The Rewatchables - ‘Taxi Driver’ With Bill Simmons, Bill Hader, and Sean Fennessey

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

Are you talking to me? The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Sean Fennessey are joined by actor Bill Hader to talk about Martin Scorsese’s 1976 classic ‘Taxi Driver’, starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, and Cybill Shepherd. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey now, welcome to our Black Girl Songbook. This is the show where we celebrate Black women in music and the moments that make them. I'm your host, Danielle Smith. I was at By for a good long time, and now I'm collaborating with the Ringer and Spotify to bring you stories about the black women who create the music that we live for. You will hear, in full, the songs behind those stories. New episodes of Black Girl Songbook drop every Thursday. Listen exclusively on Spotify.

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Songbook with Daniel Smith and SportsCard's Nonsense, our look at the sports card industry, which has taken off in all kinds of ways. Coming up, you're only as healthy as you feel. Taxi driver is next. That taxi driver's been staring at us. You talking to me? You're talking to me? I don't know who's weirder, you or me. You're talking to me? Well, who the hell I'm saying? You're talking to me?

Well, I'm the only one here. I don't believe I've ever met anyone quite like you. Oh yeah? You will never see a more chilling performance than this. Robert De Niro, in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. All right, the 45th anniversary of Taxi Driver. Taxi Driver is this week, one of the greatest American movies ever made. Bill Hader is here. Sean Fennacy is here. I'm going to start here. Tarantino, who's been on this podcast before,

he said about Taxi Driver, I actually do feel that it may be the greatest first person character study ever committed to film. I really can't even think of a second, third, or fourth that can come in a contention with it. Scorsese at this time in his career had a connection to cinema. and no matter how dark the material was, there was such an exuberance to filmmaking that I don't think if anyone, I don't know if anyone will ever quite have the run of films that he had in the 70s leading in the 80s.

Bill, the concept of a first-person character study, can you think of a better version than this movie? I mean, there's different versions of it, but, I mean, this was kind of the ultimate one. I mean, it was definitely, you know, Paul Schrader talks a lot about like Brissone movies, you know, like Pick Pocket, and he did a one movie,

that movie, Man Escapeed, and, you know, it was that same thing where you're just kind of seeing everything from one person's, you know, the purpose person thing,

but accident driver is, you know, obviously the one that really connects with people because we're still talking about it. And I think what also kind of, set it apart was how like bleakly honest it was I mean clearly it was so honest

because it kind of you know in 1976 was showing a a type of American character that clearly existed but no one really wanted to talk about it

you know and it was kind of Travis Bickle became this kind of archetype that we see still. I mean, every kind of awful mass shooting thing that happens, you can always go, well, that's, you know, the Vegas shooter. I remember when they did that, you're like, and he had all those guns. And I was like, oh, Travis Bickle guy, you know. And so I think just kind of politically and culturally and socially,

it was so prescient and dead on in a way that, you know, no other. movie I can think of, you know, did that. I mean, clearly, I mean, John Hinkley, I mean, it was right. Sean had there been a character like this in a movie before? Um, probably something close to approximating it, but nothing so specifically about somebody just totally descending into madness this way in this very specific space. But I mean, I think part of it too is like where it's happening and when it's happening. You know, as Bill was saying, it's in New York. It's in the 70s. is it's at the height of this garbage strike. The city is kind of a disaster at this point.

And so him reflecting on what he perceives as the, like, the filth of the world is a perfect marriage of a guy who is coming out of a war, is losing his marbles, and is trapped in hell. And, you know, it's just a perfect marriage of all of these awful things happening all at the same time. Yeah, it's the garbage strike and all that stuff in New York. There are all these New York movies from this era, right? where the vision of New York is so bleak. You know, you go from Death Wish,

taxi driver, the Warriors, where it's like, now the gangs have taken over New York's. And then it finally all culminates and escape from New York, where it's like, now we've turned New York into a maximum security prison. But it all starts, I guess it starts with, you know, in the mean streets,

so like the 73 range, and then the arc of that. But New York has a character in these movies. And then the flip side of it, of it when like Woody Allen's making Annie Hall in Manhattan where it's like the romanticized version. But this gritty, ugly version in New York, it's a thing that jumps out every time I see this movie. It just seems like the worst place in the world,

which is what Scorsesey wanted, right, Bill? Yeah, I mean, you had different weird takes on New York at the time. Like, he said, like Woody Allen and Annie Hall, there was that movie Girlfriends that came out and then like Panic in Eatle Park. and and and and um and then even later it was like those spike lee movies you know um and things like that you know but it definitely felt it's one of those good things it's one of those things where you just felt like paul's freighter and robert de nero and martin scorsesee and i'd say like

michael chapman and marshal lucas and everybody involved with the movie just understood it on some incredibly basic primal level, like the emotions of the movie. And there was nothing that really needed to be said. You know what I mean? It just felt the whole thing feels so instinctual and just so true, you know? Like there's nothing, I know how to explain it. Like you see a lot of movies now. They're about these things and they kind of feel like think pieces.

It kind of feels more like journalism. And this movie doesn't feel that way at all. It just feels like, I just remember watching it in Pulse, Oklahoma, and being like, oh, that's just true. I just, that's real. That's just, like, those emotions, I mean, the way, you know, I think about De Niro, when, when Harvey Kitell is talking to him about Jody Foster and everything that he can do to her and the look on Robert DeNiro's face, like, you don't, like, that's just, that's just. being a human. That's just being like, that's what's so great about sports stagy stuff.

It cuts through all that shit and just goes like right to this incredibly just very real, primal, non-intellectual, just sheerly emotional place that people can relate to. You know, and so that's why the end of that movie is so

conflicting because there's a part of you that's like, you know, yeah. fuck these guys I want to see him kill all these guys and save this girl but then they don't shy away from their reality of her

you know I think what always saves that movie for me is when he's driving away and they do that weird and you look that flash and you're like

oh yeah no this dude's a fucking he's like a ticking time bomb there's nothing uh there's there's nothing

in the heroic about what he did. And that was the huge thing when I saw the movie, I was pretty young. I mean, I thought it was like 13, 12. It was on TV.

And I just went, oh my God, this is awesome. It's like Death Wish, or there was that movie Rolling Thunder and stuff like that. We were like, fuck, yeah,

he was kicking ass. But what's for Sasey does is there's this level of empathy and honesty to it where you're like, no, this guy's sick. You know, like this is, it's more complex than that.

You know, and I think that's why it works so well, you know, because you're weirdly relating to, at least I found myself being conflicted by those emotions where you're like, well, Harvey Teichel is a massive piece of shit. And what he's doing is purely despicable. And, you know, he's doing this righteous act as they, and it's a purely kind of like American male act that's like grew up 50s and 60s. like this is what we do, you know what I mean? This can't stand. And we're seeing that a lot right now. You know what I mean? That's what's so, I mean, it's 45 years later.

And that's like the capital insurrection. I'm like, those are a lot of Travis Nichols. You know, it kind of is. You know, the, this has been one of the most written about movies, I think, of the last 50 years. And one of the fascinating pieces to me is how Paul Schrader wrote this in the early 70s, basically because he was really lonely and he was kind of losing his mind. He had a nervous breakdown in LA.

He got dumped by his wife. He lost his job and was just spending a lot of time by himself and kind of lost his marbles and then wanted to write about like a character that that happened to. And it takes a while for this movie to get made. But then when you watch it

and it comes out in 1976, New York kind of catches up with how weak the character is. John, can you remember another situation where it's actually better that it took this long for the movie to be made? It was almost like New York caught up to where everything else needed to be in this movie. They made it in 72. I don't feel like it's the same movie. Yeah, that would have been before something like Serpico.

It obviously would have been before Mean Streets. I mean, it doesn't happen because Schrader gives this script to De Palma. They had worked together on this movie called Obsession. And De Palma doesn't want to do it, but he thinks Scorsi, is right for it, Scorsese, quintessential New York filmmaker, but at that point, Scorsese hadn't really made anything,

and he couldn't convince any producers to let him make this movie, even though he's obviously, we know now, the perfect person to make this movie has the perfect perspective. Schrader is not from New York. Schrader is not a New York person.

He spent some time there when he went to school, but he's from the middle of the country. And I think the reason, everything Bill is saying is so on point, because even though Bickle is considered maybe the all-time crazy person in movies,

the person who has just lost his grip, you can see that Schrader and De Niro and Scorsese, they relate to him. They identify. They kind of love him and they're afraid of becoming him in some ways. And if you hear these guys talk about that character over the years, you hear them over and over again say, like, this was a very personal movie for me.

This movie means a lot to me. And those guys have made a lot of movies and they've made a lot of great movies and a lot of serious movies. But this one in particular, it's almost like they're talking about going to church or something when they talk about it because it's so important to them. Well, and you need luck with this stuff. It was lucky for them that a couple years passed because then New York becomes such a bigger character in it.

They needed De Niro to become more famous to make the movie. And he gets nominated for an Oscar and wins for Godfather 2. And I think didn't Coppola say to Scorsese, like, this is good for your movie. So that happens. He also got to pay him his pre-Godfather 2 rate, which is a pretty good break. It was like $35,000. Yeah. And then the other thing was he had to, I think they both had to, De Niro was going to film

1900. So Scorsese is like, okay, and he goes to film Alice doesn't live here anymore. And that buys another year. And then by the time this comes out, it ends up being one of the great movie years ever. But De Niro, you know, thinking that Godfather 2 was so close to this movie and how different those performances are. And there's a reason we talk about him reverentially as one of the greatest actors of all time.

just you take those two performances and they're so different from each other Bill just as an actor who loves this stuff and who is currently playing a conflicted possibly crazy person about an HBO show what is the Nero doing in this movie that you're noticing? What are some tricks?

