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This is Fresh Air.
I'm David Bianculli.
50 years ago next week, the movie Taxi Driver was released.
It established director Martin Scorsese as a vital new filmmaker and provided key early film roles for everyone, from Jodie Foster and Harvey Keitel to Sybil Shepard and Albert Brooks.
And, of course, there was Robert De Niro in the title role as New York cab driver Travis Bickle.
De Niro already had won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar two years before playing young Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II.
But Taxi Driver is the movie that shot him into the stratosphere.
One of the most iconic scenes in that movie is one that the actor improvised standing before a full-length mirror in Travis's noisy apartment and testing out a new weapon he'd jerry-rigged.
It was a pistol that would slide down from his sleeve, ready to cock and fire.
And De Niro, as Travis, not only was staring down the image in the mirror, he was threatening him.
I'm standing here.
You make a move.
You make a move.
It's your move.
Don't try it, you .
You talking to me?
You talking to me?
You talking to me?
Who the hell are you talking to?
Talking to me?
Well, I'm the only one here.
Taxi Driver was nominated at the Academy Awards that year for Best Picture in a very competitive year.
The other finalists included All the President's Men, Network, and the eventual winner, Rocky.
Today on Fresh Air, we're noting the golden anniversary of Taxi Driver by revisiting interviews with several of the movie's stars and creative collaborators.
And we'll begin, as we should, with director Martin Scorsese.
In 1997, Martin Scorsese was interviewed on stage by film critic Roger Ebert.
Scorsese had received the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award and also was given the Wexner Prize for Originality in the Arts.
The conversation was recorded at the Wexner Center for the Arts on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
As you'll hear, their conversation included a film clip which we edited and bleeped for broadcast.
Here's Roger Ebert with Martin Scorsese, recorded in 1997.
Kind of have a habit a very nice habit of making the best film of each decade.
I hope so.
I don't know... I don't know what... these critics' polls mean.
I know, I know.
It doesn't mean anything to lose one.
No.
It probably means something when you're selected, when they invite hundreds of critics to vote on the best films of a decade,
And when they ask the various critics groups and assemblies about the best film of the 70s, it was Taxi Driver.
Really?
And we'll leave everybody in suspense as to what the best film of the 80s was.
That will come later in the program.
But Taxi Driver, to me, really represents that feeling.
It's like the summit of personal cinema.
And about the time Taxi Driver came out, we started to get the giant, multi-million dollar blockbusters, the special effects pictures.
All due respect to people like Lucas and Spielberg.
But Jaws and Star Wars changed the rules.
When Taxi Driver was made, it wasn't as unusual as it now seems.
I know.
I know, because you're talking about a time You have to understand everybody that the number one box office film of all time, for like since 1939 to 1972, was Gone with the Wind.
1972, The Godfather Part I took over.
1976, I think, Jaws.
And everything changed.
And then 77 might have been Star Wars.
Star Wars, and that was that.
And then every year you get, so that this year it's Independence Day and last year it was Jurassic Park.
So it's become like a whole other thing.
It's almost like a different industry in a way.
But this was a film that we really believed in, Taxi Driver.
It's really, you know, I have to admit.
I mean not admit, but it's important that everybody understand that the impetus and the whole presence behind the picture is Paul Schrader.
It's very important.
Not to dare to sound generous, but the idea is that One has to understand that it came out of his guts in a two-week period when he was alone in LA and very depressed.
So it's real.
It really is real.
Let's look at the clip, and then I have a couple of questions for you.
This clip is Harvey and Bob, when he first meets Harvey in the street.
There's a little improvisation in this, a little bit.
You looking for some action?
Yeah.
You see that guy over there?
Yeah.
All right.
You go talk to him.
His name is Matthew.
I'll be over there waiting for you.
Okay.
I went to Chinatown.
You need Matthew?
I want some action.
Officer.
I swear I'm clean.
I'm just waiting here for a friend.
You gonna bust me for nothing, man?
I'm not a cop.
So why are you asking me for action?
Because she sent me over.
I suppose that ain't the 38th you've got in your sock.
38th?
No.
I'm clean, man.
You're a real cowboy.
That's nice, man.
