The Ministry of Film
The art and politics of classic films. Presented by Carolina Saludes and Robin McGhee
The Ministry of Film
Taxi Driver: Part 2
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Carolina and Robin come back for part two of their deep dive into the heart of darkness of New York City, a young angry man, and rampant capitalism.
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. Plus Carolina's rant about making these films disappear off our screens for a bit. Please.
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De Niro went around and he said that the thing that really struck him about being a taxi driver was the randomness of it, right? So people remember he explicitly is saying that he goes all over the city.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And yeah, he doesn't care.
SPEAKER_00He goes to Queens, he goes to Blah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he doesn't go to like Staten Island, which is interesting. He's going to the sort of dodgy parts of town, which is the first time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but like you need a different film permit for Staten Island. I imagine I don't know.
SPEAKER_02I don't know, but I bet you that's the I think it's because anyway, it's suburban, it's like nice, it's not the brutal city. Anyway, but basically, so Robert De Niro said that the thing that really struck him was the randomness of it and the way in which somebody would get in, and you don't know if they're going to ask you to go two blocks down or if they're going to ask you to go a couple of hours. I mean, I've experienced this being in like taxi ranks. I remember being very struck by this thing when I was once when I was a child in a taxi rank, and the person in front wanted to go to like the airport, which is like two hours away, and then the ta and the taxi driver that we were getting was just taking us like a few streets away and complaining the whole time about how he just missed out on the guy who was gonna give him you know however much for taking to the airport.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, that's they they there's something like black calves in London, also like kind of loving getting stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the airport that was like, Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, my not my choice, like then meter's just like ah that's gonna be 120 quid.
SPEAKER_02Which is a thing in this in this scene where he's meant to stay outside this guy's how the whole complicated scene, but yeah, and he's just told no, no, no, just keep the meter going. I don't care, I don't care how much it is. Um but yeah, so I think that basically this therefore is at the core of it, always going to be at the core of it. A film about a taxi driver is always gonna have random chance in it. Yeah, and it relates to aspects of Travis's character that this means that there are sudden changes in what's going on. So Travis himself, for example, was a very contradictory person, like he eats like crap, but at the same time, like obsessively works out, for example. And in the same way, you have these situations where like on the one hand you'll get like characters symbolizing moral good, kind of, uh, although that's a whole thing. But um, Charles Palantine, the presidential candidate, you know, and he like has a nice conversation with Travis, and then he gets out, and then Iris sorry that they have a chance encounter because Palantine and his and his chief of staff get in his car, get in his tickets. And it's all complete chance. So chance encounter with Palantine, like kind of good, and then chance encounter with Iris, who at least represents like the underbody.
SPEAKER_00And it's like these so these two like very reminiscent, by the way, of like the chance encounters that that we have both had with voters, with where again, very chance encounter. You knock on a door and you're like, I don't know what I'm gonna find. It might be like someone really nice, it might be a great conversation.
SPEAKER_02You never know, although if there's a nasty dog there, I always uh yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, see, I like dogs, but like yes, I have been bitten by a dog putting a leaf. Yeah, and it was not fun, it was not fun. Um, but yes, you there's also that chance, and I think it it just feels so true to like us as like people who campaign, like how similar that is to dog knocking. Like they Palantine immediately turns it into an opportunity to engage with a voter, right? And goes like, oh, tell me more, like, how would you make this city better? And then obviously uh Travis, who by this point is hinged far right. Like, well, he does the whole like I would clean up this city, and he doesn't say anything explicit, like I would clean it up off XYZ people or XYZ things, but you sort of understand what he means, um, both physically and figuratively clean up the city. Um, but it is really interesting that like Palantine just sort of kind of does the stoic politician, like, right, right, yes, no, I guess you're right. It's very hard to try to do that.
SPEAKER_02Travis's encounters, his random encounters, are reflected also his profession, basically what I'm saying is his profession is brilliantly suited to his personality. And that all the other encounters he has in the film, whether it's via him driving a cab or not, it kind of they all are, but they're all completely by chance, with the exception of he writes a letter to his parents, and then obviously at the very start he decides to become a taxi driver. He has his obviously he has to he there's one person he talks to as a result. And every single other interaction he has is basically just like randomly encountering people, and I think that it's therefore just this very it means a very, very common trope in like all kinds of drama and literature that you know someone is like pushed randomly effectively through things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and expresses something about how one feels in the world that everything is random, nothing is explained, you have no control over most things that happen to you. Like it's it's a it it it's very easy as an audience member to connect to that because that we have all felt that way. Like you suddenly randomly get one job and not get the other, you you get the job in this city, not the other, and suddenly you're building your life in a place rather than right, and yes, it's all random.
SPEAKER_02The whole thing, and yes, there's always a huge element of random chance in most people's lives, it's fair to say. Um, but especially in the city, this is the thing, it all this relates to the way in which the city creates uh these countless random encounters, and you know, the taxi is the ultimate example of this. And it's just so interesting, I think, how it it's all all these themes connect to each other in the film in the sense that it it's therefore about Travis being the ultimate expression of the city of the random person. There's a word that I really want to mention, the word sonder, it's a neologism. And Sonder was uh developed by um the Dictionary of Obscure Soros. It's a wonderful word.
SPEAKER_00Uh meaning It sounds German, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I mean I mean the it's as I said, it's a neologism, so this is all deliberate. But he the the word essentially means the idea of how a distant person you see for a split second uh by chance has an inner life as complex as yours. So you're seeing them for a split second, you know, a window uh you see somebody in a window, you walk past someone in the street, you see a car flashing by with somebody in it. And the person nevertheless, even though they only appear in your life so briefly, is actually experiencing what you're experiencing, and that's so difficult to grasp as a person, but it's a it's a central part of being in a city. I mean, if you live in a city, you're describing you're describing the song You're beautiful.
SPEAKER_03Really?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because it's a random, it's a random encounter with some beautiful woman in the tube, and he just goes like, Wow, like I I saw I saw you like across the the carriage and I thought you were beautiful, and like now you're gonna go away and I will never get to be.
SPEAKER_02I don't know the lyrics.
SPEAKER_00It's yeah, it's very good. Anyway, for just listen to it, guys. Anyway, I'm but no, that that is that is wonderful. I I wanted to say two things that connect to to that the randomness because you've made me think of it. One, uh I was recently in India uh for work and we were we had to be driven around everywhere because frankly, Delhi is so polluted, so dangerous, it just you you kind of like commit yourself to like the taxi, the the the cars that belong to the hotel, and then do that. So it has this really weird effect of like you spend a lot of time with a driver. So I spend like a whole bunch of days with this driver, so I got to know him like relatively well, guy from the Punjab, blah blah blah. And he was telling me that a lot of men, a lot of young men that come to Delhi to seek better opportunities, they don't know what else to do, and they start driving. Like, one of the reasons why the driving is so bad in Delhi is that you have all of these people that like they don't have any licenses, they don't have any like blah, you just you just like manage to like cobble together enough money for like a little pedicab and then off you go, right? Like it's it's all fucking chaos. And it really reminded me of this. Like, this guy was like, Oh yeah, you know, like he was describing his life and it was like an a lot of an enormous hardship. And I I was I was just sort of like aghast by like how natural he was about telling me his life, and like how what a difference it made the fact that I was at the back of the cab and he was at the front of the cab. Do you see what I mean? And also the fact that in a city that it is as polluted, it was already, I mean, it was February and it was warm and like just anyway, just well I encountered the same thing in Cairo.
