Film Spotting is presented by Regal Unlimited, the all you can watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. See any standard two D movie anytime with no blackoutdates or restrictions. Sign up now on the Regal app or at the link in our description and use code film spot twenty six to receive fifteen percent off. Wednesdays are when we like to drop something from the Film Spotting Archive, that massive collection that's available at all
times to Film Spotting family members. But on Wednesdays we share something with all of you. Now, on Friday Show, we're going to take another look at Best Picture nominee one battle after another. That's coming ahead, But right now, for this week's Archive Show, we have a film released fifty years ago this weekend that went on to be nominated for four Oscars a year later, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.
Yeah, how about that?
Best Picture, Best Actor for de Niro, Best Supporting Actress for Jodie Foster, and score Bernard Hermann. Josh it lost all four? How about that? Did we forget to mention Martin Scorsese's nomination? No, we did not, Because Martin Scorsese did not get nominated. We have actually reviewed Taxi Driver twice on the show. We did discuss it as part of our seven from seventy six Best Year Ever series. That's what you're gonna hear first. But I was talking to Sam and I said, you know, why not as
a little treat, let's really dip into the archive. Let's make it a two fer. Originally, twenty eleven, Dana Stevens guest hosted with me and we talked about this show as part of a thirty fifth anniversary conversation. We did that along with our top five Robert de Niro scenes. So me and you and me and Dana talking about the film Taxi Driver.
How about that?
Lots of Taxi Driver talk. You had to go to the archive, the basement of the archives, yes, to get that other one, and yeah, double dip.
Here for you.
There you go from March twenty twenty one, here is that seven from seventy six conversation, and then way back to twenty eleven, myself and Danas Stevens.
You just want to go out and again, you know, like really really really.
Do something.
Taxi life.
You mean, well, knot's.
Oh, I just want to go out I really, I really want to got some bad ideas in my head.
I just.
So.
Taxi Driver released in February of nineteen seventy six. It won the Palm d'Or at the can Film Festival that May, and went on to become the seventeenth highest grossing film of the year, Nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture. Scorsese himself, however, not nominated for Best Director. That didn't happen until Raging Bull. The screenwriter of Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader, also not nominated. However, Robert de Niro and Jodi Foster.
They both got acting nods, along with the posthumous nomination for composer Bernard Herman, who died shortly after completing the score. Now, Adam, I'm not even going to try to compete with your brilliant recent silence of the Lambs set up when you played Hannibal Lecter. Instead, I'm just going to steal a question that our producer Sam posed about Taxi Driver in this week's Film Spotting newsletter. And if you want to get that weekly email from Sam, just sign up at
filmspotting dot net slash newsletter. In it es listeners would Travis Bickle have participated in the January sixth Capitol riot. Now, I'll admit this wasn't on my mind as I contemplated revisiting Taxi Driver.
But it should have been.
In my book Movies Are Prayers, I included Taxi Driver along with another best year ever title that we've considered, nineteen ninety nine's Fight Club, in the chapter on movies as prayers of anger.
Anger.
I'd say, a particularly male white American anger was definitely on display by those who attack.
The Capitol Building.
And yeah, it's probably one of the defining qualities of Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle. So I'm really curious to hear what you think of Sam's question, Adam, do you also see some similarities between what happened earlier this year in DC and what we see in Taxi Driver? And are there maybe some important distinctions we should also consider?
Well, I do think Taxi Driver poses a bit of a challenge if you try to suggest that it's too timely or speaks to our current situation, Because one, this is a movie that is so distinctly a nineteen seventies movie made in nineteen seventies New York, and there is specific content within the film that covers that sort of social and political malaise that we all id identify with
America in the nineteen seventies. Palatine's message when he's giving his rallies definitely is touching on that, even stylistically, Josh the end of the film, and I didn't have a chance to fully verify all this. I'm going off of my notes from the last time we talked about this movie here on the show. It was myself and Slate's Dana Stevens on the movie's thirty fifth anniversary, so ten
years ago April twenty eleven, we talked about it. But the reason why you get that really jarring shift in the way the film actually looks at the end when all the violence and bloodshed is happening, I believe has something to do with them having to desaturate it and make it somehow less gory to appease.
The MPAA or something.
So you've got that aspect which probably wouldn't happen today if Taxi Driver was being released. And the film is also so completely told from Travis's point of view that whether or not Travis is representative of some larger disillusionment and anger is really almost impossible to gauge. I mean, even these rallies that Palatine's ad, it's not like there's a ton of people in the crowd. The other cabbys that he interacts with, they don't seem to really be
of a similar political mindset or bent at all. He is unique and Taxi Driver is unique. But I'm going to give you here a contradiction that I think is fitting for a movie that is full of them. I did, on this viewing, find it more timely than ever, and yet somehow I didn't connect with it. I didn't connect with the material the same way I did ten years ago. And maybe that's because I saw it on the big screen.
Then it was re released for that anniversary, and when the Blu ray came out, so I actually got to see it, and it felt like the first time because it had been so long since I had previously seen the film. Certainly I had my full attention on the film in the theater versus the distractions and the burnout that come with watching things at home these days. But
maybe Josh, it gets back to your quot. Maybe the disconnect for me this time which let me be clear still saying it's a great film, But maybe the reason it didn't quite resonate with me as much this time is related to that timeliness. Not that I'm any more or less sympathetic towards Travis Bickle here ten years later, I don't know where you even start with the sympathy question with Travis Bickell, But with Dana in twenty eleven, I made the point that Travis doesn't hate Palatine, even
though obviously he plans to assassinate him. There's this larger kind of sense of alienation on his part that he is tapping into. And maybe that's what frustrates him so much, is that there's the sense of futility and he needs a target, he needs someone to take it out on. And I said then that today we're so divided culturally and politically, the bickles out there can easily find a
target to take down. I actually invoked Jared Lee Loughner back in that review in Arizona twenty eleven, ended up killing six people, I think, and shot US Representative Gabby Diffords. And that seems almost quaint now, doesn't it? Me invoking that figure ten years later, our cultural and political divide is obviously that chasm has just grown. We've got the racial unrest that has been heightened over the past year or two. And then you've got those insurrectionists you mentioned
storming the capitol. I mean, on some level, yes, aren't they all Travis Bickle? And then you factor in two how much of Travis's rage is driven not only by racial animus but also anger towards women, which that's very clear as well. But Sam also not only gave you great fodder for your setup, he made a great comment to me and our slack, which was, you know, Travis Bickle in nineteen seventy six was really dangerous, but at least he was isolated. You know, I mentioned his community
if you will. It was just those other cabbies and he has nothing in common with them, and they don't really seem to want to hang out with him much either. But now, as Sam pointed out, everything he's engaging in, whether it's the porn, the journal writing, the stalking, that's all just moved online, in Sam's words, over the last half century, right, So he's no longer a dangerous loaner. Again, these are Sam's words. I want to get them right,
because they're very eloquent. Now instead of being a dangerous loaner, he can join a community of dangerous loaners. And again, it's not really for me about whether I'm more or less sympathetic to this gun toting in cell, but maybe I am a little fatigued the way the damage done by damaged people like Travis has warned me out to the point where I'm a little less enamored with the filmmaking and the boldness of the vision. And I'll just say too, you know, we talk about some of this
high minded stuff and that disillusionment and alienation. The reality is that Schrader has scripted something pretty elemental here, which is maybe why it's ultimately so profound and revealing still so many years later. Our friend Brett Merriman out in La quoted Paul Schrader's comments from an interview in his Letterbox Review, where Strader said the script is simple. The girl he wants he can't have, and the girl he
can have he doesn't want. So he tries to kill the father of the first girl and fails, but succeeds in killing the father of the second girl. That's about it, Paul Schrader says, but it is right. Palatine is a revenge target because of Betsy's rejection, and Sport is a revenge target because of Iris's illicit and unnatural acceptance which he can't deal with. So I don't know if I
got around to answering your question or not. There are certainly things about it that make it distinct and make it feel uniquely of its time, and make Travis Bickel feel uniquely of his time, and then there's so much about it that feels so relevant today.