I mean clearly the show I do owes a huge debt to taxi driver I mean it wasn't until we were mixing the last episode of season two but I turned to Alec Berg and I was like, Jesus Christ, we're ripping off taxi drivers. While we were shooting it, it never occurred to me. And then I'm watching it in the mix.

I'm like, oh, my God, it's full embarrassing. It's just ingrained in you, you know what I mean? It's like you talk to certain musicians and they're like, I can't even, or like Scorsese, he can't even talk about the searchers because he's just like, I've seen him so many times it's ingrained in me. And taxi driver is just clearly one of those movies for me. I mean, I think the thing that, I mean, I would actually say the two performances of De Niro from, that struck me, there's three performances, is the taxi driver and then Raging Bull, and then a lot of people say Cana Comedy, which is good. I do love Cana Comedy, but I actually, I would say his performance to Midnight Run was the other one where I was like, oh, man, this part could be. He's so much more showier if he wanted it to be, but he just makes it like such a grounded thing.

And he's allowing for Charles Broden to be really funny. Like if you really watch that movie and watch what he's doing, you're like, wow, De Niro, not only is a great actor, but he's like so confident. And his whole thing is like, I want the whole thing to work. It's not just about me. You see a lot of actors that, you know, they chew up a lot of scenery. And he doesn't have to do that. He just has a lot of confidence.

And he does it in this movie. I mean, the scene in that, this movie was kind of like a, like an acting school for me. I was like, oh, that's how you're supposed to act.

It was like watching, you know, spinal tap and being like, okay, that's how you play comedy. You don't like push it too much. It's like, you know.

And there's specifically one moment in it that I always think of, and I heard talking to Sam Rockwell about this. And this is like what actors nerd out about. And it's annoying. I get it. But it was like, there's a scene in that movie where he's talking to Palantine in the car, and he's talking about how terrible the city is.

And he's like so excited that this guy is in his cab. And there's one moment where he says, yeah, I was just take her in this city and just, he flush you down the fucking toilet. And if you watch, he goes, he flinches because he cursed. And just that little moment, he just goes like that. And it's not in the script, not anything. that's Robert De Niro and by him doing that

that tells you so much about that character so much about that guy just through one little moment and I don't think it was probably thought out I don't think it was anything it's just in the moment he did it and you just go oh man that's

that that's what you should do as a performer it's just you really you reveal these little things through behavior you know and he just does it again and again in that movie and nothing's pushed And that's why I think when he starts to go insane, it's like,

it just feels so real, you know, because it's more like a documentary. It's like you're watching behavior. When he's talking to, it's like watching that guy when he has the Mohawk. That's why that Mohawk thing is so shocking when you see it, the boom up to reveal that he's got the, that he's taking pills.

I mean, it's brilliant that it goes to pills. So it's telling you, a story. He's on pills and you boom up and he's got the mohawk. It's so shocking because if he was playing it really big, you're like, well, of course he's going to have a mohawk. Right. But he's not. You're like, oh, it's like watching your roommate who's normally really cool, suddenly go insane. You're like, what's going on with Todd? Todd was naked the other day. What happened to him? Todd was totally fine yesterday. the acting stuff with De Niro, Scorsese, who's in this scene, and we'll talk about that.

He's in this movie as a scene, we'll talk about it later. But he was talking about how he learned from De Niro, from acting with him in that scene. And he was, his first line on it was turn off the meter because he's trying to get, you know, he wants to basically stake out his wife's house. So Scorsese said, Bob said to me, when you say turn off the meter, make me turn it off. Just make me turn it off. I'm not going to turn it off until you convince me. that you want me to turn off the meter. And then Scorsese said, so I learned a lot.

He sort of acted with the back of his head, but he encouraged me by not responding to me. And then Scorsese used that tension. And it was like, little shit like that is like, nobody thinks of that stuff. No, no, don't, don't, don't, oh, the fucking meter. What are you doing? What are you doing?

The meter. Did I tell you to put, did I do, that with the meter? Put the meter back. Let the numbers go on. what I have to pay. I didn't say, I'm not getting out. Put the meter back on.

Put it down. Put it, that's right. Put it, put it down. Well, that's what I mean, though, is like, it's very simple, but that's not for De Niro. That's for Scorsese. That's like, he's thinking about his performer.

You know what I mean? It's the scene, it's what they're talking about and Raging Bull, the whole, like, You Fuck My Wife scene, you know? And there's that thing where he was doing it on Joe, they're on Joe Pesci on his coverage and he's going and he's like, you fuck my wife and he's like, no, no, no. And then I want to take

he goes, do fuck our mother? And Joe Pesci goes, what? Like that's the take they use. The take of it, he's responding to you fuck our mother. He's like, what you say? Like, that's to give him something. That's like that's what I mean, even when he would host SNL, Robert De Niro, we did like a weekend at Bernie's thing with him and it was a stupid

weekend at Bernie's thing that's Andy Sandberg and I did. And he, he really played dead. Like we legitimately had to hold him up. It wasn't like he was trying to help. And it did. It helped. We were like, oh, my God.

We were like, hey, man. And he just was like, you guys are going to have to carry me. And I was like, this is awesome. Like, this is so cool. And he's not like showy about it. It's just very simple. It's kind of like, well, if you're good, then I'm good. And then it works.

Jody Foster tells that story about doing the scene in the diner, that famous conversation back forth with them, and how De Niro was just so annoying about wanting to run lines with her for hours and hours. He would call her up over and over again and be like, let's just do the scene again. Let's just do it again. Let's work on it again. She's 12 years old. And she's like, dude, fucking relax. Like, we're going to get it. It's going to be okay. And he was so compulsive and obsessed with doing it the right way. I mean, that's how you get greatness, I think. I don't, I didn't realize how reverentially she felt about this experience. because I would have thought it would have gone the other way

where she was like, man, I can't believe if I was exploited as a child prostitute when I was 12. It's the opposite. She's like, I learned everything I ever wanted to learn about acting just from being in that movie and De Niro and Scorsese and it shaped my entire career. And I picked up 700 tricks.

Yeah, I mean, like what he did in that was really smart. I was just talking about this yesterday with an actor or it was like, oh yeah, you run it. You run the scene until you run it to death. And then he would then just start throwing her curveballs because she knew it so well. Then you could start throwing her curve balls and then she can, they can just get it back on track, you know? And Stephen Root works like that, like where we would run a scene over and over and over again. And then suddenly he would just do something different and you go and it just, it forces you to have to listen and pay attention.

Well, so De Niro has Godfather 2 in 74, taxi driver in 76, and New York, New York at 77, and then Raging Bowl in 80. And I think somewhere along that line, the Pacino-Denero thing was off. One of the things, I don't know how authentic this was in the research, whether Pacino might have been considered for this at one point if DeNiro couldn't do it, things like that. But I think after this movie, he definitely had the lead. The Jody Foster piece is interesting because in 1976, she puts out four movies. Taxi Driver, Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, which is a movie I watched as a kid and was terrified by. Super scary. Yeah, it's very weird. I can't believe they haven't remade that.

I can't believe somebody has bought the rights and done that one again. Bugsie Malone, which was a 1930s but with teens, a teen gangster movie that's really weird. And Scott Bay is the lead. And then Freaky Friday. So she made four movies in one year. I don't know. She must have just been working 365 days a year. And then the other one was Sybil Shepard, who was a big star in the early 70s, had a couple bombs.

And then they were looking for a Sybil Shepard type. And her agent was like, hey, what about just hiring Sybil Shepard? Sean, Sybil Shepard in the 70s, put it in the context for us. I think the platonic American ideal of blonde, magazine cover beauty, you know, total ingenue, right? She'd already done

last picture show and had fallen in love with Peter Bogdanovich and was like an idealized vision and obviously Travis needs someone who is like the concept of perfection,

untouchable, exactly what he had been looking for, the answer to all of his problems. And, you know, she also, I think, was maybe concerned about being, you know, not taken seriously enough

or being considered like, you know, fortunate because of her relationship with Bogdanovich or only playing light stuff. And so it's like, it's a smart move for her to be in this film. She's actually quite good in it. And it's quite an odd part. And especially by the time you get to the end of the movie and you have that final encounter between the two of them, which is so disorienting, you can see that like she's really, she's really a great match for him in a perverse way. Like they weirdly fit together. Even that conversation between him in the diner. Like they have an odd energy that is.

that you don't see in a lot of movies. Yeah, I actually, when I see this movie, I wonder why she wasn't in more stuff. And I don't know. In some of the research, it was unclear how happy they were with her performance and could she remember all her lines and stuff like that. But the highs that she had over the course of her career, you kind of wonder why she wasn't in more stuff in a bigger way.

After this movie, it kind of goes away. But I think she's great in this. All right, let's talk Scorsese. So I'm going to start with Bill Because I know Sean's take already Sean thinks Scorsese is the most important director of all time You disagree with me, Bill? Give us your thoughts, Bill Hader

Well, that's a tough I mean, that's a tough one I mean, I don't know you can never say anybody One director is the most important director of all time It's kind of like- Greatest or most important, Sean, what was it? I just think he's the most significant American filmmaker of like the last 75 years I think he basically like changed the language of movies

for at least people in America. All right. I think the thing that everybody has their own specific thing that they did that was really great. I feel like, you know, the big ones at least. You know, you talk about like, you know, even Scorsese would talk about like there's movies before and after 2001 and like what Kubrick,

how Kubrick changed things, how you shoot things. And as far as like, yeah, like American filmmakers. I mean, there's so many amazing ones. It's hard for me to say. that but I think I can just say personally and watching his movies and the thing that I always get from them is that how no matter what

the movie is you feel there's something personal to it. There's something he has to personally relate to you know and the clarity of the emotion in it you know and he can make them in these really interesting ways especially what he did

with editing and camera movement especially when you get to Goodfellers. And it's like a, you know, just, but again, it feels all very intuitive. You know, it's like, okay, it's based on a book. We have all these characters. Okay, well, I'm just going to make it, this guy's telling you the story. You know, we're going to see everything, you know. Anytime I see one of those movies, even the Irishman, I mean, I got,

we watched the Irishman recently, and I get really emotional in the last 30 minutes of that movie, especially the very last scene. I just am like, wow, this is so, so, it feels so, so personal, you know. But even like Hugo, it's like that movie is about, you know, film preservation, you know. It's like he's got to be able to latch on to something. And I think that's what I admire so much about him. Even like the big scale movies, he finds something like that, you know, even Age of Innocence.

