James Toback
Successful actress Vera Lockman thrashes during a nightmare in which she struggles with, shoots and kills her drug-dealer ex-boyfriend. Jolted awake, she reveals in her journal that the killing actually occurred the day before and that Sal, dead, lies in a trunk in her living room.
How did America change from Easy Rider into Donald Trump? What became of the dreams and utopias of the 1960's and 1970's? What do the people who lived in that golden age think about it today? Did they really blow it? Shot in Cinemascope - from New Jersey to California - this melancholic and elegiac road-movie draws upon the portrait of a confused, complex and incandescent America one year after the start of the electoral campaign. That golden age has become its last romantic border and an inconsolable America is about to pull on a trigger called Trump.
Betting, boxing, and boozing: this is the weird, true story of the time Norman Mailer confronted James Toback to argue about the difference between bourbon and scotch, setting off a years-long rivalry that climaxed in a stare-down during a tense Jets vs. Browns game and a couple well-placed stomach punches. In this short, Toback recounts the tale of his of his encounters with one of America's all-time great writers.
Literature professor Jim Bennett leads a secret life as a high-stakes gambler. Always a risk-taker, Bennett bets it all when he borrows from a gangster and offers his own life as collateral. Staying one step ahead, he pits his creditor against the operator of an illicit gambling ring while garnering the attention of Frank, a paternalistic loan shark. As his relationship with a student deepens, Bennett must risk everything for a second chance.
Visionary artist Matthew Barney returns to cinema with this 3-part epic, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filmed elements of performance, sculpture, and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of reincarnation, alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry.
SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.
Director James Toback takes an unflinching, uncompromising look at the life of Mike Tyson--almost solely from the perspective of the man himself. TYSON alternates between the controversial boxer addressing the camera and shots of the champion's fights to create an arresting picture of the man.
Retrospective documentary of the film "Bugsy"
Nicholas Jarecki follows director James Toback on the 12-day shoot of his thriller, When Will I Be Loved -- a movie made without a script or distribution deal.
Feeling undervalued by her boyfriend, a young woman begins to explore her sexuality with other people.
College has always been a time for experimentation, sexual, cultural and otherwise. "Harvard Man" plays out against a background of love, sex, basketball, crime and experimentation. Action and philosophy in young people's quest to discover their true identity.
Meet Ralph, charismatic New York adman about town. Encouraged by his sexist boss and unlucky-in-love buddy Peter, Ralph's life revolves around the pursuit of the opposite sex. Enter his match, smart and beautiful account executive Elizabeth, who is put off by his sex-obsessed ways, convincing Ralph to see a therapist. Just when a relationship between the two begins to flourish, Ralph gets thrown together with supermodel Amber. Now Ralph has to decide whether to change his player-like ways or risk losing the one woman he truly loves.
Rich Bower is an up-and-coming star in the hip-hop world. Everyone wants to be around him, including Raven and her fellow upper-class white high school friends. The growing appeal of black culture among white teens fascinates documentary filmmaker Sam Donager, who sets out to chronicle it with her husband, Terry. But before Bower was a rapper, he was a gangster, and his criminal past comes back to haunt him and all those around him.
Two women confront their boyfriend, a two-timing actor who professed eternal love to each.
New York gangster Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel takes a brief business trip to Los Angeles. A sharp-dressing womanizer with a foul temper, Siegel doesn't hesitate to kill or maim anyone crossing him. In L.A. the life, the movies, and most of all strong-willed Virginia Hill detain him while his family wait back home. Then a trip to a run-down gambling joint at a spot in the desert known as Las Vegas gives him his big idea.
Filmmaker James Toback poses basic questions in philosophy, such as why we're here and where we're going, to various celebrities and ordinary people.
A womanizer meets his match when he falls for the daughter of a gambling addict who is in debt to the mob.
An investment planner, bored with his job and his girlfriend, is given the opportunity to help open a new firm in South America. Once in the new country, he finds himself dealing with dictators and revolutionaries during a time of intense political upheaval, and to complicate his life further, he begins an affair with his new employer's wife.
New York City English professor Axel Freed outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling addiction that threatens to destroy him.
Portrait of Norman Mailer at the time of the Pentagon demonstrations in 1967, documenting Mailer's involvement and arrest, together with two TV appearances and shooting on the set of his second film 'Beyond the Law'.
