Taxi Driver
 

--very mild spoiler at the end--

Just saw it for the first time tonight. I'd heard about it a lot and received many recomendations after describing what kind of movies I like. Didn't know it was that old though. (~1970's) Anyhow I really enjoyed it. Good movie to watch alone, late at night. Deniro is badass, and very young! The movie just plays with your emotions throughout. Gets you to like one person, then hate them, and so on.
Check it out ;)

I agree, Taxi Driver is a great film! De Niro and Scorese make an excellent team!

You even got to see a young Harvey Kietel...and kind of what NYC was like pre-Disney Times Square

And Jodi Foster

And Cybil Shepherd, by God!

BTW, Scorcese plays the guy who hires the cab to sit outside his wife's window while she fools around.

Unfortunately this film was the inspiration for John Hinckley in his assassination attempt on President Reagan due to his fixation with the material and Foster.(from IMDB)

Excellent film. The story, the ideas, the characters. Classic.

Lol, no way! I had no idea, I've never seen a pic of the guy before. That guy drove me nuts.

Didn't know that either. I'm still not sure why Travis wanted to kill the candidate, but its's that kind of confusion that I guess made me really enjoy the movie.

I'm glad you finally saw that movie! It is definitly an awesome movie, especially the end where he shoots the guys hand off. lol

I know what you mean, she is absolutely gorgeous in this movie.

Watch it a few more times. It's a nuanced film, that goes beyond good and bad characters.

This is pretty much from Schrader's mouth-the movie is inspired by the John Ford western The Searchers. Travis latches onto two women. One is successful and does campaign management. He decides to murder the "father" figure, the campaign manager, but fails. So he regroups, and latches onto a young prostitute. The prostitute is oppressed by her own father figure. This time, Travis is successful, and murders several people. Society is uninterested that something is wrong with Travis, and rewards him for killing the right father. In the end, the Cybil character even wants to get back with him.

While it did inspire a copycat on Reagan, it certainly shouldn't be blamed.

It's a critique on American society, and a personal film about isolation and loneliness. It's a brilliant film.

Well I'll be! Thanks for the info. That's kind of why I mentioned in my first post about him wanting to kill the candidate, it just seemed a little odd to me and I figured there was more to it. Guess I'll watch it again this weekend.

Schrader was big into comparing Asian societies to America at the time-he said that in Asia, if a man goes crazy, he draws the shade and takes his own life; in America he goes out the door at shoots as many people as he can. This defines that point in time, which was very violent.

Originally, Keitel's character (and everyone at the end) were going to be black. There was so much racial tensions, riots were feared. Scorsese made the characters white, which minimizes some of Bickle's racism. Bickle is still clearly a racist, but the topper is a little more blurry. Bickle was going to kill somebody because he wasn't mentally right (Vietnam); he just happened to pick the right person in society's view to kill. Contrast this with the shooting of the robber. He again picked the right person to kill, but he just didn't bother to stick around to be caught. This forshadows the ending, when not only will a shop keeper reward him, but all of the community.

The theme of society approved violence coarsed through many of the major films of the '70's. Straw Dogs, Dirty Harry, Taxi Driver, A Clockwork Orange, and others all dealt, in some way, with the idea of violence and it's place in society. This was most likely due to the violent Vietnam war, which took 2 million civilians.

It's amazing how young he looks. I didn't recognize him the first time I watched the movie. It was only after knowing who he was and rewatching it that I was able to pick him out.

Great movie, an American classic.

Very interesting. Although I've always considered myself to be pretty keen with movies and their meanings, I can tell that I'm in need of a few college level courses to brush my skills up, thats for sure ;)

The best part of the entire film was when he took Cybil to a porn movie on the first date, I was laughing so hard I was crying. Then I got to thinking that I should have tried that while I was single, maybe it would have turned out interesting.:D

Lol! Already forgot about that part. He was totally innocent too! :D

Ya, that's what made the whole scene. He was totally clueless what her problem with the movie was.

