Screenwriter and director Robert Towne accepts Toback's invitation to a screening of the first production cut of When Will I Be Loved.
Accepting Towne's critique that a principal character in the film lacks adequate introduction, Toback then orders a re-shoot, adding two scenes to the final cut he shops to distributors.
In a "Bonus Features" audio track bundled into the DVD release[2] of The Outsider, Jarecki says, "I used the framework of [Toback] making the movie as the spine to jump off of, cutting with the interviews.
I wanted to get into Toback as a personal filmmaker...." For helping to resolve his footage and clips into a finished documentary, Jarecki credits editors Chris Franklin and Karen Schmeer.
[4] Mick LaSalle of San Francisco Chronicle praised it as "shrewdly made"[5] and The Village Voice called it "among the great" documentaries about filmmaking.