Taxi Driver: Classic or dud

It's been quite a while since I last saw this, but as I look back at it what strikes me today is that its brilliance was in taking an excellent basic stucture, with a strong plot and characters, and then adding a dash of cartoonish overstatement to every single aspect of it, so that one could feel like it was both middlebrow and dramatic as, let's say Ghandi, while at the same time getting plenty of lowbrow thrills and yucks, like for example Dumb and Dumber.

ghandi meets dumb & dumber... yeah that sounds apt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeTAux3_VwI

gentlemen, I present you with... turds

u present your posts? bazinga!!!!

ghandi meets dumb & dumber... yeah that sounds apt

― turds (Hungry4Ass), Monday, April 15, 2013 2:22 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

dying

cartoonish, overstated, middlebrow, 'yucks and thrills' -- this is a good list of words that do not apply to taxi driver

http://nice-cool-pics.com/data/media/22/new_york_taxi__2004__queen_latifah__jimmy_fallon.jpg

i agree with aimless here: all those words apply to taxi driver, it is complete, shameless pulp, that doesn't miss an opportunity to luxuriate in its gritty subject matter, sometimes for "yucks and thrills". it's interesting though, because the film manages to both be suprarealistic -- almost frank miller territory -- and at the same time effectively thematize post-vietnam urban alienation. it's not a restrained movie by any means but it still manages to feel honest, not exploitative. that's why it's so great.

i don't like any other films by scorcese though.

http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Business/images-6/dc-cab.jpg

Schrader was excellent last night. Very generous with his time--spoke and answered questions for around an hour after the film. I thought he might get a little impatient with Taxi Driver questions ("Where would Travis be today?")--that was the film that was showing, but he was really there to promote his new one--but no, he answered them all at length. Went into a long digression on how upside down everything is today: "We don't know what a movie is anymore." (Meaning that the nature of the industry has changed drastically, not that the audience is stupid. His upcoming film cost him, the screenwriter, and another backer $90,000 + some Kickstarter money. Yes, $90,000.) Got my DVD of Affliction and reprint Taxi Driver poster signed. I wanted to post a photo, but my friend didn't have her camera.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512CW9H4H9L.jpg

"Jodie Foster is Delightful"

opened 40 years ago

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/taxi-driver-40th-anniversary-five-films-influenced-scorseses

This is number 2 on my list of "great films" that I feel a little meh about, after Citizen Kane.

lol sorry I'm fronting I don't have a list

but probably the Big Sleep would be #3 and Chinatown #4, if I did.

really, fascinating

apple pie and *cheese* WTF. vom.

secretly down with #3 & #4, hysterically furious at #1 & #2

i'm going to stop reviving these for my own good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihHw3de86xs

The maxim never look at comments on YouTube goes 100-fold for this movie's clips.

Haven't watched the film in a few years, but thought I'd give Geoffrey Macnab's The Making of Taxi Driver a try. Not great by any means--primarily looking for interesting anecdotes, anyway, not analysis. Three I didn't know:

Foster's character is based on Garth Avery, who was hired as a consultant. She has a cameo, too--when Travis almost runs over Iris, Avery is the friend who pulls Iris away.

Keitel based his big monologue with Iris on...Barry White!

The make-up artist, Dick Smith (who did makeup for Hoffman in Little Big Man, Brando in The Godfather, and Blair/Von Sydow in The Exorcist), was distantly related to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Another one: Scorsese's role (44 Magnum and all that) was supposed to have been played by George Memmoli, Joey Clams in Mean Streets. Memmoli didn't show up the day his scene was supposed to have been shot.

"You know who lives there? A nook lives there."

"mook"

(I should only post from a desktop...)

Love the story that De Niro got the inspiration for the "You talkin' to me?" line from Bruce Springsteen, who used to say it as part of his between-song schtick.

I saw an episode of The Twilight Zone from 1960 the other day that features a shifty guy saying, "you talkin' to me?" twice, into a mirror no less, so I'd say that's a possible unconscious inspiration. The ep is called "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room"... A+ title

I figured Sometime Sweet Susan--Travis's inspired movie-date idea--would be famous enough because of Taxi Driver that getting hold of it via Amazon or YouTube would be easy. Not so.

Fun fact: This, the Lyric Theatre, is where Travis Bickle took Betsy to see the porno. Not much has changed pic.twitter.com/XqAYBC9UZn

— Matt Prigge (@mattprigge) November 7, 2019

rewatched it last night in the most recent (i think??) blu-ray release (40th anniversary restoration). looks great, the colors are just beautiful, and that coupled the graininess of the film and the absolute griminess of the atmosphere and Travis' disgusted/dreamy narration just really make this one of the most tactile viewing experiences of any movie. i feel like saying more about it but i tend to think of it as such a complete and immersive experience that it's difficult to pin down certain things thematically and separate them out from the whole.

ok i will say that Travis seems inconsistent but in ways that make complete sense to me, it being the journey of someone who is losing his mind. And everything that happens to him sets him down on his path. Also the film spends a lot of time making sure that while he's a character to have some sympathy for, we see that Travis is never wronged or misunderstood. The other characters react to him in ways that are entirely appropriate, bc he's a creepy fuckin guy. obv of course Scorsese/Schrader/De Niro really nailed him, he's such a great character.

