Taxi Driver (1976) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction
Added 2024-07-11 21:10:45 +0000 UTCHey everyone! This movie received the second highest number of votes in the Mr. Robot Inspiration poll from a while back. Thank you to everyone who voted for it! I'm looking forward to discussing this one, especially with those of you who have watched and dissected it a bunch of times. 😊 Thanks so much for taking this time to watch with me! [Direct link here.]
✦ KL
Comments
Kind of amazing to watch the movie with someone who truly has *no preconceived notion* of what Taxi Driver is going to be about. When I saw it, I didn't know how the story was going to play out, but I knew going in that Travis is a dangerous guy, so when I heard Travis' diary, it didn't strike me a guy who is logging his day or his feelings, but instead has the vibe of the kind of manifesto someone inevitably finds after a person has gone on a shooting spree, which is of course what Travis eventually goes on to try, even though he chickens out of it. I had never even considered that Travis talking about the "filth" on the street -- which if you watch closely, may in Travis' mind include Black people, who he is constantly apprehensive around and suspicious of, even his fellow cab driver -- could be interpreted as literal by someone who is not suspicious of his motives from the jump. Even his deifying of Betsy as someone who is "above" the filth could be pretty unsettling, if that's what you're expecting to see. In my view, his later status as a heroic figure is a bleak and creepy irony, given he probably would've shot Senator Palantine, or Betsy, or Tom, or all three of them if he'd been given the chance -- even if he thinks Sport is scummy, it stems from that same unhealthy elevation that he does to Betsy, which is not necessarily noble. There's probably some old joke about watching a porno for the plot, like reading Playboy for the articles, but back in that era, they were basically just regular movies with explicit sex scenes in them. They were often not especially *good* movies, but they were full films with plots and characters, and many behind-the-camera and even in-front-of-the-camera people would segue between the industries when they needed work. These days, many of these films are getting boutique Blu-ray releases with commentaries and interviews, just like any other movie. The film Boogie Nights is nominally about the point in time where videotape had studio bosses thinking about profits over quality, and the days of the Hollywood adult film disappeared, although the movie is busy focusing on the characters rather than that history. I wonder if De Niro doing "you talkin' to me?" into a mirror is so widely referenced or parodied at this point that it doesn't even register as something that would originate from someplace other than human history. It did come from here, though. One obvious parody of this is in Back to the Future Part III, when Marty wakes up and Doc isn't there. Starting with Raging Bull in 1980, Martin Scorsese has consistently worked with the same editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, and he worked with her once before, way back in 1967, on his first feature-length movie, Who's That Knocking at My Door?. He made six films in between Knocking and Bull, the only ones (as far as I can remember) that he's done without her, and Taxi Driver was co-edited by none other than George Lucas' ex-wife Marcia Lucas.
Tyler Foster
2024-07-13 04:19:58 +0000 UTCSpeaking of seeing someone young, the two cameos by Marty. One as the passenger with the cheating wife.
Carl Johnson
2024-07-12 20:54:22 +0000 UTC“Walt Whitman…W.W.” 😂😂 But seriously this movie is amazing. The 70s-80s New York grittiness is such a vibe. I’ve been to NY once, but it was in 2000 so it was different by then.
RichieRich
2024-07-12 04:28:54 +0000 UTCOne of my all-time favorite movies. Easily in my top 5. Paul Schrader's ode to loneliness, and Martin Scorsese's ode to, I think, the PTSD of Vietnam and the Nixon era and the utter failure of the peace movements of the 1960s. Personified to perfection by Robert DeNiro...'God's lonely little man'. The product of a system that sends men and women half way around the world to kill and be killed by other men and woman, and then has the balls to shudder in horror and disbelief when he or she brings that mentality home with them. And then shuffles him right back out on the street to do it all over again. The American dream. Anyway...love this fucking movie.
Steve Mercier
2024-07-11 22:42:25 +0000 UTC
