Taxi Driver

Director Martin Scorsese has stated that it was Brian De Palma who introduced him to Paul Schrader, and Taxi Driver arose from Scorsese's feeling that movies are like dreams or drug-induced reveries. He attempted to imbue within the viewer the feeling of being in a limbo state between sleeping and waking. The director cites Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1956) and Jack Hazan's A Bigger Splash (1973) as inspirations for his camerawork in the movie.[8] Before Scorsese was hired, John Milius and Irvin Kershner were considered to helm the project.[9] In writing the script, Schrader drew inspiration from the diaries of Arthur Bremer, who shot presidential candidate George Wallace in 1972,[10] as well as from the Harry Chapin song "Taxi", which is about an old girlfriend getting into a cab.[11] For the ending of the story, in which Bickle becomes a media hero, Schrader was inspired by Squeaky Fromme's attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford, which resulted in her being on the cover of Newsweek.[12]

Schrader also used himself as inspiration. In a 1981 interview with Tom Snyder on The Tomorrow Show, he related his experience of living in New York City while battling chronic insomnia, which led him to frequent pornographic bookstores and theaters because they remained open all night. Following a divorce and a breakup with a live-in girlfriend, he spent a few weeks living in his car. After visiting a hospital for a stomach ulcer, Schrader wrote the screenplay for Taxi Driver in "under a fortnight." He states, "The first draft was maybe 60 pages, and I started the next draft immediately, and it took less than two weeks." Schrader recalls, "I realized I hadn't spoken to anyone in weeks [...] that was when the metaphor of the taxi occurred to me. That is what I was: this person in an iron box, a coffin, floating around the city, but seemingly alone." Schrader decided to make Bickle a Vietnam vet because the national trauma of the war seemed to blend perfectly with Bickle's paranoid psychosis, making his experiences after the war more intense and threatening.[13]

In Scorsese on Scorsese, Scorsese mentions the religious symbolism in the story, comparing Bickle to a saint who wants to cleanse or purge both his mind and his body of weakness. Bickle attempts to kill himself near the end of the movie as a tribute to the samurai's "death with honor" principle.[8] Dustin Hoffman was offered the role of Travis Bickle but turned it down because he thought that Scorsese was "crazy".[14] Al Pacino and Jeff Bridges were also considered for Travis Bickle.[9]

While preparing for his role as Bickle, De Niro was filming Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 in Italy. According to Boyle, he would "finish shooting on a Friday in Rome ... get on a plane ... [and] fly to New York." De Niro obtained a taxi driver's license, and when on break, would pick up a taxi and drive around New York for a couple of weeks before returning to Rome to resume filming 1900. De Niro apparently lost 16 kilograms (35 pounds) and listened repeatedly to a taped reading of the diaries of criminal Arthur Bremer. When he had time off from shooting 1900, De Niro visited an army base in Northern Italy and tape-recorded soldiers from the Midwestern United States, whose accents he thought might be appropriate for Travis's character.[15]

Scorsese brought in the film title designer Dan Perri to design the title sequence for Taxi Driver. Perri had been Scorsese's original choice to design the titles for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore in 1974, but Warner Bros would not allow him to hire an unknown designer. By the time Taxi Driver was going into production, Perri had established his reputation with his work on The Exorcist, and Scorsese was now able to hire him. Perri created the opening titles for Taxi Driver using second unit footage which he color-treated through a process of film copying and slit-scan, resulting in a highly stylised graphic sequence that evoked the "underbelly" of New York City through lurid colors, glowing neon signs, distorted nocturnal images, and deep black levels. Perri went on to design opening titles for a number of major films after this, including Star Wars (1977) and Raging Bull (1980).[16][17]

On a budget of only $1.9 million, various actors took pay cuts to bring the project to life. De Niro and Cybill Shepherd received only $35,000 to make the film, while Scorsese was given $65,000. Overall, $200,000 of the budget was allocated to performers in the movie.[3][18]

Taxi Driver was shot during a New York City summer heat wave and sanitation strike in 1975. The film ran into conflict with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) due to its violence. Scorsese de-saturated the colors in the final shootout, which allowed the film to get an R rating. To capture the atmospheric scenes in Bickle's taxi, the sound technicians would get in the trunk while Scorsese and his cinematographer, Michael Chapman, would ensconce themselves on the back seat floor and use available light to shoot. Chapman later admitted the filming style was heavily influenced by New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard and his cinematographer Raoul Coutard, as the crew did not have the time or money to do "traditional things".[19] When Bickle decides to assassinate Senator Palantine, he cuts his hair into a mohawk. This detail was suggested by actor Victor Magnotta, a friend of Scorsese's who had a small role as a Secret Service agent and had served in Vietnam. Scorsese later noted that Magnotta told them that, "in Saigon, if you saw a guy with his head shaved—like a little Mohawk—that usually meant that those people were ready to go into a certain Special Forces situation. You didn't even go near them. They were ready to kill."[10]

Filming took place on New York City's West Side, at a time when the city was on the brink of bankruptcy. According to producer Michael Phillips, "the whole West Side was bombed out. There really were row after row of condemned buildings and that's what we used to build our sets [...] we didn't know we were documenting what looked like the dying gasp of New York."[20] The tracking shot over the shootout scene, filmed in an actual apartment, took three months of preparation; the production team had to cut through the ceiling to shoot it.[21]

