James Toback has furiously denied claims of sexual harassment and assault in a foul-mouthed rant during an interview.
Over 300 women, including Rachel McAdams, Julianne Moore, and Selma Blair, have come forward with claims of encounters with the filmmaker after a Los Angeles Times exposé – but James insisted that the claims are “pathetic lies”.
In a new Rolling Stone interview, which was recorded before the Los Angeles Times article was published, he said, “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.”
“And anyone who says it is a lying c**ksucker… Can I be any clearer than that? Anyone who says that, I just want to spit in his or her f**king face.”
The director was promoting his latest film The Private Life of a Modern Woman during the interview, and said, “No one who’s ever worked with me would ever say anything like that. No one… Seriously, I find it offensive and insulting and disgusting…”
James also demanded the names of his accusers from interviewer Hillel Aron, and said, “Do you want to be a writer? Do you have any sense of yourself as a serious person? Because this stuff should be beneath anybody.”
“There was an article years and years ago with a bunch of anonymous people. People read things…”
“It’s too stupid to waste time on. It really is. It doesn’t have anything to do with my life in any way. It never has. I work seriously with complete integrity… It’s too stupid to dignify.
“It’s pathetic lies. It’s just too f**king embarrassing and idiotic. And if I were you, I wouldn’t go repeating it, unless you really knew it were true, because it isn’t. So that’s all I have to say. This is not worth wasting another second on,” he added.
When James Toback was contacted by the Los Angeles Times about the claims, he said, “I have nothing to say about anything.”