SPEAKER_02Yes. There we go.
SPEAKER_00Oh, Cairo is very, very similar vibe. So the car ends up becoming your fortress, right? Like this thing that you like get out of as little as possible. Because I remember like just like opening the door, you step outside for like five minutes and like you start tasting the air, like your lungs start getting a little bit wheezy, like it's really not good.
SPEAKER_02So a reflection of what New York would have been like, Precisely.
SPEAKER_00So like it really remembered.
SPEAKER_02The smell is sort of there, even though you obviously can't smell it.
SPEAKER_00And New York has a huge problem with with bin and bin collections, like a huge rat problem. Like you really have a concept of bins, it's so bizarre, it's so unmanaged. Like, I'm sorry, Americans listening, like we love you mostly, uh, but like your cities are so badly run. Like every time I go to an American city, I'm like, what is happening? So what is happening?
SPEAKER_02One of the things about Taxi Driver is that it actually does capture a distinctive vibe of New York. I mean, I've talked about how the visuals and sound design create this a an a very, very strong aesthetic sense of the period to the extent that it feels like a costume drama. But it also captures it's it's mostly a film extremely of its time.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um trying to capture this that bit of the 70s. But the uh one one way one thing it does do that is a permanent thing is that there is actually an element in which New York does still feel like that. The dust, the pollution, the rubbish is very distinctive.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like I was really I was really surprised when I went to Tokyo how much a city that big can feel so different to any other big city I had been to. Because Tokyo is it's not loud, it's quiet, it's extremely clean, it's very organized. Like the try the driving can be a little bit chaotic, but like I was like, oh wow, a city of 32 million people can actually like function pretty like well. Whereas you go to New York, you're like, Jesus Christ, like it is the noises, the blah, the smoke, the it is such an overwhelming experience. It's really interesting. I think I do think New York is like a specific place. We both live in London. London is a big city, it's not quite as big as New York, but it is nowhere near as overwhelming, I think, as New York.
SPEAKER_02It's not comparable at all. I mean, I've not been to a city that is comparable to parts of New York City in terms of the sheer busyness. And I think you also touched on a really important point about the car as a physical thing. So it's a fortress for uh Travis in the film against the outside world. The forced um the filming reflects this because, of course, any scene shot in the car necessarily has this slightly claustrophobic element to it. So it's forcing him also to engage with people, but he also doesn't engage with them properly because there's the dynamic of the front seat and the back seat, and he actually doesn't ever really turn around properly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, ex except when he looks at the the the guy played by Martin Scorsese who was planning to kill his wife. We'll come back to that in a second, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um so it's a very again like a marvellous concept for how do you shoot a film about loneliness that you shoot in a car because you have the dynamic of the car versus everything else, the shell, but then you also have within the car the front and the back, and I think that that constantly creates this this excellent dramatic framing dramatic framing for the actual for the visuals.
SPEAKER_00Also, the car is the ultimate American invention. Like I cannot I cannot stress this enough. Like having studied architecture, we we talk about this often. The the way that the car shaped American life cannot be underestimated because it sort of came right at the perfect time where like you know the trains had sort of like joined east and west, had been like all of the tumultuousness of the 19th century, and then comes this thing that allows for individual movement, and it just completely shaped how American cities are made, and therefore the car is like such a symbol of American, like American-ness and American masculinity, but like having your own car, having your own way of like going around. So, like I think it's a very clever, as you say, like plot device. It does make it, to be honest with you, like this film says a lot about you know American the American working class, like uh the relationship with the military in the States, about like young men in the States, but it is a very American experience. Like, I what I what I really detest when I hear like commentary about this film is that this is somehow a universal experience. No, it fucking isn't, right? Like, in the same way that uh there are certain things that are very idiosyncratic of the UK that you just kind of don't find anywhere else. Like, let's not pretend to ourselves that like something that is experienced here in a very British way, like, is is eponymous like with with everywhere else. Like, you would not get a Travis pickle in Europe, not in that way, you would get a different sort of guy with different sorts of problems, but like that concoction of lack of welfare net, that sort of like the cara's my fortress, or like the the the totally easy access to guns, like it there's all of these things like combined in a very specific way, um, but it's not universal.
SPEAKER_02I think I would relate that to the aesthetic of the film being so focused around 70s New York. And I if I don't think I've articulated properly, I actually really, really like the aesthetic not just of the film, but more broadly of New York from that period. But um this is this is true, and also the sense of this decaying imperial capital. So the Vietnam War having broken 30 years of illusion of American America being impregnable uh since World War II, and the the the way this is combined with the.
SPEAKER_00I love how we all we all collectively forget Korea.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well that was slightly different as a venture. But I think that the way that it it's this yes, it's the decaying imperial capital.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Economically decaying or perceived to be.
SPEAKER_00You had films like Escape from New York, like all of this sort of like dystopias, right?
SPEAKER_02Which is Judge Dread, like from this era. Yeah. And I just really think that collectively it is an expression of itself. We haven't even talked at all about the the production context of the film in terms of like the new Hollywood.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I know, I know. We we should. So the the last thing that I want to say about like the randomness, right? And it made me think of it, and I think it's actually really beautiful. Look, I'm not the biggest fan of Paul Schrader. I think he's he's very talented, but there's something he there's something really, really good going on here. Uh, by the way, I would recommend uh First Reformed, which is this film that he did about uh I really enjoyed it. Um yeah, I mean it got it got appropriately reviewed, but actually in the canon of his films, like it's it's it's fantastic. But going back to American Psycho on to your point about randomness, it's really fascinating, right? Like I said, um Christian Bale as uh Patrick Bateman is kind of at the top of the pile of New York society, you know, with his reservations at the dossier. It's very funny. And the New York that you see them.
SPEAKER_02And how he just he just gets away with everything because he's so rich. 100%.
SPEAKER_00But if you remember, like one of the refrains in the film is that like he is exactly like a cookie-cutter copy of any of the other guys. When they're doing the like comparisons in the of the business cards and stuff, they're all competing to see like when they're gonna make VP. They're all like the more that you go out of the hierarchy, the less randomness there is, to the point that he is, you know, he's engaged to an excellent comparison. Yeah, is he is he's engaged to write Greece with a spoon, like the kind of civil shepherd character who despises him. Like they don't they have nothing in common, really, as people, but they are the sort of people that would be together at the right sort of age. So, and you see this in British society as well, like you kind of you you kind of go up the the kind of class structure, and then you get to a point where people just kind of do the things that is expected of them with zero risk, zero randomness, zero agency.