Sadly, I understand the weariness you might have experienced with this because the realities that it showcases have ballooned and have become more in our face. And to be honest, here's a distinction. Someone like Travis, if he had popped up in the last four years, would have been in bold and by those holding the highest office in the land.
And so that's a distinction as well.
It's almost like Palatine, you know, would in his stump speeches, would be encouraging Travis.
That's a distinction, right.
That's definitely, And Josh real quick to your point. Palatine does interact with him earlier in the film before maybe Travis has has gotten full on into the headspace he ends up in, but interestingly he embraces him until he starts to sound really crazy.
But he's still kind of like he still kind of walks that line where he lets Travis hear what he wants to hear. That's right, And in recent years it's not even kind of like trying to split those hairs. It's just been I know this is what you want to hear. I'm going to feed it to you and foment these things. So that's a distinction to Sam's point,
which is very good about Travis going online. I would add that imagine Travis Bickle not watching Soul Train or whatever it was on his television all day or soap operas, but watching Fox News or Newsmax or listening to Rush Limbaugh odd day every day and feeding that into his psyche as well. So, yeah, you anyone concerned about what's been happening over the past couple of years watches Taxi Driver now and it feels a lot closer, it feels
less like an isolated incident. Travis is not unique. This is what we've sadly discovered and what these online communities have have showed us is that Travis Bickle is not unique. There are a lot of Travis Bickle's out there, some who will go as far as he went in terms of actual violence. And you know that we have also learned in reports a lot of different people were part of that attack on the Capitol. So it's it's simplistic to just lay Travispickel on top of all of them.
But I think there are a lot of similarities. You've touched on some of them. The anger, the racial motivation, the idea of looking for a target, and politicians make easy targets. You know, That's that is why he can shift his animosity toward Palant who previously he was going to support, because he wanted to get close to Betsy, right, And that's another thing in common on the day at the Capitol. Blue lives matter until they didn't, you know, because the ideology wasn't what was driving a lot of
those folks. It wasn't any sort of principle. It was the anger that was driving them, and the fact that, like Travis, they believe they were acting on the side
of justice. You know, he sees himself as this angel of justice throughout the movie and interestingly the way the film ends, which I do want to get back to and spend a little time on that he's again emboldened in that the media portrays him in the reports that we could talk about whether that's in his head or not, but what we're presented with is the media portrays him as this savior. So so yeah, definitely resonates in a
lot of ways that are that are tiring. I think the thing that stood out to me this time was how much of the dent in the active cultural consciousness that Taxi Driver has made. I would used to think like it was the violence, it was Scorsese's filmmaking, which we'll get to, and some of the other craftsmanship. I think it's all d Niro's performance. I think if you had anyone other than de Niro in this part, Taxi Driver would have been, you know, maybe a nineteen seventies
gritty curiosity that would have a lot of admirers. For the craftsmanship that's on display, I don't think it would have rocked the film world. De Niro is just astounding here. The defining characteristic for me watching this again that he brings to Travis Bickle is that the guy is assaultive. He is assaultive in every instance. Even when he's talking to the manager applying for the job to drive a taxi.
His grin, his grin is just it's like two degrees too smiley, right, Or when he's at that rally, he goes right up to the security agent in the sunglass. He's way too way too familiar with him, stares right through the guy's sunglasses, like to make eye contact when he's watching TV. The way he slowly pushes it over till it falls. There's an assault of nature. This and one thing I caught at him on a revisit. This is all set up by an early throwaway gesture, no
idea if DeNiro, you know, improvis this or whatever. But he's done interviewing at the taxi garage, he's walking out. Another taxi is pulling in past him, and he gives it as he walks past a little punch. He just punches the taxi. And that is how the guy lives. He's always imagining that everything he encounters needs to be punched. But why because it's done something to him? And who knows what he thinks about that taxi. Maybe it pulled
too close to him, but it deserved a punch. When he is sitting in the coffee shop with other cab drivers and one of them just asks him, how's it hanging, his instinct is to look at the guy like he insulted his mother, and he gives it a few pauses and then says, what's that he's looking? He's always looking for something to punch. And then and then the you know, the the level beneath that de Niro gives.
This is, of course the loneliness.
The phrase he says, being God's lonely man.
You know, that's we'll get to that.
I'm the only one here seeing I'm sure, But I want to talk about that in the context of this idea of loneliness, because I think the brilliance of nearest performance is that. And maybe this is your sympathy question too, that you were wondering about. I always felt that loneliness underneath the burden. He felt as God's lonely man, the only guy on earth, he feels who sees what's happening and is going to do something about it.
Listen you, you screw heads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore, who would not let listen you you screw heads. Here's a man who would not take it anymore, a man who stood up against the scum, the dogs the film. Here is someone who stood up. Here is.
Deadly.
