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Topic: Toback, James

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	James Toback: His Life's a Movie, and He's the Star
		Toback what violence is to Quentin Tarantino, who once said he used to play "Fingers" at the video store where he worked until the owner told him it was scaring the customers.
		Toback said he told the actors they had to get "from point A to point R in a scene" and left the specifics to them.
		Toback, who is married to Stephanie Kempf, called the article slander and "an occupational hazard of personal filmmaking." He complained that the coverage of him in the media has subjected him "to personality stuff no other directors are subjected to" because he has never hired a publicist.
	partners.nytimes.com /library/film/011600sf-toback-film.html (1715 words)

	Harvard Gazette: Toback: 'Harvard Man' for a day
		Toback's first screenplay was "The Shades Below," which he wrote with Jacob Brackman '65, a former colleague on the staff of the Harvard Advocate.
		Toback based the script on his own experiences as an addictive gambler, a psychological malady that he says bears little resemblance to the mental state of the recreational gambler or the professional who gambles for money.
		Toback went to London and spent a year of preproduction time coaching Reisz on the background of his film and in turn learning the art of filmmaking by watching the director at work.
	www.news.harvard.edu /gazette/2003/04.24/17-toback.html (794 words)

	Salon Entertainment \| "Two Girls and a Guy"
		Toback's early movies, "Fingers" and the wickedly enjoyable "Exposed," never resolved the tension between the filmmaker's intellectualized approach and the pulpy melodramatic scenarios he cooked up.
		Toback is once again trawling his favorite territories: the battle between sexual compulsiveness and romantic fidelity, and the irresistible, unresolvable, maddening tension between men and women.
		Toback's detractors (who've tended to review his movies in terms of his reputation for womanizing) may jump on this as a bit of special pleading on the director's part.
	archive.salon.com /ent/movies/1998/04/cov_24two.html?CP=SAL&DN=110 (828 words)

	American Cinematographer: DVD Playback January 2003
		Toback presents Jimmy’s dual nature in a variety of novel ways; for instance, the aspiring pianist constantly lugs around a portable cassette player blaring ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll tunes, which subtly suggest his gangster leanings.
		Toback and cinematographer Michael Chapman, ASC used wide-angle lenses and spare compositions throughout the film to isolate Jimmy against the New York locations, highlighting the character’s sense of loneliness and alienation.
		In fact, during the ‘70s, Toback lived for a time with football great Jim Brown, who is cast unforgettably (and without an iota of political correctness) as a formidable underworld figure with an almost sinister power over women – a charisma that the profoundly confused Jimmy clearly lacks.
	www.theasc.com /magazine/jan03/dvd/page2.html (639 words)

	James Toback Biography @ Filmbug (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-08-19)
		In 1979 James Toback burst onto the international film scene with his cult hit, Fingers, starring Harvey Keitel, a movie which has excited filmmakers from Truffaut to Tarantino.
		A graduate of Harvard College, Toback began a career in journalism, writing for Esquire, Harper's, Dissent and Commentary.
		Toback's future projects include Harvard Man; Love in Paris, a coming-of-age romance set against the worlds of fashion and crime in New York and Paris; and Vicki, a film about the 19th century feminist and free lover Victoria Woodhull, who was the first woman to run for president.
	www.filmbug.com /db/31818-9 (215 words)

	JS Online: JS Online (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-08-19)
		But James Toback, director of the improvisational and controversial new film essay on race and sex called "Black and White," envisions a solution of sorts.
		According to Toback, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of "Bugsy" and director of "Two Girls and a Guy," the answer to racial tensions lies in capitalism and mutual exploitation.
		Toback said this collaboration with the actors is a refinement of a style he introduced in the three-character drama "Two Guys and a Girl," which also featured Downey.
	www.jsonline.com /enter/movies/dudek/mar00/tobak02033100.asp?format=print (1045 words)

	DVD \| Directors - Toback, James (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-08-19)
		James Toback's portrait of white and fl culture mixing it up on the streets of Manhattan is like two films colliding.
		From the pen of James Toback comes this ridiculous talk-fest, in which people seem to say whatever comes into their minds, whether it's interesting, germane, or doesn't even makes sense.
		The debut film for director-writer James Toback has developed a cult following over the years but was one of three 1978 films that put a damper on Harvey Keitel's career for more than a decade.
	dvd.worldsearch.com /directors/t/toback,-james (277 words)

