Taxi Driver: Part 1

Robin and Carolina stay in the depths of New York City, this time looking at all-time loser incel Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese's seminal Taxi Driver. There was so much to say that, for the first time, the episode will be split into two parts.

Politics include: Bobby de Niro raging his own Vietnam War on the streets of New York during the grossest-looking bin strike; young prostitute Iris creeping the heck out of viewers; the slimy US politics of the mid 1970s, which have not changed all that much; and a load of over-glamourised military paraphernalia. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello, I'm Robin. Hello, I'm Carolina. And welcome to The Ministry of Film, the podcast about the art and politics of classic films.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Today we're talking about uh Taxi Driver, the insanely famous film by Martin Scorsese, 1976. Everyone watching this will know this film. But before we get into like the the nitty-gritty, what it is about and all sort of stuff, um, very first impressions. How did this film make you feel this time around?

SPEAKER_02 0:26

It's a sad film about sad people in very nasty environments.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

It's brilliant. Please stay on. It's gonna be a great film.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

It is sad, it is sad. Uh you're very aesthetically drawn into it to the amazing visual design, amazing sound design. But yeah, it's a sad film. What uh how did it make you feel?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Um, so different to last time I saw it. We often talk about how different our first impressions of a film are, especially if you watch it when you're young, and then you revisit it and you're like, my god, this is actually like very different as an adult. Um, first time I watched it, I was uh Jody Foster's age. We've got some form with it, because I watched a lot of films at an age that I shouldn't have. I think I was a little bit too young and hated this film, like hated this film with a passion that it's like yeah, it really turned me off Scott Saturday, which is a shame. Um, but I then obviously like went and watched this other work and loved it. This time round, I I was aghast at how beautiful the film is. Like it is just it is the most beautifully made, edited, like like soundtracked film ever. It's great. Uh so that alone gave me a lot of joy. Uh I we will talk a little bit more about it, but like it it made me feel real rage that we are still focusing as a society on people like Travis. Like uh, um he people like him really do not deserve the amount of care and beauty bestowed upon them. So that that was my first like my gut reaction, but I really enjoyed it watching at this time, which I I know it's a crazy thing to say about a film that is like so overwhelmingly like sad, but I I I enjoyed watching it in a way that uh I didn't think I would. So yeah, loads to love.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

I mean, good to know.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

I am uh I like sadness.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Like like any like any film bro, I basically always have thought that it's fantastic ever since first seen it, but then that's a very film bro opinion.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Uh it's this is a film about men for men, and we talk about those all the time. And like this is so squarely like a film for men. Like there there was no avenue into this film as a 13-year-old girl. There just wasn't, and Jodie the Jodie Forster character, we're gonna talk about her, she's amazing, but I detest her character. Um detest, like I don't detest her, but like she's incredible, it's just the character's really flawed, and it wasn't really a way-in for me as a as a teenager. So, anyway.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Yeah, so I'll explain what happened in the film with the usual spoiler warnings.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Oh, yeah, like I'm sorry guys, like come on.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

We're always doing spoilers. So essentially, this is a film about a guy called Travis Bickel, and keep that ridiculous name in mind because it relates to the kind of undercurrent of irony throughout a lot of the film. Travis Bickel is allegedly a Vietnam veteran in America shortly after the Vietnam War, where he is unemployed in New York, we assume he's unemployed. He goes to an office of a taxi company and basically is hired as a taxi driver. He wants to work all over the city, including the nights, and we're told that it's because he can't sleep nights. And the film basically is about his grappling with the moral depravities of New York and his contribution to the moral depravities of New York.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

He is He's both above it and not above it.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Yeah. He I'd say basically two main things happen. The first one is that he falls for a campaign worker on a presidential campaign, and when she spurs spurns him due to his, you know, idiotic behaviour uh and c and and and misogyny and dangerous behaviour vibes, he attempts in principle attempts to assassinate the presidential candidate she works for and fails. The other thing that happens is that he meets a twelve-year-old sex worker, Iris, and we'll discuss their relationship, but it's something to along the lines of he in a somewhat kind of innocent but also kind of menacing and sinister way, befriends her and tries to sort of save her from her environment, and he ultimately ends up killing large numbers of people in the sort of horrible brothel that she that she works in. Um and ends up a bag of joy. Ends up apparently being in a apparently being faced as a hero. In between all of this, um he has various encounters with, you know, the the nasty characters that he meets around New York driving his cab.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Um what are your like big takes for this episode that you want to talk about?