I think the loneliness is so crucial because it's there, underscoring every aspect of Travis's life, but also almost every aspect of the film. If you think about Iris Jodie Foster's character, the young prostitute, and what she needs from the Harvey ki tell Pimp character, what Sybil Shepherd's character is doing having any involvement whatsoever with someone who's clearly a little disturbed like Travis's, but it's because she does
need some kind of connection herself. Even it's there, I think in every aspect of this film, and in terms of what stood out to me this time. And I looked at my notes from twenty eleven obviously after I saw the film, and two of the big things I focused on were still really prominent and wonderful this time, and I'll save them as we get a little bit more into the craft. But it's the score, the Bernard Hermann score, his final score, and the cinematography, some of
the stylistic choices, but specifically Michael Chapman's work. But the other big thing was, yeah, believe it or not, Robert de Niro's performance, because I think all the previous times I watched this movie, I sort of just took it for granted, And even in that review in twenty eleven, Josh, I took it for granted, didn't really spend any time on it, because in fairness, we were doing our top five Robert de Niro scenes on that show, so I was like, Okay, well, we'll just save it, and I
did put a taxi driver's scene in that top five. But de Niro's performance for me this time was the magic and the scene I picked back in twenty eleven, My number three de Niro scene was actually the one where he goes to volunteer and he kind of asks out Sybil shit for the first time. It just does catch you so off guard because he seems there to actually be trying to make a meaningful connection and seem somewhat normal in the way he's going about it, and
he actually has the nerve to ask her out. And de Niro's got to do some heavy lifting there, because we know a lot about that character that Betsy doesn't know. And in order for us to believe that he's going to get her to actually even just go around the corner and have coffee with him, it's got to be something in his performance. And I think there's an earnestness and there's a conviction that she can't deny. Hi.
I like to volunteer, Greg, I'll take you right over here, so I run volunteer.
If you don't learn, why do you feel that you have to volunteer to me?
Because I think that you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.
Thanks.
What do you think of Palentine?
Well, Charles Palentine, the man you're volunteering to help at present, I'm.
Sure he'll make a good present. I don't know exactly what his policies are, but I'm sure makes a good one.
You said that he's assaultive, and that's accurate. But it's this assaultive style that's mixed with an earnestness and an earnestness that then crosses over into complete uneasiness and awkwardness. And you're right, it's that off putting smile. The scene with the manager he was applying to this time was one that stood out to me as well, and the moment I loved in particular is when everything's going pretty well up until this point and he makes a joke.
He tries to crack a joke. He tries to do what normal people do. Josh.
He makes a joke and he says, my driving record's clean, like my conscience. And now the guy turns on him, what are you doing? You bust in my balls? And that smile, that completely obnoxious smile that is too big, then turns immediately to consternation, and he knows that he's now being punished. And like I said, he just tried to do what he thinks normal people do, try to make a little connection, try to engage in some small talk, and he's instantly rebuked by it.
And I think that he's so unhinged.
But there's a sincerity to it that De Niro conveys that makes Bickle fascinating. It's not only the smile, it's the little fidgets. It's the physicality, like the punch of the taxi cab you mentioned. And then the scene where if you do feel for Travis at all, the scene where I think it is most blatant, at least it was for me on this rewatch, I wonder if there
was a scene for you. But it's when he takes Betsy to the porno theater and she gets so mad at him, and he's apologizing, and if you think about what he even says, even when they're walking in and she questions it, he says, no couples, I see couples here all the time. Again, it's like this is normal behavior. He thinks it's normal behavior. And everything he's doing with her is an approximation, as best as he can do, of what he thinks a man should do with a
woman on a date. And yes, he's dangerous, and you see that forming, but he's so confused and so lost, and he wants to please her so much that you really do see the hurt. He's not hurt because he can't believe she doesn't like his choice. He's hurt because he had no idea she wouldn't like his choice. And there's a moment I'd never really paid attention to before with them. I think she lobs this at him as
she's going away. Remember earlier she says that he reminds her a little bit of Chris Christofferson.
So what does he do.
He goes to the record store and he buys a Chris Christofferson record and watching it this time, I'd forgotten about it. I thought, Yeah, that's so relatable. Who hasn't done that. Like, you're interested in somebody and you find out what their favorite movie is, or their favorite song or performer is. You want to understand what kind of makes them tick. You want to speak the same language. You're gonna start loving the things they love. Except that's
not what he did. He bought it for her, right, He somehow thinks that even though she's already said she's a fan of his, and she probably owns the record already. I think she says to him, I already have it. I wished you kept it for yourself. That he didn't even bother to listen to it. He admits, that's exactly right. It didn't occur to him to listen to it, right, broken record player or not. He's just so focused on trying to please her and going through those motions that
it of course blows up in his face. But he's not actually interested in expanding his understanding of the world at all.
No, that's what it is, going through the motions. How much of his life is going through the societal motions he's observed but doesn't quite know how to genuinely engage in himself. Yes, I'll give you a scene that jumped out to me where there's some sympathy for Travis Spickele And actually this will give me an example to talk about the filmmaking too. This choice is scarces he made. But there's a moment after the date where he's trying to get Betsy back and he's on a payphone in
a hallway of a building. A payphone is on the wall, and the scene begins with him in the center of the screen talking on the phone and the conversation. We already know that this is not going to go well, and sure enough, as he goes on and on, it's we can tell this is just he's really bottoming out.
Here with her.
Right, you do feel for the it's kind of an embarrassment, like, why aren't you recognizing yet that this is not going to work? And so you feel some sympathy. Then Scarsese does something interesting. The camera cut slides, well, it doesn't even cuts, It slides to the right away from de Niro and then settles on a hallway going the other way.
That's completely empty. There's even an open door, and basically, just like we've given up, she's given up on him first, you're given up on him and the camera, the camera itself has now given up on him. So I think there are some subtle things like that Scarase does because I was surprised that there wasn't as explosive as this material is. It's relatively reserved filmmaking from him. If you compare not Scarsese to other filmmakers, he's always more dyna
than most filmmakers. But if you compare Taxi Driver to a lot of his other films, I mean, there are flourishes here and there, overhead shots, those sorts of things, but it's really reserved compared to a lot of his stuff. You get a little moment like that, or you get the one where how he reveals the infamous mohawk. It's not with like a quick shot a close up. It's another camera slide right to slide across to bring Travis
in the crowd into the frame. From the weight, we see his waist, so it slides over, then pauses and then slides up to show us his head and the reveal that he's really like this is this is hairstyle number three. I think in the film. First he has kind of a boyish normal cut. Then you can tell later he's begun to cut his own hair and it's not looking too good, and then.
We get this.
