily by a lovely performance by legendary Hollywood director King Vidor, making his acting debut at the age of eighty. During the 1980s, Toback wrote and directed Exposed (1983) with Nastassia Kinski, Rudolf Nureyev, Harvey Keitel, Bibi Andersen, and Pierre Clementi. The film was photographed in ravishing style by Nouvelle Vague cinematographer Henri Decae and features a magnificent original score by Nouvelle Vague composer Georges Delerue.
Less ambitious, cute rather than searing, The Pick-up Artist (1987) with Robert Downey Jr., Molly Ringwald, Harvey Keitel, and Dennis Hopper. In 1989, Toback created The Big Bang, a documentary exploring the connections among orgasm, sex, love, madness, murder, crime, death, and the origin and fate of the cosmos. It featured a philosopher nun, an Auschwitz survivor, a gangster (Tony Sirico, later to become Paully Walnuts in the Sopranos), a cosmologist, a jazz saxophonist, a basketball star (Darryl "Chocolate Thunder" Dawkins), a concert violinist, and two six year old children.
In 1991, Toback's original screenplay Bugsy was brought to fruition with Barry Levinson (director) and Warren Beatty (star and producer). Their collaboration is documented in a hilarious three-person on camera feature in the extended cut DVD of Bugsy. The film also starred Harvey Keitel as Mickey Cohen, Ben Kingsley as Meyer Lansky, and Annette Benning as Virginia Hill. The movie won the Golden Globe for Best Picture and was nominated for ten Academy Awards. Toback won the Los Angeles Film Critics' Award for Best Original Screenplay and a similar award from the readers of Premiere Magazine. Upon losing the Academy Award, he was heard to utter a heartfelt if etiquette-defying impolite imprecation.
In 1997, Toback wrote and directed Two Girls and a Guy, a hilarious classic on the subject of the incompatibility of romantic monogamy and sexual curiosity. Robert Downey Jr.'s performance is generally recognized (by among others, Christopher Walken, Daniel Day-Lewis, and a host of noted critics) as among the most memorable in modern cinema.
In 2000, Toback wrote and directed Black and White in collaboration with members of Wu-Tang Clan, in particular Power, Raekwan, and Method Man. The film also starred Robert Downey Jr., Ben Stiller, Mike Tyson, Claudia Schiffer, Brooke Shields, Jared Leto, Bijou Phillips, Elijah Wood, Toback himself, and Allen Houston. The film explores the phenomenon of hip-hop from the inside and its corollary phenomena: identity, music, madness, murder, drugs, crime, race and sex.
In 2002, Toback wrote and directed Harvard Man starring Adrien Grenier. The movie depicts, in fictional but accurate fashion, Toback's own LSD/madness experience, which served as the intellectual and psychological underpinning of his Harvard years (and incidentally ended his drug career permanently at the age of nineteen). Harvard Man also explores traditional Tobackian themes: orgasm, sex, sports, crime, and the boundless need to take risks.
In 2003, Toback wrote and directed When Will I Be Loved, an elegantly crafted exploration of the psyche and sexuality of a driven, curious, articulate young woman, Vera, played by Neve Campbell. Dominic Chianese (The Sopranos) and Fred Weller portray men who imagine themselves - with fatal consequences - to be capable of toying with Vera when they are in fact well in over their heads.
In 2007, Toback directed Tyson, a documentary portrait of the unique, fascinating, and endlessly provocative former heavyweight champion. The film, to be released in 2008, has already received strong praise in Le Monde from its noted film critic Samuel Blumenfeld.
In 2006, documentary filmmaker Nicolas Jarecki directed The Outsider, a cinematic excursion into Toback's world, which includes excerpts from much of his work, visual observation of his directing "When Will I Be Loved," and self-revelatory as well as revelatory interviews with Norman Mailer, Robert Downey Jr, Mike Tyson, Brooke Shields, Neve Campbell, Brett Ratner, ICM chairman Jeff Berg, Bijou Phillips, Roger Ebert, former Sony chairman John Calley, Jim Brown, Woody Allen, Barry Levinson, Power of Wu-Tang Clan, and Harvey Keitel.
[edit] Personal life
 |
Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (May 2008) |
Toback was married to Consuelo Sarah Churchill Vanderbilt Russell, the granddaughter of the 10th Duke of Marlborough.
