"The script of 'Taxi Driver' is the genuine thing. It came from the gut, and while it banged around town everyone who read it realized it was authentic, the real item. After a number of years enough people said somebody should make it so that somebody finally did."
- Paul Schrader

This film is considered by many to be a classic of contemporary cinema. For years I have heard, repeatedly, that it is a masterpiece. It came out in 1976, when I was 13 years old but I didn't get around to watching it until 1993 - when I was 30. Then, I was sorry I ever bothered.

"Taxi Driver" is one of those experimental films that grew out of "Easy Rider" and the non-linear genre it created. But unlike other films of the genre, "Taxi Driver" never says or does anything. Director Martin Scorsese is going for a feeling more than a film and he does succeed on that level. But "Taxi Driver" never captures the spirit and wonderful feel for nuance that other experimental films were able to achieve.

Scorsese also never gives us a deep meaning here, not even a pretentious one. The film's only statement seems to be that sometimes maniacs get confused for heroes. What kind of statement is that? I suppose it tries to tap-in to the anti- establishment movement of the 60's and 70's but the whole film seems a sham. "Taxi Driver" captures none of the excitement and nuance of Dennis Hopper's classic films of the genre, "The Last Movie" and "Easy Rider." And while it tries to be the kind of non-linear narrative masterpiece that Coppola achieves with "Apocalypse Now," it is much more like Antonioni's "Zabriske Point" - dull beyond belief and totally immersed in the shit it pretends to denounce. 

Scorsese has only succeeded in crafting a slow moving, mind numbingly dull portrait of the seedy underside of New York City. His camera incessantly lingers on the festering sores of this underworld: the trash, the whores, the rain soaked streets, but he never says anything about them. This is supposed to be a drama, a story, not a documentary.

Our tour-guide through this atrocity is Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), the "Taxi Driver" in the title. Since Scorsese sets the tone here, De Niro also opts for the subdued approach and, in true 70's styling, the two attempt to craft some sort of an anti-film. Scorsese's vision co-opts the documentary approach which is, in fact, a great idea. But, for some reason, he refuses to allow drama to occur. He never expands upon this approach. The film and it's star meanders and muddle their way through Paul Schrader's non- script and finish on a supposed ironic note that (ironically) rings true. But, that being said, the realistic ending turns out to be a "cop-out" (the worst thing you can say about a 70's film)! It seems like the kind of ending a studio company would force on a nonsensical film to give it some sort of (unintentionally) perverse, "Hollywood" moral.

But all of this is really unimportant. The only perception of the film important enough to be conveyed is this: It is just too dull to be worth watching. The 100 minutes of mindless drivel that constitute the film's body is not redeemed by the 13 minute ironic ending. None of the performances make the film worth watching either. De Niro's acting is as much a non-event as the film. He mumbles and shrugs his way through the scenes and seems more interested in mugging for, and brooding in front of, the camera than actually giving a performance. Both he and Scorsese seem to purposefully (and therefore pretentiously) meander through this film as if it were some deep, artistic statement that only the two of them are in on. But there is only a sow's ear here and no silk purse.

Also on screen, Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, and Cybil Shepherd are featured in the cast but none of them have a character to fall back on. Shepherd seems like nothing more than a nicely dressed mannequin that is forced to provide some sort of ethereal motivation for De Niro's Bickle. But the real loser in the secondary cast is Peter Boyle who plays an advice dispensing cabbie moronically named "The Wizard." Boyle is forced to deliver one of the most uninteresting screen characters ever envisioned. The street scene outside the restaurant where Boyle and De Niro converse has to be the most opaque, absurd, meaningless scene ever filmed in the entire history of cinema. The only thing more frightening than thinking that this nonsense is ad-libbed is thinking that it may have been scripted. To memorize lines like the one's we get here must have seemed like being forced to memorize "Jaborwacky" to Boyle. 

Finally, one knows the film is hopelessly bad when the introduction of Jodie Foster as a teenage prostitute fails to evoke any emotional response at all from the viewer. Foster tries to do something with the non-script she is forced to act out and the typical character she is forced to portray but even her remarkable skill seems to have evaporated under Scorsese's glaring flood light. Foster doesn't really arrive until the last half-hour of the film so one can't really blame her for failing. She has so little to work with and so little screen time to do it in.

Finally, for the clincher, Scorsese also makes the fatal error of using a Bernard Herrmann ("Psycho") score for the film. Worse yet, Scorsese features the same hollow, sorrowful, meandering jazz piece by Herrmann prominently throughout the film. It's pointless repetition is almost enough to entice you into pulling your own hair out at the roots. When it appears audibly for the 3rd time during the film, it makes one dive for the remote to hit the mute button. That's how abysmal it is.

"Taxi Driver" is the kind of film that the cinematic aristocracy will fawn over for decades. It's harsh, unflinching eye; it's eerie mysticism, it's documentary feel are the type of things that film buffs love to laud. The fact that the film was made in the 70's affords it the opportunity to be called "revolutionary." But the bottom line here is this - it's dull. It rambles. It meanders. It says virtually nothing. In reality, as a film, "Taxi Driver" barely exists.

Notes: Scorsese filmed the piece on location in NYC. He also plays a bit-part in the film as an angry, homicidal cuckold.

After the film Foster received notes from John Hinkley which she ignored. Hinkley later attempted to assassinate then-President Ronald Reagan in a fashion eerily reminiscent of the film. The FBI later found more letters from Hinkley to Foster which quoted lines from "Taxi Driver." Scorsese, unaware of the event, was fairly impressed with the security at the Academy Awards the next day.

Paul Schrader wrote the non-script in just 12 days. He had spent some time living in his car and sleeping in porno theaters. He spent a few days at an old girlfriends house and tapped out the script. He called the film one which "is not afraid to indulge in it's own madness." I would have to agree that the film IS rather self-indulgent. The Bickle character is apparently inspired by the protagonist in Bresson's "Pickpocket." The film is reminiscent of John Ford's "The Searchers."

Foster was nominated for a Best Supporting Oscar. De Niro was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. The film was nominated for Best Picture.

The film won the top prize, the Palm D'or, at Cannes.

Herrmann died before the film was released. In fact, he finished the score on the day he died. The final title card at the end of the credits states: "Our gratitude and respect to Bernard Herrmann. June 29, 1911 - December 24, 1975."

At one point, Scorsese had funding for the project on the condition that he use Jeff Bridges for the lead. He declined.

Boyle claims that he did ad-lib his "Wizard" speech before shooting and that Scorsese had it recorded and redacted for the script.

Scorsese claims he wasn't going to appear in the film. He had tapped George Memmoli, a rather large actor who had appeared in "Mean Streets," to play the cuckold. When Memmoli was injured in shooting "The Farmer," Scorsese opted to step into the role. 

For more about "Taxi Driver" as well as Scorsese and DeNiro in this time frame, read Peter Biskin's "Easy Riders, Raging bulls."

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