It's all right.
$15, 15 minutes, $25, half an hour. but no rough stuff.
All right?
All right, I'll take it.
Hey, man.
Take out no money over here.
You want to me?
We'll give her the money.
Yeah.
Catch you later, copper.
What'd you say?
I'll see you later, copper.
I'm no cop, man.
Well, if you are, it's entrapment already.
Huh?
I'm hip.
You don't look hip.
Okay, now, share with everybody, you were talking about De Niro when he was listening.
Yeah, when he's listening to Harvey give that litany of what he can do to the kid, watch his body freezes and he's so full of anger and violence and you think he's like a stiletto.
He's about to pounce on him, you know?
And Harvey, the more he did that, if you watch Harvey, the more Harvey closed in on him.
Because they sort of played off each other beautifully, you know?
And that's why it's all in a two-shot, you see?
Until finally we do the closer shot of Bob and the closer shot of Harvey.
And even in that closer shot, you can see where he moves back this way.
He does strange things with his back.
And it's from driving the cab, too.
He has this kind of interesting look of always being prepared for anything.
A lot of that was improvised by Harvey, especially the stuff at the end.
He says, I'm hip.
And he goes, funny you don't look hip.
Martin Scorsese and Roger Ebert, recorded in 1997 at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus Ohio.
Roger Ebert died in 2013.
In his early years as an actor, Harvey Keitel became a part of Martin Scorsese's ensemble.
In Scorsese's Mean Streets.
He played Charlie, a young Italian man caught between his responsibilities to friends and family in the old neighborhood and his longing to get out.
Terry spoke with Harvey Keitel in 1992.
I've always wanted to ask you about your role in Taxi Driver as Sport, Jodie Foster's pimp.
Now I had read that in the original script this role was really very small and that in fact, you were offered a larger role, but you insisted on the role of the pimp.
What did you see in it that made you want to build it into a larger role and take it yourself?
Well, first off, what you say is accurate.
The reason I wanted to play the pimp was that I had lived for a number of years at that time in Hell's Kitchen in New York and for a good seven years or so had been nightly walking home, passing all the pimps and prostitutes along Ninth Avenue in New York.
And out of all that, taking them in all those years, there were some ideas I had about a pimp.
And it interests me to play one.
What fascinated you about The Pimps in the Neighborhood?
Well, it's the whole idea of a man selling a woman.
What is that?
For me, it's such a horrible, horrible thing to deny one's soul, one's humanity, to put it into usage that way.
I wanted to learn about that.
I wanted to know about that.
What kind of people engage in that?
So what did you do to find that out?
Well...
If I tell you, I got it solely from this pimp, whom I met and worked with for two weeks, improvising back and forth me and him I'd play the girl, he'd teach me about playing the pimp, and then I'd play the pimp and he'd play the girl.
It wouldn't be the whole, it wouldn't be the entire answer.
A lot of it came from my own conflict about women.
What kind of conflict were you going through?
This notion that a woman might be a whore because she slept with some men never sat well with me.
But yet that was a notion growing up that was handed down to us, you know.
It was trying to make sense out of that.
Why can men do it and women cannot do it?
The one thing that might interest you that I learned from the pimp in terms of treating one of his girls was, he said to me when you say to one of your girls that you love her, you mean it.
I said to him, you mean that you want her to understand that you mean it?
He said, no, you mean it.
You do love her.
And you do want to take care of her.
That was an answer that provoked many questions in my own soul about relationships.
You know the scene in Taxi Driver where you're dancing with Jodie Foster and you're giving her the rap.
Yes.
Telling her how beautiful she is and how much you care for her.
Yes.
Did that come out of improvising with this pimp?
Yes, the entire scene did.
Marty had said he wanted me in another scene in the movie.
He'd like to see the part extended.
And I had done all this work with the pimp, and I said, what about this idea?
And he said yes.
And I wrote the song along with one of the producers at that time.
I don't like what I'm doing, Swart.
Oh, baby, I never want you to like what you're doing.
If you ever liked what you were doing, you wouldn't be my woman.
You never spend any time with me anymore.
Well, I got to attend to business, baby.
You miss your man, don't you?