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Um okay. It is almost impossible to say something new about Tyson Driver. So we're gonna try and say some of the like the main beats and the main sort of like impressions and so on, and then I will try to say some new stuff. I I don't know if this is a new take, but to me, the more I watched this film, the more I thought this was the the perfect mirror of American Psycho, uh, which is another portraitor written uh novel, or he wrote the novel. I don't know, I can't remember if he adapted the novel onto screen. Uh put a pin on that one. I I can't remember. I don't think he was anywhere near as involved as as he was with this, uh, because him, Scottese, and De Niro were like pretty much like attached, they were very close and they they're like attached to the project from the very start. But the two stories are very similar, but one it kind of comes from like so to speak, the bottom of New York society, and the other one comes from kind of the top of New York society, but they're the same, it is the same story. It is a man absolutely like losing himself and like going mad in a in a world of like, is this a dream? Is this reality? What is a dream? What is reality? Is he actually just like a representation of like hell or something? Um, but yeah, to me it's like basically taxi driver walked so that American psycho could take over Manhattan. Like that that vibe. Um I don't know if it's a particularly new take. And also like, I think this film has a lot to say about the failure of the state. I think it has a lot to say about like the dismantling of the welfare state, of whatever the welfare state could have been uh in the 1970s in the US. I I think. I think no, I think that's not too galaxy brain.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Definitely the right take. I mean, the the decay of the idealism of 60s uh great society, uh unquestionably, through the bankruptcy of New York, the moral bankruptcy of the US through the Vietnam War.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

FBR would have shaken in his grave.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

Well, yes, although also the film is in some ways a sort of depiction of a very vanished universe of extremely sort of ethnically divided working class communities. Obviously, that is still very much a thing, but just in the the style of historical New York where different images violently clash with each other.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Yeah. Um I mean my by the way, like very reminiscent of Do the Right Thing, which I watched a few months ago. Yes, it is, and like it's got so much of that, right? Like all of the various communities kind of kind of helping each other, hating on each other, and like in the summer.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Yeah, yeah. Um so I think one thing that I did think is very interesting about this, which is again, it is discussed. This is not an original point, it's just the role of chance and luck in the whole thing. Yeah, the whole thing is driven by chance and luck, and and we'll talk about that.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Yeah, um there's uh yeah, in a way, uh we should say often we talk a little bit about whether we found information about the film elsewhere. So like Cleo 5 to 7, no one had talked about that film. Like it's our podcast and maybe like one other. Yeah, I like that instead. Taxi driver is like reams of like podcasts and reviews, like Letterboxd has like tens of thousands of reviews, quite mixed, actually, like a little bit more um, much more nuanced than one would maybe expect. And then all of the traditional reviews are like fawning, obviously.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

I mean, it it is just such it is the iconic pro film. I mean, it just is.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Um with all the good and all the bad. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

In my opinion, its reputation is very justified. I think it's one of the absolute greats of Holly Hollywood. Um the other thing I was gonna say about just a take that I might have about this is just around the extraordinary way in which it actually creates the vibe of New York in the period. It is it is honestly one of the great depictions of an era, uh very much a vanished era, um, and it it is simply one of the most amazing ways in which a historical period has depicted itself on film. It feels like it's a costume drama, because obviously it's not, but the amount of just something about the way that the some stuff to do with the cinematography, uh some stuff to do with the exact the exact political moment of the of its uh when it was made, and also just this very this very um aesthetically distinctive period in the 70s where and it just comes together in this very very flares everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Uh this film sort of makes sense to go slightly more chronologically, and I think sometimes we we hop around between the beginning and the end of the film, and I think it's maybe easier to kind of position ourselves where we are. As you said, we sort of start the film with um this guy who is clearly not from New York asking for a job, and it's really interesting because it looks exactly like him signing up to go to war, and we're gonna see this a little bit later on.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

I had not thought of that, I like that.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Yeah. Um he does the same thing when he goes to try and meet Betsy at the campaigning office. He puts his hands on the desk and he goes, I want to volunteer. I had not thought of this, and I really, really like that.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

It's very good.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

So so just to say that like the positioning of the film from the very start is it puts the the military undertones like there, they're explicit. So he says the the guy who's interviewing him is trying to figure out who he is, like, you know, school grades, and he's like, mmm, and like you know, that does does this whole thing of like trying to like size him up, and then he goes, you know, did you serve? And he goes, Yes, in the Marines.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

And then he goes, push back in his chair.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yeah, I was in the Marines too. Yeah, and he's he's clearly impressed, right? He's clearly like um he's clearly impressed. He's he's clearly like, oh, this is this is one of my guys, and they sort of have this moment of like Rushman. Um it's it's interesting, like that it at that point you sort of assume, okay, you know, this guy has clearly just come from Vietnam. The film was shot in 1975. The I think the final troops came out what was it, like end of 74 and then the unification.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

