I
start off with a movie that is not part of the DVD collection but was once a
Criterion Laserdisc, spine 109. I teach
it in my Introduction to American Cinema class, and if I hadn’t looked on
Amazon to try to figure out what version of the DVD I was using, I wouldn’t
have seen that the Blu ray was a startling $9.99. A new one from a third party seller was
$7.99, but looking at the bonus materials, there was noted an “Original 1986 Commentary
with Director Martin Scorsese and Writer Paul Schrader recorded by The
Criterion Collection.” That raised my
eyebrows. How easy would it be to start
with a movie I just watched and have seen several times?
Travis
Bickle is synonymous with “whack job” in the vernacular. There’s already enough historical pop content
to keep any culture vulture salivating (notably John Hinckley Jr.’s
assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981 to impress Jodie Foster, its
win at Cannes in ’76, the infamous “You talkin’ to me?” sequence).
Researching
the film, I came across an article that explained how to use Taxi Driver in sociology classes to
explain certain types of behaviors and theories. A particular aspect that I found insightful
is the idea of social circles. Travis
mostly resides in the world associated with his occupation, a taxi driver, and
that world is deviant. From the other
drivers that he tries (rather unsuccessfully) to interact with (Peter Boyle’s Wizard
having sex with a fare in the middle of the Triboro Bridge, another cabbie that
wants Travis to sell what is supposedly a piece of Errol Flynn’s bathtub) to the
customers that leave cum and blood on his back seat, the cabbie world is
violent, sadistic and masochistic. It is
inhabited by pimps, prostitutes, and other denizens, and it is a world that is
dark, taking place at night.
Something
else I came across was a review of a book called Streetwise: How Taxi Drivers
Establish Their Customers’ Trustworthiness by Gambetta and Hamill. The reviewer notes that the book examines the
practices of taxi drivers in New York City and Belfast as to how drivers
profile potential customers to assess whether they will pick them up or not. In fact, there has been quite a few sociology
and psychology articles written about cab drivers, cab designs, tipping
practices, and so on. The weird
assertion in the film is that Travis will work any time and go anywhere. He comments through voice over that other
drivers won’t take certain types of people or go to rough areas of the
city. Other drivers notice this about
him too and comment, with a mixture of admiration and incredulity. What does this say about Travis? Is he courting death? A majority of his tenure as a taxi driver is
spent without carrying some kind of firearm, which other drivers seem to take
as part of a daily load-out. When Travis
does finally buy guns, it is not for protecting himself from fares but his
plans for assassination and murder (you know, government work).
And how far gone is Travis to himself? The other sphere that Travis attempts to
operate in is the normal sphere (or however typical and commonplace NYC in 1976
can be). This is the sphere where Betsy
and Tom reside. A sphere where you don’t
take a second date to a porno. A sphere
where people sleep. A sphere where
breakfast isn’t crumbled white bread covered in sugar, peach brandy and milk. Reading articles and reviews about this film
uncovers a variety of positions taken about Travis’s mental state. Is he just psychopathic? Is he aware enough that some of his actions
are abnormal? When he writes a card to
his parents, he not only messes up when Father’s Day is (he is writing in July
and Father’s Day is in June) but explains that he cannot tell them his address
because of the important government work he is doing. He similarly tells Iris he cannot go with her
to a commune because of his work for the government. This is obviously false, but Travis knows
this. It is a way for him to
self-aggrandize. A NYC taxi driver is
not a sufficient enough status for Travis, so he lies to others about his
“true” work. So, Travis may not be
honest, but he does have enough of a capacity for critical thinking to discern
his role in the world. He doesn’t tell
this lie to Betsy, but then again, he really doesn’t get to know her long
enough to be able to spin elaborate lies.
All he can do is say his record player is broken when he has no record
player.
Some writers comment on how elusive and
underdeveloped Travis’s character is, making him all the more difficult to
unlock. I disagree. On this point, Scorsese (or Schrader, or
both) makes the biggest mistake. The
interview conducted at the beginning of the movie gives the audience some
rather specific information that allows for a great deal of stereotyping of
Travis before we get a chance to see him out in the real world. We learn that he was in the Marines and was
honorably discharged in 1973. It would
be difficult not to come to the conclusion that Travis is a Vietnam
veteran. His later expert handling of
the guns he buys and contraptions he makes to wear four guns simultaneously is
testimony to this (But the guy does way too much dry-firing – is he trying to
wreck the firing pins? Perhaps this is more self-sabotage.). Overall, the perception of Vietnam veterans
(especially combat veterans), both in popular culture and generally, is not
that flattering and tends to run, in a post-WWII America, to coding for mental
instability. WWII vets were portrayed as
heroes. Korean vets rarely
portrayed. Vietnam and onward are the
damaged, alcoholic, spouse-abusing victims / victimizers. Fair or unfair, the coding still is there for
an audience to take in. We learn that
Travis isn’t too educated (“here and there”).
There’s coding for that, too. It
also appears that he has no previous employment. He can’t sleep so he “ride(s) around nights
mostly. Subways, buses.” We don’t see him quit another job once he
gets this one. We know he goes to porno
theaters. We learn soon after that he
drinks. His apartment is squalid, even
by NYC standards. Outside of other
cabbies, Betsy, his customers, and Iris and Sport, we never see him interact
with anyone else (although we see a lot of him alone in his apartment). So, he has no friends. To call Travis “enigmatic” is unfounded. He’s a broke, friendless, uneducated Vietnam
veteran with a drinking problem (and perhaps a drug problem, as a few times in
the film we see him take pills). If
anything, the argument should be why are we fed so much of this information at
the very beginning of the film if we are not meant to have preconceived, pre-coded
notions about this character before we actually see him do something awkward?
One observation about this film that is
particularly insightful is Scorsese’s assertion that in the scene where Travis
calls Betsy to ask for another date after the debacle of the porno, halfway
through the call, the camera tracks to the right and looks down the empty
hallway. We hear Travis but no longer
see him. Scorsese says that the camera,
and the audience, is so embarrassed for Travis that we cannot bear to see this
conversation, so we look away.
As for Paul Schrader, I will leave talk
of him until I get to Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. But he did make an observation that I hadn’t
really considered. Travis falls in love
with two women whom represent the whore / Madonna dynamic (Iris and Betsy). He is set up to fail in both relationships. He wants Betsy but cannot have her. He doesn’t want Iris but can. Both women have father figures (Palantine and
Sport). When Travis fails to kill
Palantine, he kills Sport. Because he
kills Sport, a pimp, he is considered a hero.
If he had been successful at killing Palantine, he would have been an
assassin.
Incidentally, the guy who Travis has to
pay for the room when he first meets with Iris (listed in IMDb as “The John”)
is Peter Savage, the author of the novel version of Raging Bull.
Other stuff: The use of the letter or the running diary is
something Scorsese (by his own admission) stole from watching Godard films that
used a similar technique for supplying exposition and plot cohesion. He (and Spike Lee, in the next review I will
post) goes on and on about Pressburger and Powell, two filmmakers who I’m not
very fond of (at least of what I’ve seen so far), so I guess I’m missing
something (I really didn’t care for The
49th Parallel [and geez, given the subject, I should have loved it], The Dam Busters, A Canterbury Tale, and The
Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and Peeping
Tom was ok but didn’t blow my mind).
Originally, Scorsese’s script had no humor in it, which is why the
Albert Brooks character was added, as well as banter amongst the cabbies. You have
to have humor to break up tension in drama.
Aristotle says so.
