Paul Schrader, who wrote the script for Taxi Driver, said after the movie was released in 1976, he was approached by a random stranger who he had never seen before. Somehow this man found out who he was and that he had written the movie. Schrader said the man was hostile wanting to know how the filmmaker found out about him. Confused, Schrader asked what he meant. The man said that Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) was clearly modeled after him.
Recently, Martin Scorsese said in a video interview with GQ that it seems you look around and see people like Bickle everywhere. “We kept thinking in terms of the character and his loneliness and his acting out, not condoning the acting out, but he does act out and yet an empathy with him, which is really tricky,” he said. “Ultimately, what stayed with us was the psychological and emotional state of that character. As we know now, tragically, it’s a norm that every other person is like Travis Bickle.”
The movie reportedly “inspired” John Hinckley to try to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. Hinckley was so obsessed with Jodie Foster, who played the part of Iris Steensma, a child prostitute, he would send her letters for quite some time. Since the movie had a subplot where Travis tries unsuccessfully to assassinate Presidential candidate Charles Pallatine (Leonard Harris), a U.S. Senator, Hinckley reportedly tried to kill Reagan with some people saying it was a way to impress Foster.
But because Pallatine’s security spots Bickle with his hand in his military jacket, they are able to stop him but Bickle runs off without being arrested. He later goes to kill Iris’ pimp, Matthew “Sport” Higgins (Harvey Keitel), a crooked cop who allows sports to operate for payoffs and has sex with Iris, as well as a building owner who allows johns to have sex with Iris in an upstairs room. It was a violent shoot-out that results in Iris being traumatized by the events even as she pleads with Bickle not to shoot the cop. He does so anyway, blowing his brains out mere feet away from her.
Travis sees himself as a hero, but he’s not. There’s something about the voice-over from Iris’ father as he says, “They’ve taken steps” to insure Iris has “no cause” to run away. She reportedly ran away from Pittsburgh to New York City where the movie is set. Is Iris being abused by her father? It’s never known but it feels like Iris is in a bad situation either way. While Travis isn’t the type to have sex with an 13-year-old girl, he’s still a bad guy.
What the movie really shows is how Bickle goes from a lonely taxi driver no one would think is a bad guy to someone who turns violent at the end. When we first meet him, he’s trying to get a job as a taxi driver after getting his hack license. He speaks to the personnel officer (Joe Spinnell) with some sheepish gullible attitude that doesn’t impress him until he mentions he was in the Marines and served during Vietnam. This perks the personnel officer up who at first seems antagonistic to give Bickle the opportunity.
It’s implied that Bickle is a huge racist. Originally Sport was supposed to be played by a black actor, before it was changed. My guess is that Scorsese and producers Michael and Julia Phillips along with the studio Columbia Pictures changed it out of fear of violent protests. I think it might have also angered some audiences especially in predominantly white areas and the south since it’s implied (but not shown) that Sport has sex with Iris on a regular basis.
Quentin Tarantino in his book Cinema Speculation argued that Travis wasn’t in the military as many white people who served during this area also served around black people, so they wouldn’t have the racism he has. I beg to differ because I’ve seen it growing up in the south. Tarantino says Travis is just using Stolen Valor by purchasing clothing in a surplus store. That’s a maybe, but I think either way works. Most of the people arrested and charged for Jan. 6 had military training and background.
We think Bickle is just lonely as he tries to flirt with a cashier at a porno theater or later when he tries to date one of Pallatine’s campaign workers, Betsy (Cybil Shepherd). But then he does something stupid. When he finally gets a second date out of Betsy, he takes her to a porno theater. It’s a very uncomfortable scene. What the hell was he thinking? Betsy doesn’t stay long and leaves taking a taxicab.
Later, he goes to her office and harasses her. But when her co-worker, Tom (Albert Brooks), tries to escort him out, Bickle makes a move like he’s going to fight and even has a gun on him. He doesn’t. Not yet. After he keeps sending Betsy flowers and trying to call her, he gives up. Then, he buys some firearms over a black-market dealer, Easy Andy (Steven Prince). First time watching this, I’m sure people were wondering what Bickle has in mind. Is he going to try to kill Betsy, Tom and anyone else who gets in his way at her office?
Interestingly in between the dates, Bickle has a passenger (played by Scorsese himself) who goes to the location outside an apartment building where his wife is having sex with a black man. But he calls the man something else using the N-word. And when he says this, you can see a change in Bickle’s demeanor as the passenger talks about killing his wife and the man she’s having an affair with. The passenger and Bickle are the same even though the passenger seems like a more business-type person.
Scorsese and Schrader set up Bickle to make it seem all cabbies are odd. There’s Wizard (Peter Boyle) who seems to be the leader of the circle of friend who Bickle tries to turn to when he needs some help. Then there’s Doughboy (Harry Northup), a somewhat simple-minded but friendly cabbie who helps hook Bickle up with the gun salesman. Then there’s another cabbie played by Frank Adu, who is a black person who Bickle obviously doesn’t like but tolerates since he mostly hangs around Wizard and Doughboy. Bickle is so lonely that during a scene in an all-night diner, he sits at a table with the others like someone who doesn’t want to be there but he wants to be included.