So a lot of little touches like that that I noticed this time. And the other thing I gotta say about Scosese, though Top five director Cameo. I mean, he is so good in this scene because, and here's what jumped out to me, how scary he is as this jealous husband stalking his wife at another man's apartment. Scarcese is not trying. There is some ugly violent taboo talk there, but unlike happens in a lot of you know, Tarantino films, for example, Scarsese is not trying to be cool with
the language at all. He just know, he just embraces the ugliness of it, and it is a really effective what forty five one minute performance.
You see the woman in the window? Do you see the woman in the window? Yeah, you see the wind, So I want you to see him because that's my wife.
That's not my appartment.
It's one of the best, most disturbing scenes in the film. And of course Noir was on my mind this week as we are going to talk about this gun for Hire later in the show, and obviously Taxi Driver is indebted to Noir, but it occurred to me that that entire sequence could almost be its own film. That's its own ure war playing out right with the cuckolded husband and the man she's up there with and that whole illicit affair. So I found that fascinating. I always silhouet
right exactly, yeah, right in the shadow there, right. It definitely makes sense. But did you also catch because I didn't catch this apparently back in twenty eleven, that Scorsese I think, has two cameos in the film.
Yeah, he's the first time. Yeah, the first time we see Betsy. We notice him leering at her before we notice her, Yeah, which is saying something because Sybil Shepherd is just dazzling in this movie. I mean, she's very funny, very quick as well in terms of her performances, but just such a dazzling contrast to the grime of life we otherwise get.
So I was going to get into the score and some more of the filmmaking stuff, but as we're talking about the cast and how good some of the supporting players are, I mean, coming off just rewatching Silence of the Lambs. It's pretty striking to see for me how fully formed as an actress Jody Foster was even at
that age. Because that's also a remarkable performance, Like there is an ease to that performance and an intellect to it, which you talked about in relation to Clarice that comes through that has nothing to do with sort of childlike precociousness. It's just not there in Foster's performance, and it's so good.
So what are you gonna do about support in that old bastard when when you leave, I don't know, just leave, you leave.
Got plenty of the girls.
Yeah, but you just can't do that.
What are you gonna do?
What do you want me to do?
Call the cops? Well, the cops don't do nothing, you know.
I mean, he look sport never treated me bad.
I mean, he didn't beat me up or anything like that once, But.
You can't allow him to do the same at a girl.
She's so self possessed.
The scene of the two of them in the diner, you know, talking about why she's why she's chosen this life as much as she's had a choice yeah, and what twelve or thirteen when filming this, so again we can talk about you know, how.
Is that such a great thing? As good as she.
Is in the movie, you know that you would you would want someone at that age in this sort of part, but certainly Foster had the talent to pull it off. It's an incredible performance.
Yeah, it really is. Now.
The Bernard Hermann score, the dissonance of the grimy, sleazy New York that we see, and the corruption of probably multiple characters, but certainly of Bickel in his own mind,
against the often lushness of that old Hollywood orchestration. It really is so startling and often John and maybe it goes back to what Schrader was saying that on some level, this really is a movie just about a man and his romantic problems, or it could be about Scorsese and it's its own kind of twisted love letter to New
York City in some way. But I really think it's that ironic contrast which also takes us, maybe we're not ready to get there yet, but to the end of the film and why I don't see it as a fantasy.
But I'll talk here instead about the cinematography I mentioned in Michael Chapman, those eerie, sickly greens really stood out to me this time as he drives the streets of New York City, and even from the very beginning in the credits where you get that blurry effect where it's almost like an impressionist canvas movie that is, like most noirs,
actually very expressionistic. But there's just this sense from the very beginning that there's going to be a complete distortion of reality with regard to how Travis perceives the world, including these fantasies where he sees himself as the romantic lead, you know, when he's out with Betsy, for example, and we get that score that kicks in. You mentioned the camera move when we see as the mohawk for the
first time. It comes through that distortion of reality in all of the mirror shots of Travis, the reflections, the sudden camera pans. Again, there's a real intent here to
jar the audience. You know, I'd never noticed this before either, but he mentions pretty early on that the rain is going to come and wash all this scum out, And not too long after, Scor says he draws our attention as he's driving to a fire hydrant shooting water right over the street, and as he's about to approach it, he has the wherewithal to roll up his window and to not get sprayed by it, you know, as if somehow he's not going to be he's not going to
be baptized by the street, if you will, or maybe this stand in for the rain. The water isn't isn't going to get him. He's exempt from the rain in some way, depending on your reading of it. But it's notable that while he might not get sprayed, his car does. And then the view out his windshield Scorsese lingers on as he's looking at those New York City streets, and it takes a while for all that rain to go
away and the blurriness to go away. That's the entire film and Travis's view of the world in a nutshell.
Yeah, it's the most impressionistic shot is when the water is rolling off the windshield and you see those lights and as you talk about the green in Chapman cinematography, and also I would say the red glow that we get in so many neon signs, it's almost like those signs which the movie associates a couple of times with Porn Marquis, Porn Theater, Marquee.
It's like they've bled.
Into the atmosphere somehow, and it's not just the signs giving off that light anymore. It's everything. And then that's maybe how it feels in Travis's head. It's very different than not too long ago we discussed Paris, Texas the ven Vendors film, and the the beauty of the neon signs in that movie, it's there is beauty. There's a
crispness and a clearness and a sharpness to it. And here Chapman takes the same material and gives it alluridness and an infectiousness that carries over into the entire rest of the film. And I would also say about the Hermann score, Yeah, it's as you're describing it. It's it's like a split personality score, isn't it, Because we have these we have these sexy, mournful saxophones, which would be very much of the period. It's it's very seventies. And then that's Travis's fantasy.
And then we get.
Our reality, the viewers reality, which is where you hear those threatening suspense chords that that are reminiscent of some of Hermann's work for Hitchcock, I put it's it was interesting. The day after I watched this, I put on I just chose Psycho and maybe another Herman score is more reminiscent of Taxi Driver what we get here, but may was there a lot of a lot of similarities there
In listening to those back to back, we just get this. Yeah, it's old Hollywood instrumentation, but also the threatening suspense nature of it. So we've talked about Trader, mentioned Trader a couple of times. There's one thing about the script that I really want to highlight, which I just think is so clever and has a lot of thematic resonance too.
