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Tuesday, 15 August 2006 01:01 |
Fortunately, Toback -- a self-admitted addict to drugs, gambling, drinking, women and just about anything else pleasurable with which he comes into contact -- is a highly engaging and frank figure more than willing to shed entertaining light on his passions and personal demons.
While the behind-the-scenes footage of Toback filming his latest opus is fairly routine, "The Outsider" is quite entertaining thanks to its copious use of flip clips from the director's oeuvre, which includes the screenplays for "The Gambler" and "Bugsy." The well-edited assemblage makes clear the extent of Toback's obsession with sex and violence, among other things.
Even better are the filmed interviews with the wide gallery of collaborators who have formed a sort of Tobackian repertory company. These include football great Jim Brown, who talks admiringly (and this is indeed truly saying something) of Toback's ability to seduce women; Robert Downey Jr., who somehow manages to compare him to Shakespeare without sounding ridiculous; Mike Tyson, who admits that they both can "be a little crazy at times"; Norman Mailer, who proclaims that were he starting out today he would want to be a film director instead of a novelist; and Robert Towne, Brett Ratner and Roger Ebert, among others.
Jarecki also was somehow able to snare an on-set interview with Woody Allen (Toback played a small role in "Alice"), who talks about their similar personal approach to filmmaking.
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