On the dvd also there is an excellent documentary on the making of taxi driver. Check it out.

i'm hoping someone can help me out here...

remember the part, after he shaves his head (mohawk) and goes to kill Jodie fosters pimp he kills/ shoots that one guy on the stairs (was it the pimp, i forgot) but the guy doesn't just die, he keeps screaming and screaming saying "I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll fucking Kill you!" and screams some more while hanging on to deniro...

anyways, this sound bit was used in a punk rock song but I can't rmember who sampled it... anyone know? possibly the - butthole surfers? but i don't think so...

I'm not familiar with this movie... any good? care to elaborate on it...

Straw Dogs is very, very good. It is directed by Sam Peckinpah and stars Dustin Hoffman.

It's a film about a young couple that move to the English country side. There marriage begins to test the fabric of what each can stand. Harsh things happen, and in the end, Dustin Hoffman's David chooses to take on the villagers in a violent confrontation of territory.

Somewhat of a spoiler, so SPOILER ALERT!

The film is also famous for a brutal rape scene that led many to say the film was offensive in it's violence and Pauline Kael even called it fascist, though Sam Peckinpah disagreed completely.

The new Criterion DVD is very good. (http://www.deepdiscountdvd.com/dvd.cfm?itemID=HVD001597) I'd recommend renting it before spending that kind of cash on a film that could not be your cup of tea, but I'd still see it. In my opinion, it's one of the best films of the 70's. It's a lot slower and intellectual than some make it out to be, but it's still trademark Sam Peckinpah.

he keeps screaming and screaming saying "I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll fucking Kill you!" and screams some more while hanging on to deniro...

anyways, this sound bit was used in a punk rock song but I can't rmember who sampled it... anyone know? possibly the - butthole surfers? but i don't think so...


Maybe you're thinking of the Pantera song "The Badge" on "The Crow" soundtrack. Before the song begins, you hear DeNiro say "suck on this" (gunshot) then the song begins, and after the song you hear the guy go "I'll kill you!"

Maveric! Above post is for you, I don't know how to do the fancy "quote" thing when posting what others have written, so I merely cut and pasted.

yep, that was it, thanks!

Agreed, a great movie. Hoffman is wonderful in it.
I think the thing that some people found offensive about the rape scene was that they said the girl seemed to be enjoying herself.I didn't really see it and didn't think it was all that bad. Definitely quite a few similarities to Taxi Driver.

To quote someone, just click on the 'QUOTE' button right below their post. It'll paste all the code in for you.

very good movie

Its interesting in Taxi Driver, DeNiro's character gets the job driving the taxi because he doesn't have anything better to do. Then with the young hooker, he tries to give her a bunch of money saying he has nothign to spend it on. Very interesting film...

Spoilers for Straw Dogs:

She does enjoy it when her former boyfriend does it, but not the second man. I've heard it suggested that her father had probably abused her, and she viewed David the same way (note she links him with the rapist.) thus she enjoyed the abuse. I've only seen the unrated cut on the DVD, but the second rape is pretty brutal. It's not really what it shows, but Susan George's expression and Peckinpah's quick editing which shows more than you expect and less than you think.

In the commentary on the DVD, Prince goes a long way in suggesting that Peckinpah wanted the audience to view the movie from the perspective of Susan George's character, and thus be repulsed by the rape. It works for me. He also gives many instinces in which Peckinpah came out and said David is the bad guy of the film, which is an interesting slant on it. (Peckinpah's letters are included on the second disc of the DVD, and he says it out right.)

The thing about Taxi Driver for me is that it holds up in spite of several things that could really have brought it down-the washed out blood in the ending, turning the character's at the end white, an unnecessary scene (even Scorsese says to this day he isn't sure about the scene) with Harvey Keitel and Jodie Foster, and some lame scenes with Albert Brooks. In spite of some potentially large flaws, the film works almost flawlessly for me. It's one of my favorites.