And it's the trail of the twenty dollars bill. And this is the bill that Harvey kai Tell's Sport throws at Travis to get him to leave when he yanks Iris out of the cap the first time that he encounters Sport, I think, and it lands on his seat. He looks at it with disgust because he's this is the first time he started to entertaining these ideas of saving Iris. Right, she gets yanked out of the cab, he leaves it there, crumpled on the seat till he gets to the garage at night, and then pauses and
then kind of shoves it in his pocket. We see that bill again, I think three times later. I think he almost pays for something once but doesn't use it. He uses different cash, still it's crumpled up. At the coffee shop, he owes a guy some money, five bucks, so we see him pull that out next to the other cash he has. And then the last time we see it is when he rents the room with Iris, where he thinks he's going to convince her to leave.
He's got to pay this guy to rent the room, and he slams it in the guy's hand, and running through all those make it seem like this really obvious, heavy handed symbol. But maybe it isn't a script, but the way Scorsese kind of just lightly makes space for those moments makes it incredibly, incredibly effective. And yeah, I was just curious if that was in the original script and if the versions I saw online are true it was.
I think that's a great touch.
Well, it is a great touch, and it is subtle enough that I probably missed. I'm pretty sure I missed at least one of the times you mentioned, and it's not something I'd paid any attention to before on previous viewings.
And yet this time, when he leaves it on the chair, you see how he considers the money in a close up when it's thrown in in the first place, and then when he gets back and he parks the cab, he has to make that decision and as a symbol of again kind of his own corruption but his sense of moral superiority, that he's not going to take that money. But of course he also sort of maybe and this
would be fitting for Strader. It's almost like a cross he bears, right, It's that he's going to keep that twenty dollars bill because it's going to be the reminder to him of what he's not total he hopes to not be.
Yeah, it's his token in that way. I agree. It's a great screenwriting touch.
So Dana and I did talk about the ending in twenty eleven, and it turns out my thoughts about it haven't really changed since then. In short, there is a reading of the film that suggests maybe everything that happens after the blood bath is a fantasy, and there's different evidence people point to, including the overhead shot, which is almost like a view from heaven it's been suggested there
near the end. And then the fact that everything that happens in this I totally agree with, everything that happens after the police show up seems somehow a little bit tacked on false or maybe like a fantasy. You certainly see it in that exchange with Sybil Shepherd when she gets in the cab, and that's something where it's definitely not clear from watching it that we are supposed to
completely believe that she ever got in the car. There's something about the shot reverse shot of him looking at her and us only seeing her in the rearview mirror. It's almost again like it's his perception, he's projecting her there in the backseat. That all said, where do you fall on that theory?
Josh?
So, I think this takes us back to Chris Christofferson actually in that conversation, because one other question that we've touched on lightly but is why did Betsy ever even agree to go get that cup of coffee with this guy? And so that's already kind of planting this seed of how much of his interaction with her is he imagining now the movie toys with us because she gives him
a reason and thereby gives us a reason. She says she's interested, she's intrigued by his contradictions, and that's what makes her think of the Christofferson song The Pilgrim, Chapter thirty three. So we could tell ourselves that, Okay, she's curious. But I really think not everything, but a vast majority of what we see between Travis and Betsy is some sort of fantasy. And think of what he tells her
in that conversation. He says he could tell she wasn't a happy person when he watched her talk to Albert Brooks. But we've been given and I forgot how many scenes we got between Brooks and Shepherd. We get like a fair amount of them, and every time we get one of them, they seem to be pretty happy. They have a rapport, they're flirty, they're like giving it back and forth to each other.
His distorted view of the world, he's a threat, so he perceives those.
Guys exactly exactly.
So why you know she is She seems to be a happy person, so right, it's his distorted perception. Now, I don't think everything after the massacre is a fantasy, and this takes us to the top of our conversation. I think there's a very there's some interesting commentary in the fact that Travis is celebrated as the hero, and I think it's more revelatory. We're living with that now, right with the media distortion of things makes it extra resonant today. But I do think that her getting in
the cab is fantasy. And here's here's why.
And it's a.
Very brief filmmaking touch. It's partly the look in the rear room mirror that you talked about, where she seems like she's in this dream space. It's almost like we're not in the cab anymore, but we're into this portal to another dimension, right how the mirror frames her. But if you notice, there's a really weird moment. He drops her off on this leafy tree line, nice street, her home, we presume, and pulls away, watches her in the rearview mirror, and all of a sudden, he does a double take.
The sound on the soundtrack actually distorts, it's almost like a record scratch, and he looks back in the mirror and the immediate next thing we see is not her leafy green street, but it's the neon soaked, grimy streets that he usually drives down. And so I think that's the transition of he was just imagining that he was with another woman in another place, and in reality he's right back where he had been at the beginning of the film.
Yeah, so I think we're completely aligned. If you're suggesting that maybe some of the sequences with Shepherd even earlier were fantasy, potentially, is that what you're saying.
I would say his experience of it, or you know, the way it's being presented, is the way he's sort.
Of seeing it.
Well, again, I'm completely aligned with him seeing the world completely differently than everyone else around him, including the people he's sitting across from.
And I agree with you.
I think that we're supposed to read that entire exchange in the cab at the end with Sybil Shepherd as a fantasy, But that doesn't mean everything that happens at
the end is a fantasy. I do reject that, and I reject it one for the reason you said, which is there is a beautiful, profound irony in the way he is celebrated, which again comes back to this idea of the perception of reality, because it's very easy to just put what he did into frame it the way the media does, which is, you know, vigilante rescues, rescues
girl and kills a pimp. You know, if you just look at it that way and you don't see what we saw, or you don't know a little bit more about the situation and how disturbed Travis is, it's very easy to buy that narrative, even the narrative that Iris's parents are probably selling to themselves right, and isn't completely true about how she's assimilated back home and boy, she's been rescued. It's all tied up in this idea that
the world misperceives what Travis did. Travis now sees himself falsely as a hero, and this idea of kind of a collective bloodlust, where as Americans we all go, well, damn right, they had it coming, so he did the right thing. If it's all a fantasy, then that commentary is completely watered down. And what else is watered down is the moment you spoke to at the end, which is that amazing punch of the grabbing of the review mirror, I think right, and the jarringness of it, and all
of a sudden, we're back to a certain reality. And I think that certain reality is coming back from the fantasy that he was just engaged in with Sybil Shepherd in his back seat. But it's also this reality that any progress somehow that Travis seems to have made, this idea that maybe by committing this act and being the Avenger has somehow now set him right with the world and he's no longer going to be a threat to society.
We know in that moment, with that cut and with the sound, that that's not true, that Travis is still disturbed as he's ever been.