Like that movie. And I'm like, this is, I mean, it's gut-wrenching. There's parts of that movie that are just so hard to watch because they just feel so real, you know? I'm actually really glad he put himself in the movie because he looks so young in the movie. It kind of gives it this extra context about, because De Niro, you know, we've watched DeNiro

over the last 45 years turned into an old man, which is why the Irishman was so weird when they digitally deaged him. But we already had this history of DeNero as a young guy. seeing Scorsese how young he was, I think it's kind of thrilling where it's just like, oh yeah,

all these young dudes that... Yeah, he wasn't supposed to be in it. No. Somebody got in a car accident. It's a fat guy from Mean Street. From Mean Street. The guy says MOOC.

Like, this guy's a MOOC. He got hurt on a movie. He was supposed to play a part and Scorsese did it. I think he's wonderful. And I think that scene is really great because it's like, it's Travis realizing he's not really alone

and he's afraid of this guy but he also kind of relates to this guy and he's afraid of it. It's so many complex motions and De Niro doesn't say a single word in the scene and you just, you just feel it. You know, it's just really well done. I think you can make the case that the movie is like a before

and after from that point on too. It's almost like he's the inspiration for his rage and his life. If someone else has these kinds of urges. Maybe that's okay, exactly. Yeah, I can do this now, I guess. I'm terrified of this, but I'm also kind of like, that's not a bad idea. Is this the most influential movie of the 70s, Sean, for people in the movie industry? Or would you say something else? Geez. I mean, it's up for directors and actors who followed, did this have the biggest impact? Because my gut instinct would be Godfather,

but I don't know if, I think there's a gritty underground style of this that when I think about like the directors, especially in the 90s, that probably grew up and they, you know, the generation after this film. I wonder how much it was affected by that.

You could just like look at the Oscars, which we make fun of all the time on this show in 70, the ones that happened in 75, 76, and 77 for the preceding years. And just like look at the movies that are nominated in the movies that win. It's like Godfather Part 2, Chinatown, The Conversation, and then you get one full of the cuckoo's nest, Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Nashville.

And then in the in the, this year, the year the taxi driver comes out, you get Rocky, all the president's men, network, and taxi driver. I mean, could all of those movies be the most influential movies of that period? I mean, they're all kind of candidates. And I guess it depends on what kind of movie you want to go off and make or what kind of career you want to have. Yeah. I mean, there's also, it's weird because, like, you know, it's hard to, like, put that on it. Because, you know, there's a lot of people, like, when I talk about taxi driver, I like it.

And, you know, they'll be like, oh, yeah, but it's just so dark, you know. And they like, yeah, like Godfather. Godfather is kind of like, you know, to me, when I watch it, you just go, man, that is just kind of like, you know, that is just kind of like, you know, if I had to say to my daughters she's like, well, what's like a perfect kind of movie, like just you know, structurally acting cinematography, everything, you can go

well, you can watch the first godfather. I mean, it's pretty much all there in that movie. But then there's other movies like, like I said earlier, that movie Girlfriend just came out on a Claudia Wheel movie, came out on Craigsiri and you watch that and I'm like, oh, this is like every TV show, like, do you see girls and these other shows? I'm like,

oh, this movie came out in 1977 I was doing the same thing, talking about the same subjects. And then last detail, that's another one I think about a lot. I think that movie, the performances in that, the editing, it's just, it's just a great time. That's why Scorsese hired Michael Chapman. He saw the last detail, and he was like, I want that guy. Because it's unreal.

Somehow Rocky won for Best Picture. It beat Network, taxi driver, and all the president's been, along with Bound for Glory. John Avilson won for Rocky for Best Director. That's a tough one, 45 years later. I'll do respect to John. But Scorsese, not nominated. Not nominated.

The whole history. He has a whole history. I have to be totally honest. I'm probably fucking myself, you know, whatever, forever being invited to the odds. But I remember being a kid and seeing good fellas. And I was like, well, that's the greatest thing I've ever seen. And then I watched the Oscars with my parents And I was like

Well that's gonna win everything You know And then it was Kevin Costner won best director For Dances of Wolves And I was like Yeah Wait what?

And then my dad And I go, why did that happen? And my dad was like Well that's like a fun It's like a nice movie And he's popular But I also felt the same way After seeing planes trains and automobiles

And I was like Well John Candy's gonna win Like all the awards Right I cried at the end of that movie. I'm like, he's going to win an award. And my dad was like, no, no, that's not how they work. I'm like, what?

He's so good in that movie. And I stand by there. In the 70s, it was weird. I mean, that lineup of directors from this year is, it's unusual. It's, you know, it's Avaldsen wins. Pekula is nominated and Sydney Lumet is nominated for Network. But then Ingmar Bergman and Lena Vertmuller are nominated for Best Director, too. It's like an odd international collection of people.

people. And, you know, like, this is also the year that Carrie came out. Carrey's not nominated for Best Picture. Brian DePaul was not nominated. So, you know, it's like a horror movie. It's not respected as much. So it all depends on the kind of movie you're making, too. Peter Finch won for Best Actor, which that movie was a phenomenon and he was a phenomenon in it. And it's hard to litigate that one. I don't think, I get it. I mean, I think De Niro's going to go down probably historically as the greater performance, but I get it. The screenplay thing, I think, is crazy. Shrader didn't get nominated. That's nuts.

And that's just kind of headspending. I don't know what to do with that. 1.9 million dollar budget made $28.4 million. A lot of critical acclaim. Roger Ebert said it was one of the greatest films he'd ever seen, four stars. Weirdly, Gene Sisko gave it a thumbs down. He was a little prudy with this stuff. He likes Saturday Night Fever.

That's like his favorite movie. So, I mean, that's what I mean. It's like a lot of people are just like, oh, it's just so, it's sad. It's dark. I don't want to watch that. He said it covered some interesting ground, but it was spoiled by the climax, which was violent and unpleasant and unnecessary. And then Ebert said, well, if they took out the violent climax, Gene, this wouldn't be

the same movie. And they had an argument about it. I think Cisco might have backtrack. Maybe they'll just start dancing. He could have ended the film in a disco. We're going to take a break then. We're going to go through some of the scenes. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market.

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Save at Whole Foods Market. If you're chasing data down instead of seeing it in one place, you need the Intuit ERP. Intuit Enterprise Suite. All your data in one place with built-in AI for real-time insights. Learn more at intuit.com slash ERP. All right. This is weird to do most rewatchable scene. Normally we do movies like Midnight Run

that are just you watch the same scene 120 times. Taxi driver is rewatchable because it's so great and important but I wouldn't necessarily the typical thing of most rewatchable scenes. So it's almost like we got to do like best scenes. We got to tweet that for this.

I have Travis driving around explaining decrepit New York City. All the animals come out at night. Hors, skunk, pussies, buggers, Queens, fairies, dopers, junkies. Sick, venal.

Someday a real rail will come and wash all the scum off the streets. Where all the animals come out at night, horse, skunk pussies, does that whole thing. Each night I clean the cum off the back seat. Some nights I'd say clean off the blood. It's like, all right. So we're off. This is just how we're going to go here.

The producer, Michael Phillips, just from background in New York, He said, it's crazy to think of New York like this now, but he said, quote, the whole West Side was bombed out row after row of condemned buildings. Times Square was shuddering and disgusting. And he said, we didn't know we were documenting what looked like the dying gasp of New York. And I think that scene when he drives around, even though it's only like two minutes, it's grim. You're just like, wow, is this really what happened to New York? Apparently it was. Next one, Travis asking up Betsy, going into the office.

Then what exactly do you want? Would you like to come have some coffee and pie with me? Why? Why? Yeah. I'll tell you why. I think you're a lonely person. I drive by this place a lot.

I see you here. I see a lot of people around you, and I see all these phones and all this stuff on your desk. That means nothing. Then when I came inside and I met you, I saw in your eyes and I saw the way you carried yourself, but you're not a happy person. And I think you need something.

And if you want to call it a friend, you can call her a friend. You're going to be my friend? Yeah. So a lot going on there. That's just a really good scene. And it hinges on, I have to believe, that she might actually go out with the guy. And it's kind of ridiculous when you see how the movie goes that she would ever even. But she kind of buys them, right?

How do you pull off a scene like that, Bill? Well, he comes in with a lot of confidence, and he also, it's this funny thing where you could go, wow, Travis, if he wanted to be, to be a good guy. And then it's like he comes in with a lot of confidence and he, and he reads her really well, but the reason he reads her well is because he's stalking her. So when I always think of that scene, I always think there's a shot of him going like, he goes like that over her desk. It's this really weird shot where it's very normally covered, traditionally coverage.