I don't like to be away from you either.
You know how I feel about you.
I depend on you.
I'd be lost without you.
Don't you ever forget that.
How much I need you.
So is this the kind of rap that the pimp would also often use on the women who work for him?
Yes.
I got it from him.
I just wrote the song along with the fellow.
It was just basically simple, you know.
I took the idea from a Barry White song.
Oh, that's really interesting, because I always think of that scene when I hear a certain kind of Barry White song.
Yes, yes.
Well, that's where I got the idea from.
Harvey Keitel, talking with Terry Gross in 1992.
Coming up, we hear from Paul Schrader, who wrote the screenplay for Taxi Driver.
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We're marking the 50th anniversary of Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver.
Paul Schrader has had a long partnership with Scorsese.
He wrote the screenplays for his Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and, of course, Taxi Driver.
In 1988, Terry Gross asked him about writing the screenplay for Taxi Driver.
You've been collaborating with Martin Scorsese on and off since the mid-'70s.
The first time you collaborated was on the film Taxi Driver.
You had written the screenplay, and you asked, I think, that he direct the movie.
And I think you wanted him to direct it after seeing his film Mean Streets.
What was it about Mean Streets that you knew was the right sensibility for the film you were making, Taxi Driver.
Oh, it's just a passion, you know.
And also the perversity, you know.
Someone who is willing to... grab the thing, put it between his teeth, bite hard and run, you know.
I don't want to use words we can't use on language, but someone who has the guts to do it.
Okay.
Now, in Taxi Driver, your screenplay is about a lonely, alienated, psychopathic taxi driver.
You've described the taxi as the perfect metaphor for loneliness.
A man driving around the city in a steel coffin.
And his alienation erupts into a bloody killing spree at the end of the movie which he thinks of in heroic terms.
He thinks he's helping to clean the city of the pimps and the filth.
I want to play from... Yeah, go ahead.
What's interesting about that is, in the film he fixates on two women, one of whom he can have and one of whom he can't.
And, of course, he wants the one he can't and doesn't want the one he can't.
And out of this dilemma, he decides to kill the father figure of the good girl, who is a politician.
And when he cannot do that, he fails.
He kills the father figure of the bad girl, who's the prostitute.
And what's interesting in his mind, there's really not much difference.
They're both, you know, there's these competing father figures.
It's just that in society's mind, of course, he becomes a hero, because one of them was a pimp and not a politician.
Sounds a little Freudian.
Were you in Freudian analysis at the time?
No, subsequently.
Okay.
Well, you wrote the journal the diary for Travis Bickle, The Taxi Driver which De Niro just gives a brilliant reading of in the movie.
I want to play some of that and this is from the record, so it's excerpts edited together from the film.
So this is Robert De Niro over a score by Bernard Herrmann, with the screenplay by my guest Paul Schrader from Taxi Driver.
May 10th.
Thank God for the rain, which has helped wash away the garbage and the trash off the sidewalks.
I'm working long hours now, six days a week, sometimes seven days a week.
It's a long hustle, but it keeps me real busy.
I can take in three, 350 a week, sometimes even more when I do it off the meter.
All the animals come out at night.
Buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies.
Sick, venal.
Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.
I go all over.
I take people to the Bronx, Brooklyn.
I take them to Harlem.
I don't care.
Don't make no difference to me.
It does to some.
Some won't even take s***.
Don't make no difference to me.
Each night when I return the cab to the garage, I have to clean the back seat.
Some nights I clean off the blood.
Twelve hours of work and I still can't sleep.
Damn.
Days go on and on.
And they don't end.
All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go.
I don't believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention.
I believe that someone should become a person like other people.
The tone of writing in that seems so perfect for the character.
I love that line.
I do not believe that one should devote his life to more self-attention which, of course, is what this character does.
Oh, precisely.
Every moment of the day.
And the next line is just the most perfect line about alienation I think I've ever heard.
I believe that somebody should become a person like other people.
I mean, it's just the perfect, perfect expression of alienation.
How did you know not being a psychopath yourself?
How did you know the tone of voice to get for this?
It just seems just right.
Well, I wrote that script in 10 days, in two drafts.
