Taxi Driver: Classic or dud

It's sincerely the best film ever made, besides Les Enfants. I've seen it 8 TRILLION BILLION times, honest to god.

Les Enfants is clearly the best movie of all time, don't they have a Blockbuster near you? I know they have it in my Blockbuster but I'm on the Upper West Side, home of PONCEY YUPPIE TWAT HEADS (according to Momus), so we would have that. Obviously I fancy myself as Garance, otherwise it wouldn't be my email address.

How sad am I making myself, one email address is a film character I fancy myself as, the other a song that I feel describes me. I AM A STEREOTYPICAL GIRL.

How could you say that about Ray Liotta, Ally? Just, ewww, don't say that. Ray Liotta? Did you see him in Blow playing Johnny Depp's way old dad? Goodfellas left me totally perplexed. Actually, I think I turned it off with five minutes to go. I'm way Italian, but for one thing, my people come from northern Italy (part of the family's from Austria, even), so they're not exactly gangsters, and for another, I just couldn't watch Goodfellas after five years of the Sopranos. If there's some angle I'm missing, I'll watch it again, but as it was, I couldn't get anything out of it.

For me, the best part of Goodfellas is when they move to the house with the wall that opens up with the entertainment center inside, but the wall looks like a rock. But that's just because whenever we see it, me and Fred and The Cult all go, "Jimmy's house!" because they have this ludicrious friend who buys all this random expensive shit for no reason, like ramote controls to control his remote controls and the internet for his car.

You definitely are not watching Goodfellas properly if you are getting nothing out of it. Just for the scene where they off Joe Pesci alone, for fuck's sake. It's easily the funniest movie ever after Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. And I always watch the end credits cos I totally feel that version of My Way, it's the best thing anyone even tangentially related to the Sex Pistols ever did.

Not quite as great as 'Raging Bull' though... you fucked my wife?

I usually find De Niro hilarious, but in 'Raging Bull' he's as scary as hell. And that scene takes the fucking biscuit. Not many people get away with talking to Joe Pesci like that.

'Falling Down'? Better than 'Taxi Driver'? "Lions and tigers and bears, Oh My!" That is some truly scary stuff being pushed out into the intranetterhighway. Serously, wow. Just Scorsese alone prevents that assumption from happening (I won't even go into the whole Deniro/Douglas matter).

'Taxi Driver': earnest portrayal (basically, based on the writer Schrader himself - is why it is earnest) of a loser/loner type in America. Sure, it goes far overboard at the end with the "cool anarchist mohawk" bullshit and the shoot-em-ups and all that jazz, but...it's a Hollywood type of thing. It should've been left to a more earnest ending, fitting to the realistic loner/loser portrayal built-up. In reality, that character (a frayed coward at hear) would have just stayed in his crappy little apartment more as he spent the rest of his time driving the taxi. Nothing less/nothing more than that, basically. Until some other little "hottie" turned his eye, then it would all go round and round again.

'Falling Down': trite media driven drivel set-up to make the Hollywooditis folks (the audience) to stand-up and cheer (in their minds) as they related to the lead character (Douglas) and his (and most others) little everyday taxing trials and tribulations of dealing with foreign 7-11 vendors, etc.

Cybill Shepard was always kinda J-Lo, wasn't she?

They just showed that 'A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies' thing on TCM again. Totally absorbing stuff, especially considering half the films are obscure b-pictures no one's ever heard of.

Well, it means (or at least was supposed to convey) that Travis has not changed at all and that he is going to do something violent again.

OK, this is what I thought until I paid a lot of attention to it last night - if you notice, after he does the double take he's suddenly out of Betsy's uptown quiet neighborhood and back on the same street he was driving in at the point that I would think the "dream" segment would start if it was as such. Either there was a time lapse between the first look and the double take or he's "waking up". So now it's annoying me. I mean I'd certainly explain why Travis didn't freaking DIE from the gushing wound in his neck during the shootout.

Note: I don't necessarily agree with the people who think it was a dream.

And I'm curious as to how the ending of Goodfellas is dreamlike. I don't understand that claim - it's pretty straightforward, and kind of pathetic (his monologue), but not dreamlike...

Is there a diff is I guess the important question.

Taxi Driver is his best film. At least my favorite. I still find new things in it and I've seen it at least twenty times.

It's like people who say they don't care for the architect Rem Koolhaas. I mean, shit, Delirious New York and Taxi Driver are two of my favorite homages to the city.

Cybil Sheperd never looked better. They can never touch her. Notice that Marty is on the steps when she walks by in that one sequence. Later, Marty appears in the cab. Remember that part?

Why the fuck is the storekeeper who Travis saved from the armed robber wearing a Tulane ringer t-shirt?

Would a cabbie like the Wizard know anything about Bertrand Russell?

Look at the 70's fonts and graphics on the trucks on the street.

The seedy streets never looked better on film.

The part at the end, the "double-take" sound loop is beautiful.

So many things about that film. Ex-Tennis Star is absolutely correct in his comment above.

This just got a new DVD release (and it topped ILE top movie of the 70s poll). Let's talk some more about the film..

These are the good parts: the first scene with the dispatcher, most solo activity in the apartment or cab with narration, any scene with harvey keitel, the scene with the senator in the cab, botched hold-up, the bickle/secret service agent conversation, some scenes with jodie foster--others are too proto-Dakota Fanning for me to enjoy.

The rest of the film is mediocre. I think the Cybill Shepherd plot is boring, as are the conversations with the other cabbies. The two worst parts of the film are Scorsese's pussy-magnum speech in the cab--what is the point of the scene except to give Scorsese some freaky film time? there's no character or story development; bickle doesn't even speak-- and the awful, bombastic survey of the showdown aftermath at the end of the film (with overblown music), which almost ruins the movie for me.

i don't think the film is crap. it just bugs me to read (as I did in recent reviews for the DVD) that it's "arguably the greatest film of all time" etc. and i don't see how someone could want to watch it 20 times. the script shows its age the most, i think.

it's "arguably the greatest film of all time" etc. and i don't see how someone could want to watch it 20 times

not that I think it's the greatest film of anything, but what would re-watchability have to do with anything?

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.

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

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.