Cameron Anthony Park

Robert DeNiro is Travis Bickle

I don’t have a Martin Scorsese film in my top ten. I’ve struggled with this decision. I mean I don’t have any films in there by Lucas, Spielberg or Cameron but those guys are more about spectacle and even though I love a lot of their work, I’m not really about that. I guess I’m more about working from the inside out and less “act first and ask questions later” which is more of a Western approach. I guess I’ll expound more on this later but right now I want to take a few moments to discuss my favorite Scorsese flick.

Before Billy Costigan, before Sam “Ace” Rothstein, before Howard Hughes, Amsterdam Vallon, Rupert Pupkin, Paul Hackett, Jake LaMotta and certainly before Henry Hill, there was Travis Bickle.

Taxi Driver is my favorite Scorsese film because to me, it’s Scorsese playing “in the pocket”. Maybe he was more raw with Mean Streets. Maybe he had more money with The Aviator. He was certainly more commercial with The Departed. But to me Taxi Driver was Scorsese at his creative best with the ability to maximize on every last bit of resource he had with pure Scorsese genius. The jump cut used as Bickle addressed “the people” while slowly turning towards the mirror — that personally clinched it for me.

Of course he didn’t do it alone. The Yang to his Yin was Bob. Without Bob there would be no Travis Bickle. But this is more of a wax job for filmmakers rather than actors so I’ll stick to that.

If you see this poster in some guy’s bedroom and he’s over 25… run.

From the ominous Bernard Herrmann score to the dirty seventies film look all the way down to the crazy tension build-up throughout the film, Scorsese made a damn near flawless film.

My only gripe with Scorsese over the years has been that he didn’t write more. I remember an old interview with Paul Thomas Anderson and in it he talked about how prior to filming Magnolia, he had a chance to visit Kubrick’s set of Eyes Wide Shut and how stodgy old Kubrick wouldn’t and didn’t pay PTA any mind until he learned PTA wrote his own scripts. Then he paid a lot more attention and respect to Anderson’s questions and work. Maybe I’ll turn stodgy in my later years but that PTA story always made perfect sense to me.

True, great filmmaking is communication between the filmmaker (the giver of information) and the audience (the receiver of information). For every different key member of this information train, the information gets more diluted and less pure. It becomes a weird game of telephone. When the film turns out great, everyone says it’s because of them. When it’s not, everyone blames the other guy. When the writer and director are the same person, there is far less chance of this happening.

Don’t get me wrong. Obviously this is not a technique for everyone. But someone of Scorsese’s caliber and legend… I only wish.

But then his films wouldn’t be the same. I get that.

Anyway, I own tons of Scorsese films and I’ll continue to revisit them from time to time as I do others. But in the end, if I had to pick only one, Taxi Driver would be it. It’s not a big film, it’s not glossy and it’s not a polished looking piece like his later works. But it’s pure and it’s true to Scorsese at his peak. And that’s what makes it so great to me.

The original 1976 trailer! You gotta love Youtube!

The countdown continues later…

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