And then it's this high shot of just his hand going over. He's like all this stuff. And it just makes it a little bit unsettling, I think. It's really interesting. I'm so glad you said that so that I can nerd out for one minute, Bill. Go ahead. You have multiple chances to nerd out in this podcast. This is why you're here.

So that shot in particular is the first time you. you see the priest's view, they call it, where it's like an overhead shot at things like items on a table. And you see it later when he's buying the guns and you see the guns from overhead and you see this kind of omniscient, but intimate, close look at what's in the picture. And at the end of the movie during the shootout, when you see that long pullback overhead through the, you know, essentially at the ceiling level, it's like, that's the official, the confirmation that we've gotten wholly here, you know, that something has truly elevated into. into the insane and the perverse and the spiritual in a weird way.

And, you know, that's like all set up. You know, that's that scene that Bill is talking about is him, is Sasey, kind of preparing you for where we're going here. It's like, this is the real point of view of this movie is there's something deeper going on with Travis. Next one, the Palantine Cab Ride, which we discussed earlier. I didn't know this. I just thought, I always knew the actor who played Palantine.

I was like, oh, he's that guy who was, he's only. two movies ever. Yeah. And was like a culture critic who they just kind of pulled in because they didn't really want like the Hal Holbrook type of established actor to be, they

just wanted somebody who didn't seem like an actor. Fantasy, I think I have hope for you now. You might get pulled into a Scorsese movie. Bill, what do you think? Can you put in the good word for me? I don't know him. They're pulling in culture critics. Who knows? Phenisies. I don't have no idea. I don't know him.

I would happily play a nearly assassinated politician in anyone's film. So please feel free to call me. There's a lot going on in that scene. I love the reaction how that guy, he's processing it. And he's like, wow, this guy's fucking crazy. But I'm a politician. And then he's just kind of like, okay, cool, we'll work on that.

And then he gets out, he's like, hey, it was great to meet you. That's the handshake. Everything about that is awesome. Bill pointed out that moment that when Travis kind of flinches because he curses. but also the politician is so good. That actor is so good at waiting a beat to find the right politician thing to say back to the crazy person who's talking at him.

It's so good. Whatever ever becomes the president should just really clean it up. You know what I mean? Sometimes I go out and I smell it. I get headaches. It's so bad, you know? And they just like,

you just never go away, you know? It's like I think that the president should just clean up this whole mess here. You should just flush it right down to fucking toilet. toilet. Well, I think I know what you mean, Travis. Yeah. Yeah.

And Travis, I think, in that scene, knows he's being condescended to. Yes. He fully knows he's being condescended to. And it's just like, all right, I blew that. Next one, Scorsese is the crazy cab passenger. This is just such a fun five minutes. And it's so weird.

And it's just so crazy. it's not exactly politically correct in 2021, but everything that's going on in that scene and his energy and just how crazy is. And, you know, we've seen directors put themselves in movies to mix results over the years. I think I really like this.

I actually thought it worked. I'm glad he's in it. Again, I just feel like anything with a sports daze movie, it's like even when it's uncomfortable, whatever, you just go, well, is that, does that feel honest? And even when I was a kid, I was like,

that guy exists. That scene happens a lot. every day in the world. And it's really uncomfortable. There was nothing, I guess my thing is, there's nothing gratuitous about it. You know what I mean? It's like, it's just, it's honest, you know.

Yeah. Travis mastering his gun knife routine is just really fun to watch. As Sean knows, I love when actors throw themselves into, like, Cruz, when he learned how to play pool and call over money and he really spent a lot of time being good at billiards.

so that when he played billiards, he could flip the cue. I always enjoy that. You could tell De Niro spent weeks and weeks working on this stuff. So when they actually filmed it, it seemed like this guy had lost his mind and was actually working on this. Also, really smart decision. I didn't realize this until the research.

They filmed all that in one shot. And it was too long in one of the rough cuts. And somebody told him, you should just cut that in half and then you could go back to it. So they have him, he's doing it. Then he goes to one of the rallies and he talks to the Secret Service agent, that whole weird scene. And then it comes back to him doing the You Talking to Me. And initially, the You Talking to Me, it was all, it was like 10 minutes.

And they were like, this is too long. It's too weird. So that was a really smart edit. Marshall Lucas. You talking to me? You're talking to me? Then who the hell I'll say you're talking? You're talking to me?

Well, I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? Oh, yeah? The breakfast scene with Travis and Iris mentioned earlier. This is an awesome scene. Jody Foster is really great in it. If you told me she was going to win two Oscars down the road, you would have believed that after this scene?

Do I look like an arc? Yeah. I am an eye. I don't know who's weird or you or me. I think about her putting the sugar on the jam. That's the thing that always sticks out on me. I mean, the performance is phenomenal, and I love it. when he goes, I am a narc.

Maybe I am a narc. And she's like, whoa, maybe he goes laughing. But yeah, her putting that sugar on the toast, that's what I think about it. Feels like a callback, too, to him pouring the brandy and the sugar all over his cereal in that scene. And you're like, maybe they are like souls

meant for each other in this fucked up way. Yeah. The botched assassination scene, it's short, but it's really gripping because you think the movie's leading to him shooting this guy, especially given everything in the last 45 years, if you haven't seen the movie before,

you just assume that's going to be the climax. And then it goes wrong. And the way it goes wrong, and the movements and the energy in that is really cool. And him running off and the wide shot, all that stuff. And also if you know, like, where they're shooting and how big that equipment was back then, the shots that Corsese is getting is, like, really impressive.

But even those shots of, like, Palantime, where it's just you see, like, the bottom of his face, you know, where it's just kind of dolling across everybody like when Travis is in his car watching and the guy's like you got to move, you know, all these boom shots and stuff like that. The equipment was really big. Yeah.

That's a lot. It's hard to do all that. And he just had the persistence to be like, it's very easy. I now know having directed that your producer will come up to you and go, do any way we could just do this like handheld or can you do this another way

because we need to get out of here. And now when I watch that movie, I go, oh man, first days, you just like, if it takes us three days, this is what we got to do, you know. Bill, when you're directing, do you storyboarding carefully plot out every single shot? Yeah, I do just because I don't, I just photo board, which now you can do on your iPhone. So it's like I take the people and take pictures and we photo board out all the coverage. But that's just because of the shots we want to get and because it's like a 30-minute TV show

and you just don't have the time or money to kind of like mess around, you know? So at least on our show, I mean, every show is different. So I, but I mean, definitely Scorsese, Hitchcock, the Cullen Brothers, like that way of working is helps my brain, you know, but then the irony is as an actor, you know, you like to have more like freedom, you know, so I've had the experience showing up and they're like, all right, well, the storyboards have you sitting here and you're doing this and, you know, you can bristle at that.

So it's funny. Like, you have to have, I like reading an interview with Corsese where he said, here's what I have, but if you have a different idea or if it doesn't work for you, just tell me. You know? So he was very open in that way. It wasn't like your puppet or something, you know?

I have a, I storyboard every Watchable's podcast with the Zoom. I know. The producer. Yeah, I send him pictures of. Yeah, you don't share it with the co-host, though. No, you only have total control. I'm like, here's how I want them to look in the boxes.

The last one is the shootout at the end, which is just really cool filmmaking. And there's been a lot of stuff over the years, the X rating, they had to knock it down. He takes some of the color out, tries a couple's tricks to make it somewhat more palatable and all of it works. And there's weird stuff on the internet about how creative. he was about how they were going to cut it or not, whether he started to lose his mind a little bit about it. But then that wide shot

at the end, you called the pre-shot. That goes on for like two minutes. You're just like, oh, this is going to end yet? And he just goes for it. But everything about it, it's just really good. Also, the thing about that, I saw, again, when I saw, seen a movie, you know, as a young kid,

you know, I've never seen a gun fight or anything happened without music. There's no music in it, and there's nothing that tells you, like, this is an action scene. Yeah, this is now happening. This is now action,

this is an action scene, and really what does it for me, the shot in that scene that always sticks with me, if he blows the guy's hand off, and the guy's pulling his hand, and he shoots Harvey Kattel, and then he gets to this wide shot where he just goes down the hall

just to make sure Harvey Kiteel's dead and shoots him a couple more times, and then comes back, And that guy's in shock just holding his hand. And he shoots him. And then you go into like slow motion and he's like, I'll kill you. It goes into this kind of different. You're in Travis's head.

But that shot I always think of as being real. That's something I showed everybody on the Barry's, you know, that was like that. It feels like a security cam footage. It feels like it's from the point of view of somebody who's trapped in that hallway. And you can't go anywhere, you know. you're like, did that guy just fucking shoot that guy? Oh my God. I mean, the better example of that, to be honest, is when he shoots Keitel the first time, because it's like you're from the point

of view of someone sitting on your stoop and you see a cab driver pull up, he gets out, he walks over, he gets in a fight with this guy, he shoots the guy in the stomach, and he goes over and he sits down and you see a TV in the background. And now it's just the two of you. Now you're just alone with this guy. I had totally forgotten about that. When I sat down, when he sits down, I was like, holy shit. That's a crazy choice that they kept that there. He just sits

down like, do I keep going through this? And you, I just remember watching it feeling so uncomfortable. And I'm like, why am I so uncomfortable? And then when you really study it, you're like, oh, because that's just amazing directing of like, no, let's put it like, again, instinctual or not, let's put it in the

position of, I'm now alone with this guy. I should go call the cop. I should let someone know, but I hope he doesn't look over here. You know, anybody else would have cut it up if it was made

it, you know, made it like crazy. And it's like, I don't know, just simple, you know. I always forget about the suicide choice too, where he's just trying to kill himself, but there's no bullets left. Yeah. Just how interesting that was that they had him do that. And again,

done in a way where if someone did that, you know, there's a way of doing that's hyper dramatic, which is like you put that and you're tricking the audience with cuts, you know, where it's like, oh, he's about to kill himself, oh, that, you know, music goes up, down, whatever. I'm going to say again, he just plays it super straight,

no music. He does it. Never cuts. It doesn't work. It doesn't cut. You just hear her crying off camera. I heard that he, you like Fast Fender movies, like Rainer Fast Thunder movies, and they have that same kind of feeling of like, you're just in the room. What's off camera is

as important of what's on camera. You know, and it's really well choreographed that whole feedline. The thing about that, too, is like, we didn't mention this bill, but the movie was a pretty good-sized hit. You know, like, they didn't expect it to be a hit. And I think a big reason why it was a hit is because it has this cathartic, violent ending where... Yeah. And some people interpreted that, obviously, as, like, this guy fully devolving. And some people celebrated it.

