Filmmaker James Toback has long had a bad reputation with women.
Stories about the writer-director often referred to him as a womanizer, but what that actually meant did not become clear until the Los Angeles Times published an investigation Sunday in which 38 women accused the writer-director of sexual harassment.
Within two days those numbers swelled as more than 200 additional women contacted The Times and, in emails and phone calls, recalled encounters with Toback similar to those detailed in the story. The majority of the new accounts, which have not been verified, told of Toback approaching women on the streets of Manhattan, offering them the chance at a part in an upcoming movie, and a wide range of unwanted sexual advances and behavior.
The Los Angeles Police Department has fielded numerous phone calls related to Toback in the last few days, said LAPD Det. Danetta Menifee.
She said the department’s special assault section of its Robbery-Homicide Division is currently sorting through the calls to determine the nature of the complaints and where the encounters occurred and if the LAPD is going to conduct an investigation.Several of the women included in The Times’ investigation confirmed they had contacted the district attorney’s office in the past week to file complaints.
(Read the 1989 Spy magazine story that detailed James Toback's attempts to pick up women)
The Times’ story detailed a pattern of behavior, carried out over four decades, in which Toback approached women in New York and Los Angeles, boasting of his movie credits and relationships with stars such as Robert Downey Jr. Then, under the pretext of meetings framed as interviews or auditions, he asked explicit questions about the women’s sexual histories, often proposing that they remove their clothes.
The encounters often ended, according to many of the women interviewed, with Toback dry-humping them or masturbating in front of them, ejaculating into his pants or onto their bodies.
Toback, 72, denied the allegations to The Times, saying he had never met the women or, if he did, it “was for five minutes and have no recollection.”