After Bickle gets rejected by Betsy, he shuns her. Through writing in a journal that DeNiro delivers in a voice-over, we hear his true contempt for Betsy. But there’s nothing really wrong with her. She’s young and niave at times, which attracts her initially to Bickle. But she sees the porno theater incident as an indication Bickle wants to have sex with her. Yet, even though he does have the money and there’s prostitutes everywhere Bickle doesn’t.
I think Bickle wants to have a meaningful relationship with a woman but there’s something inside of him that screws it up. He hangs out in porno theaters but there’s no indication he masturbates like other people in the theater. He’s starve for companionship that he watches the sex on screen vicariously. During a scene after he’s purchased his firearms, he’s watching young people dance on American Bandstand to Van Morrison’s “Late for the Sky.” The camera zooms in on Bickle’s face as he brandishes his cherished .44 Magnum pistol in his hand and it reflects his true loneliness.
Is this fake sympathy that Scoresese, DeNiro and Schrader bring to the role that make us want to root for him when he kills Sport? But just as Bill Foster, aka D-Fens, in Falling Down, there’s something simmering underneath the surface. Bickle’s narration gives the implication he despises everyone as he criticizes the street life he sees. Why live in New York City? I think it’s because Bickle also wants to be lost in the crowds.
Aside from the fact that he may or may not have served in the Marines, he’s estranged from his parents as he writes out a summary of what he’s been up to in an anniversary card he marries his parents. He lies and tells them he’s been working for the government that is secret. This is why I believe he may have served in the military. But he lies about being in a relationship with Betsy. It’s possible that at 26, Bickle feels he’s wasted his life. This may have something to do with the expectations expected on Baby Boomers in the post-WWII era.
But I think it has more to do with Bickle’s incapabilities in dealing with his problems. He tells the personnel officer he had some schooling which indicates he may have dropped out or barely passed high school. Back then you didn’t really need a college degree. He may have joined the Marines but was dishonorably discharged. This may go with what Tarantino believes his paranoia of black men and he had a black sergeant or commanding officer or just couldn’t function in a squad or platoon.
During the second hour, we see Bickle become more unhinged. When he stops at a bodega while on his shift, the proprietor is held up by a black male. Bickle who had been in the back in a blind spot walks up behind the robber and shoots him. This comes right before the American Bandstand scene and we can see clearer that Bickle is at the point of no return. When he approaches a Secret Service Agent at a rally, the agent can tell Bickle is a problem.
But we see Bickle begin to train harder by doing exercises and even extending his arm over an open stove flame to endure the pain. If someone can watch this sequence inner cut with Bickle at a firing range and not think he is a problem, then they too are a problem. He’s preparing for something by making X carved in on his bullets. This is believed to cause more damage when fired. He even goes to the porno theater making gun gestures with his hands toward the screen.
And DeNiro’s “You talkin’ to me?” scene, while iconic, has a disturbing meaning. Bickle no longer sees himself as the gullible person talking with the personnel officer or sitting in the diner listening to the other cabbies. Watch how he walks up to Sport at the end as he stands on the street corner. He has no apprehensions anymore. He couldn’t get close enough to Pallatine. But he can do this.
In the end, while being considered a hero, it’s likely Bickle be either in a coma or dreaming this. A fan theory has emerged that Bickle dies from gunshot wounds he sustains and the ending is set in another world. There are a lot of things to support that the ending is Bickle’s coma or he’s in another world. Most of the movie is set in the spring summer months, but at the end, it’s in October and Bickle sees that Betsy has gotten into his cab. They chitchat as he drives her home. But how did he know where Betsy lives? She never tells him or we don’t see her telling him.
What we do see at the end is Bickle looking into the rear-view mirror as he sees something that really gets his attention. If Bickle survived his wounds, this means that thinking he’s a hero, he’ll go on to do this again or try to. The irony is that people see Bickle as a hero and we know that’s not true. If he had killed anyone else aside from being involved in child sex prostition, he wouldn’t be hailed as much. But I think it says something about how we view people from NYC. In small-town America, child sex trafficking and abuse is happening but it’s harder for people to accept when it’s a teacher of the year or civic leader, which is usually the case.
It’s no surprise that during the 1980s, the white supremacy milita groups sprung up and become more known following the 1990s following Ruby Ridge, the Davidian Compound Siege at Waco, Texas and the Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma City. There always were Travis Bickles who saw themselves on screen and wondered how the hell someone found out about them. People used to send out newsletters for decades but they didn’t reach a bigger audience as the Internet has.
And since the 2008 Presidential election of Barack Obama, it’s seem to have gotten worse like Scorsese has said. You need only look at the Proud Boys, Three Precenters or Oath Keepers to see people like Bickle. Even as people are being convicted over the Jan. 6 insurrection coup attempt, there still are people willing to risk it all because they believe they are always right and everyone else is always wrong.
And that’s what people don’t see about themselves or Bickle, they’re also the problem. Yet they think they are the solutons. Like Michael Douglas says in Falling Down, “I’m the bad guy?” Yes, they are. They will always be.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 