Taxi Driver: Classic or dud

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

My take is that Travis isn’t really let off the hook, as his racism is there and clearly simmering, but it’s just part of his larger nebulous anger, aimed at whoever crosses his path in the wrong way at the wrong time.

His exercise routine sounds like regurgitated Jordan Peterson advice.

Scorsese made the right call; the racism is there and plain as day for those who have working eyes, but it's not the text, and ergo won't be easily either affirmed or rejected, depending on the audience member's own personal biases

The other factor, of course, is that making Sport white allowed him to cast Keitel. The racism is definitely there and can't be missed, but it seems to have been much harsher in Schrader's original script.

Does anyone else feel that the narration doesn't feel credible coming from the character we see on the screen? I think Robert Kolker saw that as part of an intentional fragmentation of Bickle's self; to me, it always felt like the narration came from a conception (Schrader's) that was a lot closer to Bresson's country priest than what Scorsese and DeNiro were creating.

I had the impression that Bickle had maybe read a bunch of pulp adventure novels while he was in Vietnam, and was regurgitating them. The kind of adventure novels where the author details all of the weapons, as per this series from the early 1980s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Survivalist_(novel_series)

The kind of novels where the US government is evil and the hero is a massive racist who fetishises the idea of Native Americans as proud warrior savages.

Taxi Driver is one of those really good films I have seen once and have no desire to see again. I went into it dimly aware that it was some kind of classic cop/gangster film from the 1970s, and I remember having much the same reaction as the chap above who is often referred to as the Duke of Saxony. e.g. it wasn't what I expected from a Martin Scorsese film starring Robert De Niro.

I was expecting something like the lines Harry Enfield's Badfellas but with a taxi. But it's genuinely grim and uncomfortable. Bickle is a really unusual character. He has the same kind of victim complex as the people who idolised Rambo in the 1980s. I'm thinking specifically of Michael Ryan. I was confused by the ending as well. Like a lot of people. It might work if his lawyer had been able to persuade the jury that Bickle had acted in self-defence, but that would have been a heck of a stretch.

On the other hand I can imagine why Bickle turned out the way he did. At the same time the film could easily have been a vigilante fantasy in which our hero snaps and dispenses justice after being wronged for ninety minutes, but it doesn't do that. I remember reading somewhere that taxi drivers were still killed in large numbers in New York right up until the 1990s. e.g. this story here:
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/24/nyregion/gypsy-cabs-a-hard-chancy-life-on-the-side-streets-of-new-york.html

"Thirteen years after his hopeful arrival, Mr. Amara's life ended at the wheel of his cab, about five blocks from his home. He died last month face-down, a single .22-caliber bullet in his chest, on the hard streets from which he had tried to wrest a living.

He became another grim statistic as assaults and slayings of gypsy- and livery-cab drivers have become common in New York City. There have been 26 livery- and gypsy-cab drivers slain so far this year, compared with 30 in 1991, 32 in 1990 and 28 in 1989, according to the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission."

And presumably dozens more were shot in the arms and not killed. The thought of Friends coexisting with taxi drivers being killed by the dozen feels wrong somehow.

I think the narration is a Travis fantasy of how he’s disciplined and is a truth teller and is brave and also shows his somewhat dangerous idealization of women, pedastaling them up to a height they can’t possibly fulfill when he interacts with them. It’s childlike fantasy.

The victim complex is interesting since he is charming and good looking enough to a point where he can get a date with Betsy by simply working up some bravado and intriguing her, but the details and nuances of how to get beyond that elude him, and he’s totally lost. And when Betsy correctly flees, it’s due to his own lack of understanding, his own sabotaging the situation. What makes it sad is that he’s been set adrift in life at some point, unprepared to handle adult relationships and anything other than menial gigs. It’s maybe no mistake that the person he connects with most easily is Iris; he’s stuck in adolescence.

The irony of the ending is that Travis just happened to target some truly despicable characters who could easily be written off by society, and this ending was only possible bc he failed at killing a political candidate. It had a bit to do with who they were and what they did, but if he’d walked into that campaign office at the same point in his downfall he might’ve shot up that place instead of a pimp hostel.

What continues to be amazing to me about this film is that it’s genuinely beautiful, the music and gauzy colors at night and methodical pace really cast a spell.

I’d say the first time I saw the film I appreciated it but when I saw a 20th anniversary screening in NYC (good audience to see it with) it really hit home. And its continued to do that moreso over time, as I mentioned upthread the most recent blu-ray looks amazing and I understand that character a lot more.

What continues to be amazing to me about this film is that it’s genuinely beautiful, the music and gauzy colors at night and methodical pace really cast a spell.

― omar little, Wednesday, December 28, 2022

yes!

Great posts.

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.