Taxi Driver : The All-American Hero | Literally Me

all the animals come out at night [ __ ] buggers queens fairies dopers junkies sick fenal someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets i go all over i take people to rainy south congress i take them to round rock i don't care don't make no difference to me it does to some some won't even take redditors don't make no difference to me [Music] do you know what it's like to live in a city that stinks so much it gives you a headache to be in a place where violence and degeneracy run rampant travis bickle does and on top of all of that he's suffering from sleeping problems let's face it he probably got ptsd from his time in the vietnam war as a marine he works long hours as a cabbie to deal with it working nights going anywhere with anyone bickle sees new york for the abyss it is and the longer pickle stares more into the abyss the more it stares back into him will this darkness consume him or will he rise above it and defeat the evil taxi driver opened in 1976 at the khan film festival winning the highly prestigious palm d'or award it found critical and commercial success being nominated for a handful of oscars including best picture it not only stands as one of scorsese's finest films but is one of the greatest films of all time so today let's dive deep into taxi driver it's funny that taxi driver is now seen as the epitome of the literally me movie as the writer of the film paul schrader has stated multiple times that travis bickle is literally him well him mixed with arthur bremmer and oliver stone therefore i think it's important for us to understand schroeder if we want to understand bickle he's a prophet he's a prophet and a pusher partly truth partly fiction walking contradiction in the early 70s schroeder's life was going just great he was married he was an apprentice of the legendary film critic pauline kale he was also working at the american film institute and then he divorced his wife he left his mistress he stopped working with kale and he quit the afi for a while he found himself in a deep depression he couldn't sleep due to his depression so he wandered the la streets at night drinking to excess in this time he found himself growing a fascination with guns and he'd spend a ton of time in porno theaters as they were the only things open at four in the morning no doubt a level of sexual frustration and addiction was also probably at play over the course of a month he lived this kind of nocturnal lifestyle staying in bed until 5 pm only to embark on his daily nighttime odyssey he didn't eat but he did drink a lot the event that put an end to his self-destructive lifestyle was the formation of an ulcer the searing pain and the hospital admission was a much needed wake-up call for schrader as he realized that he couldn't continue down this path he was on for very much longer as a form of self-therapy schrader wrote taxi driver the script practically wrote itself with the writer finishing the first draft in only 15 days with this screenplay paul made a story out of his depressive period with the protagonist the lone taxi driver floating around the hellish city in his metal coffin he didn't intend for the script to be his breakout screenplay but once it fell into the hands of the up-and-coming new hollywood director martin scorsese his fate was sealed now to be fair schrader had sold his script the yakuza for a whopping 325 thousand dollars but the movie flopped in the box office taxi driver is the film that brought prestige to schrader's name i've got to give props to robert de niro for his performance in this movie for a few reasons for one de nira had since blown up in popularity due to the success of the godfather part 2 and so his going rates soared to five hundred thousand dollars per picture but he had already signed on to taxi driver for a salary of thirty five thousand dollars he could have negotiated for it to be higher but he stuck with the original some also to his credit he put in the work he worked as a taxi driver for up to 15 hours a day to get into the cabbie mindset and he also interviewed midwestern military men during his breaks while filming novocento so that he could tape their voices and mimic the flat midwestern accent that voice would become one of the defining features of the film then who the hell else are you talking talking to me to think that dustin hoffman almost got the role i mean i love hoffman but he would not be a good travis bickel in my opinion i don't want to get too lost in the details on the production as i'm prone to do but i just want to say that from my perspective the film seemed to just come together so perfectly they shot in the sweltering summer enduring a garbage strike so there was just tons of grime and trash all over the streets new york in the 70s was already kind of a gross and dangerous place but it was heightened for this film and one last thing before i get into discussing bickle's character the original script had all the bad guys sport the receptionist and the other people associated with the brothel is black score says he changed it because he thought that it would make bickle's character come off as more racist than anything else which wasn't the intention honestly he made the right call i couldn't imagine how film youtube or film twitter would talk about the film now if that change hadn't been made there's no escape i'm god's lonely man [Music] taxi driver is at its heart a film about loneliness but it's more than just that it's an exploration of loneliness and how it can become pathological what do i mean by this think of it like this was there ever a time in your life in which you felt sad lonely depressed or all the above and you kind of liked it for as bad as all of that made you feel you still reveled in it and even made active choices to make matters worse there is a comfort and loneliness and alienation it takes time and energy to build relationships with people who may be great additions to your life or they might ruin your life so you put all this effort into forces that you can't control it's much easier to control every aspect of your life if you just don't depend on anyone for anything even friendship or basic companionship if you care so much about controlling your life and making sure that no one can hurt you or change you then it just kind of makes logical sense to have self-destructive behavior when it comes to your relationships you don't let anyone get too close to you and you especially don't let yourself get too close to anyone you can blame society for making you an outcast and yeah society at large probably does play somewhat of a role but at the end of the day you are responsible for how you handle the cards you've been dealt travis bickle is guilty of this attitude he's a fish out of water a midwesterner in new york and a marine among civilians but he doesn't try to form any meaningful relationships he interacts with people for a living sure but they're just short-term fellow passengers in his yellow chariot they're what the protagonist a fight club would call single-serving friends that might even be a stretch when's the last time you had a meaningful connection with your cab driver even among the other cab drivers he doesn't go to great lengths to befriend any of them when they're eating he sits on the edge slouched in a pose that's not welcoming and he barely talks unless one of them brings him into the conversation he does try to form a relationship