And do you think maybe even like the letter from mister Steinsma from Iris's father, which which seems to be kind of like a practice run for Schrader's hardcore, because I think that came a few years later and had a similar plot about a father going after his daughter
runaway daughter. But I wonder if even that is imagined, because just because of the detail of the father making so many excuses about how we can't come out to see you, like we don't have any more money, and it's almost like he's inventing these reasons why these people won't actually interact with him because maybe they don't exist.
Well, we saw earlier him writing a note that was mostly a fabrication to his parents, so I wouldn't put it past him to fabricate that letter paying true to him as a hero either. For more on our seven from seventy six Best Year Ever series, including previous and future reviews, visit film Spotting dot Net Slash seven from seventy six.
Yeah, people do anything in front of a taxi drive. I mean anything. People too cheap to run a hotel room.
Or drive a hurry up.
Well this people want to embarrass you. It's like here, not even there.
It's like, you know, like a taxi driver doesn't even exist.
I've seen there from Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, a movie that was part of one of my favorite Best Picture crops ever in nineteen seventy six, along with Network and All the President's Men and Rocky, which did win the Oscar and I love Rocky, don't get me wrong, but I'd rank it probably fourth behind those other three movies.
There were no wins for Taxi Driver, despite four nominations for Best Picture, obviously supporting Actress for Jodi Foster as the twelve year old prostitute, Iris for Score and for Best Actor for Robert de Niro in one of his most memorable roles ever as Travis Bickle, the disillusion lonely Vietnam vett who watches quote all the animals come out at night from the seat of his cab and hopes that someday a real rain will come and wash all
this scum off the streets. In honor of Taxi Drivers thirty fifth anniversary and the Blu ray release coming out this Tuesday, AMC Theaters had screenings across the country on March nineteenth and March twenty second. Dana, we both caught it on the big screen. It was the first time I'd seen it in more than fifteen years, so I almost felt like I was watching it for the first time. I know from listening to your Slate Spoiler Special podcast that you had a similar reaction to it and are
always erudite and often contrarian. Film spotting producer Sam van Halgren also got a night out and saw the re release, which prompted some chatter between us over email. I hope he won't mind that I'm going to poach the question he posed to me and oppose it to you now, because I think it's a really good one. He acknowledges that de Niro is beyond brilliant as bikel and he gets why it's so beloved, but he ultimately wonders, what makes this a great film today as opposed to in its day?
How do you answer that? Ah?
So his argument was that it's locked in to the mid seventies, it's time and it feels dated. Now. Wow, I topically disagree, but I don't really have an argument except to say that I just don't feel that. Watching the movie, I felt that it was incredibly topical and alive, and I had that feeling that you feel when you watch a great work of art and say, wow, this says something new to me now than it did when I first saw it.
Yeah, I agree.
I think that in its grittiness and its style and that sense of alienation that just pervades the whole film, there's no doubt it's a nineteen seventies American film, in a nineteen seventies New York film. You probably know this a lot better than I do. That Times Square just doesn't exist anymore. A lot of those scenes that we see of him walking or in his cab late at night. But I do think it's a great film today. I'm with you because it does seem timeless to me as well.
It's still very audacious cinematically, especially in how it depicts violence. I think that still shocks you a little bit. And I think that the politics of the movie are largely secondary to this very vivid portrait of paints of loneliness. I think that the senator who's running for president, Palatine, his speeches are really full of kind of the same bland rhetoric we hear today. It's sort of universal, and I think that sadly, there probably are a lot of
Travis Bickles out there. In some ways, they're may be even more dangerous because I was thinking about it. You know, Travis's enemy, if he has one, he thinks he has a lot of them. But there it's really just himself. He's more self destructive than anything. You see how he eats and how he lives. But there isn't one group of people that he can pinpoint as the cause of his miserable life. He doesn't hate, even Palatine, the guy he plans to kill because he just really doesn't have
any conviction about that one way or another. I think he's caught up in a more general malaise, this kind of intangible malaise, which is also what makes it so frustrating, makes it so you have such the sense.
Of utility that you can't pinpoint.
And I think that today, one of the things that struck me were so divided culturally and politically that the bickles out there can probably more easily find a target to try and take down. I think about Gabrielle Gifford's in Arizona.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's another thing that makes this movie. Again, to answer Sam's question, that makes it still vibrant now, is that in nineteen seventy six when it was made, it was a prophecy, right, it was a prophetic kind of film, And now it's actually happened
multiple times over. It's just weird to think that this movie was made when John Lennon was still alive, before Reagan was even president, much less you know, the assassination attempt, of course by someone who was obsessed with Jodie Foster. I mean, you could, I guess even argue that taxi driver created some Travis Bickles, right, but at the very least it predicted this, this whole series of Travis Bickles that
have existed, I mean, including the Columbine Shooters. You could connect so many acts of violence to this kind of psychology that you see taken apart in Travis Bickle. That feels familiar to us now because of you know, current events that have answered it, and because this movie's become so iconic, But it must have felt so strange at the time that this was the hero of a movie. You know that this guy obviously an antihero, but that he was the protagonist of a movie.
Yeah. Absolutely.
I think that the interesting part about it is you do sympathize with him even though he's clearly derained, just because he is such a lonely character. I think that the way the loneliness is depicted throughout the film, you even see it in all of the supporting characters and in his encounters with them. I think about Albert Brooks
as his character. He doesn't get much screen time, but he's clearly just pining for Sybil Shepherd and she's completely ignoring him, and she's drawn to Travis, which seems sort of hard to believe on its face, but I think it's just because of his earnestness and his conviction for her.
Even if it's just the fact that he's just in love with her and seems to be totally devoted and passionate in whatever she is, that's at least something that Albert Brooks certainly isn't bringing to the table, and that gets her somehow connected to him in a way that
she's willing to explore. And I think even the great Martin Scorsese's scene, I really love his cameo in this film where he ends up getting in the car just as a fair and he makes him park outside this apartment and he says, his wife's up there, and he's angry that his wife is cheating on him. His wife's cheating on him with a black man, which he also doesn't like, and he says, I'm gonna actually do something
about this. You get that same sense of alienation and loneliness from that character, And that scene is actually really pivotal because it's what, in the end, seems to spark something in Travis. It seems to give him this sense that, wait a second, I sit here and complain a lot about what I see going on in society. I didn't think that, you know what, I could actually go out and get a forty four magnum and do something about it.