Like, they did see it as kind of a death wish kind of a movie where he was seeking revenge and saving the damsel. It was certainly that era, right? Because he was the dirty hairy, death wish, the hero gets revenge at the end, but this guy was not a hero. Yeah, the good thing about,

I think tax driver was like the more complicated view of that thing. You know what I mean? It wasn't like, because you watch something like Rolling Thunder again, which I like, but Rolling Thunder is pretty dry. Like, it's definitely like,

Connolly Jones is like, I'm going to go get my gear. That's the best part. Yeah. It's the best part. You know. also written by Schrader. Yeah.

And it's very much like, I'm going to, let's go kick some ass. And you just feel as Scorsese, he's like, yeah, yeah, that there's like, I think this is why he's such a great director. Like, no, it's more complex than that, you know, and it's really actually kind of sad. And this is what a gunfight would look like, you know? Right. It's not rad, you know, which is what I respond to. We're not going to pick a most rewatchable scene because that would be.

weird for this movie. Yeah. What's age the best? We mentioned mid-70s seed in New York City. I like the opening interview with former that guy, Joe Spinelli, who I think is now just Joe Spinelli. I don't feel like he's in that guy when De Niro's trying to get a job doing a taxi and everything going on for two minutes there and him kind of sizing him up.

And you could see he's like, this guy's a lunatic. I don't know if I should hire him. I was in the Marines too. Yeah. Joe Spinell, who is the biggest piece of shit ever in the Godfather movies, Willie Cheechee, turn coat asshole, but who has an iconic run of movies. Like his movie run in the 70s is up there with De Niro's. He's like Godfather 2, taxi driver, rocky sorcerer, big Wednesday.

He's a key rocky part. He's like the feel-good mobster who's got the insulting chauffeur driver. I like when he said the quote of loneliness has followed me my whole life everywhere in bars and cars, sidewalk stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's a lonely man. That's just Shrader. writing after he almost lost his mind, a movie about loneliness.

Bill, how do you feel about Harvey Keitel's sleeves' t-shirt, hat, hair, muscles look, just as a for some? Like, how is that not a Saturday Live character for you? Why didn't you work that into anything? I know. Apparently, he based that on a real temp, and he brought that temp to the actor's studio, and they worked on scenes together. but yeah I mean it feels real

and even like the shit he's talking about I love reading this course he's like I don't know what he's talking about about like I had a horse one so he'd get by a car he's like I have no idea what he's talking about well then he had the Pimp had five lines initially so Kaito basically added however many other lines just because they wanted more of him in the movie

I love that scene so much he's like I'm hip you don't look hip that whole that whole thing is just Again, it's all very simple. That is good. Catch you later, Coppa. What did you say? I'll see you later, Coppa.

I'm no cop, man. Well, if you are, it's entrapment already. Ah? I'm hip. You don't look hips. Go ahead. I'll have you some good time. Go ahead.

Travis telling Wizard, he's got some bad ideas in my head. That scene, it's not, it's not, it's a short scene, but there's a lot going on, and that's when you realize he really loses. Peter Boyle's so good, because it's such a losing battle of, like, and it feels so real. Like, that's what that conversation would be between those two guys.

Like, go out of the way. Like, he makes no sense. Like, what Peter Boyle is saying actually does, like as he's talking, you feel like he knows he doesn't know what he's saying. But he's weirdly right. I don't know what to do. He's like, we're all fucked.

You know? We're all fucked. Yeah. And he's like, is about the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Peter Boyle, I think, is the highest batting average of playing weird characters and weird movies dealing with other weird characters.

The you talking to me thing, which I think now in 2021, probably not as big of a deal, but it felt like that was an omnipresent catchphrase for 15 or 20 years. You talking to me, you're talking to me, iconic. De Niro's prep routine for this is, I feel like this was like the first time we heard about an actor preparing for a movie in a

completely psychotic way where he's like 15 hours of days driving cabs, studied mental illness, tape recorded conversations with Midwestern soldiers to pick up their accent, lost 35 pounds. I don't remember hearing about actor commitments to the degree that was almost like part of the marketing of this movie, you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, I feel like the method he's, saying like, you know, like Brando and then Dustin Hoffman and those guys was definitely

like a thing, but this is definitely the, you know, whatever, maybe the precursor to like what later you saw it like Daniel Dave Lewis and people like that. But definitely Dustin Hoffman was doing this. That's around the same time. Marathon Man is, you know. Right.

Same year, yeah. Yeah, when you watch like him as Ratto-Rizzo, it's like, you know, it's all in that as well. I think it was just everybody was trying to be Brando, but I think, I don't know, just De Niro, it just, there's something that it was, what I just responded to,

like all those other performances are really good, but you could see the choices and the acting, and I always feel with De Niro, it's like, it's honed into just behavior, you know. Well, I remember when you were the cop and Superbad, I remember you rode around with cops for eight months.

Yeah, we actually did have to ride around the cop. Judd-appentel made Spencer Ogan, and I ride with a cop in South Central, and it was the dumbest thing of all time. You're like, why did you make us do this? I'm like, we're like cops in the suburbs, and this guy's like fucking with us. Sean, you want to talk about Bernard Herman's score

while they run to the bathroom for 45 seconds? Of course. That sounds great. This is Bernard Herman, arguably the most important composer of film music. This is his last score ever. It's probably best known for Psycho, Vertigo, Citizen Kane, some of the most important movies ever made. Scorsese really wanted him to do the score for this movie.

In fact, Scorsese really doesn't use score for very many of his movies. He mostly uses needle drops all the time. And so he more or less begged Herman to do it. And he got him to do it after he resisted for a while. And I guess the famous quote is, all I hear is brass. That was what Herman said to Scorsese about the sound. And so that famous, you know, the taxi coming through the fog. opening and you hear that booming score is just so indelible.

Yeah, I love it. I know the editor on Barry, Jeffrey Cannons, he doesn't like the score, but this is a big thing we disagree on. I don't think like the kind of like bluesy saxophone stuff, but to me it works. I think it all. But I definitely like that what that, you know,

that opening music is just like a giant wave. hitting you, you know, and it definitely immediately takes you. It's like the opening of popcorn, that ball. The music hits you and you're just immediately in another universe. You know, you're in the world of the movie. It's really cool. Scorsese said when he heard the music, he felt the doom and the fate of Travis Bickle right off the bat. And like, that kind of says it all. Did you cover how he died right after the filming? We didn't even say that yet. Only recorded two days and died, yeah. Very young. 64. I think he was not that old.

Any other Wood Sage the best for you guys? I mean, I will say one thing, I don't know, man. I think the cinematography needs to call it. It's like the way the movie shot and the kind of prettiness of it, but it's very like composed. It has like this kind of natural light feeling to it.

And it's all, it's just a style that you don't see a lot now, you know? And it's just really, really, I think it's a very beautiful movie. So they had some I had this in my research somewhere Oh, this is Scorsese talking about it He said

You know, they didn't have a ton of money for this He said For whatever reason that summer When they were filming This garbage strike There's also, it was super hot Streets were packed with people So there's a lot of like that

Playing with the fire hydrant era Of New York City So the streets were wet And he said it was raining a lot So the windows would be you know, stuff like that. And then Chapman said,

much of the way the movie looks was dictated by the fact we didn't have a lot of time, we didn't have a lot of money, couldn't do traditional things, we couldn't light the streets with big lights.

We had to take our level of light down to let New York light itself. Of course, that turned out to be exactly the right thing to do. Thank God we didn't have any more time or money. Yeah. It worked out.

It worked out of favor, yeah. What's age the worst? I mean, gotta start with John Hinkley. That became the anchor to this movie in a bad way. Five years later, he literally tries to kill President Reagan because he's trying to impress Jody Foster

because he saw this movie a million times. It happened, I didn't even know this. It happened the day before the 81 Oscars for the 1980 movie season, which De Niro was about to win Best Actor for Raging Bow, and it postponed it by a day because this lunatic tried to shoot the president. And then that led to a whole bunch of,

you know, like a retroactive fallout with this movie, with a bit, blah, blah, blah, and then just Hinkley became part of this movie for a few years. I feel like that's faded away, Sean. What do you think? I don't think the idea of blaming culture for horrible things that happen in the world is faded away, though, and this is probably one of the most significant examples of that. I think that Schrader and Scorsese have always been really thoughtful whenever they get pushed on this. They're basically just say, by blaming the movie on acts like this, you evacuate all responsibility for everybody else. This is not addressing the problem.

It's only addressing a movie. And that remains true. I mean, we've seen this like over and over again where artists have to find a way to contend with this stuff. Yeah, there's a really uncomfortable Matt Lauer interviewing Jody. Like, he's interviewing everybody about taxi driver, like the 40th anniversary or something, a taxi driver. And he starts talking to Jody Foster about John Hinkling. He just tells, she's like, I don't know.

