38 women accused film maker James Toback of sexual assaults
The Oscar-nominated writer and director James Toback has been accused of sexual harassment by 38 women in a report published by the Los Angeles Times.
The 72-year-old denied the allegations to LA Times, saying he never met any of the women, or if he had it “was for five minutes and [I] have no recollection”.
Thirty-one of the women spoke on the record including Louise Post, who is a guitarist and vocalist for the band Veruca Salt, and the As the World Turns actor Terri Conn. Actor Echo Danon recalled an incident on the set of Toback’s film Black and White where he put his hands on her and said he would ejaculate if she looked at his eyes and pinched his nipples.
“Everyone wants to work, so they put up with it,” Danon told the Times. “That’s why I put up with it. Because I was hoping to get another job.”
Toback did not respond to a request for comment.
The report comes after the downfall of producer Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by more than three dozen women. Weinstein denies allegations of criminal sexual harassment, rape and sexual assault but has been fired from the company he co-founded and widely denounced by his Hollywood peers.
“James Toback damn you for stealing, damn you for traumatizing,” Weinstein accuser Rose McGowan tweeted on Sunday.
Another Weinstein accuser, Asia Argento, tweeted: “So proud of my sisters for bringing down yet another pig.”
Though less well-known than Weinstein, Toback has had a successful four-decade career in Hollywood and has a devoted following who have praised him for his originality and outsized, deeply flawed characters.
A New York native, Harvard graduate, creative writing professor and compulsive gambler, he used his own life as inspiration for his first produced screenplay, The Gambler, which came out in 1974 and starred James Caan. The film was remade in 2014 with Mark Wahlberg and Brie Larson.
He also wrote and directed the Harvey Keitel film Fingers, the loosely autobiographical The Pick-up Artist, which starred Robert Downey Jr and Molly Ringwald, Two Girls and a Guy, also with Downey Jr and Heather Graham, Harvard Man, with Sarah Michelle Gellar, and the Mike Tyson documentary Tyson.
His only Oscar nomination is for writing the Barry Levinson-directed and Warren Beatty-starring gangster film Bugsy. Toback’s next film, The Private Life of a Modern Woman, stars Sienna Miller and Alec Baldwin and debuted at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year.
The 72-year-old denied the allegations to LA Times, saying he never met any of the women, or if he had it “was for five minutes and [I] have no recollection”.
Thirty-one of the women spoke on the record including Louise Post, who is a guitarist and vocalist for the band Veruca Salt, and the As the World Turns actor Terri Conn. Actor Echo Danon recalled an incident on the set of Toback’s film Black and White where he put his hands on her and said he would ejaculate if she looked at his eyes and pinched his nipples.
“Everyone wants to work, so they put up with it,” Danon told the Times. “That’s why I put up with it. Because I was hoping to get another job.”
Toback did not respond to a request for comment.
The report comes after the downfall of producer Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by more than three dozen women. Weinstein denies allegations of criminal sexual harassment, rape and sexual assault but has been fired from the company he co-founded and widely denounced by his Hollywood peers.
“James Toback damn you for stealing, damn you for traumatizing,” Weinstein accuser Rose McGowan tweeted on Sunday.
Another Weinstein accuser, Asia Argento, tweeted: “So proud of my sisters for bringing down yet another pig.”
Though less well-known than Weinstein, Toback has had a successful four-decade career in Hollywood and has a devoted following who have praised him for his originality and outsized, deeply flawed characters.
A New York native, Harvard graduate, creative writing professor and compulsive gambler, he used his own life as inspiration for his first produced screenplay, The Gambler, which came out in 1974 and starred James Caan. The film was remade in 2014 with Mark Wahlberg and Brie Larson.
He also wrote and directed the Harvey Keitel film Fingers, the loosely autobiographical The Pick-up Artist, which starred Robert Downey Jr and Molly Ringwald, Two Girls and a Guy, also with Downey Jr and Heather Graham, Harvard Man, with Sarah Michelle Gellar, and the Mike Tyson documentary Tyson.
His only Oscar nomination is for writing the Barry Levinson-directed and Warren Beatty-starring gangster film Bugsy. Toback’s next film, The Private Life of a Modern Woman, stars Sienna Miller and Alec Baldwin and debuted at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year.
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