It jumped out of my head like an animal.
And so it was a really critical, it was a cry from my heart.
I
I'd fallen into a difficult period in Los Angeles where I was living in my car and just sort of driving around and having a lot of trouble sleeping.
And finally I got a pain in my stomach, which turned out to be an ulcer, and I went to the hospital.
And while I was talking to a nurse in an emergency, I realized I hadn't spoken to anyone yet.
In several weeks.
And when I was in the hospital, I realized that that's what I was.
I was like a taxi driver.
I was like this person who was floating around in this car.
And I got out of the hospital and I wrote that script, like I said, in 10 days.
Did being in that car, driving around in it, almost living in it, increase your sense of detachment and alienation.
Of being separate from?
Yes.
I mean, particularly in Los Angeles, where I was.
I wasn't in New York at the time.
You know, you really, you know, you do feel like you are alive in a coffin.
Let's get back to the tone that you actually wrote it in.
There's something almost Old Testament about the tone.
Someday a real rain will come along and wash all the scum off the streets.
But that apocalyptic sense.
Yeah, that was my first real script.
I'd done one thing before.
I didn't know how you were supposed to write scripts yet.
But had you studied the journals of people who had become assassins or murderers?
No, I was actually surprised.
Arthur Bremer's journal came out after I had written the script.
And I read it, and I was very surprised to find that the voice was almost identical.
And I think the reason that psychopathic people have attached themselves to this film is because the voice is absolutely authentic.
Did it scare you that you were able to so authentically and so intuitively capture a psychopathic voice?
Well, you know, it scared me that I was at that place at that time.
I mean, the person who wrote that script is long gone, and I don't even know if I would recognize him if I saw him.
Another taxi driver question.
De Niro, in addition to having you record the journal entries, also wore your shirt, your boots and your belt during part of the screening for the movie.
Was that his idea or your idea?
That's his idea.
That's sort of the way he works.
It's not this unique to that particular project.
He's done similar things in other films.
You had mentioned that you think one of the reasons why psychopaths attach themselves to taxi drivers is because the voice is so authentic.
What was your reaction when Hinckley said that he had seen Taxi Driver and he wanted to impress Jodie Foster by attempting to assassinate the president?
I was in New Orleans at the time scouting locations, and it came over the radio that this kid had tried to kill Reagan.
And he was from Colorado, sort of a white-bred kid.
And I said to the person sitting next to me, I said, it's one of those taxi driver kids.
And I got back to the hotel, and the FBI was waiting for me.
And in fact, it was one of those taxi driver kids.
The film didn't create them.
They exist before the film and after the film, and they attach themselves to many things.
It's actually sort of rare that they attach themselves to a good film.
More likely they attach themselves to things like advertising.
You are always warned about the danger of films.
Did any of that come back to you after this?
No.
Not relevant.
I think art really works, you know.
I mean, I think that it is possible, through artifice to you know, vicariously purge yourself of these dangerous feelings.
You've also said that you had to learn how to not be too literary when you were writing screenplays.
You've said, I don't think a movie should have too many good lines.
At most, five great lines and ten good ones.
The rest should be absolutely ordinary and banal.
Yeah well, I mean you can overwrite a movie and start to call attention to the language, unless that is your intention, unless language is the subject matter of the film, such as in a David Mamet production.
But if you are trying to convey a quotidienne, a daily reality, then you've got to restrain yourself from getting a little excessive in that area.
You said that you are no longer the same person who wrote Taxi Driver, that you don't really have those feelings anymore.
At that time, I think you were really motivated by certain demons, by alienation, by loneliness.
You're now married, you're a father, and I figure loneliness wouldn't have the same pull on you that it did then.
Are there different things that motivate you now in your writing, or even different demons that drive you?
Yes, certainly.
And you miss those old demons, you know boy, because those are powerful engines and they really drive you hard.
And it was actually easier to write then because you had no choice.
You were just trying to, you were running to keep the demons from swallowing you up.
So today it's a little more difficult.
You have to... use your imaginative powers and your creative skills to a greater degree.
Paul Schrader, recorded in 1988.
Jodie Foster, an already established child actress, was 12 years old when she was cast as a 12-year-old prostitute.