It was in 75.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

It was right, yes, it was like at the beginning of 75. Yeah, so it was like really, really prescient. It was a little bit with Cleo 5 to 7, actually, where like the Algiers uh war was just like so, so in the air. Um so it kind of needed it did not need explaining, if you see what I mean. Like the audience didn't need explaining, like, oh, this guy has just come back from he doesn't need to explain any of that. We're we're assuming it. Um as the film goes on, and you mentioned this, you sort of start to question whether this guy actually was in the military. I have my own theory on it, and I think it's uh maybe a little bit too sophisticated for this, but but to be fair, this film was considered shot by shot, every reference, everything. Like the Marty Scott's encyclopedic knowledge of cinema is very well known, so everything was considered. So I I and I and before everything else, Portray is a very, very good screenwriter. So I just I want to assume the best of everyone that actually a lot of these things were done on purpose. But yeah, he presents himself as a as a former Marine, he's 26 years of age, he's young, but he's sort of like got this like world-wary like look about him.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

He does not look 26.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

He does not look 26, but he he like sort of physically kind of does, but he's gait, the way he looks at the world, he looks like a tired man. It's crazy. Like if you'd told me that he was 35, I'd be like, I I guess, I guess I can believe that as well. Um slightly ashen face with like a really bad haircut. So yeah, so it's like very convincing that this guy is kind of not not alright. Uh he says he can't sleep, as you say, so like he's just a little bit like out of it. He needs like a job, any job. We see through the film that he adopts more and more of like a sort of aesthetic, aesthetic military like posture, like in the the jacket that he wears, he shaves his head partially and then fully. Uh he buys a load of guns. I think the scene where he buys from like uh something Andy um from the dealer the the guns dealer who wants to want to sell him. Yeah, who wants to sell him like any drug and maybe a Cadillac as well. Um but I I I suppose that for me the first like sort of thematic thread of this is like how much uh the war lingers over civilian society, right? Um this is where I take a step back and it's like this is my take that I hope is original to someone. Like I think the film is an a genuinely very good and very sad portrayal of what PTSD can look like in a man. I think in my mind I square off the fact that he doesn't actually seem to know how to use guns very well. And when he gets presented with all the various guns to choose from, he has to practice. But also when he gets presented with all the various uh guns, uh somebody mentioned this in a podcast, and I think it's a very good point, which is like they're all like film guns, and I put air quotes on that, in that they're all famous guns from famous characters, like the dirty Harry like 44 and like the the James Bond gun, and like they're all Yeah, he just takes them all.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

He just says I'll just have the lot. Yeah, literally just no sense of like that he's someone who knows exactly what he wants for particular things.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

He's not being strategic, he's just sort of like, well, there's a suitcase, so like I'll get the suitcase a thousand dollars, whatever the hell. Um so you do get then like a signal throughout the film, like he doesn't seem like that comfortable in the overalls like kind of military jacket that he's wearing in the way that somebody who had self would I was listening actually to a really good um podcast about Forrest Gump and Gary Sinise in playing Lieutenant Dad actually like worked really closely with veterans and he really wanted to make a more faithful portrait of what it is to be a guy who has lost his legs, who's like completely out of it with PTSD. And and actually, like veterans were really grateful to him for like the great work that he had done representing them. Um so we we we have had like really nuanced performances where that looks like. Obviously, there's like things like Born on the Fourth of July and and stuff like that. I uh there was obviously like not a name for that at the time, but you know, there's there's always like an effort in knowing how to like wear military uniforms, how to like comport yourself. He does not really comport himself like a soldier. Uh he's like this sort of like slightly like weedy guy who's like quite uncomfortable. So I can believe both theories, but what I would believe is something a bit sadder, which is that a lot of the times in military service, what you do is not that impressive. And I hear this all the time from people around me who who are in the forces, that like every now and then, like I've met a couple of people who have done really cool stuff, like a guy that I know did like bomb disposal uh work in really dangerous areas, like that is unbelievably dangerous work, and he is of course very affected by it and has now left the forces and is like hopefully going to be better at some point. But other than people like him, the job of being like in the army, like you're kind of a body. So I can imagine that this guy got discharged at 26, maybe didn't really see so much action, but saw just about enough to be completely broken by it. And and like and to be like both a loser, but like a veteran, but also like someone who like just doesn't fundamentally have any worth in the world. And therefore, I think the film is a really fantastic portrayal of what not just PTSD, but like the absolute terror that is becoming a civilian and having to figure out what your place in the world is outside of the place that you had when you had a uniform. It is the the this idea that he's trying to find agency and an identity I I actually think is quite overt. This film isn't called Travis Bickle, the film is called Taxi Driver. He grows to identify as the thing that he does. He was a soldier, and then he was a taxi driver, and then he's like, you know, whatever whatever he tells himself, or like either like a Marvel style, like you know, urban hero, like a watchman-style like hero. But like it it's it's so entrenched, I think, in the film that like this guy doesn't know who he is, doesn't know how to find himself. Like it's it's you know, and and the more that he tries to do that, the more that he gets like completely lost in his own mental health issues. I d I should say, like, this film is also about someone with like a a load of mental health issues, like PTSD can be part of it. I am I am not a mental health. Some people have suspect of that, or like schizophrenia, but like there's there's a lot of things that you're like, wow, okay, there's like something going on here that is like quite profound, that isn't just the normal, like someone's been to war and like now they're very sad. Um normal, again, scare quotes. So so yeah, so to me, like I would zero in a little bit on like, yeah, that that first scene, and then yeah, when he starts like uh training and kitting himself that he has decided that uh he wants to get back at the world, he wants to like he wants to like clean up the city, right? Like as he continues to say. And uh there's a really great sentence of the being that he wants to like make himself a man, like other men are, right? Like it's sort of it so he he starts to like reconstruct himself as this sort of like proto like military guy. Now my first criticism of the film is that like I I don't think the film was intending to do that, but it really created a blueprint for people who are like that. Like it created an aesthetic and social blueprint for people who are like that. And and there's a lot of that to there's a lot of that in the US. There's a lot of like dudes in Camo who like buy loads of guns in like Vermont, and like it's like sort of like, did you really need to have like a basement full of guns? And it's like, well, you know, it protect like the family and the blah are you okay? Do you know what I mean? It's a sort of like uh it is a very sort of American phrase.

