James Toback

About James Toback

Who is it?: Writer, Director, Actor
Birth Day: November 23, 1944
Birth Place:  New York City, New York, United States
Birth Sign: Sagittarius
Occupation: Screenwriter, film director
Spouse(s): Consuelo Sarah Churchill Vanderbilt Russell (1968–1969; divorced) Stephanie Kempf (1992–present; 1 son)

James Toback Net Worth

James Toback was born on November 23, 1944 in  New York City, New York, United States, is Writer, Director, Actor. 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. 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 Scorcese collaborator Harvey Keitel as a debt collector who has ambitions to be a concert pianist (the latter a determinedly non-Scorcese 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. In a year 2000 appearance at the National Film Theatre in London to screen and discuss Black and 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.Long before making the controversial Black and 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. Love & Money (1982) 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). 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.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.. 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). He also had an earlier screenplay adapted and filmed by French writer-director Jacques Audiard (De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté (2005).
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💰James Toback Net worth: $13 Million

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Biography/Timeline

1963

He graduated from The Fieldston School in 1963 and from Harvard College, magna cum laude, in 1966. While attending Harvard College, Toback took what he half-seriously claims to be the largest single dose of LSD in history. He remained under the influence of the drug for eight days before being administered an "antidote" by neuropsychiatrist Max Rinkel. According to Toback, he lost all fear of death due to this experience.

1968

Toback was married for one year (1968–1969) to Consuelo Sarah Churchill Vanderbilt Russell, the granddaughter of John Spencer-Churchill, 10th Duke of Marlborough. He is currently married to Stephanie Kempf, with whom he has one son.

1972

After graduating from Harvard, Toback worked as a Journalist. An assignment from Esquire on football player Jim Brown led to him living in Brown's house for a period of a couple years, where both Toback and Brown claim to have engaged in orgies with several women. It was after Toback grew tired of his hedonistic lifestyle in Brown's house that he came to the decision to make movies for a living. Toback wrote a book about his experiences with Brown entitled Jim: The Author's Self-Centered Memoir of the Great Jim Brown (1972). In the early 1970s Toback taught creative writing at the City College of New York. He drew on this experience when he wrote the screenplay for The Gambler.

1974

In 1974, Toback's screenplay The Gambler was produced. Much of the film was shot at City College. His directorial début was the 1978 film Fingers, remade 28 years later by Jacques Audiard as The Beat That My Heart Skipped. Toback followed Fingers with Love and Money in 1982. Toback wrote and directed Exposed in 1983; The Pick-up Artist in 1987; and the documentary The Big Bang in 1989. Toback wrote the original screenplay for Bugsy, which won the Golden Globe for Best Picture and was nominated for ten Academy Awards including Best Original Screenplay. Toback won the Los Angeles Film Critics' Award for Best Original Screenplay and a similar award from the readers of Premiere Magazine.

1989

An article in a 1989 issue of Spy magazine detailed how Toback would "hang out on the streets of the Upper 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 his Directors 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".

1997

In 1997, Toback wrote and directed the comedy Two Girls and a Guy, and in 1999, he wrote and directed Black and White in collaboration with members of Wu-Tang Clan. He then wrote and directed Harvard Man starring Adrian Grenier in 2001. In 2004, Toback wrote and directed When Will I Be Loved and in 2008, Toback directed Tyson, a documentary about boxer Mike Tyson.

2008

In 2008 and 2015 Gawker articles described Toback as a "pick-up artist".

2011

In an August 2011 interview, Toback gave the story of the autobiographical background and development of The Gambler, and criticized the idea of the film being remade (as it was in 2014).

2013

Toback teamed with Alec Baldwin in 2013 to create and release a full-length movie called Seduced and Abandoned, which features a look into how movies are financed. Toback referred to the documentary style film as a cinematic romp. The HBO film shows Toback and Baldwin at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival searching for funding for a movie.

2017

On October 22, 2017, the Los Angeles Times reported that 38 women have accused Toback of sexual harassment or assault. 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". 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. Accusers include actresses Rachel McAdams, Selma Blair, Terri Conn, Caterina Scorsone, Julianne Moore, and musician Louise Post. Toback claimed he was taking medication at the time of the alleged assaults that made it "biologically impossible" for the alleged actions to occur.

2018

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 the statute of limitations. Two of the declined cases involved misdemeanors, three involved felonies.