SPEAKER_02One of the terrifying aspects of certainly sort of being in your sort of thirties or whatever, and having just the the number of people that just do the same kind of stuff in a very interchangeable way is quite alarming.
SPEAKER_00And and I think I think it this speaks again to that sense of agency that Travis is trying to find. Like, I I it is really interesting in that like actually I think Travis does one the uniform more. One of the things I find with guys who leave the army and I'm surrounded by them, you you lose the one identity that you were given.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he he is not ever in uniform.
SPEAKER_00He's that but and but he has the the Mohican. Right. Whereas Patrick Bateman, he is in uniform all the time, and his uniform is his business suit, and like that's that's all he is. Do you remember the scene where like they all confuse each other? It's like, oh Paul, you're Paul from London, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Multiple scenes.
SPEAKER_00Not Paul, yeah. Like, are you Patrick? You're Paul, it doesn't fucking matter. Like, you could be any other guy because they're all interchangeable. But but it's fascinating, but like that your your idea of of randomness is actually played with in American psycho very beautifully because he just desires like escape, like chaos, escaping from that rigid structure, and like that's where he sort of starts like killing people, like it's just sort of like absolutely goes out of his mind. So they kind of come across, they come into the same problem from the opposite direction, like a life so restricted to this this this economic and cultural media versus a life totally excluded from any kind of belonging, right? Like it's just yeah, like he says, like he says like a whole bunch of slurs, but you know, the fairies, the blah, the gays, the whatever, like all of these lost people. Um I mean I think that there's anyway, it's like it's like galaxy brain, but like I do like that in the con uh look, Paul Schrader is not really interested in talking about women, right? Like he talks about the male experience, and he's explored that in in different ways. I think Clause is a little bit of an element of Taxi Driver because Betsy is clearly Betsy and and then Alba Brooks, the the other campaign manager, they are clearly like well universe-educated, well-educated, like upper middle class people.
SPEAKER_02So yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so so I think that comes into it.
SPEAKER_02I mean, one aspect of the film that I do like is that I'm not really going to pretend that this is something that the people who created the film uh have that they can understand.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But it is a film that that is centred around working class life um in a way that is quite refreshing even now, even though it's so much part of the culture. So um it's very notable that the campaign staffers who are, you know, as you say, like university educated, whatever, they they're the other. They're very much the other.
SPEAKER_00They're the only glimpse of that kind of New York, apart from Palantine when we see him in the c in the game.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. And um whereas otherwise Travis himself and everything that he engages with is very much stuck in the in the working class experience or the the underbelly. Uh not necessarily financially, there's although, you know, everything is driven by money with him with the taxi driver of the title. But I think that you know it's it's so interesting and you know good that it actually really tries to just have it's not just that it focus if that it is focused on the working class experience, it's that it others the the the non-working class experience.
SPEAKER_00I I I love 70 cinema, and you can talk a bit about like kind of new the new kind of wave of Hollywood film. I love 70 Cinema because it is so it is so new and so transgressive. Taxi Driver, although it is a film of its time, feels like a modern film. Like even three or four years beforehand, it's like, you know, but like in 74 and 75, you're getting Chinatown, you're getting this, and then it's it all starts to, you know, you're you're getting Star Wars, like it's all starting to look like a proper modern film. Like um, 2001 we talk about all the time, it's 1968. That feels like a 60s film. That is that is of that of that time. It it's sort of trying to bridge, but aesthetically it's still there. Whereas Taxi Driver feels like much more of like in construction, a much more modern film. Um, but yeah, I I love that the 70s focuses on working class stories all the time. An officer and a gentleman, a film that gets gets derided as being like just like some romantic comedy. It really fucking isn't. It's a really tough movie. Um, and it talks about exactly this a young guy who has lost, who is literally nothing without his uniform, falls in love with a girl, blah blah. It's a working-class story, right? Like the guy has I think he shouts at one point in the film, it's like, I'm nothing else. I'm like, I'm nothing, I'm nothing without this thing, without the army. And it's it's it's fascinating, but like Saturday Night Fever, working class story. Like just you have all of these amazing examples.
SPEAKER_02I don't like that one, but but yeah.
SPEAKER_00Sure, but but it is undeniably a film about uh like uh the sort of Italian American like working class like community. I don't think it's in New York actually. I think it's like New Jersey.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, where the th the the value the thing that they get is um Yeah, and it's about disco culture and like all that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_00But like, but it is I love that the US was still like Hollywood or the system around it or whatever was still interested in making working class stories. Like I I am so tired of seeing the same luxurious apartments in in modern like TV and film, like everyone just being incredibly well off. We just sort of like assume like like I can't remember the last time that like I I watched like a real film, like maybe like someone like a like boyhood or something like that felt like a very real like American film.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, boyhood actually, I mean I didn't like it very much, but it is good at that, like it feels like normal life.
SPEAKER_00It feels like normal life.
SPEAKER_02The guy's dad in boyhood, I think, is really to me Ethan Hope, yeah. Give it is a good impression of of yes, reality.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um but anyway, yeah, so so it it is nice. Th I think this is why you one of the reasons you and I are both so attracted to the aesthetic of this film, because it's it just it feels so real.
SPEAKER_02Like just the griminess that and the cinematography, and again, they really would obviously Have thought carefully about this. I don't know the exact details, but interestingly, the cinematographer had done like two films before. I mean, a really astonishing piece of work that he was able to pull this out of the back.
SPEAKER_00I mean, he did like Alice and then um Mean Streets and then this. It's like insane. Like always, like uh Martin's cause as a came fully formed into the world of film. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_02And just the way that they they made um the they made the film's uh visuals to be this single uh aesthetically coherent thing, and what they did with that is partly by you know using specific kinds of cameras and then complementing uh that with just the the griminess of the environment, the way in which they were even though it was grimy, it was also just aesthetically quite cool, like the clothes in particular and it all blends together absolutely beautifully and creates a very distinctive thing. And when you especially when you combine that with the the editing work and also the sound. Um and the sound is often used to sort of give you an impression of something happening. If you like so as I said, like Travis is surrounded by sounds that he is part of but also isn't part of. So the sounds of people talking and joking.
SPEAKER_03There's layers. These are very layers.
SPEAKER_02When he when he goes to the pornography uh cinema, he you hear the porn and you see him, but he's and that sort of detaches, gives you a sense of his detachment from the reality of you know loving sexual relationships.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I I I just think that that's a constant theme throughout this of the sound in the background.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the sound is amazing. We talked about the importance of sound with uh the zone of interest. This film definitely does that, where it goes sound number one, sound number two, sound number three, sound number four. So you get this like cacophony of New York, which has been talked about in all kinds of in all kinds of films. Um uh Clint Eastwood talked about it in um not a matter of life and death. There's like a walk through the the thingy of life and death. This is like film from like the late 90s where like somebody from New York goes into like a small village and like takes a tape recorder with like uh the sounds of New York uh recorded in it so that they can sleep in the street.