Can we not? I have nothing to say about those. Yeah. Well, it certainly messed her up, too. I think, you know, she took a big step back and didn't really act for a couple years there other than one or two movies. But yeah, that's obviously maybe the best example ever of what's age the worst, John Hinkley. Can I just quickly build? I think in terms of what's age the best, like I think if you play out Jody Foster's career like a hundred times, 99 times it might not turn out exactly as it did where she is one of the most celebrated actors of a generation. She's an accomplished filmmaker. She's like, she really is so amazing. I mean, it could have got another way. There's so much.

There's so much about it. Like, Jody Foster, I mean, I was just thinking that where you're like, you know, for me at least it was like Jody Foster was like, you know, one of the greatest actors ever, you know. And I'm like, you know, I was a good director too. I like through directing stuff, you know, a little man paid and stuff like that. So it's kind of like she was just incredibly talented. and it wasn't until, for me at least, I mean, this is how it always happens generationally that you find out later this stuff.

You go, oh, wow, that's terrible, you know? And so that's always the thing to kind of remember with a lot of this stuff, you know. Yeah. I was going to talk about the posters. The posters are almost intentionally bad, but it's like, Palantine, we are the people. I don't know whether they went over the top

with how lame the slogan and just like the passion they're trying to drum up with these terrible candidates were. But I almost felt like it's too far. Palantine We Are the People just gets rejected immediately. But maybe, I don't know, maybe that's how bad 70s posters were. I don't know. It always stuck out to me, though.

I mean, make America great. You know, a lot of people like that. You think Trump put it out weird people? Unfortunately. Sean, what happened when you took your future wife to sometimes sweet Susan on a date? Did it go better than this? We got married that night.

It was incredible. Yeah, that's how I knew she was the one for me. That scene is, it's aged worse for me. Just like, your skin's crawling for three minutes. So well done. I've watched this movie. I've gone to see it in the theater a couple of times, like when it plays places because I just want to see it in the theater.

And every time that scene comes up, I go to the bathroom. It's just too hard for me to watch. But that, I will say, though, this brings me up the biggest influence that this movie had on my life. and what termy I mean as you guys like as you know it's just like fans of things and where I don't know if you've had this

whether it's with sports music anything where it's like you go from being someone who loves something to like something unlocks in your brain and then it makes you an obsessive where you go oh wow there's like this whole deep chasm into this that I didn't even understand and it's

I'm watching this movie that scene comes up and especially when you're you know whatever in like sixth grade or whatever and girls are just terrifying to you, it's the most embarrassing thing you've ever seen in your life.

Yeah. And it's still one of the most embarrassing things ever. And it's also now watching it, I realize how self-destructive it is. I literally, when I watched it as young, I was like, oh, he doesn't know any better. Now I watch him, like, oh, he knows what he's doing.

He's like, I'm going to take this beautiful thing. I just want to like this clean, perfect angel. He's trying to pull her into his weird world. Yeah. I just want to sully her. And then it cuts to him on the phone with her in the hallway

and he's like did you get the flowers like that sent you oh he didn't oh they give you a headache and I'm like this is the worst thing I've ever seen

like my stomachs did not I'm like this is the most embarrassing thing I've ever seen and then if you remember the camera pulls off the dollies off of him and then it goes down the hallway

and this thing unlocked in my brain where I went oh the movie doesn't want to watch this like the director's like I can't watch this. So I'm going to make, it's like an emotional camera move.

It's like, I can't watch this. And so the camera just lines up on the hallway and then he enters it. And I don't know if that was what, his purpose was or whatever, but for me watching it, that thing at sixth grade or whatever was,

suddenly it was like, whoa, I didn't know that you could do that or even if that's what it meant, but it affected me in such a massive way. And that's when I think I just became, It's very rare that I can go that right there is when I became like a full movie fanatic, you know? I'm like to.

Porn theaters at age the worst. I can't even imagine how to explain that to people under 25. Yeah, so in the 70s and 80s, we just, we used to watch porn in theaters just with complete strangers. Every time I see a porn theater in a movie now, I'm like, how did we do this? What was happening? Yeah. Like, you guys are so lucky. where I remember going into like the woods

and there would be like a steel box in the woods that would have a naked photo that some guy's cousin put in there and you're like, where is it? Now people stumble upon the most high quality porn possible. They're like, oh wow, oh man, I meant to put in this but get this off my screen.

Another one's age the worst. You know, Jody Foster's playing a 12 and a half-year-old prostitute. I think they handle it really. well. The Kytel dance scene's a little weird when you think about just, I'm thinking about it as a dad if that was my 12 and a half year old daughter acting in a movie. I'd probably not feel great about that. But

you know, it's 45 years ago. Same thing with some of the language and stuff like this. You can't really litigate some of that stuff in 2021. But that the 12 and a half year old prostitute thing was kind of a big deal back then because then the next year, Brooke Shields was in that movie Pretty Baby.

And it was the same thing. Is she too young to be in this? And it turned into this whole thing. So there was some sort of weird moment happening in the mid-70s that I don't really know how to explain. Yeah, I think it's definitely like a generational thing with, yeah. I don't think it's coming back, Bill. Yeah, thank God. I think, you know, the taxi driver, though, I do feel like, again, it was like, it was just part of the honesty of it. Because, you know the part where he almost hits her with the cab? Yeah. That girl who grabs her and says, come with me, that's the girl that she's based on. And that's like an actual prostitute.

And that's the girl that was like her tech advisor, you know? And she was like 14 or something in a prostitute in New York. So you're like, that thing exists. That guy is real. Let's talk about it. And yeah, that's part of the reason like you get him shooting these guys. It's like it makes sense. Or it's like pretty baby and stuff like that.

There's like a different level to it. but it's not about that. You're like, I don't know. What's the point of it? Sean, unless you have any more content about 12 and a half-year-old prostitutes, I'm going to move on. Appreciate you letting me dodge that one.

Thanks, Bill. You got it. Casting what ifs. So, we've reached a point with this movie where... Wait, wait, wait. I do have one more, what's age the worst. Okay. Taxis?

I mean, like, in 10 years, will there be taxis in America? Like, this is... The movie is called taxi driver, and Trader tells this story. about going to see the movie for the first time, or seeing a movie at one point with a New York audience and people cheering at the title just because it had a kind of weird New York ethic to it. There was something very New York about a movie about a taxi driver, and that that alone meant

something. And like, I don't, that doesn't, does that mean anything to people anymore? I mean, forget about what's going on in the world right now, just in general with the rise of ride sharing and all this other stuff. Like, I don't think taxi drivers hold the same place in the consciousness. It's like making a movie about a samurai. The other piece of that taxi driver point, this movie almost made it impossible to make another movie about somebody who drove a taxi. It was literally like nobody could pull it off after this because it was just going to be, it was like, yeah, I'm making a movie about an undertaker who loses his mind in a Colorado hotel. It's like, no, you can't. Shining happened.

This movie kind of peed on all the taxi driver ideas. Casting what ifs. Look, I don't know how much of this is true or not true, but this is stuff. I found on the internet. Paul Schrader, when he was writing the movie, wrote the part of Travis for Jeff Bridges in his mind. This is early 70s. That seems possible. Scorsese has said that he did talk to Dustin Hoffman about playing Travis Bickle. And Hoffman thought the movie was too crazy. I don't know if that's true. This is definitely true. Harvey Keitel has offered the part of the campaign worker that Albert Brooks ended up playing and wanted to be the pimp. Instead, and Schrader says, we were told by the studio to change the pimp to a white guy because the lawyers were concerned, if we do this and Travis kills all these black people, then we're going to have a riot. We're going to be liable for this way they thought in the mid-70s. So they changed colors with the pimp, and Harvey Kattel ended up being the pimp.

There's conflicting stuff on whether Melanie Griffith was the first person offered Iris or not. She was like 15, 16. She played a hitchhiker. She's in 19. Yeah, she played a hitchhiker. one-on-one with Robbie Benson a year later, so who knows? The Nightmoose part is pretty similar to this part, you know, underage girl, sexualized.

Yeah, there was a lot of that bullshit. Yeah. There's a Linda Blair possibility. I don't know if that's true, but that's on the internet. And then there's another thing that I don't know how this is true, but Tatum O'Neill was offered the part, and Jody Foster was offered the Bad News Bears part, and they ended up, each one did the other movie.

Who knows? That's all I got. Best That Guy, A.K. The Joey Pants Award. Is our guy, Joe, or that guy? Spinell? Spinell? Yeah. Do we know him as Joe Spinell or do we know him as that guy? I do. I'm sure Hater does. Does the world at large know Joe Spinell? Well, I'm going to, I think the answer is Leonard Harris because he only had two roles. He was Palantine and then he was in the John Ritter movie, Hero at Large. So isn't he just that guy from taxi driver? I like, you know,

I like in the movie is the guy there's two guys I like in this movie I guess that guy is one is the guy who beats up the bodega guy because he's in like every sports crazy movie the guy who's like this motherfucker this year and he's like blah blah blah and he starts beating up the body

Vic Argo that guy is in every every single Spurs Daisy movie and then he's even in a yeah Lassimation of Christ he's like you know Jesus what do we you know um he plays Peter yeah and then the other guy is

the weird cab driver who has a piece of Aeroflin's bathtub. Oh boy. What's his name? Dobo. Dobo, yeah. I think Doe Boy is right. But that guy, in the commentary track, it's funny because the I have Scorsese, he's like, I don't know what he's talking about here about the two persons.

I still have no idea what's hell with it. Arrowfield's bathtub. But then he's in like over the edge and he's in like a lot of, you know, he's in Mean Streets. he's in a lot of movies. I like that guy. There's two other guys, Bill, I think. They're interesting. One is Stephen Prince, who's the gun salesman, who is the...

