10.) Taxi Driver - Recut
This film is responsible for one of my favourite re-cut trailers which manages to transform a dark, psychological drama into a light hearted, generic romance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_UaVUPsLsM
11.) The Screenplay
"Age 26, lean, hard, the consummate loner. On the surface he appears good-looking, even handsome; he has a quiet steady look and a disarming smile which flashes from nowhere, lighting up his whole face. But behind that smile, around his dark eyes, in his gaunt cheeks, one can see the ominous stains caused by a life of private fear, emptiness and loneliness. He seems to have wandered in from a land where it is always cold, a country where the inhabitants seldom speak."
You would never have got away with such a wordy opening at the scriptwriting course I attended and yet Paul Schrader's novelistic passages do a brilliantly detailed job of immediately absorbing you into the strange and isolated mindset of Travis. Schrader was down on his luck when writing the script. He was living in his car and had just split from his girlfriend and the script became a form of therapy to help fuel the anger that he felt from his weak emotional and physical well-being.
12.) Lobby of Love
It's become a rare commodity these days but Taxi Driver was made simply because a few passionate individuals felt that it needed to be made. Martin Scorsese wasn't confident that the film would find an audience and he certainly didn't expect Taxi Driver to become as critically acclaimed as it did. Rather the picture was 100% artistically driven and made up its own rules as it went along. As such there is a raw intensity to Taxi Driver which isn't seen very often in a studio system obsessed with budgets, box office numbers and audience friendly changes.
13.) Jackson Browne - Late for the Sky
My favourite scene in the film is when we see Travis pointing his gun in the direction of the tv which is depicting a show where a number of couples are dancing. It is yet another sign that Travis is losing his mind and his helpless, sleep depraved facial expression arouse both sympathy and scares. Jackson Browne's haunting ballad Late for the Sky plays over the sequence and what a perfect soundtrack choice with the record capturing all the anguish and sorrow that emanates from the images on screen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvApmCuZads
14.) Improvisation
De Niro and Keitel first showed their ability to improvise during many key sequences in the film Mean Streets. In Taxi Driver the pair first exchange in a tense, edgy conversation in which Keitel's pimp character winds Bickle up about being a cop. Bickle smiles it off but it is a smile hiding a manic anger waiting to explode. It is a shame they haven't had more screen outings together because the chemistry between these two actors is just fantastic.