Taxi Driver (1976) on Netflix
Travis Bickle, a sleepless Vietnam veteran, drives a night-shift taxi in New York City. He fixates on Betsy, who works on a presidential campaign, and on Iris, a twelve-year-old prostitute.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb8.2/101,042,435 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
Travis Bickle cannot sleep, so the former Marine and Vietnam veteran takes a night job behind the wheel of a taxi in New York City. Between fares he sits in adult movie theaters, and in his diary he writes down what he thinks about the crime and decay around him and his wish to clear the streets of the people he calls scum. A campaign office catches his eye: Betsy works there for Senator Charles Palantine, a candidate for president, and he asks her out for coffee. He also tells a fellow cabbie, Wizard, about his violent thoughts. On his rounds he keeps running into Iris, a twelve-year-old prostitute, and he sets out to talk her out of the life.
Cast
- Frank Aduas Angry Black Man
- Gino Arditoas Policeman at Rally
- Garth Averyas Iris' Friend
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Taxi Driver (1976)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Travis Bickle was shaped by Alain Delon's solitary hitman Jef Costello in Le Samourai, and the role of Bickle was actually offered to Delon himself, among many other actors, before it went to Robert De Niro.
- Dustin Hoffman was offered the lead role of Travis Bickle but turned it down because he thought director Martin Scorsese was "crazy"; Al Pacino, Jason Miller and Jeff Bridges were also considered before Robert De Niro was cast.
- Screenwriter Paul Schrader wrote the entire script in under two weeks while recovering from a stomach ulcer, after a period living in his car following a divorce and a breakup, and drawing on his own bout of chronic insomnia that had driven him to New York's all-night porn theaters.
- Even though Robert De Niro had already starred in The Godfather Part II, he was recognized only once while actually driving a taxi around New York to prepare for the role, and he lost 35 pounds while also repeatedly listening to a taped reading of the diaries of would-be presidential assassin Arthur Bremer.
- Travis's mohawk before the planned assassination was suggested by actor Victor Magnotta, a Vietnam veteran playing a Secret Service agent, who told Scorsese that in Saigon a man seen with his head shaved into a small mohawk was known to be about to go on a killing mission and was someone you avoided.
- The MPAA considered slapping the climactic shootout with an X rating for its graphic violence, and the film was booed at the Cannes Film Festival over the same scene; Scorsese secured an R rating by having the colors desaturated to mute the brightly colored blood.
- John Hinckley Jr.'s 1981 attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan was tied directly to the film: he later said he was trying to impress Jodie Foster by imitating Travis Bickle's mohawk from the Palantine rally scene, and his lawyer played the entire movie for the jury as part of his defense.
- Composer Bernard Herrmann finished recording the film's score just hours before he died on December 24, 1975, making it his final work, and Taxi Driver was dedicated to his memory.