SPEAKER_02So I have not come across that. It's so good.
SPEAKER_00Um anyway, but yeah, but like I think the cacophony of New York sounds is a very well-known uh aspect of New York that like people sort of develop a slightly Stockholm syndrome thing to it, where like they kind of miss it when it's not there. Um so the film does a really good job. It it does that with uh the way that it's shot. So that first scene that we talked about, where like you've got Travis, and then you can see the guy interviewing him, and then behind him you see like some like it's like a police person, and like there's like some an entire different film going on like there in the background, and then behind them there's something else going on. So at any given point you have so much. It's also a film with like lots of extras, just like people in the streets, loads of cars, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02Like it's actually like a very like a very luxuriously built world in a way, and uh it it is luxuriously built world, and and again, that's why it gives me the sense that it it feels like a costume drama. But I would also again kind of repeat the the point that it by creating all this stuff happening in the background, it reinforces Travis's own loneliness, but it also reinforces the sense of being lonely in a city, as in this stuff happening all around you. You know, Travis is a good okay, a good way of describing it simply is this Travis spends his hours outside of work by himself, he spends his hours in work with other people continuously, yeah, and that indicates the way in which you can be lonely in a city.
SPEAKER_00And it's uh because city can be really dehumanizing, right? Yeah. We obsess with you know, we were talking about local councils and like uh local authorities this morning. I was talking about it last night as well.
SPEAKER_02We talk about it all the time.
SPEAKER_00All the time. That like the the like local authorities touch people's lives, are the are the actually closest touching point of politics with people's lives throughout their lives, right? Like the the potholes, the lighting, the bin collections, the safety, the schools, the local police, the and taxi regulation.
SPEAKER_02And taxi regulation, right? It's actually local government is mentioned almost immediately in this film when uh Travis is referred to a point about how he has to you know engage with the sort of regulation that the city is doing. He's very much part of the geography of the city, and the geography of a city which again, in the context of 1976, had just been declared bankrupt two years before the local authority. It's so fascinating how again he he forms part of the geography of the city. I I think one thing by the way that you mentioned just now is really interesting. Um you mentioned about how it dehumanises things. Um he is dehumanized. His he is selling his labour power because that's what he has to sell. But he also because he doesn't have his skill, many skills other than that, but also um he's completely reliant on machines. So the whole thing is about him being almost part of a machine. Like you don't hire a taxi driver, you hire a taxi.
SPEAKER_00I and I and he is it's do you know what is do you know what it's reminding me of? Um this is gonna sound an apologies because we we will come back, we'll we'll try and keep it like um tied. This is why it's a great film because you can connect it to a lot of other pieces of art. But um the the book Lady Chatterley's Lover, yes, it is about two people falling in love, blah blah blah, whatever else. But it is profoundly a film about class and a film about technology and how technology changes the relationship between workers and and the the the upper classes, right? Like in that this is in the context of like the first world war in in the UK. I I actually think that like Vietnam US coming out of Vietnam is not dissimilar socially to like the UK coming out of the first world war, where like like society just kind of went upside down, everything that that was normal stopped being normal, and there's a whole strand of that film around all that Mellers that the the gamekeeper has to offer is like his physicality, is his is his brute force. The miners only have like the brute force of that, and then you have the cars coming into the into the village, you have like all of this technology, you have like big conversations had between all the landowners being like, Well, we're not gonna need any of the villagers, you can just fire them all, right? Like, technology is gonna be doing all of this, all of this stuff. And you're right, that like if you're a working class person, like your arms, your legs, your capacity to work, that's it. That's all you've got.
SPEAKER_02Like, and it's an interesting contrast with so um the comparison is often made.
SPEAKER_00By the way, this is extremely reduction. I'm so sorry. Like, I would I don't mean to say like every working class person, but like there is something to that experience.
SPEAKER_02We're trying to draw out some themes, I guess. I mean, uh, the film is very often compared to two works by Dostoevsky, so Nose from the Underground and Crime and Punishment, both of which Martin Scorsese, the director, absolutely loves. I think Scorsese said something about how he's read everything Dostoevsky ever did. Um I think that it's it is interesting to compare to Crime and Punishment, where Raskolnikov is who's basically a character very, very similar to um to Travis. He's so depressing to me. Okay, I'm very I'm simplifying it again, but for the purposes of argument, he is he has lots of similarities, as in he is mega lonely and a bro.
SPEAKER_00And exists and exists in this society that is like like kind of amoral and falling apart.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and he and he tries to kill people in an extremely bloody way, in this case by hacking his landlady to death with an axe. And essentially, Raskolnikov, though, does come from an extremely middle class environment. In fact, one of the issues is that Raskolnikov like doesn't want to work, he he's meant to be a sort of student and he just like can't be arsed doing anything. I'm simplifying it, but like, and that's a very interesting contrast with the guy who works super hard. He's such an American version, you know. The Russian, the Russian equivalent, you know, doesn't want to do anything, whereas he very much does want to do stuff. He wants to work 12 hours a day, every day. And um he does, and part of his madness is from the fact that it doesn't give him meaning.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it doesn't give him connection, right? Like this man, as we said, like my theory is that like this man is actually desperate for connection because like being alone in his like jail-like little studio apartment is more lonely than being in a car with randomers, even if the whole uh experience is completely dehumanizing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's kind of fake. I mean, one of the things that he does is he creates fake connections for himself all the time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, you know, sort of makes makes a sort of friendship with the other taxi drivers, you know, sort has this like really imperfect friendship with Iris. Um I would love us, um, because at some point we'll have to wrap up, but I would love to just have us as a strand on women in this film, as ever. Uh very explicitly, Paul Schrader talked about the the dichotomy between Betsy, the campaign manager, and Iris, the the young, the the child prostitute. Um you know, the first one is what he desires but he can't have. And the next is what he could have but he can't desire. And it's it's quite interesting to me that there is that economy. Obviously, there's the whole Madonna like complex going on, which is deeply annoying. There's the fact that like we you don't, other than um, other than Betsy, you don't see any other women that aren't prostitutes in this film. Most most of the people are like either passers-by, like they're like passengers, or there are very clear shots of like uh women who are prostitutes, like outside of uh porn cinemas, blah blah. There aren't there aren't like and again again to care quotes like normal women, right? Like there's there's these like extremes. Uh Iris is beautifully played. Uh both of them are beautifully played, but like um Iris is especially beautifully played by Jolly Foster as this like kid that has this sort of age behind her eyes. She looked like this carob little child. I by the way, there's the the the character of Iris really, really turned me off the first time I watched the film. I hated it. I it she's because she is a child, but like my my niece is 13 and I I'm just I'm just ho uh horrified like by everything. And we exist in a world of Epstein Files and it is wholly horrifying.
