Taxi Driver was released in 1976 and stars Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd, and Jodie Foster and was directed by Martin Scorsese. There is just something about Taxi Driver that makes a movie like this so improbable but yet so successful that it helped define the careers of nearly everyone involved. No one in the movie was an unknown but yet it was treated as though, and budgeted like, it was an independent movie being put out by a bunch of college kids. Robert De Niro had just won the Oscar for his performance in The Godfather Part II and had put in an extremely intense performance in the 1973 movie Mean Streets. Martin Scorsese had also worked on Mean Streets and had just got done with the Oscar winning movie Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Even 14 year old Jodie Foster was a 7 year veteran of movies and television with roles in countless Disney movies and with a role of her own in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. So the major portions of the cast and crew not only knew each other but had done Oscar caliber work together in some cases. So that is what makes something like Taxi Driver so improbable. Today you may not be able to get all of that Oscar talent into one low budget project no matter how great the script is. As far as the script goes the script for this classic movie was written by Paul Schrader in just 5 days and in order to stay inspired to write the script he kept a loaded gun by his typewriter at all times. Taxi Driver was a movie destined to cause some kind of commotion.

Taxi Driver is about a deranged and mentally unstable cab driver named Travis Bickle who is a Vietnam vet that just cannot stand the crime in the streets and the horrible conditions he sees around him. It gets to him so much that he cannot sleep and to help him deal with his insomnia he takes a job driving a cab on the night shift where he gets to see the whole spectrum of what he calls “the scum of the streets.” He attempts to reach out and date a Senatorial campaign worker named Betsy but his chances at happiness with Betsy are derailed when he takes her to see a porno movie on their first date. To Travis it seems natural because he is around that sort of thing all the time but to Betsy it is horrifying and she leaves. Travis tries to apologize but Betsy wants nothing to do with him. Then Travis meets Iris, played by Jodie Foster, and Iris is a 12 year old hooker. Travis spends a lot of time trying to convince Iris to get off the streets and go back home but she refuses. In the end Travis decides that all that can be done is to take two high powered hand guns and go kill the Senator that Betsy works for.

Taxi Driver wound up with four Oscar nominations with one going to Jodie Foster and another going to Robert De Niro. It became extremely successful both financially and critically and is referred today as one of the most dangerous movies ever made. It also spawned one of the most famous movie catch phrases ever when Robert De Niro looked at himself in a mirror and asked “Are you talking to me?” which, as both De Niro and Scorsese would both later admit, was totally improvised by Robert De Niro.