Taxi Driver: Classic or dud

I don't want to watch Raging Bull over and over, either, because it's a painful movie to watch... but it's supposed to be. If you don't recall reflexively, you weren't paying attention.

recoil, not recall

this is way subjective, but some movies have more replay potential if there's elements of density (zodiac!) or humor or mastery or eroticism etc, and Taxi Driver doesn't seem like one of those films to me. of course, i can see how someone else wouldn't want to watch Ninja Scroll 15 times.

oh. wait. i didn't mean to suggest a connection between "greatest film of all time" and how many times you'd want to watch something. two separate thoughts.

Great music. I like Peter Boyle in it. A lot. So much so that I watched Raymond once. The other cabbie/Scorsese scenes are, y'know, a quotidien beats kinda thing.

Just saw Harsh Times, which is a Taxi Driver remake with a buddy film thrown in.

my favorite moment of the film comes right after de niro shoots keitel. he walks down the block then just sits on a stoop.

the point of the scorsese scene is that it gives bickle the idea to go buy a gun.

i like taxi driver more than any of the other "easy riders raging bulls" type uber-macho classics. de niro did a great job deepening the character of travis bickle (as written, he's a pretty two-dimensional character - ); what's really horrifying in the movie isn't the violence, it's how boyish and gleeful he gets about it. the charmer chatting up cybill, the awkward newbie asking advice from peter boyle, the yokel pelting the secret service guy with questions - all inseparable from the lunatic pointing a gun at his reflection.

i also think scorsese did a terrific job giving us a strong sense of everything that's going on outside bickle's self-contained little world. the scene with cybill and albert brooks talking in the campaign office seems superfluous at first, but it's there because it reminds you that THIS is everything travis can't have: an utterly casual and unremarkable conversation with a friend. bickle almost never has a real conversation with anyone; he's either playing the goofball rube or trying to save some woman he's idealized from afar. the talk he has with iris is heartbreaking because it's the only genuine connection he manages to establish in the whole movie - he even jokes around with her; "i AM a narc" - and of course he instantly destroys it by "saving" her.

the movie builds beautifully; there's so many individual scenes that stand out to me. the scene with bickle watching "american bandstand" has always particularly moved me for some reason.

there are ugly currents running through the movie, of course. bickle's racism (indicated in an ongoing series of long, silent shots which indicate he's staring at a black fellow cabbie) is obvious, but never explored. schrader's script contains huge dollops of misogyny, but scorsese was smart enough to make iris the movie's most sympathetic character.

the score, of course, is unforgettable; herrmann at his best.

bickle's racism (indicated in an ongoing series of long, silent shots which indicate he's staring at a black fellow cabbie) is obvious, but never explored

I think it's explored plenty, as in his silence and stillness when it's reflected back at him in the Passenger Scorsese scene. (ie, totally disagree w/ poortheatre)

JD absolutely OTM.

JD OTM, poortheatere NOTM, and most everything that needs saying's already been said. A damn near perfect film. Scorsese's best, DiNiro's best, Herrman's best. Not to slight the cinematography & editing. Opening w/ cab rolling out of the fog on rain-slick streets, muted trumpets boiling in behind = one of the finest and most mysteriously terrifying shots I've ever seen. I love this movie so much, I want to eat it. As though it were a cat or a small dog.

or oatmeal with whiskey

I've seen Taxi Driver at least 20 times. And it keeps getting funnier every time I see it.

I like the remake better (The King of Comedy)

King of Comedy is tops.

the scene with cybill and albert brooks talking in the campaign office seems superfluous at first, but it's there because it reminds you that THIS is everything travis can't have: an utterly casual and unremarkable conversation with a friend.

nice!

Do you think it bothers Jodie Foster that she hasn't changed a bit - face, voice, mannerisms - in 30 years?

I think she sleeps okay.

At least she's not a botox monster.

the recent DVD documentary is amazing with this. paul schrader comes across as a very smart fellow. you almost need to watch the doc to counter-balance all the negativity slung around about the players/ makers in EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS.

"Falling down" is a lot wittier and heartfelt

!

So ridiculously better than Raging Bull and Goodfellas combined.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IumwPicacM

Saw this for the 29th or 37th time last night, introduced by Liam Lacey, a daily critic in Toronto. Something I never knew: the whole adrenelin-shot-to-the-heart bit from Pulp Fiction originated with Steven Prince, Easy Andy in Taxi Driver and subject of Scorsese's All-American Boy.