SPEAKER_02Well, the I mean I think it is important to emphasize that first of all, I mean Jodie Foster is a very, very great actress, and it's very obvious that she she's a prodigy, and um she was able to play it this role at this age. I mean it it's an extremely charismatic and effective performance. But I also think that um it is always child prostitution in this film is not it it is basically depicted as as entirely horrific. And you're you you do it's depicted as entirely horrific, but even in the very bizarre way that um that Travis approaches it, it it's something that contributes very much to his sense, it makes him snap about the immorality of the So this is interesting, right?
SPEAKER_00Like we're discussing this in 2026, and I we were we were talking about this before, that uh Robin is a very nice man, he's a really lovely person, uh with like very healthy relationships, and you just don't look at things like quite that way. Uh I I would totally agree with you in that like it is obvious that even Travis, someone who's like going crazy, recognises that this is a horrendous situation. However, apparently Paul Trader was interviewed about the scene with Harvey Kaitel. Uh, that Iris had obvious that even Travis, someone who's like going crazy, recognises that this is a horrendous situation. However, apparently Paul Trader was interviewed about the scene with Harvey Kaitel. Uh that Iris has, you know, in the implication is that Paul Trader like hired Well, Paul Trader, yeah, like slept with a child prostitute and that but it's not just that. Yeah, sorry, sorry, so the story is uh Paul Trader came upon a a child prostitute, uh again, scare quote, and uh decided over the back of that to to create the character the character of Iris when so far as introducing this prostitute to uh Jolly Foster and her mother, uh and Jolly Foster's mum. So and they had breakfast together and sort of like exchanged stories and and and so on and so forth. But like beyond the fact that it is very possible that Portray is a pedophile, um, but it's not that, is that he in his mind the scene between Iris and Harry Kaitel, like her pimp, is a demonstration that actually she has free will and she is there because she loves and wants to be there. And this is the authoral intent thing where it's like, well, it doesn't matter what he thinks because like what comes across is different. Uh it is interesting to me that like apparently um uh to be clear, the 70s was extremely not okay with uh the depiction of a 13-year-old uh prostitute, right? And and there is something to telling really transgressive stories, like you saying this is a thing that happens, this is a thing that has happened. I listen, I am very, very, very harsh on the film in that I this film doesn't hold any social responsibility for what it is doing. I don't I'm not saying that it has to, but I think in discussing this film, it is important to say that this film is frankly like unconcerned with what it is doing to glamorise this. And and we may think that it isn't, right? But it's like you have this beautiful child being put in like clothes that are just uh unspeakably not of her age. I I I think it is very easy if you're if you're someone who's like not disposed to love this film, you watch any scene with Jodie Foster in there and you go, Yes, that is a good actress, and like I no, I do not want to be anywhere near this film. And um to be very clear, Travis is Travis uh the the the character of Travis Bickle is like I don't want this person's world. I don't like I I've got very harsh thoughts on that, but I will leave that aside. But just in terms of like the the the woman in the film, like it's tough. I'm sorry, it's like it's tough to watch it. It's tough to watch a a young kid presenting this.
SPEAKER_02Um it is very horrible.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the conversation with Harvey Kaitel, right? Where like where he's pimping the the kid, right? Like, and and Travis is kind of like trying to find a way of seeing Iris again, and so he goes to the you know, goes to her and she goes, Well, talk to this guy, talk to sport, and so he goes to talk to Harvey Kaitel, and he describes all of the horrible things that he could do to her. And guys, like I there's listen again in the world of 2026, of like so far about what a million and a half files of like an entire network of people doing this to children. I I just it is not okay to consider this anything than like horrific. And and putting it on screen is like it's a work of art, right? And it is it it is an extension of like expression and creativity, but at the same time, I'm so fucking tired that I have to be couching my words when all I want to say is, what the fuck? Take children off screen like portraying prostitutes. What the fuck are we doing? This is not something to glamorize. So yeah, I I I have nothing good to say about the idea of Paul Schrader doing any of that, the idea of putting it on screen. I respect Jolly Foster so much, and I'm so glad that she had a wonderful career. I love all her work, like I love her work. Um, but I would rather see her in Bugsham alone than see her in this, and and it's that is that is just kind of where we are.
SPEAKER_02Well, I think that it's very horrible considering that uh when you consider that the the the writer might have actually sort of sex with child prostitutes as part of any uh uh yeah, and then and then that it's reflected.
SPEAKER_00I I don't give a shit how he justified it. Like I do know what I mean. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02I mean the the fact that this was written by someone who's clearly a very horrible disturbed person is um is quite quite interesting in terms of like how to then consider the way the film works. I mean I um I think that yeah, it's kind of as I said, I I think okay. One thing that's interesting is to contrast it with Betsy. So the campaign staff are as we were saying earlier, they are othered as middle class people, and they're the only people who aren't like messed up in some quite profound way. I think that also, um though they look quite hip as well.
SPEAKER_00They look quite cool.
SPEAKER_02They look quite hip. She looks incredible, so it's uh she's in white, so she's like a depiction of innocence. But what's interesting is that they're not innocent. They are they are creating the uh political failures that America has just had through Vietnam and then through Watergate. And they are in a sense a the surface level on the surface level they appear to be um entirely innocent and and normal in in a sense, but actually they're not. Um actually they are just a reflection of the uh catastrophic moral failures that have resulted that have come from the American political system in the previous decade of this film being made. And you know, the the city itself is bankrupt as a result of you could say competent political decisions and the federal government refused to bail New York out. And I think that so therefore for them to be this pre in this presidential campaign sort of contrasted with the evils of the underworld of New York, uh in which the writer of the film might have been engaged. I think that or probably was engaged. I think it's uh it's just interesting. It's it's it's more it it's I mean of course simplistically contrasting them.
SPEAKER_00And and Travis identifies uh Palantine as the enemy, right? Like he identifies him and tries to kill him, identifies him as the top of the tree in terms of being the problem. Like, I'm you know, we need to clean up this city, and in his mind, as like he is something to clean up, right? As as much as everything else is. And the point is part of the dirtiness.