The term now is sex worker in Taxi Driver.
Harvey Keitel played her pimp.
Terry spoke with Jodie Foster last month.
So I want to focus a little on Taxi Driver, since next month marks the 50th anniversary of its release.
So let's start with a clip.
Amazing.
Yeah.
And this is an example of your mother being brilliant in accepting the part for you and of being controversial because
She accepted the part for you because you play a 12-year-old and you were 12 when you shot this.
And you are what would then be called a prostitute and today, a sex worker who has a pimp, played by Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle, the taxi driver.
And De Niro sees this, and so he wants to buy some time with you to save you.
He kind of has a savior complex.
So here's a scene where he has tried to talk with you and rescue you, take him away from the pimp, but you don't want to be rescued.
So he ends up taking you to a diner.
He's trying to convince you to go back home, be with your parents, and just live a better life.
And you speak first.
Why do you want me to go back to my parents?
I mean, they hate me.
Why do you think I split in the first place?
There ain't nothing there.
Yeah, but you can't live like this.
It's a hell.
A girl should live at home.
Didn't you ever hear of women's lib?
What do you mean women's lib?
You're a young girl.
You should be at home now.
You should be dressed up.
You should be going out with boys.
You should be going to school.
You know, that kind of stuff.
God, are you square?
Hey, I'm not square.
You're the one that's square.
You're full of Man, what are you talking about?
You walk out with those creeps and lowlifes and degenerates out on the street and you sell your little for nothing man.
For some lowlife pimp?
Stands in a hall?
I'm square?
You're the one that's square, man.
I think Paul Schrader doesn't ever get quite enough credit for writing this.
I mean people who really know movies think he's made terrific movies.
But Scorsese did a brilliant job directing it, but Paul Schrader did a brilliant job writing it.
You know, God's Lonely Man and all of Travis's monologues.
Did you get to talk to Schrader about the screenplay?
Well, you know, at 12 years old, my mom, if you saw Paul Schrader at that time, he really was Travis Bickle, right.
He wore that army jacket and he mumbled a lot and he stayed up all night and stayed up for hours and hours at a time.
My mom didn't want me anywhere near Paul Schrader.
She was like, don't talk to him, whatever you do.
That's funny because it's like you can play a prostitute who's 12 years old in the movie, but don't talk to the person who wrote this.
Well, yeah, look, I was an actor.
I finally understood through working with Robert De Niro, because he really took the time to show me what acting was, that it wasn't just saying lines that somebody else wrote, that it actually was creating a character.
I didn't know that before I was 12.
How did your mother feel about playing a 12-year-old sex worker and how did you feel about it?
How much did you understand what that meant?
And also the film has some pretty explicit violence.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that my mom knew he was a great artist.
We loved Mean Streets.
We saw it three or four times.
My mom saw that I was interested in art and cinema and took me to every foreign film she could find, mostly because she wanted me to hear other languages.
But, you know, we went to very dark, interesting German films that lasted eight hours long.
And, you know, we saw... all the French New Wave movies.
And we had long conversations about movies and what they meant.
And I think that she respected me.
This was before you were 12?
Yeah.
And some of them were inappropriate.
You know, some of them were moments I remember where she'd be like why don't you go get, let's go get popcorn.
Because there were moments in the film that were not appropriate for a kid.
Too sexual?
Yeah.
I remember seeing Last Hangover in Paris and my mom going like maybe this is a good time for you to go get a Coke.
You've said De Niro stayed in character during the whole shoot and before it, too.
So what he would do is take you to a diner and not necessarily say anything.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He had a very Travis Bickle personality during that shoot.
So he was pretty boring.
He was very awkward and very boring.
And it was difficult for me.
I was a 12-year-old kid.
I was like, oh, God, here comes this guy again.
He's taking me to a diner and he's going to not talk for 20 minutes.
Yeah.
And I would talk to the waiters.
And we also would run lines.
So we ran the lines, sort of a normal rehearsal process where we ran the lines.
And I think by the third time he started going off and improvising around the lines and encouraging me to do the same and trying to show me how to dip in.
So, you know, he would go off on a tangent, some long improvised tangent.
