The Outsider

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Audience Member The Outsider is a horrible excuse for a biographical documentary. It feels like Nicholas Jarecki must have been best friends with James Toback, so he did his best to manufacture a movie that makes him look like a genius rebel film-maker. It’s amazing how he almost exclusively interviews people who are friends with Toback or are currently working with him, so they’ll talk about his brilliance. Then there are the handful of interviews that are clearly cut in a careful way to avoid making him look bad. You’ll notice Woody Allen never once says Toback is good, just says he’s “a New York character” or something like that. There are a couple of actresses who look uncomfortable in their interviews, like they’re trying to dodge any discussion of the experience of working on his films. Then we see clips of him shooting a sex scene, and you can clearly see why. It made my skin crawl hearing this creep talk like he’s directing porn, with no respect for the actors involved. The intent of The Outsider is ostensibly to focus on the making of When Will I Be Loved, but it seems clear that Nicholas Jarecki gets bored with that and wants to focus more on hero worship of the director. Meanwhile, every scene we see of When Will I Be Loved looks like a terrible movie that’s being thrown together by an amateur with a gigantic ego. They have a moment to face the truth that James Toback isn’t as good as he thinks because the studio doesn’t want to release his crappy movie, but instead of being confrontational or possibly calling into question the quality of his work, only minutes later we see a minor studio give him a deal. I wish I cared enough to do the research and see what connection there is between Nicholas Jarecki and James Toback, because I would love to expose The Outsider as the ego-stroking piece of garbage that it seems to be. I think the best thing I can do is recommend you avoid it, unless you just watch the clips of Woody Allen and Roger Ebert because they are the only two people who seem articulate and talk about the art of making movies. Ranking on my Flickchart Loses to The Phantom of the Opera Loses to Friends & Lovers Loses to Danger Zone Loses to Christian Mingle Loses to Watercolor Postcards Loses to The Day of the Locust Wins against Nurse Wins against Jason Bourne Wins against Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Wins against Dawn of the Dead Wins against The Fly The Outsider ranked 1557 out of 1585 Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 06/21/18 Full Review Audience Member The actual coverage of the making of When Will I be Loved is pretty lazy, most of the 'making' of that film is covered in montages with a song thrown over the soundtrack. The more interesting parts of the film are watching Toback interact with some of his friends. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/20/23 Full Review Audience Member The Outsider captures the raw spirit of artistic filmmaking, which unfortunately is becoming almost an unknown concept these days. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/11/23 Full Review Audience Member I quite liked this documentary on independent film director James Toback which follows him as he shoots his film "When Will I be Loved" in just 12 days. There are some great guest interviews talking about Toback such as frequent collaborator Roberts Downey Jr., Norman Mailer, Woody Allen, Harvey Keitel, Mike Tyson, Brooke Shields, Barry Levinson and more. This is a must for film lovers! Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member I caught this really late one night on TV right as i was about to call it a night. An hour after the movie was over i was still searching for movies, interviews, stories or anything i could find involving James Toback. In terms of getting me excited to see this particular movie the documentary isn't great. But in terms of showing me one of the great people in film today, it succeeds by leaps and bounds. I've never seen a Toback movie and barely knew about him before i saw this. After i saw this movie i would've killed to be at that table with him and Keitel! Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/09/23 Full Review Audience Member If I loved making film, it'd probably seem less self-important and indulgant. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Outsider

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