	IGN: Neve Campbell and James Toback Interview
		Toback's films are generally dialogue heavy, with rich, complex characters and situations that often revolve around the nature of sex and sexuality.
		Toback's films are usually interesting, with his lesser works even generally worthy of post-film discussion.
		Toback has received quite a reputation over the years as a "ladies man." In addition to the obvious benefits of his female conquests, Toback has learned a great deal about the female consciousness, which comes through in the character of Vera.
	filmforce.ign.com /articles/546/546743p1.html (723 words)

	OFFOFFOFF film review WHEN WILL I BE LOVED? movie by James Toback with Neve Campbell, Fred Weller, Dominic Chianese, ...
		In press notes, writer-director James Toback ("The Pick-Up Artist") boasts that only two scenes of the film were written in advance and the rest was heavily improvised, which only means he should have worked harder on the script.
		Toback himself appears as a Columbia professor who wants to hire Vera as an assistant with whom he could maybe also have sex if that's, like, part of her personal journey or something.
		Toback at least got lucky to this extent — he got some very un-self-conscious nude scenes from his star actress, and gave her a couple of snappy, sexually charged conversations that work well.
	www.offoffoff.com /film/2004/whenwillibeloved.php (734 words)

	DVD Talk > Reviews > Fingers > Printer Friendly
		James Toback is one of the "crazy" directors.
		Toback was a Harvard graduate, a best friend of Jim Brown (about whom he wrote a book), and a number of other things before he turned to writing screenplays.
		James meets a girl on the street who was listening to him play the piano, and he tries to form a relationship with her.
	www.dvdtalk.com /reviews/print.php?ID=5127 (684 words)

	Salon Arts & Entertainment \| The return of the White Negro (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-08-19)
		Toback surrounds them with a panoply of figures who are equally confused and compromised, ranging from a fl basketball player (Allan Houston) and his white Ph.D.-bound girlfriend (Claudia Schiffer) to a conniving undercover cop (Ben Stiller) and an ambitious D.A. (Joe Pantoliano) whose sons are also in thrall to hip-hop.
		Toback says that as a teenager he was living the life of "the White Negro" even before he read the famous Dissent essay in which his old friend Norman Mailer named and analyzed the phenomenon.
		Indeed, rereading Mailer's essay after seeing Toback's movie, which also portrays psychopathy as a mode of existential exploration, you may feel that the biggest difference between "White Negroes" and today's "wiggers" is that what once was cutting-edge behavior is now (in urban society, at least) perilously common.
	www.salon.com /ent/col/srag/2000/03/30/toback/index.html (1046 words)

	Movie Database - [TV Guide Online] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-08-19)
		An engrossing documentary from writer-director James Toback, THE BIG BANG raises the question of whether he may have missed his cinematic calling while it raises greater questions about the meaning of life in a series of interviews with the famous, the near-famous and the obscure.
		Toback finds this form of heroism in people of all ages and from all walks of life.
		In the amusing framing story, Toback pitches his film to producer Joseph H. Kanter by claiming that his is the one film for which the producer will be remembered through the ages.
	online.tvguide.com /movies/database/showmovie.asp?MI=34542 (683 words)

	Salon.com Arts & Entertainment \| The original pick-up artist (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-08-19)
		Toback's friends say he chooses to experiment with life as if it were a movie.
		Toback put the film aside for four years while he made "Two Girls and a Guy" and "Black and White" with the backing of Michael Mailer's company, which later agreed to produce "Harvard Man" as well.
		Toback turns around to let the man know he understands: "Where's seven-three?" They share a laugh, and still chuckling Toback turns and sprints across the street.
	www.salon.com /ent/movies/feature/2002/07/02/toback/index3.html (1207 words)

	Gerald Peary - interviews - James Toback
		That's why James Toback (Two Girls and a Guy, Black and White), a proud 60s graduate at Harvard, was forced to shoot the bulk of his autobiographical new movie, Harvard Man, far away in Toronto.
		Toback invited me to eavesdrop on the Memorial Drive shooting for two afternoons.
		Toback could screen-write professor oratory because, well, he'd been one, teaching Literature at CCNY in 1971 in what he considers the world's greatest English department: Donald Barthelme, Ishmael Reed, Joseph Heller, John Hawkes, Israel Horowitz.
	www.geraldpeary.com /interviews/stuv/toback.html (840 words)