SPEAKER_02 19:25

Also, you know, the film directly led to a near assassination of a president. So in 1981, an attempt was made to kill Ronald Reagan by this maniac who supposedly wanted to impress Jodie Foster, the actress who plays a child sex worker in the film. Um Reagan was nearly killed, by the way. So this is actually I think it's quite an interesting thing. He was very, very nearly died. He got a bullet very near to his heart.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Yeah. Therefore, like the film from the from the start, like establishes, yeah, there's the relationship to war and then the relationship to like the military. And I think I kept having this sense that New York has become this man's Vietnam.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

So yes, and and I think you put it incredibly well, pointing out that when he starts the film in this wonderful scene, which I'll briefly talk about in a second. Um when he starts the film, it's like he's trying to enlist. And as you say, when he goes to the presidential campaign headquarters, it's like he's trying to enlist. And you could easily, I think, see from that the film being a reflection of his Vietnam experience, where he starts with enlisting and it ends with horrible violence, and then the final bit is this sort of heroic bit.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

And whether that's deliberately what he's trying to do, or whether it's what he says he's doing, or whether he's imagining it, you could see it as effectively a kind of extreme aversion in New York of his Vietnam experience. Um I was gonna say about the opening scene, I would definitely sort of like this is what I you know, if I'm kind of like recommending stuff, um we often ask each other our favourite scenes. I'll just tell you now I think the opening scene. So basically Spoiler.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

I'll tell you what my favourite scene is in a second. I will we'll we'll put them in the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

So the opening scene is um extremely excellent at depicting at depicting at giving you an immediate sense of what the film is about.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

And there's a lot going on as well, because you've got the f first plane, especially.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

That's absolutely correct. So essentially, you know, you have uh the camera moving through this kind of horrible but also extremely characterful and aesthetically interesting taxi firm with its uh with its characters sort of like the dispatch guy sitting.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Phones everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

Phones everywhere. And they're doing everything analog. Oh by the way, the film is amazing for analog technology, like stuff like the um, you know, the little meter on the taxis.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

You hadn't got it it is very seventies in that way. Like we hadn't transferred into like the 80s with sort of like, you know, personal computers and blah blah like none of that had happened yet. It's so manual. Like you look at it and you're like, this is closer to the fifties than it is to like anything that we would recognise today.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

When the film was made, it was like closer to the Wall Street crash than to than today. I mean, I really want to emphasise this is a historical part that is substance like a lot of it in Spanish. But I mean listen, 50 years this year, right? Like Yeah, 50 years this year.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

Um but I think that basically the way that the opening scene creates this this character of the city is so wonderful. And then also just the way that the the screenplay is constructed. So as we said, the first thing that Travis says is why does he want to be a uh why does he want to be a taxi driver slash why does he want to enlist? Is I can't sleep nights. And you immediately get it's this it's very well done, it's a very basic way of doing it, whereby a character tells another character about like their biography in like a kind of proper setting, but like it just works really well. Like it means you instantaneously know the background.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

And then also And by the way, the way that it is shot is very similar to the campaigning um Office where like the camera is kind of at the bottom in a sort of like upward angle, right? Yeah, so like you see this guy kind of like hat in hand is a very like 1930s like visual, both times just kind of like almost like standing to attention, being like, here I am, here is me, here's what I want, right? Like here's his like me showing up for like an interview. It's it's really interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