Scorsese & Schrader on restoration for BluRay -- Marty on RWF's influence:

It’s way over my head, in that sense. The Fassbinder stuff, I just don’t get.... But the thing about Merchant of Four Seasons was that it had a kind of brutal honesty about the way the camera looked at the characters — at the actors — and not necessarily the melodramatic scenes. And it just made me realize that you could do anything, really. Just anything, as long as you feel honest about it. It’s an honest image. It’s like a police photo — a crime scene photo.

http://www.movieline.com/2011/03/it-was-all-unsaid-martin-scorsese-and-paul-schrader-talk-35-years-of-taxi-driver.php

http://checkingonmysausages.blogspot.com/2011/01/writing-while-watching-taxi-driver.html

I think it's getting a theatrical rerelease too. I see this in the theater any time I can. My favorite part is when DeNiro tells Foster "you're the one that's square, man, you're the square!"

Travis Bickle: I should get one of those signs that says "One of these days I'm gonna get organezized".
Betsy: You mean organized?
Travis Bickle: Organezized. Organezized. It's a joke. O-R-G-A-N-E-Z-I-Z-E-D...
Betsy: Oh, you mean organezized. Like those little signs they have in offices that says, "Thimk"?

And then there's the punchline where Travis actually gets the sign and has it up in his apartment.

The scene with Sport & Iris alone in their room--this is taking place in Travis's imagination, right? The obvious giveaway is the record player playing the theme song. The dialog is not what you'd expect a guy like Sport to say to his 12 year old girlfriend, either. It's really the only scene in the whole film that is not from Travis's perspective, and I don't see it in Schrader's script.

hi

definitely not a fantasy, imo -- it parallels the earlier scenes with betsy and albert brooks, which also aren't from travis's perspective.

the sport-iris scene is also one of the very best scenes in the movie, it's like a mini-movie in itself.

I don't have any proof beyond an opinion, but I've never even considered the possibility that the Sport/Iris scene isn't for real. Based on what we see of Sport elsewhere, his slimy sweet-talk to Iris seems perfectly in character. I'm guessing you're contrasting his behaviour with the way he roughs her up when she tries to get away earlier, but seeing as he's trying to make sure she doesn't attempt something similar again, I don't see that as being inconsistent. (When Cybill Shepherd and Albert Brooks talk for the first time--Brooks trying to light the match and all that--I wouldn't quite say that's from Travis's perspective. He's parked in his cab outside, true, but we're right inside the office, hearing and seeing them in a way that he can't.)

Don't most of the Betsy scenes happen just as Travis is walking in or about to walk in and, hence, would be watching from the window? (Interesting theory anyway.)

I think the second and third time that's true, when he asks her out and again when he and Brooks scuffle, but the first time, I see that scene as being outside of his perspective.

But yes, it's an interesting theory. I've always partially subscribed to the theory that the final scene, where he picks up Betsy, might be a fantasy of Travis's.

For the record, I was wrong about the script--it is in there. And yes my point about Travis's perspective was that in the Sport/Iris scene he's completely removed from the action, but the Betsy/Albert Brooks scenes he's nearby. There's definitely some interesting parallels there between those scenes.

Another thing that struck me after not seeing the film for many years is that for all its technical brilliance, some of the sound editing is not very good. The scene outside of the porno theater when Betsy leaves the date has at least two lines of dialogue from Cybill Shepard that are essentially inaudible. And when Albert Brooks is telling the story about the canary and smashes his fist into his hand, it sounds like the Three Stooges. A couple of other minor things. But I think it's all made up for in the shootout scene, which has amazing sound--how often in a film do you hear bullets echo throughout a hallway the way they do here? It really sounds like a true shootout, not some video game.

JD is otm upthread about the "American Bandstand" part. That may be the best scene in the whole thing. It's unbelievably heartbreaking.

Speaking of sound editing, I just pulled out my copy of "Late for the Sky". I never realized that the guitar solo is actually edited in the film! They cut out about 20 seconds of it, and for the better. I take it all back...

"Late for the Sky" in Taxi Driver is one of the most unappreciated great uses of music in any Scorsese film. I don't think it's nearly as well known as the girl group and doo-wop stuff that's all over Mean Streets and Goodfellas--when you think about Taxi Driver, you think about Bernard Herrmann's score. It works so well, though. I've always been intrigued by the empty pair of shoes. Surely Scorsese and Schrader put that in there themselves.

