Word: toback
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Toback explained that he made the character extremely wealthy because he wanted to make it explicit for the audience as to how she is able to live so care-free in her personal life...
...Toback frankly discussed these themes in his films with the kind of voracity that details his obsession with his characters and the troubling decisions he forces them to make. “I think it’s only interesting when you find people stressed out, pushed to their limits, exposed by adversity,” he says. “If you’re making a serious movie, deal with death, deal with madness, deal with the extremes of human possibility. That’s when people reveal themselves, that’s what’s fascinating...
Controversy, or at the very least disagreement, among the critical community, is a key element of Toback’s career. His directorial debut, 1978’s Fingers, was, as Toback describes it, “defiled, defamed and rejected except by a handful.” That “handful,” however, included famed critics David Thompson and Pauline Kael, and the film is now regarded as an American cinema classic...
Starting his cinematic work in the 1970s during a period of American cinema in which experimentation was highly valued (primarily due to the steady economic breakdown of Hollywood in the ’50s and ’60s), Toback sees the Hollywood of today as a kind of dead space in which filmmakers are always pushed to “shoot for the middle.” He sees dealing honestly with adverse topics a near impossibility in the mainstream cinematic landscape...
...Says Toback, “The system right now as it exists is so filled with checks and balances, with restraints and cautions, with marketing strategies that involve shaving off the extremes so that you can hit some mythical common denominator in the middle of America, that it’s almost impossible for someone who has an agenda like my own to function fruitfully within...