As we walk away from the woman with the baby, I ask Toback why women fall for him. "I have an instinct, which is not conscious, for women who are female versions of me," he says.

I ask if Downey has the same instinct. "It may be easier to picture Robert Downey Jr. picking up women," he jokes, especially in his role as Jack Jericho in "The Pick-Up Artist." But the director says Downey was shy and secretive when he was younger.

"I consider Robert my alter ego," Toback says. His decision to cast the 20-year-old, gap-toothed actor, without a screen test or reading, in his first substantial role was an irrational leap of faith Toback hoped "would create confidence in him." The next time audiences saw Downey in a Toback film was 11 years later in "Two Girls and a Guy."

It was Downey's second chance to embody Toback. The director wrote the script in four days with Downey in mind after he saw him on television in 1996, in handcuffs on his way to drug rehab. He thought that the older Downey might have a complexity that would enable him to inhabit another role, that of a liar and philanderer who justifies his behavior because he's an actor who, he says, is always playing a role.

Toback's friends say he chooses to experiment with life as if it were a movie. "Jim has always had the ability to play himself as if he were a part and be totally immersed in it and then stand back and be objective," says film critic (and Salon contributor) David Thomson, who hung out with him in the '70s.

But Toback's lifestyle was more than just lewd drama. "The Jim I knew thought he'd be dead by now," remembers Thomson. "He used to vow to never reach middle age. But the inherent danger in living with little distance between deliberation and action was a break between doing and thinking that attracted a lot of hostility."

What matters more to Toback than critical reception is getting his personal vision on-screen. By embracing and aggressively presenting themes that the MPAA categorizes as too strong, he has thrown away any chance of getting backing from conglomerate production companies. As a result, Toback has tailored his filmmaking to the constraints of independent production.

"Two Girls and a Guy," for example, cost about $1 million to make and was filmed in only 11 days in a Manhattan loft. Mainstream movies can easily cost 50 times that, with fewer time constraints on the production.

But with less money and less time, Toback makes the movies he wants to make. He's working on a scale that is key to any independent movie. "Jim has found a line between art and the commercial mainstream and he's very successful at that stage," says Michael Mailer, a longtime friend who has produced Toback's last three pictures.

Box-office numbers for Toback's films are surprisingly good. Together, his last three movies grossed $20 million. In 1999, "Black and White" brought in $6 million during its entire commercial run and cost $4.5 million to make, a high budget by his standards. (The top box-office performer that year was "The Sixth Sense," which made $293 million on a $55 million budget.)

Years ago, Toback says, top-level Hollywood producer Don Simpson ("Top Gun," "Flashdance") agreed to back "Harvard Man" after Toback read the entire script to him over the phone. Unfortunately, the next morning Simpson woke up, went into his bathroom and died. Toback put the film aside for four years while he made "Two Girls and a Guy" and "Black and White" with the backing of Michael Mailer's company, which later agreed to produce "Harvard Man" as well. To Mailer, the film's appeal was simple: "What it does best is deal with madness, which we're all susceptible to, and Jim captures that creative instability."

Toback seems even more agitated than usual when we meet to go on errands before his afternoon flight to Toronto. A foot of snow covers the ground, and he's pacing back and forth trying to get a taxi. It's 3 p.m. but it seems like rush hour; eight cabs are stopped at the nearest stoplight. When he sees a cab down the street he runs a block, one hand holding a shopping bag, the other in the air. Off duty.

The stoplight changes and a cab stops for Toback. Inside the cab he explains: "I've been outside almost all day by choice, don't know what got into me. Yeah, I went to the park and the paths weren't obvious, so I ended up walking triple the distance and it's making me strange. Inside his bag is a sandwich for his mother and videocassettes of "Requiem for a Dream" and "Jesus' Son." We stop at his mother's apartment on Central Park West; he scurries in to drop off her lunch, and returns to the taxi carrying a bank deposit envelope.

We get out at a newspaper store and Toback asks the man at the counter if, by chance, he has the New York Times from two days ago, or the New York Post and the Daily News from the day before. The man squints his eyes: No. Toback explains as we leave. "I was in the papers yesterday. There was this crazy picture in the Post."

Toback strides across the icy sidewalk and up to a curb, packed with dirty snow. An old, black man, who appears to be homeless, walks past ranting and repeating, "Seven three, seven three," and laughing.

Toback turns around to let the man know he understands: "Where's seven-three?" They share a laugh, and still chuckling Toback turns and sprints across the street. He holds a cab and explains as he slides in: The man was "an old gambling psycho" and the numbers have to do with betting two horses at two tracks.

He seems to get nostalgic. "You know, if you watch a person gamble you can learn a tremendous amount about that person," he says. "Actually, it's the same as if you watch a person sexually. Whether you want to or not you reveal your strengths, weaknesses, essence. Everything that is fundamental about your nature."

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