And then I had to find the opportunity for me to place my next line.
To when was the right time.
And really talking about reactions.
You know, how does that make you feel?
He was the first person that ever took the time to treat me like an actor.
Was that fun for you, doing those improvs?
Oh, it was amazing.
It was just this huge eureka moment.
I'll never forget it.
I remember being excited and being kind of sweaty and my heart racing when I came home to the hotel room and came up in the elevator and I said to my mom like wow, I finally get it.
Like, I really get it, and I want to be a part of this.
Jody Foster speaking with Terry Gross last month.
Coming up, more about the making of Taxi Driver from Sybil Shepard and Albert Brooks.
This is Fresh Air.
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Listen to NPR's Code Switch podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
We're marking the 50th anniversary of Martin Scorsese's now classic film Taxi Driver.
Sybil Shepard made her first screen appearance in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show in 1971 and starred in The Heartbreak Kid a year later.
On TV, she starred opposite Bruce Willis in Moonlighting.
In Taxi Driver.
She played Betsy, a campaign worker who goes out on a date with taxi driver Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro.
In 1997, Shepard told Terry how she was cast in Taxi Driver.
Martin Scorsese didn't audition you in front of the camera.
He just met with you?
Mm-hmm.
He just met with me and talked to me.
What did he talk with you about to feel you out?
We talked about Hitchcock a lot, because he's a real Hitchcock fan.
And we talked about some of the things about acting that we learned over the years from classic movies.
Like Hitchcock said, don't put a lot of scribble on your face.
Cagney said, you know, to be a good actor is easy.
Just stand up, look the other guy in the eye, and tell the truth.
And...
We just talked about that.
So that's basically, I love Marty Scorsese.
I hope I can work with him again.
What we did was we improvised off of the script.
Paul Schrader wrote the script, but I don't think I said but two words that he wrote.
We sat in that hotel suite with a video camera And De Niro and I, or Albert Brooks and I improvised and Marty videoed that and then later on he went through and picked out the lines that he wanted out of our improvisation and that's what we ended up playing in the movie.
You know, Taxi Driver is a very disturbing movie, and that's part of what makes it so great.
And I'm wondering what it was like for you the first time you actually saw the whole movie and saw how disturbing the character was.
I never saw the whole movie because the violence in Taxi Driver I cannot handle.
You still haven't seen it?
I left the theater.
I knew that violence was coming, and I had to leave the theater.
I don't know what it is about me, but I have never been able to handle...
Even the violent television shows, I get very disturbed by that.
There's just very few violent movies that I can handle seeing.
How do you feel about being in a movie that you can't watch?
It's disturbing.
It's disturbing.
But on the other hand, you recognize that it's a great movie?
Yes, and I feel that I was fortunate to be a part of the movie, and I think Scorsese's a great filmmaker.
But I do find it very disturbing, that violence.
Did you relate to the character at all?
I mean, the character that you play is a very kind of sheltered middle class woman who's working in a presidential campaign.
And she's kind of naive about why this taxi driver is lurking around and wanting to go out with her.
Well, I found Robert De Niro incredibly disturbing and it was easy to act that I was grossed out by him.
Also, he had that scene in the movie theater where he takes me to this, like, pornographic movie.
I hate pornography like that.
I hate that.
Just, ugh, that's easy to act.
It was real.
He takes you to a movie theater on a little date and when you get inside you realize it's just people having sex on screen.
Yeah, it's really gross.
What a turnoff.
So tell me what it was like to act opposite him in this movie, as he gets more and more disturbing as the characters' pathologies come more to the surface.
He was very scary, and I just steered clear of him.
Early on during, where he liked to rehearse a lot and he made a lot of notes in his script, which I do also and he was very kind.
But once he was into that character and he started going out the deep end, I didn't really talk to him and make like chatty conversation.
You know, just didn't feel comfortable.
When he was in character?
Yeah.
Once he was into that part of the movie...
Robert De Niro as an actor was gone and the character had taken over and I felt he was a character the whole time.
Oh, oh, oh.
In other words, we would say, cut, but he would still be that character.
I just kind of avoided it.
I could tell.
He was that character, and I wasn't going to mess with him.
