James Toback - Biography

James Lee Toback (born November 23, 1944) is an American screenwriter and film director.

1 Early life
2 Career
3 Personal life
4 Filmography
- 4.1 Acting Credits
5 External links

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. His father, Irwin Lionel Toback, was a stockbroker and former Vice-President of Dreyfus & Company. Toback graduated from The Fieldston School in 1963 and from Harvard College, magna cum laude, in 1966.

Career

After graduating from Harvard, Toback worked as a journalist. An assignment from Esquire on football player Jim Brown led to collaboration on Jim: The Author's Self-Centered Memoir of the Great Jim Brown.

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.

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 twenty-eight 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, and in 1989, Toback directed the documentary The Big Bang.

Toback wrote the original screenplay for Bugsy, which 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.

In 1998, Toback wrote and directed the comedy Two Girls and a Guy, and in 2000, he wrote and directed Black and White in collaboration with members of Wu-Tang Clan. He then wrote and directed Harvard Man starring Adrien Grenier in 2002. In 2004, Toback wrote and directed When Will I Be Loved and in 2009, Toback directed Tyson, a documentary about boxer Mike Tyson.

The 2006 documentary The Outsider is about Toback and his work.