with betsy he spies her working for the palantine campaign and can sense that she's another lonely spirit just like him and just like him she's a lonely soul despite being surrounded by people all day it feels paradoxical but the loneliest i've ever personally been has been in cities it's like being in the middle of the ocean and needing a drink of water in a pretty alpha move he asks her out not just in the middle of her work but in front of the man who is obviously in love with her but the relationship doesn't last long he takes her on a nice date in which he buys a piece of pie and melted yellow cheese but the second date doesn't go so well [Music] where are you going the kino corner said this was a good movie i mean i don't know much about movies but he told me this was good and a lot of couples watch it i could put in another movie if you want listen fellas i'm no dating expert or anything but it's not a good idea to take your girl out to see an adult film on the second date why'd he do this he says that he sees other couples doing it and that he thought it was just a normal thing to do we can take him at face value here it's obvious that he spends a lot of time at the cd cinema and his overexposure to these adult films might have desensitized him however i find it hard to believe that even the most socially unaware person would think that this was a good idea the way bickle tries to mitigate the situation is by comparing the adult film to just about any film that's out there sure a lot of films in the 70s had tons of sex and nudity and raunchy movies were becoming more mainstream hell deep throat was a box office hit but come on he took her to a cinema that had hookers just outside the lobby my thinking is that he might have been intentionally sabotaging the relationship he was afraid of getting too close with someone or opening himself up to someone we know that he has a hard time talking honestly about himself when he goes to the wizard for advice i just want to go out and you know like really really really do something he just babbles and babbles and can't give a straight answer as to what's bothering him maybe he sees that if he's to continue this relationship with betsy then he'll have to open up to her so he executes the relationship early on before that can happen but immediately regrets it my favorite shot in the film is when he calls betsy on the telephone to vainly attempt to schedule another date and salvage what he once had the camera trucks to the right revealing an empty hallway highlighting his isolation and emptiness his anger towards himself his life the world the state of things everything manifests itself as a kind of existential anger he has all this pent-up rage that he hasn't been able to process it's like a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off but what will be the consequences it's scorsese himself who introduces the ideas of guns and violence to bickel as a possible way to solve his problems it's not only a great scene but it's got a meta quality to it like the artist is reaching down into the art to influence the subject anyone could have played the character but scorsese playing it made it more special bickle stops his porn consumption he eats healthier and adopts an exercise routine in his small dingy apartment bickle transforms from travis the cabbie to travis the warrior in the meantime travis takes on a couple new obsessions the politician palantine and the child prostitute iris and so he must choose between a destructive or a constructive path the destructive path is that of political assassination why is our hero set on the destruction of the politician he had once admired is it that he associates betsy with palentine and thus his own failings as a man or as this attempted act of violence won against the system as a whole what would his assassination accomplish would it actually cause an actual positive change in the system or would it just so more chaos would the act be for the benefit of society at large or would it merely be an act of egoism on pickle's part i think the latter the killing of palantine would mean the destruction of travis with his last cry to the world being one of anger now on to the sorta constructive path pickle first encounters iris when she hops into his taxi in order to get away from her pimp sport her pimp then throws a crumpled 20 bill at bickle to keep him quiet but the taxi driver holds on to that note and uses it later as a ticket of passage into iris's world what he sees appalls him a 12 year old girl being used and abused by sport and anyone with enough money judging by her putting excess sugar on her food she might also be addicted to dope bickle can't stand the sight of this and he immediately wants to save her if he saw betsy as madonna who turned into a [ __ ] then he sees iris as a [ __ ] who has the potential to return to being a madonna he wants initially to have it both ways to kill palantine and save iris by giving her several hundred dollars but we all know that that money would be wasted so when he decides to call off the political hit and instead channel his violent energy to save iris he chooses the path of creation he becomes the rescuer cowboy instead of the villainous gunslinger it's no coincidence that he wears a king kong patch pickle is a lot like kong he's doing what he thinks is the right thing to save both betsy and iris but he's doing it in a clumsy and destructive way so even if i'm saying he chooses the better path it's still a messy one but even though he chooses to save iris he still wants to die he downs a bottle of pills and at the end of the gun fight he tries to shoot himself but he's out of bullets all he can do is point a finger gun at his own head in a way he does die at least the rage-filled lonely man inside him dies so that he can be reborn start anew and reintegrate back into society in the end he saves a girl by killing some gangsters pimps and lowlifes he becomes the hero of his own story only for him to go back to his life of driving a cab the important thing is that he focused on what he could change rather than what he couldn't now i'm not advocating for anyone here to attack a brothel in your city or whatever but just to think of the film more metaphorically maybe we can change our depressive mindset by focusing on the things that we can change like how we treat other people how physically active we are what job we have how we dress how involved we are in our communities or any number of things rather than focusing on the things that we can't change it's easy to wallow in sadness and blame systems beyond our control for our own failures or lack of happiness but to pointlessly lash out at them is fruitless and can sometimes and oftentimes lead to our own self-destruction we have to make our world better before we can make the whole world better [Music] you

Channel: The Kino Corner

Views: 123,494

Keywords: the kino corner, taxi driver, travis, bickle, martin, scorsese, italian, nyc, new york, cinema, art, kino, theater, drama, film, filmmaking, harvey keitel, robert de niro, sport, jodie foster, paul, schrader, writer, LA, 70s, 1970s, cannes, Oscar, Academy, palme d'or, western, cowboy, godfather, taxi, salo, king kong, literally me, sigma, male, lonely, loneliness, another round, cybill shepherd, albert brooks, talkin to me, prophet, contradiction, america, secret service

Id: 1Sa_GWPZ3as

Length: 14min 35sec (875 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 15 2022