SPEAKER_02He is something to clean up because he is. And we talk about cleaning up politics all the time, by the way. Yeah, we talk about cleaning up politics. And he's in a nice suit and he's very smooth talking. It is worth saying when I'm saying all this, they are actually depicted constantly as being like kind of nice and also like intelligent and well-meaning people, including Palantine himself. Um, but the my point is just that it's a surface-level thing. As much a surface-level thing as like the fact that um Iris sort of wears clothes that are too old for her is meant to sort of indicate that actually she's very underage. They are they have the sort of the veneer of them being nice and so on, but actually what the American political system is doing is horrifically unethical.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that's yeah, I would maybe compare them in that sense. Um I'm not sure what the intent was actually there. I don't know if that was a deliberate political statement. Uh Paul Schrader does seem to have been, yes, a very politically right-wing person, unsurprisingly. But like, but I They're all the same.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It turns out no, they're not. Um, so uh actually let me connect it slightly in a slightly skewed way, but uh again to try and kind of get us get us to a kind of a point of conclusion at some point. It is the the film is quite hard to place from a genre perspective, um, in that maybe it's kind of a thriller. Obviously, Martin Scouses have described it as like horror-like. Um, there are elements of it that are kind of boy meets girl, right? Like there's a little bit of like a romance thing or the possibility of one, to especially the first half of the film. Um, I think this film is a perfect neo noir. Like a perfect neo noir. There's obviously it comes out the year after Chinatown comes out, which is one of my favourite films of all time. We should do it one day. It is incredible. Um, but it has all of the it has this structure and a lot of the aesthetic actually, um, and a lot of the tropes of a of a noir film, and then obviously neon noir because it it it then incorporates the the the sort of the the slightly grittier, as we said, like new Hollywood like age kind of elements, right? Like you wouldn't have had like a 13-year-old prostitute, although you had like all manner of like suggestions in the like in the especially in the the late 30s, early 40s, before the Hays Code really like kicked in. I there is a film from Humphrey Bogart, I think I've recommended it before. It's called In a Lonely Place. It is about a Humphrey Bogart, uh, a screenwriter. He was a little bit older at this point, and he he's got writer's block. Um Gloria Graham moves across the courtyard from the apartment where he is. The guy's like totally like an alcoholic, and they sort of have a thing, but then maybe not, and he goes, he goes crazy, and that it is very similar to the structure of this film, and it is the most perfect film noir. Like, I it is constantly in the top tens of like film noir, and it's one of those interesting ones because like I think double indemnity is perfect, but it I I'm surprised that one is really well known, and and and one isn't as well known, but in L and On Only Places is perfect for like the the falling down of a man, the breakdown of this man, or like he and and it all comes from like the suggestion that maybe there is maybe there is happiness to be found with this woman, and then it just kind of and then it doesn't, and then just all of these things kind of like unravel around him. Um so yeah, so I to me like the literally 10 minutes in, I was like, wow, this is a this is a neon noir, and wow, it's amazing. And to be fair, it finishes with a with a shooting, right? Like it's got like the police element. Is got he kind of fashions himself as like not a detective but a sort of like justice warrior in some way. So like it's I I uh to me it made a lot of sense, like but but it is a hard film to classify, and like there's kind of no point classifying the genre of it. But and obviously, like Martin Scottosa would have been watching all of these films.
SPEAKER_02I think we should wrap up by talking about the ending.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02So it is worth mentioning there.
SPEAKER_00No thoughts on neon noir.
SPEAKER_02God, I no, I'm sorry. Okay. Let me let me talk about neon noir.
SPEAKER_00No, it's right, it's fine. But yes, let's let's wrap up. But yeah, do do tell me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so it is neon noir. Um and I think that neon noir is an interesting way that new Hollywood works. So the new Hollywood directors in the 70s, because what they're they're doing is they are deeply, of course, steeped in conventional Hollywood. And they are trying to make like conventional Hollywood films that are popular and that are anyone can go and see and enjoy. So the supreme examples of the new Hollywood are The Godfather and Star Wars, both of them two of the most successful films of all time. And then of course Jaws. And Jaws, actually, that's a really good point as well. So those are some of the most successful films of all time. Taxi Driver very much not one of them, and uh it made a profit, but like it wasn't a huge deal when it came out. But I think that what they are doing there for is they're building on the noir as a sort of it of classic Hollywood. Like it's it's it embodies classic Hollywood really.
SPEAKER_00And presumably like with financing it would have made sense and the kinds of script like it just it's just that it's in the woods.
SPEAKER_02It's just a good kind, you know, a mystery or a s a somewhat violent film, you know, is is a good film, and aesthetically it really 100%.
SPEAKER_00And it's and it's a very American genre as well. Like I I I the the noir was very, you know, your Raymond Chandler's and stuff is is a very kind of um uh American refraction.
SPEAKER_02And this, of course, taxi drive is an incredibly American film.
SPEAKER_00Uh oh yeah, this is what I'm saying, like it's so idiosyncratic of that that time. Um but yeah, so alright, um the ending of the film.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so basically there are two scenes in the ending of the film. One of them is where uh uh uh insane fantastic like idea for how to shoot it and how to frame it. Um Travis is sitting in his horrible bedsit, having come out of hospital, and you see you know all this because the camera pans past uh clippings from newspapers that he's got on his wall about his killing of various mobsters. Yeah. And it's the voiceover is Iris' father, a letter that is written from Iris' father just saying, Thank you so much for saving our daughter. And then the second scene is where Travis encounters Betsy in the back of his cab, who's like impressed with him. And um he then goes off with a so long into the distance in his cab.
SPEAKER_00He he like he forfeits the the fare for Betsy. It doesn't take her money.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he doesn't take her money, and he also yeah, he's bumped into completely by chance, as with everything. So, okay, so what can we take out of these? I mean, well, the argument that a lot of people have made is that it's all meant to be a dream.
SPEAKER_00Um I have to say, like, I I wasn't trying to like dig too deep, but as I was watching it and not really remembering how it ended, I was like, oh shit, yeah, that's a dream. Like immediately I was like, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think he desperately wants success. So I don't really buy this actually. I think that I don't see a problem with the idea that he could have actually had a success. So people say a a particular example is that one of the clippings, one of the newspaper clippings, says something to the effect of that hundreds of taxi drivers came to his hospital where he he was in a coma or whatever from having been in this gunfight.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I which is again this idea of like community, which is I don't know that it would happen.
SPEAKER_02I I don't know that it would happen, I get that. Um, but I think in terms of it being a dream-like sequence, I mean it's completely in line with the tone of the rest of the film. So, you know, this sort of irony, the slightly weird humour, but that is actually quite funny.
SPEAKER_00But at the same time, the dreamlike quality is also part of the film, right? So it is quite ambiguous. Like, I don't think I don't think the conversation exactly, I don't think it's that interesting. It's like the film plays with like dream and reality and what is inside of Travis's head versus what is outside in the real world versus what's ironic and what's real. Like it like it's okay for it to be ambiguous.
SPEAKER_02Like it is I think it's it's basically it is completely ambiguous, same as Travis being in the Marines, or whether he actually was, um or whether he's just making that up. Um I mean Travis does like make loads of stuff up, and he does he is a fantasist, but he also isn't, like he is shown doing extremely I'm not saying heroic, but certainly brave objectively brave acts like shooting this guy that he encounters in a uh But then at the same time like yes absolutely but then at the same time traumatizing the girl that he's trying to protect by shooting the pimp that she has a relationship with right in front of her.
SPEAKER_00Like this kid will never be the same, right?
SPEAKER_02Like it's yeah, and Iris is a very going to be a very fuck fuck person.
