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.
Many of the women allege Toback approached them on the streets of New York City and promised stardom. Subsequent meetings would often end with sexual questions and Toback masturbating in front of the women or dry-humping them, according to the accounts.
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.
Like Weinstein, reports of Toback’s alleged behavior toward women have been around for decades. Spy magazine wrote about him in 1989 and the now-defunct website Gawker also published accounts from women in New York.
In the past few weeks, amid the Weinstein scandal and the rise of the #MeToo social media movement, in which women are revealing instances of sexual harassment and assault, more reports have emerged about the conduct of many working in the entertainment industry. Amazon Studios executive Roy Price resigned following sexual harassment allegations made by a Man in the High Castle producer.
On Sunday, a few in Hollywood began denouncing Toback on social media, including Bridesmaids director Paul Feig, who tweeted that Toback was “a disgrace”. “One of the main jobs of a director is to create a safe environment for the actors,” Feig wrote.
Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson wrote: “If there is a Hell, James Toback will be in it.”
Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn wrote a lengthy Facebook post about the allegations, saying he had met at least 15 women who said they had these kinds of encounters with Toback, including three women he has dated, two friends and a family member.
“For over 20 years now, I’ve been bringing up James Toback every chance I could in groups of people,” Gunn wrote. “I couldn’t stop him, but I could warn people about him.”