	Salon.com Arts & Entertainment \| The original pick-up artist (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-08-19)
		At 57, James Toback is clean, sober and married.
		Toback's routine reveals how life is a laboratory for his films.
		Ask anyone in the film industry about Toback, and his less discreet days of '70s excess as a gambler, partygoer and womanizer are sure to arise.
	www.salon.com /ent/movies/feature/2002/07/02/toback/index.html (967 words)

	Amazon.com: Fingers (1978) : Video (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-08-19)
		James Toback is quoted as telling Harvey Keitel in the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1977 that Keitel "was born to do Fingers." Toback was right; Keitel delivers a first-rate performance that is arguably his best ever, alongside his work in Mean Streets and Bad Lieutenant.
		Many times over the years James Toback has been referred to as `brilliant', and a good deal of those times the film `Fingers' is mentioned in the same sentence.
		Toback's dialogue is very raw, but it is on target for the very raw world he describes.
	www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6303047262?v=glance (1796 words)

	FOCUS Newsletter
		For Toback, filmmaking has been about the pursuit of art since he was a young man, when he nearly drowned and considered the experience a second chance at life.
		Toback speculated that these breakthroughs will soon allow everyone to be in the film business—instead of e-mail, friends will send each other movies.
		Toback added that if you know what you want, and pursue it with assuredness and tenacity, you can be "a success" and an artist on your own terms.
	www.bu.edu /com/filmtv/Focus/focusnovember2000/cinematheque.html (1127 words)

	Toback's 'Loved' takes gritty look at New York (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-08-19)
		TORONTO -- As a filmmaker, James Toback may be as committed to Manhattan as is Woody Allen.
		This time, Toback, whose credits include "Two Girls and a Guy" and "The Pick-up Artist," has lifted the veil on a seedy world of sex and money in Manhattan that "Sex and the City's" Carrie Bradshaw would never stumble upon in one of her columns.
		Toback polishes off his yogurt and walks over to a pile of papers with fresh reviews of "Loved." He's heading back to New York for the weekend to sneak into a couple theaters and gauge the audiences' reaction on opening weekend.
	www.hollywoodreporter.com /thr/icopyright_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000629126 (574 words)

	NewsNet5.com - Entertainment - Director Brutally Honest About Downey
		Written by Toback with the actor's personal troubles in mind, the film hits its peak when Downey literally confronts himself with a profound stretch of dialogue, where he lectures himself in front of a mirror.
		Toback said the scene the still resonates with people today, and people remind him of it all the time.
		But while Toback feels Downey is on the mark most of the time, as a true friend, he also spares no feelings in pointing out what he considers his lesser roles.
	www.newsnet5.com /entertainment/820174/detail.html (1153 words)

	Reel.com: James Toback
		When James Toback initially comes on the line, he apologizes for the poor quality of the call: "I'm in a cell." I ask him if he realizes what he just said, and he laughs before his mobile connection drops completely and we have to start all over again.
		The Freudian slip seems somehow appropriate when the purpose of his call is his 1978 feature-film directing debut Fingers, an unforgettable psychological drama starring Harvey Keitel as a sensitive, aspiring concert pianist who happens to be his loan-shark father's vicious collector on the side.
		It was Toback's second produced script after the equally haunting The Gambler, a somewhat autobiographical drama about a college professor who comes to grief over his compulsive wagering.
	www.reel.com /reel.asp?node=features/interviews/T/toback (2051 words)

	Modamag.com \| Harvard Man (Movie Review)
		Toback, the mind (or force) behind the recent truth-seeking odysseys "Two Girls And A Guy" and "Black and White," returns with "Harvard Man," another interesting journey into the heart of the drug-swilling, sexually-liberated, philosophy-spewing hypocrites that Toback has this inexplicable love for.
		There's a spontaneity to the film, as there is in any Toback film, but the filmmaker doesn't know how to corral the energy, and more often than not, each scene opens well, then gets away from him.
		Loosely based on Toback’s real adventures during the swinging 60s, “Harvard Man” is gummed up with the inclusion of crime films staples like the mafia and undercover cops.
	www.modamag.com /harvardman.htm (547 words)