SPEAKER_00Sure, sure, sure. But it's like it's a sort of everything it's imperfect, is what I'm trying to say. It is extremely not just imperfect, but like really horrendous and flawed. By the way, just a tiny note, like that we've said that that scene of the the the shootout at the end of the brothel is really well done. There is there is a shot that I'm obsessed with, and I bet you it was quite new when it was done, which is that when the shooting ends, uh Travis has tried to like kill himself in a whole bunch of ways by and and I say kill himself because he's like quite methodical about it. So he he tries to shoot himself with a gun, it's out of uh bullets, he tries with another one, he tries with a third one, and then he sort of like gives up and like lies on the sofa and like points at his own head with like his fingers and just blah. At that point, the camera shifts to like being like a ceiling shot that tracks out of the room and like into the corridor where you can see all of the various bodies lying down. I cannot stress enough how brilliantly done that is, and the music is this like jazz again, it connects very much to the it reminded me a lot of the Chinatown soundtrack, like like this sort of like deep noiry jazz, like sad, like saxophone and stuff. It's so good. It's so good. Um, but yeah, like that shot, incredible, and then we go into the hospital, and then yes, and then it kind of and then it really switches gears, right? Because it goes kind of quote unquote back to him with longer hair, driving his cab, looking pretty normal, looking pretty like alright, like relatively even keeled.
SPEAKER_02Some people have sort of said about that that the implication is that he's just going to do it again and he's going to keep doing mad stuff. I don't really think that's right. I think the implication is this is a single, tightly bound one-off story of this guy going batshit crazy and then essentially kind of recovering. Essentially, he's he's expressed himself. And I think that's very telling because it shows that actually you know, Travis it's it's kind of optimistic about Travis. Like I take it very, very literally. I think that it's very straightforwardly about Travis desperately wants to do something, perceives himself as having done something exciting or rather morally worthwhile by killing a load of people, and um and then going back to driving his taxi. And possibly trip possibly, it's unclear actually what really happens, but possibly saving a child prostitute. Um and then just goes back to driving his taxi, and it's like, well, the implication for me is well, he can just go on having his lonely existence in New York just part of the infinite city, the um the endless sonder of the city, and he can keep doing that, but it's it but he'll feel satisfied with himself because he will have actually done something. He'll have got his, as I was saying earlier, his heroes.
SPEAKER_00He will, he would have like, yeah, right, he would have scratched the itch. I I have to say, I was very harsh on the film. We texted about this like when I watched it afterwards, and I think uh this film suffers from the same illness. I'm gonna be harsh here, but like this is listen, I'm I'm hoping that this connects with how some people felt about it. Um, I felt similar to how to when I watched Network recently, where actually it felt like a left-wing fantasy of what how the right wing might behave. To me, the the end of Taxi Driver is like a pretty wimpy attempt by someone who's like otherwise pretty liberal in a pretty liberal environment, imagining what that might be, and then what what being like someone going down like a right-wing rabbit hole might be like, and then and then fantasizing about how that might end. There are zero consequences for Travis. He seems to be like an alright guy. I'm sorry, but like most of these people are not alright, right? Like the New Zealand shooter that shot like 20 people, the guy who like went in and murdered like a whole bunch of children. Like, I'm sorry, these people do not fucking deserve the idea of like heroicism. Like the the film is, I think, too much too kind to what Travis does with his craziness. Travis uses his craziness to like quote unquote save Iris. I don't actually think any of these fucking characters, and I I put them in the same bucket because blah, mental health is a really bad thing, as I say, welfare welfare net first and foremost, right? But I think by the time you get to like doing something like that, experience will tell us over the last 40 years that the way it is done is by being indiscriminately cruel towards other people, not in ways that are like selected and heroic, actually. Do you know what I mean? It's it's 18-year-olds with like a fucking grudge going into a school and killing half the schoolmates. It is it let's not be grim about this, right? But like I don't want any glamorizing of people that go down the deep end this way and do this. I don't want anyone looking at themselves in the mirror and going, you know, you looking at me, wah, ruh. Like, none of this should be a blueprint from anything. Like, and and the fact that really the end of the film kind of goes, well, and then he goes back and he drives a cab, and you're like, what the fuck no? Like, what the fuck no? Like, this is not this is not how any of this would go. And there's just such a fucking fantasy. I think I So So yeah, so that's that my I had a very gut reaction to this.
SPEAKER_02I think I agree. I think you're being you're not recognising, I would say, that one of the things, the dramatic successes of the film that makes it so impressive, is that it's able to depict this madman in a very sympathetic way, in the sense that you are forced to and by sympathetic I mean literally likable way. One of the things that's quite striking about it is that even though Travis is a very lonely, horrible, complete maniac, no redeeming features at all, yeah, you nevertheless kind of find a sense of him that's like, oh he's oh he's a bit funny, or like oh he's a bit charming, he's a bit sexy, he's a bit blah. Yeah, he's like sexy, like and so you I think what I'd say is that it's a very impressive film that is able to do that.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, I uh yeah, I've got like a two-minute thing to say about it.
SPEAKER_02Okay, the the other thing I would just briefly say is I don't really think the film tries to go like we talked about the um the immorality and the horrible shit that the writer had probably done. I would say though that it kind of basically just says all the characters in it are kind of horrible, and I've explained why I think that Betsy is also horrible as a representation of the uh the immorality in American politics at the time. Um and yeah, even Iris is kind I mean Iris is like kind of like No, she's great.
SPEAKER_00She's just a kid.
SPEAKER_02She's just a child, and she's maybe kind of exempted from oh man, yeah.
SPEAKER_00She's exempted from all this.
SPEAKER_02It's difficult to it's hard.
SPEAKER_00I will say so on the and I will give myself like literally like 90 seconds for this. I again, 2026, we have seen school shootings, mass shootings around the world, very often inspired by people who were inspired by who were then inspired by Travis Bickle.
SPEAKER_02Well, directly the film directly inspired the nearly successful assassination attempt.
SPEAKER_00Mass shootings were not really a thing at all until the 70s. At all. And like you look at the statistics and it is frightening.
SPEAKER_02But that's because of gun violence. It's fairly funny. Because of deliberate policy around.