So it's only after that that he starts thinking about about assassinating the politician. I think, so, Yeah, I think you're right. I think that happens earlier in the movie than I remembered. Yeah, the scorseseic cameo apparently was something that was put in at the last minute because whoever was going to do it dropped out of the movie, and it was just sort of like, hey, this is
a low budget movie, let the director do it. But it ends up being so perfect, right, because it ends up sounding as if it's sort of the soul of the movie speaking, and it's actually some of the worst and most violent, horrific, racist, sexist language in the whole movie. And it doesn't come out of Robert Nero's mouth, that comes out of the directors, right, So it's this weird displacement.
It is, I think too. Did you notice the Scorsese pops up in another scene.
Yeah, when he's watching Sybil Shepherd walking into the building in the white dress.
Yeah, he's just sitting there along the building there and just happens to be someone that Travis walks by. And it's so weird that he's in the film later, but he's also in that early scene.
I don't know quite what to make.
He's such an unmistakable bystander. It's kind of funny to put him in if you don't want him to be noticed, because it's this short, little stubby guy with a black unibrow. I mean, nobody else looks like Martin Scorsese.
We were talking about loneliness and kind of those supporting characters. Obviously, the Jodie Foster character, she's someone too who is willing, it seems, to prostitute herself because at least someone will listen to her. This character that Harvey Kayitel plays sport. He says he loves her, he'll somehow validate her existence.
And the only reason, actually, I don't mind the scene between Foster and kit Tell where Kitell basically does this Berry White esque soliloquy talking about how happy he is to be with her and how happy he is to have a woman who loves her man and they're dancing. It's a bizarre scene because it does kind of take you out of the moment when you realize that Travis isn't around. Every other moment in the film has been kind of through his lens and he's not there, and
it felt really obtrusive and unnecessary. But then it does explain Iris if you put it in that context of loneliness, it makes sense that she is this character who finally feels a connection to someone. Clearly her parents aren't giving her the kind of validation she needs. This character does, and then you see the link she's willing to go to continue getting that.
Yeah, I think that scene accomplishes a lot actually when Kyell and Foster dance together, because it humanizes them in some way that makes the act of violence at the end of the movie more horrifying. Right, They're not just a pimp and his hooker, but there are two people who, in whatever twisted way, care about each other and need each other right. And then also the music in that scene I just thought was incredible. The moment that Kayitell goes over and puts the needle down on the record
and the music that comes out is Betsy's theme. It's the theme, the saxophone theme that's been associated with Sybil Shepherd through the whole movie. It's the love theme, right, but somebody else's love theme. It's just a brilliant use of sound. I mean, and as you know, I'm just in love with that Bernard Herman's score for that movie.
Yeah, And why don't we go ahead and jump into that, because that is a big discovery for me with this film the second time around, as well, seeing it again on the big screen and hearing that Bernard Hermann score and the romanticism of that main theme that you talked about, Betsy's theme. You did write really eloquently about it. I want to link to that in the notes for the
show if anyone wants to check it out. But the split there, there's kind of this schizophrenic quality to the score where you get something so lush and so are romantic and so New York as you see him driving around, but jextaposed with all these kind of degraded, you know, images, But then also those main themes that you hear throughout the rest of the film when he's training, if you will, for his assassination, or he's thinking about the things he's
going to do, and he's really getting worked up about the ills of society. It's so dark, it's so menacing, and again such a contrast to that great Betsy's theme and very.
Old fashioned, right, I mean, it's like monster movie music or horror movie music. For some reason this particular screening, going and seeing this thirty fifth anniversary restoration, I was just really struck by the music. It almost seemed like the whole movie was just this huge jazz improvisation, you know, like the music works so perfectly with the film. And I know that Herman always insisted on extreme control, like he wanted to write the music he wanted to write,
and the director had to work around it. And I don't know whether this happened with Scorsese, but I know with Hitchcock sometimes the scenes would have to be extended, and Hitchcock would make them thirty seconds longer because there were thirty more seconds of music that Hermann wanted him to use.
Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned it.
It's almost like Walldawall jazz, because of course Scorsese often gets lumped into that category as someone who has wall to wall rock and roll music. It's almost like it's just images going with the sound and mean Streets is a lot like that, and then you have Taxi Driver here, where you get this full orchestra, as you mentioned, this really old fashioned, kind of classic score. It actually reminded me a lot of those great Miklosh Roscha scores from
the noirs, like Double Indemnity and The Killers. They're just so again menacing and oppressive. It's almost as if these characters just have the weight of the world on their shoulders. And I think that what I really loved about it is it does put this movie squarely in that context between old Hollywood and New Hollywood. It's clearly a New Hollywood film in its audacity and its style, but at the same time it's rooted in the films that Scorsese
grew up obviously loving and idolizing. And I think actually about the end of the film, that great shot that everyone talks about deservedly so where after all the violence, we get the overhead shot, the ceiling, that aerial view. It's great, but then when it cuts outside and you get the crowded streets and the crowded street and you have the cop cars showing up and the sirens going, it really reminded me of something like straight out of
Sunset Boulevard. It's the ending of that movie when everyone's showing up on the scene, or even the beginning of that movie when all the cars and you hear the sirens blaring as they're going to Norma Desmond's house. So it clearly has that influence on it.
Yeah, I didn't thought of the Sunset Boulevard, but you're right. It's almost a direct reference to that. And it's that same kind of sense that this personal, intimate, painful story you've been seeing has suddenly become an event on the nightly news and you have to switch into that other context. And you're right, it's the same exact note as Sunset Boulevard.
It makes sense to have that noir influence a little bit, I think.
I mean, obviously, the movie mostly takes place at night, and he sees himself. I think, is this kind of dark hero, this dark knight of the underworld. But what's troubling about it, of course, is there's no mystery to solve, there's no fem fatale to try to blame, there's no solution, there's no resolution, there's just life. And that's what makes it feel, I guess, so heavy and so bleak. So I think we should at least touch on the ending
of the movie. I know this is something you talked about with John Swansburg in your spoiler special, and I'm exactly with you, guys. I was just nodding my head the whole time I was listening to you, because if you had asked me to describe the ending of Taxi Driver, and I would have bet any amount of money that I knew it. I would have recounted the shootout with the pimps and the gun to the head and that amazing overhead tracking shot. That's the end of the movie, right,
And then come to find out, no, it's not. I completely forgot about the end with the paper clippings and that whole coda with the letter from Iris's parents, which in itself just seems kind of crazy. But I'll let you jump in on how much of a shock that one.
Yeah, I don't know what's your policy on spoiling here on film spotting. Can we assume that a movie that's thirty five years old we can now talk about the ending of I would hope.
So, so let's go ahead and go for.
It, all right?
