James Toback () is an American screenwriter and film director. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1991 for Bugsy. He has directed films including The Pick-up Artist, Two Girls and a Guy and Black and White. In 2018, the Los Angeles Times reported that 395 women had accused Toback of sexual harassment or assault over a 40-year period. Toback denied all the allegations. In 2022, thirty-eight women filed a lawsuit in New York accusing him of sexual abuse. Early life Toback was born and raised in Manhattan, New York City, the only child of Irwin Lionel Toback and Selma Judith (née Levy). His father was vice president of Dreyfus Corporation. His mother was a president of the League of Women Voters and a moderator of political debates on NBC. His grandfather, Joseph Levy, was the founder of a clothing chain and real estate empire. Toback grew up in The Majestic with his parents, who lived four floors below his grandfather. He befriended future film producer, Ed Pressman, who lived in the same building and later produced Tobeck's film, Harvard Man. Toback graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1966. He was an editor for The Harvard Crimson. He spent 3 years teaching English at City College of New York and developed a gambling addiction. An assignment from Esquire to write about football great and actor Jim Brown led to Brown's invitation to host Toback for an extended stay in Brown's Hollywood Hills home. Brown said that "along with both of us liking girls, I just like his intellect." Toback wrote a book about his experiences as Brown's house guest, Jim: The Author's Self-Centered Memoir of the Great Jim Brown (1971), which Salon described as "essentially a series of wild parties and orgies". Film career Toback's first major film success was with writing the semi-autobiographical The Gambler, released in 1974. He credits actress and friend Lucy Saroyan, his literary agent Lynn Nesbit, and Nesbit's contact in film Mike Medavoy with getting his the script to director Karel Reisz and then to Paramount Pictures. For a year, Toback attached himself to Reisz "as his acolyte" in "the perfect mentor-protegé relationship," and he later described Reisz as "my one-man film school." Toback's directorial début was the 1978 film Fingers, with Harvey Keitel. In her review of Fingers, film critic Pauline Kael wrote of Toback's "true moviemaking