• Film director accused of sexual abuse,
He allegedly prowled the streets of Manhattan looking for attractive young women, usually in their early 20s, sometimes college students, on occasion a high schooler. He approached them in Central Park, standing in line at a bank or drug store or at a copy center while they worked on their resumes.
His opening line reportedly had a few variations. One went: “My name’s James Toback. I’m a movie director. Have you ever seen ‘Black and White’ or ‘ Two Girls and a Guy’?”
Probably not. So he’d reportedly start to drop names. He had an Oscar nomination for writing the Warren Beatty movie “Bugsy.” He directed Robert Downey Jr., in three movies. The actor, Mr. Toback claimed, was a close friend; he had “invented him.” If you didn’t believe him, he would pull out a business card or an article that had been written about him to prove he had some juice in Hollywood. That he could make you a star.
But first, he’d need to get to know you. Intimately. Trust him, he’d allegedly say. It’s all part of his process.
Then, in a hotel room, a movie trailer, a public park, meetings framed as interviews or auditions quickly turned sexual, according to 38 women who in separate interviews told the Los Angeles Times of similar encounters they had with Mr. Toback.
During these meetings, many of the women said, Mr. Toback boasted of sexual conquests with the famous and then asked humiliating personal questions. He’d tell them, they said, that he couldn’t properly function unless he performed a sexual act several times a day. And then he’d engage in a sex act in front of them or on them, have a sexual release and then walk away. Meeting over.
The women’s accounts portray Mr. Toback as a man who, for decades, sexually harassed women he hired, women looking for work and women he just saw on the street.
As is often the case, none of them contacted the police at the time. When contacted by the Times, Mr. Toback denied the allegations, saying that he had never met any of these women or, if he did, it “was for five minutes and have no recollection.” He also repeatedly claimed that for the last 22 years, it had been “biologically impossible” for him to engage in the behavior described by the women in this story, saying he had diabetes and a heart condition that required medication. Mr. Toback declined to offer further details.
Like Harvey Weinstein, Mr. Toback, now 72, was a big, hulking man with a reputation, so much so that he titled his 1987 semi-autobiographical movie “The Pickup Artist.” He has been a writer/director since 1974; his most recent film, “The Private Life of a Modern Woman” starring Sienna Miller, premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Media profiles often referred to him as a womanizer. Lurking underneath were darker rumors of creepy behavior, reported in 1989 by Spy magazine and, more recently, by Gawker.