And and um and he is having this kind of formal job interview, but he also, and this is what I also really like about the scene, it establishes the tone of the film so well, which is essentially this this basically tragic situation, this lonely loser who and you immediately understand he's like that, but there's also the irony, the sort of he he like has these these stupid little jokes, and they just kind of work very well in creating a a sense of this kind of ironic humour that is used over and over again throughout the film. So, for example, when at the very end, um Travis kills Iris' pimp, uh, and the way that the pimp dies is extremely played by Harvey Kartell. Uh the way the pimp dies, it's a sort of extremely exaggerated thing. So it's like even and it's sort of funny and yeah, although it's really well done.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Like, I was really expecting like you know in the 70s, right? Like like when we talked about with uh Ridley Scott, like there was no latex, like like um fake blunt technology was really bad. I was expecting it to like be quite shit, and actually it's spectacularly well done. Like I was really impressed with it.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Yeah, I agree. Um I think the other thing though that the opening scene does is it just establishes the way in which sound is used to complement the visual. So again, really, really loads of focus on editing. Scorsese as a director is very focused on editing and he basically edits particularly like the the way in which Travis leaves the recruiting office, whatever you want to call it, um, is complemented by this rising sound. So you have first of all the conversations having with all the phones, as you said, then there's the dispatch rider, this very eccentric guy, driver, the very eccentric guy, and then there are all the cars around, and there's the shouting, and and it just establishes and then the movement onto the street. And this is a very, very strong oral like way of following the characters, but also creating New York, and as you say, so dynamic, like it's so exciting. The film is cut in a way that's deliberately designed to be very exciting, in my opinion, even though by modern standards it's very slow.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

I cannot stress this enough. Like within 15 seconds, I was like, I am so locked in with how this film looks. It is it it it has you know hopper painting uh references, a lot of dark greens, if you can imagine, a lot of like um smoke and a lot of darkness. Uh when we s first see Travis, he's coming out of like this this whole like waft of smoke, right? And uh apparently Scorsese being not an unpretentious man, so that it was like um like he was coming from hell.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Well, he is he's I mean the the the pretentious thing is to say that he's the he's the ferryman on the sticks. So his taxi is like the ferry on the sticks. I quite like that. I mean the the way in which New York we haven't really talked about the contest in New York by the way, but basically the city notoriously went bankrupt in 1974, the municipal authority. Yeah. And basically uh we were talking about this uh before we started recording about the how there was a bin men went on strike. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

But yeah, if anyone has been uh in a city during a bin strike, it stinks. Like it is such a good visual representation, like such a good setting for a film like this where like the tension ratchets and ratchets, because like like New York in the summer is fucking hot. Like I cannot I cannot tell you enough. It's on the same latitude as Madrid. It gets to like 40 degrees, it's really, really hot. Um so that with a bin strike with like a city that's gone bankrupt is like the perfect the perfect scenario for like a guy like Travis to go absolutely crazy.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

Yeah, and he is very much a part of Okay, so let me just say that again. He's very much a part of the worst aspect of the city, and you get the sense that he's manifesting he's a sort of manifestation of the worst of the city in the form of a person. So he's really lonely, he is traumatized, as you say, by Vietnam and by this unpleasant economic context. He is just a faceless person. I really want to emphasize this. So people often talk about loneliness in the film, and loneliness is a m of like arguably the main theme in his life.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Like come on, his studio apartment like has like the the the the gates in front of the windows. He is literally in a prison, right? It's like it's it's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

And um I would say that he has a what he is is in addition to this loneliness though, is that he is a non-entity. He doesn't have the skills to achieve stuff. He doesn't have the like interests or qualifications to get stuff done. At the very start, again, I emphasise very much like how well written this start the start is. He's asked, like, what's your education? Oh, here's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

Yeah, he like he sort of like shrugs when he asks about school. So like this guy has not done his sort of like GCSC, but he's not fixing it.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

So he's like semi-literate, and I think that that so that doesn't inherently mean that he's like not going to get anywhere in life or whatever, but it's just like all builds up to this guy who is like just doesn't really have anything going for him, and he does the ultimate anonymous job of being a taxi driver.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

