Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Jay Coyle and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Rioghnach Ní Ghrioghair and Alex Towers, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.
This time, kicking off our Summer of Scorsese season, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
Martin Scorsese is one of the defining directors in American cinema, with a host of massively successful (and cult) hits that have shaped and defined cinema across generations: Raging Bull, King of Comedy, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed, Shutter Island. The Summer of Scorsese season offers a trip through the director’s filmography via the IMDb‘s 250.
Travis Bickle cannot sleep. So he splits his nights between the Times Square porno theatres and his job as a taxi driver. Bickle immerses himself in the nightlife of New York City, finding himself adrift in a world of anomie and urban decay. Thoughts begin to formulate in his head, thought he can’t articulate or express, but thoughts that push him in a horrific and unsettling direction.
At time of recording, it was ranked 107th on the Internet Movie Database‘s list of the best movies of all-time.
Show Notes:
- Recorded 8th August 2020.
- Taxi Driver at The Internet Movie Database.
- The IMDB 250 as it appeared at time of recording.
- Follow Jay on Twitter.
- Listen to Jay at the Scannain podcast.
- Vickie Thomas at The New York Times on the balance between auteurism and the market, February 2014.
- Ryan Terry at ReelView on Alfred Hitchcock’s transformation of himself into a brand, August 2019.
- Sean Fennessey at The Ringer offers a brief overview of the five stages of Martin Scorsese’s career, December 2016.
- Adam Nayman at The Ringer on how Martin Scorsese functions as a genre unto himself, November 2019.
- Brian Raftery at The Ringer offers a whirlwind tour of Martin Scorsese’s eighties, November 2019.
- Ed Power at The Independent looks at how Steven Spielberg came to direct Schindler’s List, November 2018.
- Scorsese talks to The Telegraph about making The Aviator, December 2004.
- Leonardo DiCaprio talks to The Telegraph about bringing Martin Scorsese on to The Aviator, December 2004.
- Roger Ebert reviews the twentieth anniversary re-release of Taxi Driver for The Chicago Sun Times, March 1996.
- Kenneth Turan at The Los Angeles Times looks back at Taxi Driver in its twentieth anniversary year, February 1996.
- Joe McGovern at Entertainment Weekly on the pop culture legacy of Taxi Driver in its fortieth anniversary year, February 2016.
- Liza Corsilla at GQ on the unlikely influence of Taxi Driver on men’s fashion, October 2016.
- Tom Shone at The Telegraph argues that Martin Scorsese has been hugely influential on men’s fashion, September 2014.
- Paul Schrader talks to FilmComment about Taxi Driver, March-April 1976.
- Chris Fuchs at NBC News visits the gun range from Taxi Driver, May 2017.
- David Montgomery at The Washington Post on the strange celebrity of Arthur Bremer, the man who tried to assassinate George Wallace, December 2015.
- Andrew Glass at Politico reports on Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme’s attempted assassination of Gerald Ford, September 2017.
- Sam Roberts at The New York Times reports on the infamous headline in which Gerald Ford allegedly told New York City to “drop dead”, December 2016.
- Kim Masters at The Hollywood Reporter on the deal that Martin Scorsese has signed with Apple to produce The Killers of the Flower Moon, May 2020.
- Charles Barfield at The Playlist on the reported budget of The Irishman, July 2019.
- Jon Savage at Sight & Sound on how Taxi Driver and the Ramones captured the mood of the seventies, February 2017.
- Paul Schrader talks to The Los Angeles Times about the development of Taxi Driver, August 1991.
- The Hollywood Reporter offers an oral history of the production of Taxi Driver, April 2016.
- Alex Galbraith at Complex reports on the unlikely feud between Paul Schrader and Brian dePalma, June 2019.
- Seth Abramovitch at The Hollywood Reporter revisits the triumph of Taxi Driver at Cannes, May 2016.
- A.A. O’Dowd at The A.V. Club looks back on Taxi Driver as one of the most influential winners of the Palme d’Or, January 2014.
- Mark Harris looks back at Klute for The Criterion Collection, July 2019.
- Martin Chilton looks back at the legacy of Midnight Cowboy for The Independent, May 2019.
- Jodie Foster talks to Vanity Fair about working on Taxi Driver, April 2016.
- Ryan Parker at The Hollywood Reporter on John Hinckley’s attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, inspired by Taxi Driver, July 2016.
- Laura A. Kiernan at The Washington Post reports on John Hinckley’s defense screening the entirety of Taxi Driver for the jury, May 1982.
- K. Austin Collins at Vanity Fair on rewatching Taxi Driver in the age of Joker, October 2019.
- Frank Rich at The Criterion Collection on the use of New York City in Taxi Driver, September 1990.
- Martin Scorsese talks to Vulture about the ambient mood in New York City while making Taxi Driver, April 2015.
- DJ Pangburn at Vice on the subjectivity of Taxi Driver, May 2016.
- Elle Hunt at The Guardian reports on how quickly the internet turned Microsoft’s artificial intelligence Tay into a virulent racist, March 2016.
- Patrick Nobarro at One Room With a View on Martin Scorsese’s most memorable cameo in Taxi Driver, November 2017.
- Roger Ebert’s original review of Taxi Driver for The Chicago Sun Times, January 1976.
- Martin Scorsese talks to Roger Ebert and The Chicago Sun Times about Taxi Driver, March 1976.
- Stacy Black at AMC on writer Paul Schrader’s recurring fascination with The Searchers, March 2008.
- Simon Abrams at Politico on how Taxi Driver interrogates the uncomfortable racial politics of The Searchers, August 2012.
- David E. Pitt at The New York Times on the racially-charged undertones of the Bernie Goetz case, June 1987.
- Jennifer Latson at Time on the scars left by the Bernie Goetz shootings, December 2014.
- Pauline Kael reviews Taxi Driver for The New Yorker, February 1976.
- Jason Hellerman discusses the ending of Taxi Driver at No Film School, January 2020.
- Lindsay Zoladz at The Ringer reflects on watching Taxi Driver in the age of incels, July 2018.
- Paul Schrader talks to The Guardian about writing Taxi Driver, July 2006.
- Ashley Clarke at Reverse Shot on the racial politics of Taxi Driver, September 2014.
- Rachel Withers at Vox on the legacy of the Willie Horton advertisement, December 2018.
- David Simon takes Inside Hook on a historical tour of Times Square, September 2017.
- Oliver Stone talks to The Baltimore Sun about whether he might have been an influence on Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, July 2006.
- Paul Schrader talks to America Magazine about his career from Taxi Driver onwards, January 2019.
- Michael J. Casey at Michael J. Cinema writes on the recurring death drive in the films of Paul Schrader, April 2020.
- Follow The 250 on Twitter.
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Filed under: Movies, The 250 | Tagged: anomie, gerald ford, god's loneliest man, incels, martin scorsese, new york, paul schrader, pornography, prostitution, r the 250, racism, robert deniro, Ronald Reagan, sexism, summer of scorsese, taxi drive, time square, urban decay, violence |
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