In a recent interview, Taxi Driver director Martin Scorsese has confirmed that Travis Bickle, the character played by Robert De Niro and idolized by cabbies everywhere, was never intended to be the real Taxi Driver. Instead, Bickle was simply an unsuspecting military vet who had the title of Taxi Driver thrust upon him.
Taxi Driver ends with Bickle celebrated as a vigilante hero by the media, for his actions that saved Jodi Foster’s Iris, from having to grow up in the atrocious cesspool that is New York City. Bickle eventually returns to driving his cab. The final shot of the film shows him looking in his rearview mirror, disgusted with the contents of his backseat. It’s in this closing moment, that Bickle realizes he is not really the Taxi Driver.
“During the ‘You talkin to me’ scene Travis has this realization that he’s not talking to a taxi driver. He’s talking to Travis Bickle,” Scorsese said with tired eyes. “You can put a man in a taxi and call him a taxi driver, but that doesn’t make him a taxi driver. That final look in the rearview mirror? That’s a man who feels disdain for the Taxi Driver, and loathes the yellow cab-fared corner the world has painted him into.”
Scorsese also points out how Cybill Shepherd’s character, Betsy, never acknowledges Bickle as the Taxi Driver until the end of the film.
“We get to the end and she hasn’t called him Taxi Driver even once,” Scorsese said, shaking his head in disappointment. “I told Paul [Schrader], she should at least call him it once, that way he can say ‘I’m not the Taxi Driver, I’m Travis Bickle.’ But Paul wouldn’t budge an inch. Instead we had to settle for him turning down her cab fare and hoping the audience was literate enough to understand the subtext. That was our mistake.”
Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader argued against Scorsese’s read of the film in a recent video interview with THR.
“Marty said what now? He’s full of shit,” Schrader said, putting on his coat mid-interview. “Sorry I’m bored out of my eyes with this interview and I just realized Arcane season one is getting a steel book release. I’m gonna go grab a copy at Target. You guys keep going with the interview. I’ll be back later.”
At press time, Schrader had returned to the interview, just to leave after another ten minutes.
