It\u2019s a half-century-old film so darkly prophetic and viscerally relevant that even its makers are still unpacking it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a sense of being isolated, it\u2019s about being lonely and not being able to communicate or connect,\u201d said Taxi Driver<\/a>\u2019s director, Martin Scorsese<\/a>, last night. \u201cFor me, that\u2019s universal. It\u2019s always going to speak to young people.\u201d<\/p>\n On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of New York\u2019s Tribeca film festival, Taxi Driver\u2019s main players, including Scorsese and Robert De Niro<\/a>, as well as Jodie Foster<\/a> and screenwriter Paul Schrader<\/a>, gathered for a screening at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center to mark the 50th anniversary of the movie and examine its lasting legacy.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously there is something in this film that doesn\u2019t die,\u201d said Schrader. \u201cIf we marked [the 50th anniversary of a film] in 1976, we\u2019d be talking about a 1926 movie. So it is very peculiar.\u201d<\/p>\n Released in February 1976, Taxi Driver was an electrifying sensation from the moment it entered into the American consciousness. Making stars of its cast and crew, it was awarded the Palme d\u2019Or at Cannes as well as receiving four Academy Award nominations, including for best picture, best actor for De Niro and best supporting actress for co-star Foster, who was just 12 when the film was shot.<\/p>\n Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. Photograph: TCD\/Prod.DB\/Alamy<\/p>\n A theme of alienation echoes hopelessly throughout the movie they crafted, with De Niro\u2019s insomniac character driving his cab around the streets of a grimy New York<\/a> at night: traversing its then rough-and-tumble underbelly while also ruminating on his own sense of isolation as a 26-year-old who has trouble connecting with anybody around him. It subsequently leads to violent results, as meticulously detailed in Schrader\u2019s script. \u201cEach page was like a razor blade,\u201d Scorsese said last night.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we all read the script, everybody felt really good about it because we identified with it in some way,\u201d added De Niro. \u201cToday, I do understand that people are still lonely, especially with the internet, and in light of the pandemic. People are getting more isolated and getting into worlds they shouldn\u2019t get into, becoming obsessed with something negative.\u201d<\/p>\n A milieu of future cultural woes were foretold by their crackling film: while the image of a disaffected young man with a warped mind and a gun was still decades away (Columbine wasn\u2019t until 1999), the film was played at John Hinkley Jr\u2019s trial for his 1981 assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan, with Hinkley famously on a quest to impress Foster. The archetype of the angry young man has only ramped up in intensity. Even the rise of extremist internet groups and the \u201calt-right\u201d make an uneasy parallel to its pulsating story.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I first read the script, there was something absolutely 100% true and authentic about the character\u2019s disaffection and loneliness that I didn\u2019t really understand at the time,\u201d said Foster. \u201cThere\u2019s no real self-understanding; he allows the audience to witness his descent, unraveling and attempt to connect, but he doesn\u2019t really understand himself. That\u2019s the draw of the antihero.\u201d<\/p>\n Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster discussing Taxi Driver at the Tribeca film festival on 5 June 2026. Photograph: Dominik Bindl\/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival<\/p>\n Perhaps the loneliness of De Niro\u2019s Travis Bickle can be connected to the rise of the digital age as well. In the film, he pines for female companionship, including the beautiful Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), whom he effectively stalks. Today, Bickle could have turned to a chatbot girlfriend; something Schrader himself, only weeks ago, publicly admitted to procuring<\/a>.<\/p>\n While the plot line of its main warped character mirrors the modern era, Scorsese\u2019s film captures a period of New York City firmly in the rear view: an unimaginable cesspool of grim and crime in Manhattan that today is altogether glossed over and buffed out. \u201cIt\u2019s different now, you say?\u201d joked Scorsese, when asked by moderator W Kamau Bell about the changing city.<\/p>\n \u201cI was born and bred in New York downtown on Elizabeth Street,\u201d the director said before clarifying: \u201cThe old [pre-gentrification] Elizabeth Street, not the new one. I remember a couple friends of mine said, \u2018Marty, did you realize something was really wrong when there were stacks of garbage piled in the streets?\u2019 There was something during the shoot of the film where you could feel the temperature and a kind of violence all around you.\u201d<\/p>\n When they were filming in 1975, crime was at its peak and the city was flat broke. (The iconic \u201cFord to City: Drop Dead<\/a>\u201d headline came out that October). Meanwhile, earlier this month the NYPD announced the lowest amount of gun violence in recorded history<\/a> so far this year. Last night, Schrader bemoaned what was lost. \u201cIt was alive,\u201d he said of New York at the time. \u201cI came here in \u201966 and I remember sitting on a curb on MacDougal Street listening to [the Lovin\u2019 Spoonful\u2019s song] Summer in the City, and I\u2019m thinking: \u2018This is the greatest fucking place on earth.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n When it comes to the changing culture around film-making, Scorsese admits he came up in a different era. \u201cI really don\u2019t know much about how films are put together these days in terms of financing and that sort of thing,\u201d he said. \u201cI come from a time where I wanted to make films based in the Hollywood system, but independent films at the same time.\u201d While Scorsese\u2019s recent polarizing endorsement of an AI storyboarding company<\/a> didn\u2019t come up in conversation, the director says that now with technology, \u201cYou can do anything, really. There are no excuses any more [to not pursue film-making]. The key thing is your own will and not be shaken by any kind of hindrance at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Jodie Foster and Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. Photograph: Columbia\/Allstar<\/p>\n Schrader chimed in with a metaphor to evoke the challenges of getting a movie made. \u201cPut me in a lion cage, and give me a whip and a chair. Sometimes you win, and sometimes the lions win.\u201d The bottom line in general, according to De Niro, is to be original in your work and everything will fall into place. \u201cYou can never go wrong by making it your own, because no one can imitate what you can do or who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n Ironically, Taxi Driver has been intimated ad nauseam, right down to De Niro\u2019s iconic \u201cYou talkin\u2019 to me?\u201d line, which he said he came up with during an improvisation that Scorsese said was \u201ctrance-like\u201d. (He said the line for the crowd last night, to raucous applause, after being egged on by moderator Bell.)<\/p>\n \u201cWhy are we [still] sitting here?\u201d said Schrader, with what seemed like a mix of surprise and pride. \u201cA lot of films were made 50 years ago, yet this one seems to redo its contract with young viewers every decade or so.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a half-century-old film so darkly prophetic and viscerally relevant that even its makers are still unpacking it.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-624788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}