And I just find that such an interesting way of like it's another angle on the kind of loneliness which is the whole point of the film. He's mega lonely and he creates his own loneliness, but he's just like he wants to be somebody. He clearly knows that he's never going to be able to be somebody, but he tries to get around that by being somebody by pursuing what is that is actually a name for it. I think I might have used it on a previous podcast, called Herostratic Fame, which is uh named after Guys, you come here for this. Yes, this is So I must have mentioned this before. Herostratic fame, the idea is there's a guy called Herostratus, note that I'm mentioning who he is now, who sought permanent fame by burning down the Temple of Artemis in ancient Greece. And as a result, he was killed and his name was forbidden from being mentioned ever again, which is why I'm talking about him right now, because it succeeds. Herostratic fame succeeds. You try and do something terrible in order to make yourself famous. And um Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a short story called Herostratus, but um which it kind of plays on this theme with a guy who commits murder in like a dodgy urban environment in Paris. So um, but I would say that uh like he just it all stems from this fact that like he kind of knows that he's a nobody.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Yeah. I will say, so let's connect that to my favourite scene in the film. Uh we're we're doing everything upside down here, uh, because I think it connects really well to that theme of loneliness where like this film is about loneliness. And I do think generally, like, listen, if you're like um uh a pensive or lost or slightly angry young man, you might watch this film and be like, fuck, like there's so much for me to identify with here, right? Like the loneliness, the wanting to be someone, the feeling like you will never be someone, wanting the beautiful girl.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Um and like you know in all these cases, kind of like I just want to emphasize also it's not that like oh he he's a hundred percent a complete loser. He's actually like quite funny and witty in his own way.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

And he's he's played by Robert De Niro, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:08

He gets a date with What's the Face and uh Civil Shepherd.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Yes, Betsy.

SPEAKER_02 31:14

He gets a date with her, he gets a second date with her. He messes it up, but it's not like he's like a hundred percent complete failure. And then also like he is charismatic. We he's very charismatic when he when he does his attempted assassination, it's not that he like doesn't get anywhere, he actually gets really close to the guy, and you kind of think like it he plausibly could have succeeded in assassinating him.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

So it's always and he is somebody who in a very strange, dodgy way, but he does kind of like I mean he does kind of get Iris back with her parents, right? So it's like it's not that he knows he won't be anyone, but he also knows he has a bit of something to him. Yeah. Anyway, I think I've No no enough.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

So my favourite scene is in a way the film where that I think uh the first half of the film like hinges into the second half of the film. Like I think it is it is what sends him fully down the rabbit hole, I think. He has a a bunch of sort of like nighttime taxi driver colleagues that sort of loosely meet in a in a in a in a in a couple of diners, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:21

So beautifully atmospheric is with it.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Insanely well laid. Like in that way that you're like, I I don't think I would want to be there, but like it looks so cool. So anyway, and so and there's this guy called Wizard, he's the one that tells stories and half of them are fabricated, but he's quite he's charming and he entertains everyone else. There's the the other quiet guy, blah blah, and they sort of take him in and they think, oh, he's young and he's not unattractive, or he's probably like blah, and then almost immediately they see how weird he is and they they nickname him the killer, uh, which is uh so on the nose, but they clock him, right? Basically, like it says something about like this guy is wearing his weirdness on his lapel, like it's it's it's hard to hide. Anyway, so this guy wizard who is much older, so he's maybe in like his mid-40s or something, he's clearly been a taxi driver for a really long time. He gets he gets taken aside by Travis, and Travis says to him, you know, I'm finding this so hard. Like basically he's saying, like, I I've been doing this like nights driving this taxi and it's it's driving me insane, right? It's like uh and he he said something like it makes me it makes me want to do something, it makes me want to do something, and you see the vulnerability in his eyes, you see I think you see him pleading for connection. This is this is a young guy, I think, who is trying and trying to build connection in really imperfect ways, in ways that to be honest, I have seen a lot of young men who are very socially inept try to make connections with the world emotionally and not succeeding. So, you know, uh the the the the going to the the taxi like office to to get a job is like he is try as you say, right? He's trying to get a job, he's trying to get a job and make money, and fundamentally he doesn't really spend a lot of money, so he is through the film he's actually quite flush. He's doing he's doing alright.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

Yeah, this is actually a really interesting point, and I I did think it when I was watching the film, but um I wasn't gonna talk about it. But um his financial situation is actually really interesting, like he has he the whole film is driven by his job, right? In the title.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

And he keeps saying he works all the hours, he works six, seven days.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

You have an absolutely horrible okay, it's like not a shared flat, I guess. But again, because he's horrible like bed sit.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:41

Like doesn't appear to like eat terrible food all the time, like doesn't seem to have really any like legendary. He drinks he drinks a lot.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

He's seen drinking like brandy all the time.