Some critics showed concern over 12-year-old Foster's presence during the climactic shoot-out.[26] Foster said that she was present during the setup and staging of the special effects used during the scene; the entire process was explained and demonstrated for her, step by step. Moreover, Foster said, she was fascinated and entertained by the behind-the-scenes preparation that went into the scene. In addition, before being given the part, Foster was subjected to psychological testing, attending sessions with a UCLA psychiatrist, to ensure that she would not be emotionally scarred by her role, in accordance with California Labor Board requirements monitoring children's welfare on film sets.[27][28]

Additional concerns surrounding Foster's age focus on the role she played as Iris, a prostitute. Years later, she confessed how uncomfortable the treatment of her character was on set. Scorsese did not know how to approach different scenes with the actress. The director relied on Robert De Niro to deliver his directions to the young actress. Foster often expressed how De Niro, in that moment, became a mentor to her, stating that her acting career was highly influenced by the actor's advice during the filming of Taxi Driver.[29]

Taxi Driver formed part of the delusional fantasy of John Hinckley Jr.[30] that triggered his attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, an act for which he was found not guilty by reason of insanity.[31] Hinckley stated that his actions were an attempt to impress Foster, on whom Hinckley was fixated, by mimicking Travis's mohawked appearance at the Palantine rally. His attorney concluded his defense by playing the movie for the jury.[32][33] When Scorsese heard about Hinckley's motivation behind his assassination attempt, he briefly thought about quitting film-making as the association brought a negative perception of the film.[34]

The climactic shoot-out was considered intensely graphic by some critics, who even considered giving the film an X rating.[35] The film was booed at the Cannes Film Festival for its graphic violence.[36] To obtain an R rating, Scorsese had the colors desaturated, making the brightly colored blood less prominent. In later interviews, Scorsese commented that he was pleased by the color change and considered it an improvement over the original scene.[37] However, in the special-edition DVD, Michael Chapman, the film's cinematographer, expresses regret about the decision and the fact that no print with the unmuted colors exists anymore, as the originals had long since deteriorated.

Jodie Foster and Robert De Niro's performances garnered critical praise and earned them Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actor, respectively.

The film opened at the Coronet Theater in New York City and grossed a house record of $68,000 in its first week.[50] It went on to gross $28.3 million in the United States,[51] making it the 17th-highest-grossing film of 1976.

Taxi Driver received critical acclaim. Roger Ebert instantly praised it as one of the greatest films he had ever seen, claiming:

Taxi Driver is a hell, from the opening shot of a cab emerging from stygian clouds of steam to the climactic killing scene in which the camera finally looks straight down. Scorsese wanted to look away from Travis's rejection; we almost want to look away from his life. But he's there, all right, and he's suffering.[52]

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 89% based on 158 reviews and an average rating of 9.10/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A must-see film for movie lovers, this Martin Scorsese masterpiece is as hard-hitting as it is compelling, with Robert De Niro at his best."[53] Metacritic gives the film a score of 94 out of 100, based on reviews from 23 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[54]

Taxi Driver was ranked by the American Film Institute as the 52nd-greatest American film on its AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) list, and Bickle was voted the 30th-greatest villain in a poll by the same organization. The Village Voice ranked Taxi Driver at number 33 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics.[55] Empire also ranked him 18th in its "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" poll,[56] and the film ranks at No. 17 on the magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.[57]

Time Out magazine conducted a poll of the 100 greatest movies set in New York City. Taxi Driver topped the list, placing at No. 1.[58] Schrader's screenplay for the film was ranked the 43rd-greatest ever written by the Writers Guild of America.[59] In contrast, Leonard Maltin gave a rating of only 2 stars and called it a "gory, cold-blooded story of a sick man's lurid descent into violence" that was "ugly and unredeeming".[60]

In 2012, in a Sight & Sound poll, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi selected Taxi Driver as one of his 10 best films of all time.[61] Quentin Tarantino also listed the movie among his 10 greatest films of all time.[62]

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains – #30 Villain – Travis Bickle
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes – #10 – "You talkin' to me?"
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – #22
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – #47
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #52

• National Film Registry – Inducted in 1994[69]
• The film was chosen by Time as one of the 100 best films of all time.[70]
• In 2015, Taxi Driver ranked 19th on BBC's "100 Greatest American Films" list, voted on by film critics from around the world.[71]

De Niro's "You talkin' to me?" speech has become a pop culture mainstay. In 2005, it was ranked number 10 on the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes.

In the relevant scene, the deranged Bickle is looking into a mirror at himself, imagining a confrontation that would give him a chance to draw his gun:

"You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?"

While Scorsese said that he drew inspiration from John Huston's 1967 movie Reflections in a Golden Eye in a scene in which Marlon Brando's character is facing the mirror,[82] screenwriter Paul Schrader said De Niro improvised the dialogue and that De Niro's performance was inspired by "an underground New York comedian" he had once seen, possibly including his signature line.[83] Roger Ebert said of the latter part of the phrase "I'm the only one here" that it was "the truest line in the film.... Travis Bickle's desperate need to make some kind of contact somehow—to share or mimic the effortless social interaction he sees all around him, but does not participate in."[84] In his 2009 memoir, saxophonist Clarence Clemons said that De Niro explained the line's origins during production of New York, New York (1977), with the actor seeing Bruce Springsteen say the line onstage at a concert.[85] In the 2000 film The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, De Niro went on to repeat the monologue with some alterations in the role of the character Fearless Leader.[86]