Well, so, yeah, you have this strange coda right, So that after the scene that we just talked about the sunset boulevard referencing, you know, pulling out and seeing the cops arriving at the crime scene of the brothel or whatever. Then suddenly we cut to I guess sometime in the future, and again we hear Betsy's theme. We hear that, you know, romantic theme, and there's this kind of ironic pan across this wall of clippings that you realize is on Travis
Bickle's wall in his apartment. Taxi driver becomes local hero save prostitute and gun battle, and that either in his mind and his imagination. I guess some people think that this is happening only his imagination, but the film doesn't signal that in any way. It just seems that realistically he's now become this hero. He somehow talked his way out of the massacre and made himself look like the
hero of it. And he gets a letter from Iris's parents, Iris being the Jodie Foster Child prostitute character, saying thank you for returning our daughter to us. So he's a hero to them. They even say, menacingly, maybe you can come and visit us in Pittsburgh. Sometime and you think, oh, boy, Taxi Driver to the Pittsburgh Years. And then there's a coda to the coda, right, then there's the insane part where he picks up Sybil Shepherd's character Betsy as just
a random fair. There's a lot of coincidental cabfairs in this movie, right, because he also picks up the politician
that he's planning to kill earlier, that's true. He drives Betsy back to her apartment, and there's this strangely nostalgic feeling to that scene, almost as if John and I were saying, almost as if it's like the TV show Taxi instead of the movie Taxi Driver, Like, hey, you're all right, Travis Bickle, you know, but it has to be ironic and it has to be maybe a fake out of some kind, right, can't be meant to be left with the feeling that Travis Pickol's just okay.
Yeah, And I think maybe you guys touch on this as well. The one cue that Paul Schrader, the writer who we haven't mentioned yet and Scorsese he gives you is in that Bernard Hermann score where you have that moment of the backward sound that cues you, and cues de Niro. He responds to it as if he's hearing it in the scene where he quickly looks in the review mirror, and it's the sense that there's still something
lurking back there. There's still something in his psyche that suggests that all is not well with him and things are not going to go very well. He's going to have another moment like this, but maybe he's not going to be regarded as a hero when that happens. So that part is really interesting. But yeah, it's hard to really get a handle on what they were going for there, because first of all, you are surprised that he's alive
at all. And then I don't think you really buy that Iris is actually just back home in Pittsburgh and is really doing fine. Would she really just go back and resume her life as a teenage girl. It seems kind of hard to swallow.
And her home life could not have been as happy and christian as all met right if she ran away from it and so fiercely refused to go back to it, you.
Wouldn't think so, And then you do in the Sibil Shepherd part, And that is the one part where you said, they don't really signal you in any way that this could be like a dream. That's the one part anyway of the coda that seems like there's something so dream like about it. We don't even see her get in the taxi, right, He just gets in. They say he's got a fair He gets in, Alton, he looks in his rearview mirror.
I don't think I could be wrong.
I didn't go back and watch the DVD, but I don't think we actually see Sybil Shepherd except in the rearview mirror. So there is this sense that it's all his perspective and it's just in his head that maybe she's there, And it does seem crazy that she would get in and now we see her in the back.
Seat, I think, do we okay?
I mean we see her from that perspective that you see him in the front seat and her behind him in the back seat. You definitely get a sense that she's really riding in the.
Cab, because all I remember is the shot where he sees her for the first time, and that's how he sees her is through the mirror, right, So it gives me the sense that he's he's fantasizing almost that it's her, and their conversation is really bizarre. You wonder where could they possibly go in terms of any kind of relationship from there. But with that all said, what does make you think it has to be legitimate or that they're playing it straight in some way is that I've never
heard Scorsese or Straighter say anything that suggests otherwise. They've both always kind of dismissed those readings and said that, you know what, it really is legit, And that's why we added that part with the score, so you'll realize that all isn't really well with the world. And actually scor says he does the same thing in The King of Comedy, I think maybe a little bit more successfully.
But both characters, if you think about Rupert Pupkin and who de Niro plays here, Travis Bickel, they're both lonely, they're both delusional, and at one point at the end of the film. I'm not spoiling anything for anyone who hasn't seen The King of Comedy, but he really sums up his philosophy. He says that it's better to be king for a knight than schmuck for a lifetime. And I think that, actually, though in a much darker way.
I think Travis Bickel would agree with that. And so both films actually have these really cynical codas where the heroes are redeemed they do something really wrong, but the heroes are redeemed by I guess society's thirst for sensationalism or the Taxi Driver anyway, this thirst for blood and vengeance, and I think that somehow end up being these statements on redemption. Scorsese obviously wants these characters to be redeemed in some way even after they do terrible things.
In King of Comedy, for some reason, it works better for me. I don't know why. I think the iron at the end of Taxi Driver is just somehow wrong. The movie's not a social satire really, and suddenly for the link of that code, it's as if it were. It's as if the end is like the end of Network or something, you know, where you sort of envision this dystopic future where things are going to keep getting worse and worse. It just doesn't go with the mood
of Taxi Driver. Somehow. To me, the ending feels like a flaw, one of the few flaws in a really, really great movie.
I think I'm with you on that, but it's certainly fun to discuss. One other quick thing I'll mention that really struck me on the big screen. I never noticed on the small screen before. Is it really was disappointing to see how Scorcese had to desaturate the colors during the violence. He had to really shift the look of the film completely in order to get an R rating.
They had to try to make it a little less vivid, I guess, and I know Michael Chapman, the cinematographer, has said that that was something he when they restored it, he went out searching for the original film and apparently it had been destroyed later, I guess has said that, you know, that's fine. He thinks he actually came out good that way. It's something that ended up working in the end for the film. I don't think it really did.
And on the big screen I really noticed it. It was almost as if someone had had flipped a lens or something on the projector when it cuts to that scene.
It's true that it's strange looking blood. I hadn't attributed it to the color, but that moment, that famous shot where he's holding his fingers to his head and gun style and then this blood is slowly dripping off. Oh it's so powerful still and so gross, and the viscosity of the blood really struck me that it was like a lot of extra carro corn syrup in there or something.
Well, a taxi driver obviously a film that provokes some good discussion. Again out now in this thirty fifth anniversary celebration of it, it played. Unfortunately if you missed it, well, you can catch it in its Blu Ray release coming out this Tuesday. And I mentioned it once, but you can read Dane his great article about the Bernard Hermann score over at slate dot com. We'll put a link in the notes for this show at film spotting dot net.
Some guy's got to be a secret serviceman.
What.
I was just curious because I thought maybe i'd make a good view.
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The burn