Taxi Driver
Short description
Travis Bickle is a Vietnam veteran living in New York City who has trouble sleeping and takes a job driving a cab at night. Cut off from other people, he watches the life of the city around him and records his thoughts in a diary, growing more estranged from the world as time passes. After an attempt to connect with a young woman goes badly, he becomes fixated on taking action against what he sees as the city's decay, and his attention settles on a teenage girl working as a prostitute and on the men who control her.
Martin Scorsese directed the film, the sixth of the thirty-eight features he has made in chronological order, following Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and preceding New York, New York. Paul Schrader wrote the screenplay, and Julia and Michael Phillips produced. Robert De Niro plays Travis, with Jodie Foster as Iris, Cybill Shepherd as Betsy, Harvey Keitel as Sport, Peter Boyle as Wizard and Leonard Harris as Charles Palantine among a credited cast of fifty-three.
Made for about two million dollars, the film earned roughly twenty-nine million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 8.2 out of 10 from around a million votes, and on TMDB 8.1 from more than thirteen thousand. A critics' rating of 9.5 from 163 reviews places it well above the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Filming period: June-September 1975.
- Sibyll Shepherd accidentally landed the role of Betsy. The producers were looking for an actress who resembled Sibyll in type. Actress Sue Mengers' agent learned about this and asked the producers why they didn't invite Shepherd herself.
- Brian De Palma was going to direct the film.
- Al Pacino turned down the lead role.
- Paul Schrader's screenplay featured several negative characters who were Black. Scorsese believed this could be perceived as racism and demanded that these characters be made white. Schrader agreed.
- Jeff Bridges was offered the role of Travis Bickle.
- Rock Hudson was invited for the role of Senator Charles Palantine, but the actor was busy with the series “McMillan & Wife” at the time.
- Harvey Keitel was initially offered the role of worker Tom. But then that role went to Albert Brooks, and Keitel himself chose the pimp Sport Matthew, although his character says no more than five lines in the script.
- Specifically for the role, Keitel got acquainted with real pimps. He also improvised the dance scene with Jodie Foster. The dance is one of two scenes where the camera's focus is not on Travis.
- For a month, De Niro sat behind the wheel for twelve hours to learn how to drive a taxi. He also specifically studied manifestations of various mental illnesses for the role.
- The scene where Travis talks to his reflection in the mirror was entirely improvised by De Niro. The script simply states “Travis looks in the mirror.”
- Due to her young age (13 years old at the time of filming), Jodie Foster was unable to participate in some of the more explicit scenes. Her older sister, Connie Foster, dubbed for her.
- Actor George Memmoli was supposed to play one of Travis's passengers, however, he had an accident on the set of another film, 'The Farmer' (1977), and Martin Scorsese himself had to replace Memmoli.
- Robert De Niro's future wife, Diane Abbott, appears in the film in a cameo role as a cinema usher. The couple is now divorced.
- Bernard Herrmann did not want to write music for the film, but after seeing the scene where Travis pours schnapps on bread, he agreed.
- Hermann passed away a few hours after the final part of the film's musical score was recorded.
- The phrase from the film "You talkin' to me?" was ranked 10th on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest movie quotes.
- On March 30, 1981, John Warnock Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, then President of the United States. He "dedicated" his crime to Iris, the character played by Jodie Foster.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