Oh, yeah, American Boy. Who's the star of American Boy, this really cool Martin Scorsese, or fascinating, at least Martin Scorsese documentary, about a guy who's kind of out of control, you know, who's on drugs and who he has a lot of love for, but who's kind of losing his mind. And there's someone else, too. Oh, Diane Abbott is the concession girl, and that's Robert Trey's wife.

She's so good in that scene. Oh, my God. she's so good. Yeah, she's like, he's just hitting on her. And he buys so, it's also sad how much shit he buys. He spends like two bucks, which is a lot of money back then.

And he's like, wait a minute, you're going to be jerking off. All this stuff is on your lap. Like, that's what I just think about. I'm like, how is he jerking off? He has all this crap. You know, you were talking about the guy who's in every Scorsese movie

when Bill Lawrence was on this podcast last week and he thought we should have a category for the guy who's clearly a friend of the star of the director who's in a lot of their movies and call it like the Jack Haley Award or the Eddie House Award or like the guy who's on a bunch of different NBA teams because he's friends with the superstar. And the Jack Haley Award, that might be a good one. Who did you say that guy was? Who's in every Scorsese movie? Did you know his name, Sean? Harry Northup? Or Vic Argo? I mean, both of those guys are in a bunch of those movies. Yeah. Maybe one of those guys. Speaking of Scorsese, I think he wins the next

awards. The Vincent Hanna, Give Me All You Got Award for somebody who dialed it up, brought it up a notch. And then the Deanne Waiters Award for biggest heat check. He's in this movie for five minutes. It's an indelible scene. I think it's a heat check performance. Is there a bigger heat check in this movie, Bill? Like someone who just pops it in and it just is like... Some comes in and hits some threes. Yeah, it's like three threes, grabs a couple rebounds. Can we talk about... Can we talk about... Because Brooks, this is a second? Am I talking about...

Because Brooks, this is the first movie that Albert Brooks ever makes. And Schrader says that Scorsese has this genius trick where every time in the script, if there's a boring party, always hires a comedian. And then he lets the comedian vamp and do his thing. That's interesting. And a lot of that, Albert Brooks stuff, Brooks wrote or improvised with Scorsese and Civil Shepherd. And like, you don't, I don't realize, I am obsessed with Albert Brooks. He's one of my favorite people of all time.

But you don't realize that this is kind of the beginning of the Albert Brooks movie persona. it almost feels like a prequel to the broadcast news character. Yeah. Yeah. He's great in it. I mean, it's kind of a thing. We can give him Dianwaters.

Yeah, we'll give him Dianwaters. We'll give Scorsese to the Vincent Hanna. I think Steve Prince should owe something to, because Steve Prince is just when he's, just for the part where he starts pitching him drugs at the end of the, and then I also like it when he's showing him the guns and he goes, ain't that a little?

Oh, no, he's putting on the holster. And he goes, ain't that a little, honey? Like, just that. alone. He's like, ain't that a little honey? Look at that. Also, you know what I'm loving that is the sound of the kids playing. That whole team when he's looking at guns. He has, that's

so smart he puts in like a playground outside. That's like again, perfect choice. Some half-ass internet research that we haven't covered yet. We talked about how De Niro only made $35,000 bucks, then his profile source, the producers panic because

they don't feel like they can afford him now for the movie. And De Niro's like, I'm going to honor. I'm going to honor my original deal. So he did, and it helped them get the movie made. Jody Foster's sister Connie, who was like 19 when they made the movie, was a body double for any sort of weird stuff like the last scene, anything that would have been weird to have a 12-and-a-year-old in. Julia Phillips, the producer who wrote a really good book about her life in Hollywood, has a lot of stuff in that book. One of which was that they were really frustrated with Sybil Shepard in this movie and that she could not remember her lines. in the coffee and pie scene with De Niro

and they were upset about it. This was the most shocking thing that I found. Couldn't believe this. De Niro's Mohawk, not real. Yeah, that's Dick Smith. It's like the greatest makeup guy in history. Unbelievable. That's a ball tape with individually placed hairs.

He would sit there and individually put hairs in it. And then also made it pale. So they had to do it that way, apparently, because they had to film other scenes for the movie after the Mohawk scenes. So they had to do this. Anytime you see a haircut and a movie, producers' heads explode.

Because it's like you have to, and that's always the thing of like when they, when they call cut on a movie, I always always always always go, hey, if I have like longer hair, like I did it too, and they were like, you let us know if you're going to cut your hair. Right.

Or can we get pictures in case we come back and put a wig on you or whatever. But yeah, the fact that Dick Smith did that and all the gunshot wounds, I would say, are amazing. Like when Travis gets shot in the neck, that's like a monopilament being pulled off his neck. And if you slow it down, you can see it. It's like a piece of fishing line that's put over a piece of makeup on his neck and it's got blood underneath it. And he just goes and he pulls it off and all the blood runs down his neck. and when I watch it now, that's all I see is you can see like a little string pulls on it. Interesting.

Because there's another part right after he passes out or right before he passes out when he does the finger gun to his head for the cops. And the blood just kind of pours down his hand. It's just, it's really, it's smart how they do it. It's just good. That Mohawk, that hair piece is on display at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York, in case you ever want to go look. Apex Mountain It's tough

I don't feel like there's I don't feel like this was Apex Mountain for De Niro This is the It was this somebody's career apex Scorsese no De Niro no You wouldn't say Scorsese for this Right John

What is what is Scorseses's Apex Mountain Just out of curiosity Raging Bull or Goodfellis Goodfellis for me Okay I think it is too I don't think he's reached it Wow I think he's still going

Will it be killers of the flower moves I'm joking I'm joking I'm joking Do you think between this movie and Rocky and the Rocky movie, this was the apex for clap pushups? I don't think they've ever been better than 1976. This is like it for plio, plio push pushups. I remember this was the first time I saw anybody working out in a movie. Yeah.

It's a big workout. And also him putting his hand over the burner. It's pretty intense. This is the apex mountain for, this. disgusting mid-70s New York, I feel like. I don't think any movie captured it better.

It's a Jackson Brown song. Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. The one needle drop in the movie, that's super weird. Jackson Brown's song. Yeah, that wasn't weird. That almost could have been in what stage is the worst. That Jackson Brown song is kind of great. It actually comes, there's a shot where it's like

is pushing in on him and the music hits at the certain point. It's actually really nice. I think the one thing I heard about the editing in it that was funny was that you know the part where he's talking and he's like, this is a man who would not stop and he's turning and then it repeats itself. He goes, this is a man who would not stop.

This is a man, but here's a man, you know, and it starts over. Apparently that, Corsese put that in and all the editors hated it and he was like, no, I want it. They all hated it. And that's, that's, uh, De Niro, I guess, actually fucking up. His line. It's great. It's like

you're in his mind. You're with him as he's writing in his diary. That's the other thing. This is a really good movie or a bad movie, as it were, for writers. It's just about how fucking crazy you go trying to write anything because so much of the movie is just Travis sitting at a desk writing in his journal and slowly losing it. I think best prop in the movie is the card to his parents, a couple of good scouts. I think that's the best prop in the movie.

I like the narration of the family, Iris's family thanking him that's kind of super choppy and weird as he's doing it. We thank you for coming, dude. I don't know why they made that choice, but I always enjoyed it. You get why that dude's daughter turned out the way she did. He was a fucking batty case. Mr. Steensma, yeah, he has some problems. He's got problems.

Not the Apex Mountain for taxis. I think that happens in the late 70s with the TV show Taxi, which was somehow watched by like 15 to 16 million people a week. Just six weird kind of bummed out taxi drivers in New York City. What about DC cab? I feel like we're looking over DC cab here. Mr. T? Yeah, Mr. T.

No? No. Okay. Picking Nets. My biggest one is just would Betsy really flirt with Travis? How do you guys feel about that? Was that realistic enough for you guys? Is this beginning?

Well, just that she was so gorgeous. Is this somebody she had to have been swatting dudes away like this for the last 12 years of her life? I think because he comes in and he's like, there's something about him that's charming to her and that's not like just a dude picking her up, like he has some depth, you know? And then when they have that dinner together, she says, or that, you know, the apple pie and cheese thing, but she says, you're not like anybody I've ever met, you know? There's something alluring to him. And he feels that.

And then he's like, okay, I got to blow there. I got to blow it up. And we see that all the time, especially with like athletes. And you know what I mean? You see, like, people just like get, you know, close to it's working. And then it's like, okay, now I'm going to, you know, Mike Tyson biting off, you know, the ear or whatever. You know what I mean? It's just like, it's just interesting self-destructive behavior.

he's kind of doing the Neil Strauss the game pickup thing a little bit though too you know he's nagging her he's nagging her he's like you're not a happy person you know and he's kind of like tricking her into believing that he's he can make her

genuine he's stalking her he's a full on stalker that's why he can say all this shit that's the thing that I like about the movie is that they're like Travis Bickle's not a good dude like there's never a part of this where you should be like yeah and it's like

but I'm going to show you this piece of shit and you're going to like there might be a part of you that relates to his anger and frustration you know right it's like Alex and clockwork orange it's like here's a completely deplorable piece of shit now I'm going to make you kind of feel for him because he's getting fucked with you know what I mean it's just really bold it's the thing like you're saying earlier like it's a very 70s thing it's a hard thing to pull off you know now you know um but yeah I mean, Joker with Phoenix is probably, that's the modern version of this movie. And I think they had a lot of trouble trying to find that balance of.

