James Toback famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

It's hard to give a dramatic shape to even the most dramatic life. . . . you are forced not just into selectivity, but into alteration, distortion and outright lying about what did and didn't happen.
-- James Toback

#Lying #Giving #Crafts
I alternate between feeling incredibly lucky that I've gotten away with almost everything I wanted to do, and feeling like I've been shafted.
-- James Toback

#Feelings #Lucky #Wanted
The idea that there aren't mistakes made constantly in the judicial system is too obvious even to need to mention.
-- James Toback

#Mistake #Ideas #Needs
You will never convince anyone to do anything unless you believe it should be done.
-- James Toback

#Believe #Done #Should
What am I hanging around for? But I'm hanging around because it's still fun.
-- James Toback

#Fun #Stills #Hanging Around
Most of my movies get about a third raves, a third vicious attacks, and a third in-between.
-- James Toback

#Rave #Vicious #Thirds
[Robert Downey was being singled out for] selective prosecution. He's a sweet guy who never did harm to anyone except himself. He's been doing drugs for 20 years and functioning for 20 years, and in those 20 years there've been hundreds of people who've been getting high constantly and behaved very destructively and have not been arrested. Robert's real problem is he gets caught.
-- James Toback

#Sweet #Real #Being Single
Some people get married and they remain "I," some get married and become "we."
-- James Toback

#People #Married
I work seriously with complete integrity. I never, never, never have offered a part to anyone who didn't deserve it, and I've never not delivered when I do offer a part. My word is better than a contract.
-- James Toback

#Integrity #Deserve
When people are temperate in their behavior, in their lives, someone who is addictive or extreme or obsessive can't understand how people can just go through their lives in the middle, and people who are rational and balanced can't understand the opposite. I'm one who's in the extreme camp in almost every area of my life and I always have been. I've observed that I'm in a minority, but I never understand people who are measured.
-- James Toback

#People #Behavior #Rational
I think there's a general sense that the belief structures that existed and carried civilization forward have weakened to the point where they can no longer support it. They are not powerful enough to do it anymore because there is not enough serious belief in them.
-- James Toback

#Powerful #Thinking #Support
To have six billion people on Earth, two billion of whom are carrying around a warped view of you? That has to register.
-- James Toback

#Views #Two #People
Much as I like getting awards in Oldenburg, Germany and Torino, it's nice to get one in America.
-- James Toback

#Nice #Awards #America
The collaborator has to be someone who understands that his role is to help you articulate what you want, but at the same time is not just going to be mechanically obeying, but adding to, supplementing, and coming up with stuff.
-- James Toback

#Roles #Want #Stuff
Death is a part of life, and eventually I assimilated that completely.
-- James Toback

#Parts Of Life
I've struggled seriously to make movies with very little money, that I write, that I direct, that mean my life to me. The idea that I would offer a part to anyone for any other reason than that he or she was gonna be the best of anyone I could find is so disgusting to me. I don't give my best friends parts unless they deserve them. Ever.
-- James Toback

#Writing #Mean #Giving
I feel like Alain Delon, who once said, "It doesn't matter that I'm not a star in America because I'm a huge star in France, I'm a legend in Spain, and I'm a god in Japan.
-- James Toback
I'd been basically anchored in New York for three years, but I fled to L.A. after the funeral and decided that I had to start a movie immediately. It was the only way to avoid becoming overwhelmed by depression. And that meant financing the film myself because there is no such thing as "immediately" in movies that one writes.
-- James Toback

#Writing #Funeral #Overwhelmed
I felt, "Oh, film is a great art because I can pull in music and visual imagery, and it has its literary aspects and drama." Film was a sort of Wagnerian synthesis of the arts, as opposed to opera, which Wagner had thought would be. That's another art form that has seen its best days.
-- James Toback

#Art #Drama #Film
Boxing is not coming back. There's not going to be a new Ali or a new Tyson. What's happened to movies is happening to boxing-that is, too much availability of alternative, similar entertainment. Movies started to become diluted with the advent of television; that has been mirrored by the dilution of boxing, with kickboxing and absolute, extreme homicidal fighting.
-- James Toback

#Fighting #Boxing #Advent
In a way, I think that the movie Fight Club [1999] did a weird, negative thing to boxing, culturally. I mean, it is sort of similar to what has happened to the novel. For however many good novels are written, the novel itself has completely lost its place.
-- James Toback

#Mean #Fighting #Thinking

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