Here’s how I opened my exclusive interview with James Toback when the Nicholas Jarecki documentary about his life, The Outsider, came out:
James Toback says he took more hits of acid than anyone else in history. James Toback bet a million dollars on a baseball game. James Toback was going to hire a hit man to kill Barry Levinson until he and Levinson became friends. James Toback lived in Jim Brown’s house and took part in star-studded orgies. James Toback is a lothario, just like Robert Downey Jr’s character in The Pick-Up Artist.
How else can I possibly sell you on watching The Outsider, which is streaming just below all this text? If that paragraph of amazing facts about indie filmmaker James Toback doesn’t do it, check out my 9/10 review from when the film first came out.
You may not know James Toback’s work (although you really, really should), but you’ll still be fascinated by his life and story. And maybe you’ll end up throwing some of his films (Fingers! Definitely Fingers!) on your Netflix queue. Thank me later.
Two things: Toback has a new film, a documentary about his buddy Mike Tyson, called Tyson. And The Outsider contains plenty that’s not work safe. It opens with a naked Harvey Keitel, in fact, and then goes on to a montage of sex scenes from Toback’s movies.