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THE OUTSIDER
Directed, Produced & Camera: Nicholas Jarecki.
Edited by: Anna Fogg, J.C. Khoury & Nicholas Jarecki.
Released by: Green Room Films/imMEDIAte.
Country of Origin: USA. 83 min. Not Rated.
With: Robert Downey, Jr., Brooke Shields, Mike Tyson, Harvey Keitel, Norman Mailer, Barry Levinson, Jim Browne, Robert Towne, Brett Ratner, Roger Ebert, Bijou Phillips & Woody Allen.

At first, I did not quite know what to make of the work of maverick filmmaker James Toback (Black and White, Harvard Man, and his latest, When Will I Be Loved). Perhaps then, the best compliment I can pay Nicholas Jarecki’s documentary is that it perfectly crystallizes much of what I had suspected about this nonconformist figure. This film veteran, whose career began in the 1970s, strikes me as a quintessential auteur; and after watching Jarecki’s concise and cogent analysis/tribute, I am as convinced of this as I am that The Outsider will revive interest in Toback’s films, particularly his screenplays for The Gambler and Bugsy.

John Calley, former chairman of Sony Pictures, provides a key insight into the director, opining that “the role of the outsider is one that Jim plays with great comfort.” Indeed, Toback’s iconoclastic image is gradually shown to be as much of an elaborate put-on as it is genuine. Judging from the list of notables offering testimonials in this film, he’s one of the most well-connected people in Hollywood, though opting to remain on the margins. Fittingly, contradiction is Toback’s raison d'etre, whether it be the disparity between his privileged background and renegade status, or his commitment to personal filmmaking, despite being subsequently frustrated in his search for a distributor (in this case, for When Will I Be Loved, the movie Toback was shooting as Jarecki began this project). During the making of Loved, there’s a classic moment when Tobeck painstakingly plans out a sex scene and is able to explicitly recite its choreography again later, gesture by gesture.

The documentary insightfully conveys Toback’s central themes: the juxtaposition of high (classical music) and low (hip hop) culture, and the intrinsic impulses of gambling, drugs, and sex. Jarecki’s achievement is not letting the remarkably eclectic interview participants take over the film with their unabashed admiration for the director. (A scene in which Robert Downey, Jr.’s eyes well up when discussing his own suicide attempt, as he compares his personal demons to those of Toback’s, is overwhelming in its emotional nakedness). Though bound to be more appreciated by Toback’s fans, Jarecki succeeds admirably in making evident a glaring paradox: despite the chaotic randomness evoked by the improvisatory quality and the sense of existential fate permeating his movies, Toback’s method is meticulous. Reymond Levy
June 16, 2006