James Toback

James Toback
Toback on April 28, 2009
Born	(1944-11-23) November 23, 1944 (age 72) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Screenwriter, film director
Spouse(s)	Consuelo Sarah Churchill Vanderbilt Russell (1968-?; divorced) Stephanie Kempf (?-present; 1 son)

James Lee Toback (born November 23, 1944) is an American screenwriter and film director, as well as non-fiction writer, and essayist.

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.

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 claims to be half-seriously, the largest single dose of LSD of all time. 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.

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. 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 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, 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.