James Toback - Gamblin' Man
Written before he was emphatically Me Too-ed, the following doesn't excuse Toback's alleged behaviour. Rather, it's an examination of a man's addictions; addictions of a very dark stripe indeed...
Where to begin with James Toback…? Perhaps a quick dash through his life is in order. Born in 1944, James Lee Toback is a Harvard literature graduate who underwent a “life-changing” LSD experience during his early twenties. The Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated writer of Warren Beatty’s Bugsy, his screenwriting credits also include The Gambler, a loose adaptation of a Fyodor Dostoyevsky novella that's up there with the greatest movies ever made about gaming.
It’s as a writer-director, however, that Toback is revered in filmmaking circles. No, his films have rarely enjoyed commercial success, but anyone with a serious interest in cinema will be familiar with pictures like Fingers – the only film that could play on a double-bill with Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and survive the comparison. And as for fans of Robert Downey Jr fan, three of the Iron Man star’s greatest performances have come in Toback films – The Pick-Up Artist, Two Girls And A Guy and Black & White.
There’s more, of course – great documentaries about Mike Tyson and the horror that is film financing, an idiosyncratic biography of gridiron legend Jim Brown, a clutch of interesting acting turns. And then there are the demons, the addictions that have driven this highly intelligent man to the brink of personal and financial destruction; addictions to drink, to drugs, to women, to tobacco, and, yes, gambling.
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