I think when we first heard the reports of James Toback using his influence as an Oscar-nominated director to pressure women into sleeping with him, we had the same reaction as the women he was trying to pick up in Central Park, namely “Who the f**k is James Toback?”
It turns out two of the women Toback sexually harassed were Selma Blair and Rachel McAdams. Both auditioned for Toback’s Harvard Man, a film that never had a wide release and that Rotten Tomatoes describes as “a pretentious, incoherent mess” with a rating of 33 out of 100. So not only is James Toback going to get all creepy and probably hump your leg, the best possible result is you get to be in a terrible James Toback movie afterwards.
Blair and McAdams both told Vanity Fair similar stories about their experience with Toback. Blair recalled him asking her to read a monologue topless.
It was about 40 minutes in and he said, “Will you trust me? I cannot continue to work with you unless you trust me.” He said, “I need you to take your clothes off. I need you to do this monologue naked.”
I said, “Why would my character need to be naked? She is a lawyer in a courtroom.”
He said, “Because I need to see how your body moves. How comfortable you are with your body. This is where I start training you.”
McAdams stated separately that Toback said similar things to her, while telling her how many times he had masturbated that day while thinking about her.
He started that kind of manipulative talk of, “How brave are you? How far you are willing to go as an actress? I want to build some intimacy between us because we have to have a very trusting relationship and this is a very difficult part.” Then he asked me to read passages out loud from different reviews of his films and different critics talking about his work. It was all so confusing. I kept thinking, “When are we getting to the rehearsal part?” Then he went to the bathroom and left me with some literature to read about him. When he came back he said, “I just jerked off in the bathroom thinking about you. Will you show me your pubic hair?” I said no.
So there you go. It doesn’t take a Harvey Weinstein to be a creep in Hollywood. James Toback had to explain to the women he was trying to pick up who he was after telling them his name because his only real claim to fame is he directed a movie Robert Downey, Jr. was in at the beginning of his career. No one had really heard of James Toback and yet hundreds of women have come forward to say he was using his tiny bit of power to harass them and rub his tiny bit of a dick on their legs. Also, there’s basically no good reason for Hollywood directors, producers or casting agents to be inviting actors and actresses to hotel rooms alone at night. The only reason is that they’re married and they’re going to try to f**k you, possibly regardless of your thoughts on the matter.