I think to get it made, they needed to say this is an overt homage to taxi driver. You know, like, I don't think if they weren't so literal about that. Yeah, it's a movie about a movie. And, you know, I don't know, this is like, oh, this is like a real thing. I don't know, it's like, you know, you see it in some TV shows. I think that's like the weird thing about the rise of documentaries now too. I mean, documentaries are a big thing in the 70s. Now when you watch documentaries, you see in the actual behavior, you know,

and there's just something more, you know, you watch that awful like Jeffrey, you know, Jeffrey Epstein documentary and it's like that's what tax driver would have been now. You know what I'm saying? Like it's like you go, oh, fuck, this kind of a disgusting person exists, you know, and as though they got away with it, you know, it's the same thing. Could this, do you have any other nitpicks before we keep going? Can we, well, I'll wait for unanswerable questions. Okay.

Next category, could this be remade as a 10-episode Netflix show? Please know. No. Probably unanswerable questions. Go, Sean. So the creators of this movie have said that this is not the case under any circumstance, but I thought I would just be curious to hear what you guys think about the idea of either the ending or huge swaths of the movie essentially being like a dream,

sequence or fantasy or, you know, how much of the movie is in Travis's head versus what is it that he's actually doing? Because Schrader and Scorsese say that is not what we were going for, but this stuff is open to interpretation, I guess. I think it's all happening, but, you know, it's not like, you know, that movie burning that came out where that movie very much feels like I don't know what's real or what's not real and it doesn't a very, really smart, awesome way, you know, um, there's never a. felt like that. I mean, it felt like pretty straight ahead and it felt like you were

following the emotions pretty clearly and it had its own you know when I would have felt that as if she would have gotten the cab at the end and it would have like, hey Travis and everything was fine. Or if she tried to like what are you doing later? Yeah, what are you doing

later? Then I'd be like, oh, this isn't real. But that's like I think for me the whole key of that the main thing that putting that weird sound effect over the review mirror at the end was the thing that kind of saves the movie where you're like no this is the time bomb's ticking again and you know that was my next unanswerable question what was that like the devil there's a lot of interpretation over the years of what was the point of that is that like just his brain going haywire for a second was that there something following it to me it I just took it again I know

Bernard Herman was the one, like, that came up with that sound, but it was the last thing he apparently said to Scorsese. But like... The sting. The sting and just play it backwards. But to me, it always felt like he's always, he's watching his back.

Like, there's going to be another, you know, to me I just took it very kind of literally, I guess, was that he's constantly watching his back and he's going to be constantly freaked out. It's not, didn't go away. Well, Scorsese, has some weird religious shit that he works in sometimes in the movies. I didn't know if it was like a heaven and hell thing. Which is what some people think. Definitely when he's burning the

flowers and he's like shining his boots and all that stuff. That feels very religious. And like what Sean was saying earlier with like the god. I mean, that's all. Yeah, 100%. Shrader too. Shrader has raised Calvinist and he's got so much religious shit in all of his films. Wasn't the original ending of this much more violent, like what Trader was imagining, was, you know, kind of like a, you know, it's more like a Japanese samurai movie where you're just seeing blood being sprayed everywhere. Yeah, wild bunch.

Yeah, wild bunch. Yeah. And again, you know, I think what made it work was it was like no grounded, grounded in reality, you know. My unanswerable question, it's really interesting to watch this movie coming out of everything we've come out of the last five years and especially the last 18 months. And what is Travis Bickle now in 2021? Because part of this movie about loneliness and losing your mind and when you're probably

predisposed to lose a little bit anyway. But if you put Travis Bickle from this movie into 2020, he's just on the internet. Yeah. 19 hours a day. And I don't, it's first of all, that's a less interesting movie. But I just don't know what to make of 2021 Travis Bickle. Who is that? There was a lot of talk a couple of years ago when like the quote unquote in-cell movement came up,

the sort of involuntarily celibate movement happened and trying to draw a lot of Travis Bickle conclusions to people who were spending all their time on Reddit. And I always felt like that didn't make sense because Travis Bickle like has no sex. no sexualization. He doesn't, like, he goes to porn theaters, but you don't get the impression that he has like a physical relationship to that stuff. And there's something, he's like a little bit outside of that experience. And honestly, if he were on the internet, he wouldn't be God's lonely man. He would probably find a community. It would probably be a fucked up community, but he would probably find a community to be a part of that would feed some of his

disturbances, I guess. That's how I feel too. I think he would have found his people. I I think part of this movie is about he can't find his people. He doesn't know where they were. The only time he has any sort of kinship at all is when he goes to that late-night diner and talks to those other three weirdos. And even in that, he's like spacing out. He's an outcast. Yeah, he's spacing out.

He's not really paying attention. I mean, yeah, that's the sad thing now. I think now he would just, like, have curated his own reality. You know, he wouldn't be, like, fighting reality. He would have just completely curated a whole thing. his whole world that doesn't exist. Right. You know what I mean?

And it would just be really... What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie, Bill? Oh, man, I don't know. I think I'm going with the big old jacket. That green jacket. Oh, the King Kong thing, yeah. That feels like a piece of movie history. I think that would be my choice.

What do you have, Sean? Maybe one of those, We Are the People, Charles Palantine posters, you know? Oh, yeah. That's a good choice. Yeah, frame that? I think I want that card, a couple of good scouts. I would laugh every time I watch that that's the card that he's there.

It shows like how to out of touch and weird he is. I also like when he buys her that Chris Christoperson record that she's already told him she has. Yeah. Like that's also just, I mean, again, you're just like, oh, dude. Yeah, come on. The reason you go, oh, dude, is because I think there's a part of you that's like, terrified of making that mistake. You know?

You know, there's like, it's not insane. It's just within the, it's so just true, you know? They're just like, oh, okay. All right, Sean. This is a tough one. Who won the movie? You know, when you hit me up about this, you were like, I know you don't want to miss Scorsese's first truly iconic film

to participate in a show about this. and so I always say the director because that's a bad habit of mine but I think and we blew past this on the show for a good reason but I think it's actually De Niro because the are you talking to me thing is that is

the thing that was quoted and cited and remembered and sort of memorialized in the memory of pop culture from this movie the most. More than the shooting, more than Jody Foster, more than John Hinkley. Are you talking to me? And De Niro talks about this. When he introduced the movie at a 40th anniversary screening, he was like, listen, you motherfuckers, you've been saying to me,

are you talking to me for 40 years? And I'm fucking sick of it. And that is the, that is like the weirdly the lasting memory of it. For Scorsese, he goes on to win almost every other movie he makes, so I'm going De Niro. What do you think, Bill? I have a very, it's kind of, I have a very weird one, and I know it makes no sense, but I think it's just because what we've been talking about earlier, but I do think the interesting thing about how awful John Hinkley thing was and how it should have killed the movie

and it could have really haunted Jody Foster and I think what she ended up doing was great and I do think her performance in it is unfucking real for a 12 year old to be in such a heavy disturbing thing and

what an amazing performance she is that she's in that scene with De Niro and she's like unreal in it like every scene, even the scene in that awful scene with Harvey Tide's Lel where they're slow dancing

she's playing with so many different levels where she's trying to be tough but she's trying to like, you know, be vulnerable with him. She really thinks that he cares about her, you know? It's a thing I feel like that always gets overlooked. Like that's Trevor is very much like a guy's movie

and Corses always kind of noted for being like a dude, you know, a guy's filmmaker. And I was like, no, there's this really terrible, sad character in her Lyra that he tries to save. And it's this thing where you're like, you know, it's good that he did it, but she, I think, also would have gotten out of it at some point. Like, there was a part of her that, you know, it's just a very interesting character. And she could have played a victim and she kind of isn't.

She's this person that when he's telling her in that theme, you can see that she knows he's right and that she doesn't need to be told any of those stuff. And the fact that Jody Foster can play that at that age is insane to me. Where I'm like, God, she's playing. It's so smart. And so I pick her because that John Hinkley, the performance is amazing. And then what happened in, you know, John Hinkling stuff.

And then she's like, her career was so amazing. And she's still like on a kind of a hero of mine. I'm going to go with that. That's a good one. I'm going to go Scorsese. just so we can all split the we can split each each person's represented um look i i just think after this movie anything seemed possible with the guy and the fact that future generations of filmmakers and creative people this became a go-to movie for them i think it's on the short list of for dozens and

dozens of really influential people that just point to this movie and maybe three others. So I'm going to say him. But I think it's good that we ended up in three different places with it because that's why this movie is so great. You know, it's like I have C tax drivers like a perfectly directed movie and especially perfectly directed from like a subjective point of person, point of view. I mean, it's kind of everything about it and I've watched it so many times where you're just like, you know, it's kind of, I don't know, it's perfect.

I don't know, I don't know. So I'll put point out. All right. Taxi driver. So Bill Hader, you're currently filming a one hour Barry episode. It's just Barry in a hotel room. Yeah, trying to avoid COVID. Yeah, it's a one-man show.

Yeah, no. It's one camera. We're writing, we wrote season, we were like a week away from shooting season three. We had done our first table read for season three when I saw, when my producer in the middle of table read pushed her phone over to me and I thought the NBA had shut down. And I just looked at her and I was like, yeah, we're not doing that. And so then we finished our table read and it was like, all right, everybody, so we don't know what's going on. And that was almost a year ago. And so, you know, we finished, you know, we have season three ready to go.

And then we wrote season four over the last year. So season four is written. And, uh, Yeah, I also wrote season 5, 6, 7, and 8. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's on season 9. Here it goes. Yeah, I know. I was like, well, it's written. I mean, what do you guys think?

Just kidding, we make it? All right, Bill Hader, thank you, Sean Fantasy. Thank you. Martin's Corsezi. Thank you. This movie's awesome. See you next time in the real life.