SPEAKER_00Deliberate policy and everything else, right? So fine. So this is a thing that happened. These things too, these two things happen at the same time, correlation, not causation. However, as somebody who loves films and wants films to also to depict a variety of stories, this film unfortunately falls in the category of films that is totally overrepresented. You know, you've got you've got Joker, you've got Jokerfully advanced. You've got like I, you know, you've got Dexter, like when I got I, you know, and and and things like films that I love, right? Like the talents of the lambs and stuff. I I hope that I speak for some of our listeners that I am sick and tired of engaging with the brilliant, brilliant, no, like great talent being put to the use of describing and portraying and sympathizing with people like Travis. Like I I will give you an example of this, and I I will be brief. Uh there was a a short TV series that was released at the end of last year called Heated Rivalry, like a kind of like pulpy genre thing, right? Canadian hockey players fall in love. There you go. There are no out pro athletes on the like in the world. They just aren't. Like in Premier League, NFL, NHL, none. Um the the the entirety of the series is like two men learning to express their emotions to each other, and everyone lost their fucking tiny minds about it. Like it was it has been the most successful show in HBO, like the most successful show. Like it was a tiny Canadian show. It is astonishing to me that in 2026 it is radical to see two men expressing their emotions for each other on screen in a mainstream context. We are so starved for stories that aren't about loneliness and psychopathy and blah and sympathizing with a monster. I'm fucking tired of having no idea. And do you know one of the nicest consequences of that has been? There's a whole subset of women who haven't engaged with films like Taxi Driver because there's no entry point to Taxi Driver, to Goodfellas, to all of these fucking films that demean women and that are like horrible and they're about like things that fundamentally have nothing to do with women, and kind of go, you can care about men, you can care about women, you can care about all of these big things and big topics. And by the way, film is an incredible way to do that. Because by the way, this tiny little show, unbelievably like like unbelievably like filmically and cinematically, like just like sublime, right? Beautiful. But but like this is what I mean. It's like I don't want to see any more Travis stories, please and fucking thank you. We need to move on from this as much as Taxi Driver is objectively a masterpiece. It just it just doesn't it doesn't reflect the ex the the full spectrum of the human experience, much less the full spectrum of the female experience of life, which is just totally like demeaned at this.
SPEAKER_02I think I completely agree. I mean it it is very the theme is really the theme is really boring of you know oh a kind of okay again I I wouldn't actually go as far as to say sympathetic, but a likable maniac um who's a young man um and the focus is all on him um that is obviously massively overdone. I think you also are right in saying that it's a masterpiece in the sense of uh again, I'm such a filmbreaker for saying you know track star is a masterpiece, it's the most obvious opinion imaginable. But the the objectively it's just so well made. I mean, if you're saying you know, and that's where I don't think I'd agree with the thing of you know, women don't have an entry point to it or whatever, okay, but it the just go in there just for the aesthetic of it is my what I'd say in response to that. We've spent so much time rightly talking about, you know, Travis's like mindset and so on. Well, yes, but ultimately it nobody would care about this if it wasn't a beautifully con construction.
SPEAKER_00Right, I and that's and that's what we disagree. I so if we so sorry, if we are going to and I and I promise this is it, but like if we are to talk about Taxi Driver as a masterpiece, then let's look at a different film from from Martin Scorsese, The Age of Innocence, which talks about Count Olenska and like the horrific experience of like being a woman in the early like 20th century. An absolute masterpiece, it does not get talked about at all. I'm sorry, if if the if I am to approach the film bros favorites, then the film bros need to fucking approach all of the rest of the world favourite because there are wonderful films out there that have nothing to do with Tarantino or Wisconsese or with like hyper-violent, you know, Michael Mann. And like these are all films that I love, right? But but I love them because I love cinema in its entirety. A lot of people don't have access to it. The the only reason I mentioned this TV show is that like you have now a generation of people under the age of like 30 who look at this and go, oh wow, incredible storytelling, incredible talent can be dedicated to stories that I care about. That that I care profoundly about because otherwise film is going to be ossified into oblivion. Because you could get away with doing that in the 70s, but like I'm sorry, like that there is a reason the Marvel films are dying. There's like there's there's a whole bunch of reasons, right? But in terms of like the stories that Hollywood is able to tell, it just we need to we need to move on. We need to move on from like telling the same stories about broken men that break things. That is it.
SPEAKER_02Yes, I mean I I agree obviously that does it is really boring. Um and uh yes, but this is so what I would say is maybe that this is the ultimate uh example of that trope, and where the trope is that it works really well. Where it works really well, and it works really well because of the ultimately the filmmaking and um yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean But you can still you can hate Travis and and like the film, and I think I think that's very much where I said I hate Travis and his character and everything he represents, and I I I love the film, but I wish the talents honestly had been put to telling like maybe like a different kind of story.
SPEAKER_02That's true, but I would I would say that 50 years ago this actually was not novel. Transgressive, absolutely but the the context of the new Hollywood meant that making a film even like this, as in that was visually like this, and that also even to an extent addressed some of the themes of this, although it's not the main not the main theme, but that was actually pretty transgressive at the time. Now it's boring shit.
SPEAKER_00Because it's been done to like yeah, to the end of the day.
SPEAKER_02That's where I very much I well, I think we are agree. Um but that's where I most agree is it's now so exhausting. You may I I really like you mentioned an example earlier of like Joker, which I didn't bother seeing, just to be clear. But I uh part you know, a reason I didn't bother seeing it is it's so boring. I mean, I just don't care about that. Right. But the trope that was created by this film, um, or okay, not created, but where it's the ultimate example of it.
SPEAKER_00Um because it's such a good film as well, and and the near is so brilliant, and and it it gave it gave a personification. And we we sometimes don't give films enough credit for creating this this compelling everlasting images. And I suppose we haven't even mentioned like the most famous scene of this film is uh Travis, he's like uh shaped his head into a mohawk and like is practicing, you know, kind of being all big big and mean uh in front of the mirror and doing the whole you talking to me, are you talking to me, and just kind of like pulling out the gun, like in the mirror, practicing what he will look like when he uh avenges and like cleans up the city in a sort of like watchman style way, which again, like there's a lot of comic books, like we haven't even referenced Gotham, but this is very much like New Yorker's Gotham as like you know the lowest of the low. It needs the lone warrior that like is going to save it, like all of this like stuff, which is to be honest, nonsensical because God bless, like social democracy and uh well-funded local authorities.
SPEAKER_02Thank you very much, and uh having a great safe to know not possible under the local government finance framework that we have in England. Um on that on that note, on that note, thank you very much for listening to this epic discussion, in terms of epic in terms of length, um and breadth, and hopefully breadth, about yes, one of the most stereotypical sort of films that that is that are considered to be masterpieces by um a particular demographic of film critics, and which nevertheless it just is spectacularly good, like it it it it deserves its reputation, even though it also is symbolic of people really liking a particular kind of film which is like Yeah, like and and and sadly a lot of people seeing themselves in Travis, right?
SPEAKER_00Like in uh sometimes in a helpful way and sometimes in a deeply, deeply unhelpful way.
SPEAKER_02Especially John Hinckley.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, indeed, indeed. But so if you like what you hear, um please uh rate this podcast, like give it a little like. It genuinely, genuinely, genuinely helps uh a huge amount. Uh we're trying out this whole video thing. If it sucks, well look, just listen to us like you have done beforehand. Yeah, if you like our faces and Robin's beautiful library, uh continue on. And yeah, we will see you in a couple of weeks with something quite different because we've done Leon, we've done Lincoln, we've done a lot of violins and men and a lot of violence and men.
SPEAKER_02We will do things that are not that.
SPEAKER_00Violence and men, exactly. We we've done Alice, which is great and and chaotic, but we'll do something just a bit a bit different and light.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So thank you very much.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for listening.