SPEAKER_02 34:50

But he like where's all this my going? I mean, apart from on guns, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

Well, yeah, he does spend like a thousand dollars on like guns in like one go. So yeah, like and bullets and things. Like he uh but it is true that like objectively he's actually doing you know, he could be doing alright. But anyway, so he there's that there's all of these points in the film where he is trying to connect with the world. I understand that Paul Schrader wrote this script when he apparently he like he realized one day, you know, his wife is split up with him, he was like really not having a good time, he was not having a good time with his health, and he realised he hadn't spoken to a single soul in like three weeks, and then and he was like so desperately lonely, right? And that's kind of like the beginning of like of that, and then he obviously took the taxi driver, like, let's call it trope, it's not a trope, but the taxi driver profession as a as a symbolism of that, of being surrounded by people all day but being desperately lonely. Um, I think Travis throughout this film is trying to is trying to connect with people, even with Iris. I actually think the the sweetest scene in the film is when he takes Iris for breakfast and they have an actual real conversation person to person that I can actually believe is Travis having a conversation with this kid, and it's great, and he's trying to say to her, like, your your place is not here. This is terrible, you should be, you should be in school, you should be like, you know what I mean? Like you should be with your parents, you should be with your family. But anyway, but the the reason why the scene with Wizard with his older tax driver is my favourite is because you can see the hope absolutely draining from his eyes. It's such beautiful acting that like you know, he says to Wizard, like I like it basically it's like I'm like please help me. Everything in his like manner, everything in his body language, like please fucking help me out of this, because I hate this, right? Like, I hate this job, I don't think I can get another job, right? Like, all of these things. And Wizard just forbes him off so badly in that way that you can imagine man-to-man relationships in the in the US in the 70s would be, right? Sort of like, all right, old chap, just fucking carry on, stop complaining, just do what you do. I like and and Travis calls him out of it. He's like, that's the biggest load of old shit I've ever heard in my life. And he is correct. This is a young man looking at an older man being like, help me. And once more, like these, these, these themes that we keep talking about in films, about, and we talked about this in Lincoln, old men getting young men to die for them. Like, you get there's just this like inability for like older men to connect with younger men that I think is actually actually fucking crucial in 2026. Um, but I think it's the centerpiece of this film because after that, Travis cuts his hair off, he starts, he starts like getting guns, he just goes down the rabbit hole. I think he decides in his head, this is it. I I can't I can't connect like the girl that I took on a date with, I took her to see a porno because I'm a fucking moron.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Yeah, so their second dates, and but and he's very self-destructive. I mean, that's a big part of it, and his loneliness is self-imposed to a very great extent.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

But but I do think some of it comes from inability, right? Like I think he is trying really imperfectly, and it I I this is why I said that I think this is a failure of the of the state. Like everything around him fails. Everything of what we would understand the welfare like net today, it just does not exist and lets him just fall all the way through. And I and I we we often love, like, and I know sorry, I I know, you know, we're we're both in politics, we care a lot about this, and we talk a lot about like systems, right? And like systems like protecting people and helping them out. But it is true, like, there is a reason why all of us are forced to do the sort of like identify when people are sad and know like no to call the Samaritans and know what to say, because it's in those moments of real vulnerability of a younger man going to an older man and being like, I am not okay and I want to do things. That is the moment of maximum risk and also of maximum opportunity for someone to be like, shit, let me help you, let me help you out of this. So it it is I I see it as like I what makes the film really sad to me is that like it is a man absolutely falling through the cracks of society, like just every single step, like no one is there, and he tries in a really imperfect way to kind of blah and then just obviously like goes down the deep end and it's totally inexcusable. Um, but yeah, anyway, so that's my big please. I I think it I think that scene is absolutely impeccable. I should say Robert De Niro is one of the greats for a reason. He is he demonstrates that in this film. He I uh we were talking about this beforehand. I don't think this film holds up quite the way that it does without everything that he brings to it. Like it is astonishing. I hadn't appreciated how good he was. Um but yeah. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 39:27

Yeah, uh wow. Uh sorry, loads of stuff. Uh yeah, loneliness, a robot and so I think that that conversation with Wizard is wonderfully important, and a big part of that is because it gets to the centre of the existential question, which is ultimately bugging Travis. The existential question bugging America at the time, or whatever, you know. Uh but but the existential question there is why did we fight the Vietnam War?

SPEAKER_00 39:56

Yeah and what was it all for? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

The answer being nothing, or you can read the Pentagon papers if you want about how it was containment strategy around based around China. But um but basically it why why did this happen? And so Travis comes back from Vietnam allegedly. Um we haven't actually said necessarily explicitly i in my opinion he might be faking that he's Yeah, no, we we did talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

We did talk about it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:23

But basically uh he he might be faking.

SPEAKER_00 40:25

I mean there is a moment uh which I think is significant when he he kills the the young black guy at the um And it's a very military thing, he likes ages on his and the the the way in which he doesn't hesitate with how he does it, and that to me in the acting felt like Robert De Niro was portraying someone who actually had done this before. I d I did not believe that he wouldn't have done this before.