Sybil Shepard, speaking with Terry Gross in 1997.
Albert Brooks is known for his comedy movies and TV appearances, but he studied acting and his first serious acting role was in Taxi Driver.
He played Tom, a political campaign operative working in the same office as Sybil Shepard's character, Betsy.
Well, in Taxi Driver you play a campaign worker on the presidential campaign who works with Sybil Shepard.
Yes, and you know, there's a funny story with that.
Oh, tell us.
Well, Paul Schrader, that part wasn't written.
So Marty Scorsese hired me and said, you know, maybe you could figure out that part.
And, you know, we could figure out the lines and everything.
And so we worked on it.
And what you see on the movie was sort of like developed in a hotel room setting.
I just sort of worked on things, and he would tape it, and that's what would appear in the script.
And when it was all over, Paul Schrader, the writer, said, you know, I want to thank you.
That was the only character I really didn't know.
And I said, really?
I said you knew Travis Bickle and Harvey Keitel and all of the pimps and hookers, but a simple guy who works at an office you couldn't figure out, huh.
So it was really a great experience.
There's a scene where Robert De Niro, as Travis Bickle, the taxi driver, is hanging around the campaign headquarters.
You know, just eyeing Sybil Shepard who he really wants to pick up.
And he comes in and tries to talk with her.
And your character chases him out.
Did you come up with a way to do that and the lines to use and stuff like that?
Well, De Niro did something interesting, because in those days he was, you know, very method way before the restaurants, you know.
He wouldn't ever even talk to me.
So that moment of uncomfortableness was extra real.
And, of course, I thought it was just, you know, about method acting.
Then at the cast party, he wouldn't talk to me either.
He just didn't want to talk to me.
But seriously, he wouldn't let me know him.
I was trying to make conversation and say, so are you having fun doing this?
And he would just walk away.
So at that moment where I had to come up and figure out how to throw him out, it was extra tense because I didn't know who the hell I was dealing with.
Well, tell us how you and your character as this very kind of like middle class campaign worker who isn't a very physical person, deals with De Niro.
Who's this really threatening marginal figure, shadowy figure walking in?
Well, he uses the police.
He keeps saying there's police across the street.
I'm going to call the police.
I don't think he could do this alone.
So that's really the only way he would do it.
This guy I played is not going to get in a fist fight with the guy that Robert De Niro played.
I mean, Immediately, De Niro goes into this karate position.
And, you know, he's playing the world's most frightening man anyway.
So all my guy is doing is, there's police across the street.
I'm calling police.
I'm calling police.
You know, getting police in there a lot.
Don't have any trouble.
What are you talking about?
Why won't you talk to me?
Why won't you talk to me?
Why won't you answer my calls when I call you?
You think I don't know you're here?
Let's not have any trouble.
You think I don't know?
You think I don't know?
Would you please leave?
Put your hands off.
Okay, then leave, okay?
I just want you to know that I know.
Let's not have any trouble.
Please, just leave.
This is the place to do it.
Okay.
Put your hands off!
Okay, then just leave!
Hang on!
All right, leave then!
Come on.
I'm going to tell you you're in hell.
Look, come on.
You're in hell.
And you're going to die in hell like the rest of them.
Come on now.
There's a cop across the street.
You're like the rest of them.
Look, I'm calling the cops.
Officer!
Officer!
Look, don't come around here because I'll call the police.
Albert Brooks getting the police involved in a scene from Taxi Driver.
He spoke with Terry Gross in 1997.
Taxi Driver turns 50 years old next week.
Coming up, Justin Chang reviews Pillion, which won a screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival last year.
This is Fresh Air.
Our film critic, Justin Chang, recommends the new romantic dramedy Pillion, which opens in theaters this week.
It stars Harry Melling as a mild-mannered young man who falls for the leader of a gay biker gang, played by Alexander Skarsgård.
Their unconventional love story earned the film's writer and director, Harry Leighton, a screenplay prize last year at the Cannes Film Festival.
Here is Justin's review.
In 2020, the English writer Adam Mars Jones published a slender, tough-minded novel titled Box Hill a story of low self-esteem.
