The Reeler

The Reeler presents
THE OUTSIDER
(dir. Nicholas Jarecki, 85 mins, 2005)

Weds., Aug. 2 -- 6:30 p.m.
http://pioneertheater.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=63080

"**** Riveting... Shows the highs and lows of making films outside the system."
- Mick LaSalle, SF Chronicle

"One of the great documentaries about filmmaking; you'd compare it to HEARTS OF DARKNESS. . ."
- Rob Nelson, Village Voice

Few American filmmakers of the last 30 years have navigated in and out of the mainstream as fearlessly as James Toback (Fingers, Exposed, Black and White), whose life and work provides the basis for Nicholas Jarecki's documentary The Outsider. Half making-of documentary and half all-access biography, The Outsider views Toback through the oversexed, intellectualized, cosmopolitan prism of his most recent film, When Will I Be Loved --a spectrum that reflects Toback's compulsions as effectively as it challenges his colleagues to consider their own.

And as Jarecki discovers, Toback has plenty of colleagues; the film features interviews with Woody Allen, Barry Levinson, Roger Ebert, Brett Ratner, Brooke Shields, Jim Brown and a trenchant conversation with longtime Toback collaborator (and kindred spirit in debauchery) Robert Downey Jr. The Outsider reveals a man about whom everybody has an opinion, but also an enigma whom nobody--perhaps even Toback himself--can ever really know.