SPEAKER_02 40:50

I also think the authorial intent is that he actually was in Vietnam, and I think that Paul Schrader, the writer, has actually said that he was meant to be in Vietnam. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Um as we as we've Yeah, like there's there's something of like overintellectualizing this a little bit, but I I can also believe that he was just sort of like just some soldier. Like there's so many b bits of being in the army that are like just not fucking glamorous. It's not like rescuing people from blah and being like fucking like Rambo. Like it's just so I can also imagine he was just like some guy and he like did some stuff, and as I say, like came back and was just like, well, now what?

SPEAKER_02 41:21

But also going back to so going back to Yeah, sorry uh the scene with Wizards, he is confronted with the existential questions about his own life that perhaps were put off by him being in Vietnam and focusing on this other thing that turned out to be pointless, and then coming back and realizing, wait, I'm just a total non-entity in my job as a taxi driver, at least that's how he'd perceive it. Um I have you know very few skills. I basically he ha he you know he is like he writes a letter once to his parents saying that he's in New York.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

Um, lies exactly and it's very much like a journal, right? It's like he's telling himself all of these things as well, it's sort of like uh yeah, it's all full of lies.

SPEAKER_02 42:06

He's clearly very friendless man. I mean part of the film is about him making a friend, arguably, in the form of virus, but like it he's a very friendless person and he this is the closest he comes to that kind of intimacy. Yeah. Um and tragic. I think that he just he just realizes he realizes in that scene that nobody's coming to help that he is he is alone. That he's alone, and that is a very profound adult thing to learn about. It's a buildings roman, it's it's a coming-of-age story in the sense that this guy who is childlike in so many ways comes to realise that he is alone.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

And this is where I'm gonna bring Taylor Swift into a conversation about Taxi Driver one of her best songs is this song called You're on Your Own Kid.

SPEAKER_02 42:55

I've never read it.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

But it's actually the lyrics are beautiful, but I think it's like the ending of it uh goes, You're on your own kid, you always have been. And it's it is exactly that process, right? Like of like tell her telling herself like it's you, man, like it's you. Like it this it's it's you and your decisions, and that's it. And that's a it's a horrendous thing to kind of come to, right? Like I suppose it's like the final separation with like the nucleus from your from your parents. I don't know. I don't know what that that brings. I'm sure there's like a technical pro like process for this, but like something happens around 24 to 25, 26, where you're like you your brain stops developing, right? Like you're like a fully formed human being, and your relationship with your parents changes, you are like a full-grown like adult. Like you you're sort of entering into like I I do generally believe, and it's usually when like your your relationship with your parents changes from like mum and dad to like a a set of adults having a relationship with each other. Um so it is really interesting to me that he says at the beginning that he's 26. I'm like, that makes so much sense to me that it this is this moment when he realizes he's kind of like alone in the world.

SPEAKER_01 43:59

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

I and and why he's so insistent to Ira is that he should go back, she should go back to her family.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

Exactly. Yeah. He learns from it and he he passes it on to the younger generation, but he also realizes that it's it's himself. This is what I really emphasise about when I said about how he he's not competent enough to really make something of himself, but he also is clever enough to that he knows that, and that is a very horrible situation.

SPEAKER_00 44:31

We talked about exactly the same psychology when we did an episode on The Shining about how by the way, that first scene's so reminiscent of the first scene where Jack Nicholson goes to the hotel to get the job, the the interview with the hotel manager. Absolutely, and and in both cases you're like, this person's unhinged, like Jack Nicholson, Robin Henry are unhinged.

SPEAKER_02 44:51

Both of the films have I would have the same majorism of both of the films, which is that it's extremely obvious that the main character is crazy from the start and is just going to become more and more crazy. And that that's my main crit, yeah, it's kind of like just a bit boring.

SPEAKER_00 45:06

Um Both School says so Skull says it has described this film as kind of veering into a horror.

SPEAKER_02 45:12

Yeah, it does. I mean, especially at the end. Like this.

SPEAKER_00 45:15

I I have something to say about the aesthetic, by the way, and like the influences on like the genre influences, but like we'll come to that.

SPEAKER_02 45:20

I wanted to talk about luck and chance.

SPEAKER_00 45:22

Oh, yeah, please. Yeah. So by the way, I I when you mention it, I didn't I didn't think about the film in that way at all. So I'm really interested because it didn't really occur to me.

SPEAKER_02 45:33

So Robert De Niro actually said so Robert De Niro like famously is this actor who likes sort of testing, you know, he in the when he was in The Godfather Part 2, which where he spoke entirely Sicilian Italian, he you know he's tracy spent learning it. And and then so for this film, he he was a taxi driver for two weeks. Incidentally, the amazing anecdote that supposedly somebody got into the back of the cab and said, Are you the actor? I guess it's hard to get steady work.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, like, you know, the joke is famous, by the time couldn't you like melt your Oscar or something?

SPEAKER_02 46:06

Yeah.