Remember this time last week when most of us weren’t even aware of the existence of James Toback?
What a wonderful time that was.
Yes, that ignorance sure was bliss, but since early last week, we’ve heard story after story about Toback, the man behind films like Two Girls and a Guy, The Pick-Up Artist, and Bugsy.
And those stories were just completely horrific.
At this point, over 300 women in the industry, including very famous actresses like Rachel McAdams and Selma Blair, have come forward with claims that Toback sexually assaulted them, or attempted to assault them.
Just think about that for a moment: over 300 women, all with a story to tell about this guy.
Selma Blair said that she met with Toback when her career was just starting to take off, and that he requested she come to his hotel room to discuss a possible role in one of his movies, Harvard Man.
After a bit of conversation, he asked her to perform a monologue naked, and, being intimidated and scared, she agreed. He touched himself while she did the monologue, then asked her to sleep with him.
She refused and tried to leave the room, but he blocked her way and threatened her until she allowed him to hump her leg — something he greatly enjoys doing, based on the other women’s stories.
Actresses Ambika Leigh and Sari Kamin, two of the first people to come forward with their accusations, claimed that he set up professional meetings with them that soon turned sexual and that ended with him humping their legs.
So how is Toback dealing with all this? Is he simply laying low, hoping everything blows over? Did he pull a Harvey Weinstein and fly off to a rehab/resort for a week?
Nope, it turns out that he’s just going the “be nasty and cruel in a vulgar public statement” route.
In an interview published by Rolling Stone, Toback was asked about the recent allegations during a phone call, and he denied everything in spectacular fashion.
“Lemme be really clear about this,” he said. “I don’t want to get a pat on the back, but I’ve struggled seriously to make movies with very little money, that I write, that I direct, that mean my life to me.”
“The idea that I would offer a part to anyone for any other reason than that he or she was gonna be the best of anyone I could find is so disgusting to me,” he continued.
“And anyone who says it is a lying c–ksucker or c–t or both. Can I be any clearer than that? … Anyone who says that, I just want to spit in his or her f-cking face.”
“By the way,” he added, “no one who’s ever worked with me would ever say anything like that. No one.”
Then he bizarrely mentioned that Sienna Miller, the star of his latest movie, was sitting right next to him. She spoke with the reporter for moment in an off-the-record conversation — no public defense from her — then Toback took back the phone.
“No, seriously, I find it offensive and insulting and disgusting, that people …” he trailed off.
“Because it’s the opposite of the way I work. I don’t give my best friends parts unless they deserve them. Ever.”
Which is a weird thing to say, because that’s not exactly what he’s being accused of. These hundreds of women didn’t all go on to star in his movies, you know?
The interviewer pointed that out, that he’s mostly being accused of discussing work with women before getting them in a private setting and humping their legs.
Toback responded to that by asking the reporter to give him one name, and he did — Ambika Leigh’s name.
He said that Ambika’s story “is a total lie,” and that he never even heard of her before, “and believe me, I would remember it, because it’s a very unusual name.”
“This is just too stupid,” he went on. “I mean, these are people I don’t know, and it’s things I never would have done. And it’s just not worth talking about. It’s idiotic.”
He said that these women “hear each other. And they gang up … It’s all, you know, me too, me too, me too, me too, me too.”
“Anyway, it’s too stupid to waste time on. It really is. It doesn’t have anything to do with my life in any way. It never has. I work seriously with complete integrity.”
He went on to call the allegations “too stupid to dignify,” “pathetic lies,” and “too f-cking embarrassing and idiotic.”
Another interesting layer to this conversation? The reporter’s own wife had a story about Toback — when she was in high school, he tried to discuss a movie with her before turning the conversation to her pubic hair.
It’s just wild, because it’s like this jackass sincerely believes that we’ll buy all this, that hundreds of women just decided to “gang up” and make up tales about how he humped their legs.
The vast majority of the people working in Hollywood don’t deal with this kind of thing.
There’s the occasional Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby, but it’s not normal for this many people to accuse you of these very specific things if there’s no truth at all in those accusations.
Also, if your response to many, many people accusing you of doing horrific things is to call them “lying c–ksuckers and c–ts” … is there any hope left at all for humanity?