It's narrated by a shy 18-year-old named Colin Smith, who falls for Ray, a hunky, leather-clad motorcyclist in his late 20s.
They enter into a dominant-submissive relationship in which Colin does Ray's bidding sexually and domestically.
Mars Jones doesn't sugarcoat any of it.
The story takes place in the 1970s.
Not an easy time to be gay, let alone part of a gay BDSM subculture, especially with the AIDS epidemic on the horizon.
And although rough sex is part of the character's arrangement, Ray's behavior crosses the line of consent.
Describing one of their first sexual encounters.
Collins says what had begun as a rough seduction ended as well rape.
Now Box Hill has been adapted into a film by the writer-director Harry Leighton, who has, there's no way around it, lightened the mood considerably.
The movie, which is called Pillion, is a dark-toned but wildly entertaining comedy, and the relationship at its center is a study in emotional neglect but not physical abuse.
It takes place in the present day, in the southeast London suburb of Bromley.
Colin, played by the 36-year-old actor Harry Melling, is older, smarter and more sexually experienced than his counterpart in the book.
He's still a bit naive, with a touchingly wholesome streak.
He sings in a barbershop quartet and lives at home with his charmingly over-supportive parents, who just want him to settle down with a nice boyfriend.
That, alas, isn't in the cards.
One night at the local pub, Colin locks eyes with that hunky motorcyclist Ray, and is instantly smitten.
The viewer will understand why.
Ray is played by Alexander Skarsgård, who looks even more like a Nordic god than usual, with his immaculately chiseled form, his utter disdain for small talk and his apparent imperviousness to cold weather.
Even on a chilly December night when they meet up for the first time in a side, alley Ray shows up in a chest-bearing leather bodysuit.
He gives Colin a taste of the playful physical aggression that will characterize their relationship.
From the controversial 1974 film The Night Porter, to the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, and the kinky Nicole Kidman vehicle Baby Girl, the movies have long been fascinated by dominant-submissive relationships, and the intriguing, some might say intrinsic, connections between pleasure and pain.
Pillian approaches the subject without judgment, and with a great deal of sly humor.
Colin has what Ray calls an aptitude for devotion, and before long the two have settled into an odd routine.
Colin becomes a kind of servant, cooking dinner most nights for Ray at his sparsely furnished duplex and sleeping on the rug at the foot of Ray's bed.
Colin buzzes his hair short, rides Pillian on the back of Ray's motorcycle and and starts hanging out with Ray's biker gang, many of whom appear to be paired off in similar relationships of their own.
The movie doesn't delve too deeply into this community, though we do learn some of the rules.
Submissives, for example, are seldom allowed to kiss their dominance.
The sex itself is wild, if not terribly explicit by the standards of certain HBO series.
But Melling keys us in to Colin's feelings of exhilaration and surrender.
In time, though, he also shows us Colin's growing dissatisfaction.
As he falls in love with Ray, he begins to insist on a bit more equity and attention in their relationship.
His parents help strengthen his resolve.
There's a terrific performance here from Leslie Sharp as Colin's mother, who has terminal cancer and wants to see her son in a loving, stable relationship before she dies.
Needless to say, she doesn't care for Ray and the controlling, withholding way he treats Colin.
Alexander Skarsgård is terrific here as an impossibly gorgeous and impossibly stubborn object of desire who lavishes more affection on his dog and his beloved motorcycle than he does on Colin.
Skarsgård's performance becomes more revealing as the film progresses.
We catch glimpses of the panic and insecurity beneath Ray's rigid attitude and also perhaps his own fear that he's becoming more attached to colin than he wants to admit.
In the book, colin and ray's relationship comes to a tragic end.
The film unsurprisingly, moves in a more hopeful direction.
Colin does have an aptitude for devotion.
He just needs someone worthy of it.
Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker.
He reviewed the new film Pillion, which opens in theaters this week.
On Monday's show, writer Chris Jennings recalls the violent 1992 Ruby Ridge confrontation in Idaho between federal agents and the family of Randy Weaver.
Jennings' new book explores the apocalyptic religious views that fueled the standoff and the use of force rules that made it so deadly.
His book is End of Days.
Hope you can join us.
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