So you think that Scorsese actually had a special "American Bandstand" clip filmed for the movie? Hmm, I don't know. My hunch is that that song was never even on AB, and that the video clip we see is probably of another song. Didn't they just play charting singles on AB? I'm almost certain that song was not a top 40 hit. Although it would be interesting to hear if anyone has a 45 of that song (if one exists) and see if the guitar edit I noticed above is the same.

The clip is obviously real, and yes, I think they shoe-horned Jackson Browne on top of it--"Late for the Sky" would not have been played on American Bandstand. The thing that I think Scorsese and Schrader snuck into the clip (using whatever non-digital means were available at the time) is the empty pair of shoes, the symbolism of which is too good to be true.

http://3-ps.googleusercontent.com/h/www.retronaut.co/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/520x426xDe-Niro-520x426.jpg.pagespeed.ic.za5Bb7uVEM.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3442/3355915808_59bb9ce5ab.jpg

(I was hoping to find a fake Judd Hirsch license, but no luck.)

Apparently that's a real De Niro license that he got while prepping for the role!

i don't really see how anyone can take the coda of the film (after the bloodbath) as anything _but_ some kind of fantasy. not only is the way its shot thoroughly (and clearly intentionally) dreamlike and disorienting (the most obvious example being the way cybill shepard appears in the rear-view mirror, like a disembodied portrait), but it simply doesn't make any literal sense. (one thing i noted was that the voice-over of iris's "dad" has the same awkward, staccato cadence of deniro reading the fabulist letter to _his_ parents.)

it's interesting that neither schrader nor scorsese really seem to have intended for audiences to identify with the lead character, strictly speaking. but by making much of the film in an expressionist mode, in which we are aligned with deniro (and arguably inside his head-space), there's really an encouragement to do so.

i think part of the point of the scene with scorsese as the taxi fare is actually to break some of that possible identification w/ bickle. what the character played by scorsese says is utterly harrowing/horrifying. bickle's initial reaction seems to be discomfort, but by the end he seems to be identifying with the rant and envisioning something similar. in other words i imagine this was designed by the filmmakers to be a moment where our reactions and those of bickle diverge in a very strong sense. i'm not sure if it has that affect on everyone in the audience though.

i kind of see this film as a stunning, virtuoso piece of work that kind of elevates, if not transcends, a really problematic screenplay.

schrader has a way of writing dialogue that is almost revelatory in its awkward detail. but despite that sense of surface authenticity i feel like he often just doesn't _get_ the milieu he's writing about. i feel that way with taxi driver and i feel that way about blue collar.

still think schrader's greatet moment is the first act of rolling thunder.

I'd play devil's advocate on that point with the Peter Boyle-De Niro dialogue scene, which sounds pitch-perfect to me. (Unless it was improvised?)

yeah i like that scene--they are talking past one another completely

But isn't that the exact scene that follows the "44 magnum" scene? Whatever "break" may have happened between the audience and Travis in the silhouette scene is probably made up for by his total vulnerability in the Wiz dialogue. Also, Scorcese also gives us other opportunities later on to re-bond with him, especially in that American Bandstand bit.

Part of this movie's power is that the audience's identification with the hero is always ambiguous. We always partly "root" for him, even when he's about to kill a presidential candidate in cold blood.

I really can't post my response to that last bit, surveillance being what it is these days.

heh

i think i remember reading around the time peter boyle died that his giving advice scene to travis was mostly improvised

Look, if you're really interested, if you give us your name and address, Morbius, we'll send you all the information on how to apply--how's that?

The genius of the film is how it’s pitched for maximum dissonance, gorgeous visuals and score, charismatic actors and dialogue, telling a story which is fucked up and psychotic as if it were a beautiful tragedy.

The beauty of the movie is something that is almost astonishing to behold after years of it having been misunderstood and represented in media incorrectly. I think the emptiness of something like Joker which aspires to that supposed scuzzy Taxi Driver-via-King of Comedy Scorsese vibe is that Joker is an ugly film making empty gestures by depicting this washed out dirty setting and Scorsese makes a beautiful poetic kind of film out of it. Joker had a “dorm room poster of Travis holding a .357 magnum in Taxi Driver/I saw the movie once” understanding of its inspirational material.

I was most struck by its visual beauty when I saw what was obviously a restored print some time in the '90s or maybe early '00s. I'd been seeing deteriorating rep-theatre prints for a couple of decades before that.

(I did like the way Joker played off against Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, though.)

I mean there are worse ways that film could have turned out, it wasn’t anything I found really worthwhile but better that than Jared Leto’s joker interpretation being made into a solo vehicle.