	Spotlight on: Adrian Grenier - article - Stumped? - Stumped At the Video Store is a Magazine About Movies, DVD ...
		James Toback is a director who is known for causing controversy, stirring up trouble and portraying the younger generations as Larry Clark-like, complete with more drugs, gambling and sex than one could imagine.
		James Toback is not a director, however, who is widely known for his ability to get good performances out of actors.
		With his very gritty use of the camera, Toback’s realistic and almost documentary-like style can occasionally detract from an actor’s presentation.
	centerstage.net /stumped/Articles/spotlight-adrian-grenier.html (368 words)

	Two Girls and James Toback
		Toback: It was both very intense and pressured and at the same time it paradoxically was very relaxed because we didn't have any of the interruptions.
		Toback: I wish I could do only that because you don't end up wasting time and energy on things that not only have nothing to do with the actual making of the film, they are interferences to it.
		Toback: I refused to cut a single shot from that scene, they are shorter.
	www.indiewire.com /people/int_Toback_James_980427.html (2744 words)

	Music: The White Stuff (The Boston Phoenix . 04-24-00)
		We have James Toback to blame for this.
		And on Rose's show, Shields and Toback sounded like every other white explorer proud of what he or she has uncovered, repeatedly referring to "the fl community" and "the hip-hop culture" as immobile and obedient case studies parked just outside their tents in the Bronx.
		Mailer had called jazz "the music of orgasm," and he argued that what attracted white hipsters to fl men with horns in their mouths was their savage sexuality, their alleged infantile lack of control over their sexual impulses.
	weeklywire.com /ww/04-24-00/boston_music_2.html (677 words)

	Two Girls and a Guy Reviews
		That is the case with James Toback's "Two Girls and a Guy," a muddled comedy that pretends to be more than the sum of its parts.
		Director James Toback wrote the film as a vehicle for his friend Downey, tailoring the story to focus on the...
		Writer-director James Toback's low-budget, high-concept three-character (OK, there's really _five_ characters, but two of them only appear in the first scene) drama is not nearly as provocative as its title or much-publicized ratings troubles suggests....
	www.killermovies.com /t/twogirlsandaguy/reviews (546 words)

	James Toback
		A native New Yorker, James Toback earned degrees from both Harvard and Columbia before starting out as an English instructor at the City College of New York.
		A compulsive gambler, Toback's first screenplay was the 1974 semi-autobiographical The Gambler, starring James Caan and Lauren Hutton.
		Toback wrote the screenplay for Bugsy (1991), starring Annette Bening and Warren Beatty.
	www.tribute.ca /bio.asp?id=1004 (236 words)

	IGN: Neve Campbell and James Toback Interview
		Toback actually gave Campbell a lot of freedom over the content of the sex scenes in the film.
		We asked Toback about this choice: "I didn't ask them, but I think that one of the reasons was that it enabled them to do more than they would've been able to do if the curtain hadn't been there.
		That is to say, the actions were pretty aggressive and specific and bold, and I think that if the curtain had been away, it would've made the absence of nudity more glaring and less credible.
	filmforce.ign.com /articles/546/546743p2.html (514 words)

	James Toback @ Filmbug UK
		Before James Toback gained his extensive experience as producer, director and actor, he started his career as a teacher.
		Brown became the subject of Toback's 1971 book "Jim: The Author's Self-Centered Memoir of the Great Jim Brown." The book brought Toback to the attention of Hollywood producers, and culminated in his first screenplay credit for 1974's The Gambler.
		James Toback went on to direct and write Harvard Man (2001), Black and White (1999), Love In Paris (1999), Two Girls and a Guy (1997), The Big Bang (1989), The Pick-Up Artist (1987), Exposed (1983), Love and Money (1982), and Fingers (1978).
	www.filmbug.co.uk /db/31818 (260 words)

	MovieFreak.com - Interview with Director James Toback
		James Toback is without a doubt the most interesting, compelling person I have had the pleasure of speaking with.
		I have long been a fan of his work, so the chance to meet him was one I had to jump at, and he did not disappoint.
		I didn’t know for a fact that she was a free-wheeling and open as she was.
	www.moviefreak.com /features/interviews/jamestoback.htm (2867 words)

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