Watched last night for the first time in many years, showed it to my 18-year-old son. Movie still packs a wallop. It actually felt more timely now than any of the previous times I've seen it, Travis feels like such an 8chan incel precursor/prototype. And all of the things that are supposed to be shocking and uncomfortable (the vicious racism, child prostitution, gun fetishism) only feel more unsettling now. (Also it sure is beautiful for an ugly movie.)

At the end, my somewhat blown-away son asked, "What was the moral of that?" I was hard-pressed to come up with a good answer.

Don't drive a taxi!

Yeah. Don't drive a taxi at night. Make some friends. Porn films aren't good for 1st dates. Also I guess, if you're going to go on a shooting spree, pimps are better targets than presidential candidates.

I need to watch this again. I just read that the first 15 minutes are based on Astral Weeks and can't think what they are

First 15 minutes are mostly him driving the cab and ruminating darkly on the sickness of the city. Not sure how that connects to Astral Weeks, but maybe somehow in Scorsese's head.

Ah apparently it was "Madame George" in particular:

Down on Cyprus Avenue,
With a childlike vision leaping into view,
Clicking, clacking of the high heeled shoe,
Ford & Fitzroy, Madame George
Marching with the soldier boy behind;
He’s much older with hat on drinking wine,
And that smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through
The cool night air like Shalimar;
And outside they’re making all the stops;
The kids out in the street collecting bottle-tops,
Gone for cigarettes and matches in the shops.

i read this in shawn levy's bio of de niro:

The famous words were, apparently, stolen from Bruce Springsteen, who was about to burst into superstardom
with his forthcoming album Born to Run, the release of which was preceded by a series of shows at the Bottom Line nightclub in Greenwich Village that De Niro had attended. Ever the master showman, Springsteen would do a bit in which he pretended not to realize that the audience's hoots of "Bruuuuuuce" were for him. "You talkin' to me?" he would ask in mock humility. De Niro held on to that phrase and turned it into one of the most famous lines in all of American movies.

found it interesting cuz just a few weeks ago watching the howard stern springsteen hbo interview i noticed how much springsteen now reminds me of de niro esp when he laughs/smiles

It's been probably 30 years since I've seen this film. Is it ever explicitly stated that Bickle is a Vietnam vet? I remember it as being unstated but somehow understood.

In the scene w/him applying for the taxi gig he refers to being in the marines and getting an honorable discharge in 1973, which kinda softens the hard edge of the dude interviewing him.

“I was in the Marines, too.”

Agree on all the incel comparisons though also what makes everything hit harder is it doesn’t feel like the laundry list of grievances a tedious angry white guy (see: Falling Down) but it feels like a troubled man who’s just saturated in all of this shit and has been for a long, long time. What makes it hit is the character is actually vv disturbed and not even angry at all, he’s quiet and he’s not even able to express what he’s feeling. He just acts on the feelings.

He’s expressive in ways that are just generally referencing his emotions, his targets shift because he’s not even focused on anyone in particular as much as just hazily feeling these large things. I think it’s a really rich and telling portrait of a guy who is hard to pin down.

To me, the film is less a character study than an attempt to capture the despair and decay of the era. Bickle, who is mentally unstable, returns from the fiasco of the Vietnam war to a city in mid collapse. In his confused state, he somehow hits on the idea of assassinating a presidential candidate as a way to solve the problem, before his self-immolation in an attempt to rescue Foster's character.

xp His bafflement at his date's reaction to the porn film is kind of heartbreaking.

For what it's worth, Tarantino, in his book, disputes that Travis was ever actually a vet--thinks it's another of his fantasies, and that he bought his jacket at a surplus store.

After his chapter on Taxi Driver, the next chapter is "What if De Palma had directed Taxi Driver?" (It's well known that he was the first person the script was offered to.) Not nearly as interesting as the title promises.

I revere De Palma well above Scorsese and Friedkin, but I'm glad he didn't get either Taxi Driver or Cruising.

There was one studio request that Scorsese acceded to (willingly--sounds like he was uncomfortable with the script as written too) that Tarantino believes De Palma wouldn't have: in Schrader's original script, every single person Travis kills is African American, including Sport.

https://snakkle.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/taxi-GC.jpg

I think, as related by Tarantino, De Palma's reasoning was that Scorsese let Travis off the hook somewhat by softening his racism.

i’ve always been a fan of this movie, lately i’ve decided my favorite part is his self help monologue

June twenty-ninth. I gotta get in shape. Too much sitting has ruined my body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on there will be 50 pushups each morning, 50 pullups. There will be no more pills, no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body. From now on will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight

“every muscle must be tight” always cracks me up