The Pick-up Artist

James Lee Toback is an American screenwriter and film director. Toback was born in New York City. His mother, Selma Judith , was a President of The League of Women Voters and a moderator of political debates on NBC. His father, Irwin Lionel Toback, was a stockbroker and former Vice-President of... Dreyfus & Company. Toback graduated from The Fieldston School in 1963 and from Harvard College, magna cum laude, in 1966. After graduating from Harvard, Toback worked as a journalist. An assignment from Esquire on football player Jim Brown led to collaboration on Jim: The Author's Self-Centered Memoir of the Great Jim Brown. In the early 1970s Toback taught creative writing at the City College of New York. He drew on this experience when he wrote the screenplay for The Gambler. In 1974, Toback's screenplay The Gambler was produced. Much of the film was shot at City College. His directorial début was the 1978 film Fingers, remade twenty-eight years later by Jacques Audiard as The Beat That My Heart Skipped. Toback followed Fingers with Love and Money in 1982.
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