Taxi Driver Totally Explained

Everything about Taxi Driver totally explained

Taxi Driver is a 1976 thriller/drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The movie is set in early post-Vietnam Era New York City and stars Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, a lonely, isolated taxi driver, Cybill Shepherd as the woman he attempts to pursue romantically, Jodie Foster as the 12-year-old prostitute he attempts to save, and Harvey Keitel as Sport, a pimp. The story was inspired by the 1972 assassination attempt on George Wallace by Arthur Bremer, on whom the protagonist Bickle is based.

Synopsis

Travis Bickle (De Niro), who claims to be an honorably discharged Marine and Vietnam War veteran, is a lonely and depressed young man of 26. He settles in Manhattan where he becomes a nighttime taxi driver due to chronic insomnia. Bickle spends his restless days in seedy porn theaters and works 12 or 14-hour shifts during the evening and nighttime hours carrying passengers between all five boroughs of New York City.
   Bickle becomes interested in Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a campaign volunteer for New York Senator Charles Palantine, who is running for the presidential nomination and is promising dramatic social change. She is initially intrigued by Bickle and agrees to a date with him after he flirts with her over coffee and sympathizes with her own apparent loneliness. On the date, however, Bickle is clueless about how to treat her and think it's a good idea to take her to a Swedish sex education film (Language of Love). Offended, she leaves him and takes a taxi home alone. The next day he tries to reconcile with Betsy, phoning her and sending her flowers, but all of his attempts are in vain. although the film implies that Travis himself is a racist. Schrader's original screenplay also set the action in Los Angeles; it was moved to New York City because taxis were much more prevalent there than L.A. during the 1970's.
   Travis Bickle's first name was a homage to the Mick Travis character played by Malcolm McDowell in if.... (1968) and O Lucky Man! (1973), the latter of which was one of Scorsese's favorite films at the time.
When Bickle determines 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 who had served in Vietnam. Scorsese later noted, "Magnotta had talked about certain types of soldiers going into the jungle. They cut their hair in a certain way; looked like a mohawk... and you knew that was a special situation, a commando kind of situation, and people gave them wide berths ... we thought it was a good idea." To attain an "R" rating, Scorsese desaturated the colors, making the brightly-colored blood less prominent. In later interviews, Scorsese commented that he was actually pleased by the color change and he considered it an improvement over the originally filmed scene, which has been lost. However, in the special edition DVD, Michael Chapman, the film's cinematographer, regrets the decision and the fact that no print with the unmuted colors exists anymore. One irony of the MPAA's insistence on changes of the shootout sequence--which originally received the X rating for violence--was that they made the scene even more shocking than Scorsese had originally intended.
   Some critics expressed concern over young Jodie Foster's presence during the climactic shoot-out. However, Foster stated 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. Rather than being upset or traumatized, Foster said, she was fascinated and entertained by the behind-the-scenes preparation that went into the scene.

Interpretations of the ending

Roger Ebert has written of the film's ending,

"There has been much discussion about the ending, in which we see newspaper clippings about Travis's 'heroism' of saving Iris, and then Betsy gets into his cab and seems to give him admiration instead of her earlier disgust. Is this a fantasy scene? Did Travis survive the shoot-out? Are we experiencing his dying thoughts? Can the sequence be accepted as literally true? ... I'm not sure there can be an answer to these questions. The end sequence plays like music, not drama: It completes the story on an emotional, not a literal, level. We end not on carnage but on redemption, which is the goal of so many of Scorsese's characters."

James Berardinelli, in his review of the film, argues against the dream or fantasy interpretation, stating "Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader append the perfect conclusion to Taxi Driver. Steeped in irony, the five-minute epilogue underscores the vagaries of fate. The media builds Bickle into a hero, when, had he been a little quicker drawing his gun against Senator Palantine, he'd have been revealed as an assassin. As the film closes, the misanthrope has been embraced as the model citizen -- someone who takes on pimps, drug dealers, and mobsters to save one little girl."
On the Laserdisc audio commentary, Scorsese acknowledged several critics' interpretation on the film's ending being Bickle's dying dream. However, he admitted that the last scene of Bickle glancing at an unseen object implies that he might fall into rage and recklessness in the future, and he's like "a ticking time bomb." Writer Paul Schrader confirms this in his commentary on the 30th anniversary DVD, stating that Travis "is not cured by the movie's end," and that "he's not going to be a hero next time."

Critical response

Taxi Driver was a financial success and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture (but lost to Rocky) and received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In later years, the film was ranked #52 on the American Film Institute's list of "100 Years, 100 Movies", and #22 on its "100 Years, 100 Thrills". Bickle was also named as #30 on their villains list. It has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Roger Ebert added Taxi Driver to his list of "Great Movies," alongside other Scorsese films also on the list such as Raging Bull, GoodFellas, Mean Streets and The Age of Innocence. The film earned $28,262,574 in the United States.
The film was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best films of all time.

Awards

Wins

Cannes Film Festival – Palme d'Or

New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor – (Robert De Niro)

BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role – (Jodie Foster)

BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer – (Jodie Foster)

BAFTA Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music – (Bernard Herrmann) Nominations

Academy Award for Best Picture

Academy Award for Best Actor – (Robert De Niro)

Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress – (Jodie Foster)

Academy Award for Original Music Score – (Bernard Herrmann)

BAFTA Award for Best Film

BAFTA Award for Direction – (Martin Scorsese)

DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures – (Martin Scorsese)

Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama - (Robert De Niro)

Grammy Award for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture – (Bernard Herrmann)

BAFTA Award for Best Editing – (Marcia Lucas, Tom Rolf, Melvin Shapiro)

Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture – (Paul Schrader)

WGA Award for Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen – (Paul Schrader)

Proposed sequels and spin-offs

In an interview on Inside the Actor's Studio in 1999, Robert De Niro stated that he and Martin Scorsese had discussed the possibility of making a sequel to this film. According to De Niro, the two agreed that it would be interesting to see where Travis Bickle ended up 30 years later. But during Scorsese's interview on the show in 2002, the director stated that he'd never make a sequel to any of his films.
In May 2005 Majesco announced that it was going to publish a video game sequel to Taxi Driver, developed by Papaya Studio. In January 2006 the game was canceled due to financial problems.

John Hinckley, Jr.

Taxi Driver was reportedly part of a delusional fantasy on the part of John Hinckley, Jr. which triggered his attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, an act for which he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. His stated reason was that the act was an attempt to impress Jodie Foster by mimicking Travis' mohawked appearance at the Palantine rally. The movie was so influential that his attorney concluded his defense by playing the movie.

Further Information

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