Taxi Driver

Martin Scorsese’s film, Taxi Driver (1976), was both influenced by Springsteen and acted as an influence on Bruce as well. The film is a powerful chronicle of a man who served for several years as a marine in Vietnam and has returned to America in the early 1970’s finding it very difficult to assimilate himself into normal society. Robert DeNiro’s incredible performance as Travis Bickle and Scorsese’s intense directing style both elevate Paul Schrader’s brilliant and multi-layered screenplay. The character of Bickle was a combination of Schrader’s personal experience living in New York, his fondness for the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, and studying the diaries of Arthur Bremer, the man who tried to assassinate Governor George Wallace.
The film begins with Travis Bickle seeking a job driving a taxi because he is unable to sleep. During the night he rides around in buses and on the subway. He decides to work as a cabby because he figures he might as well get paid for it. Travis tells the man hiring them that he is willing to work “anytime, anywhere”. When he isn’t working, he sits in small porno theaters or works on his diaries in his room. His life first changes when he sees Betsy, played by Cybil Shepherd, and he describes her as an “angel”. He concentrates all his energies on winning her over, but this plan fails when she is disgusted by the movies he likes to watch. His failure with women sends him into a downward spiral and he becomes more psychotic as the movie progresses. When a twelve-year-old prostitute, played by Jodie Foster, gets into his taxi one day and then is pulled out by her pimp, he then becomes obsessed with rescuing her. Travis also becomes fascinated by a Democratic candidate for president, but I will stop the plot summary there because I don’t want to ruin this unbelievably powerful movie for anybody who hasn’t seen it.
There are several connections between Taxi Driver and Springsteen. During the period Bruce was working on Nebraska, Schrader contacted him to see if he would be interested in contributing the music for a script he’s just completed. Schrader’s script was titled “Born in the USA”, but Springsteen hadn’t looked at until later when he was intending to write a song about Vietnam. Also, DeNiro improvised the famous “Are you talkin’ to me?” speech based on what Springsteen would say at then end of one of his marathon concerts of the mid 1970’s. Also, Jodie Foster’s character is a direct homage: her name is Iris Steenman.
Schrader conceived the taxi cab in the film as a kind of moving coffin, just as the cars in Nebraska are often traps and instruments of isolation. The taxi driver is around a lot of people, either in the backseat or outside the car, but there is little connection. The character of Travis Bickle is like the protagonist of Johnny 99 because he has gone over the edge. Through the course of the film, we watch his descent into madness. In a way similar to Badlands, Bickle’s voice-over chronicles this descent. The film seems to make the point that the fact that he served in Vietnam, and witnessed all the horrors that took place there, are a direct cause for his increasing more psychotic behavior.