Taxi driver
1976 USA color 113 minutes
Oscar nominations:
Best Actor (Leading) -> Robert De Niro
Best Actress (Supporting) -> Jodie Foster
Best Music -> Bernard Herrmann
Best Picture
Release date: February 8, 1976
The famous Are you talking to me scene wasn’t in the script. Scorsese: “I just said, Do something” Source / More (Book)
John Hinckley watched Taxi driver over fifteen times. He identified with Bickle and began stalking Foster to save her. In 1981 he tried to murder Ronald Reagan to show his love for her. Source / More (Book)
Jodie Foster was 13 years of age.
Hitchcock composer Bernard Hermann finished recording the last note of music on 23th December 1975, went back to his hotel and died in his sleep that night.
The script is based on the twisted diaries of Arthur Bremer (1950), a 21 year old restaurant busboy. Because he was dumped by a 15 year old girl, Arthur wanted to kill the governor of Alabama, George Wallace. He’s serving a 63-year stretch for attempted murder.
Paul Schrader wrote the script. He had a very hard time selling it to a studio. Schrader: “Every studio said, This is a great script, and somebody should make it - but not us”. Source / More (Book)
Scorsese turned down the chance to direct Schindler’s list in the 1980s, as he felt he couldn’t do as good a job as a Jewish director. He agreed to swap films with Steven Spielberg, taking over Cape Fear (1991) instead.
November 17, 1942
Scorsese, an asthmatic child, was raised in New York's Little Italy (USA) and spent most of his early years frequenting movie theaters. After he tried unsuccessfully to enter the Roman Catholic priesthood, Martin graduated from New York University as a film major in 1966.
In 1968 he made his first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door?, and then agreed to work as an assistant director and editor on the musical documentary Woodstock (1970).
Scorsese won in 1973 critical attention with Mean Streets and even more with Taxi Driver (1976), a brutal, uncompromising film that starred Robert De Niro as a lonely, psychopathic New York cabbie. Martin chose for his next project, Raging bull (1980), black-and-white cinematography to render stark realism to the story of boxing champion Jake La Motta.
In 1986 Scorsese made a conventional Hollywood movie, The color of money but two years later he sparked controversy with his film adaptation of the novel The Last Temptation of Christ. He returned to more familiar subject matter in GoodFellas (1990) and Casino (1995) but turned to unexpected material with The age of innocence (1993).
By making Kundun (1997) Martin was barred from entering Tibet. His latest film The departed was his biggest financial success to date and it won Martin's only Oscar.
It has been announced that Scorsese will be working on The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and on Silence, the story of Portuguese Jesuit missionaries in feudal Japan.
2007 Won Oscar for: The Departed (2006)
2005 Nominated Best Director for: The Aviator (2004)
2003 Nominated Best Director for: Gangs of New York (2002)
1994 Nominated Best Writing for: The age of innocence (1993)
1991 Nominated Best Director for: Goodfellas (1990)
1991 Nominated Best Writing for: Goodfellas (1990)
1989 Nominated Best Director for: The last temptation of Christ (1988)
1981 Nominated Best Director for: Raging bull (1980)
Lester Keyser -> Martin Scorsese (1992)
Mary Pat Kelly -> Martin Scorsese: A Journey (1996)
Lawrence S. Friedman -> The Cinema of Martin Scorsese (1998)