Taxi Driver

Okay, so Darjeeling Limited was sold out, which might have been my fault for not getting tickets because I thought the RagTag opened at 5. Whatever. So Julie, Awesome, and Soulmate (not mine, Awesome's) went to see a free showing of Taxi Driver in Jesse Wrench Auditorium. It was really intense. I was expecting for it to be really bloody and gruesome, being Scorsese. But I wasn't expecting it to have nothing of the familiar narrative arc of anything I've seen before.

Julie and I were talking afterwards and she started the movie off thinking that Travis (Robert DeNiro) was looking to Betsy (Cybill Shepherd - who used to be really pretty and not at all scary) as a love interest for his hope in life, but then discovered that she was "like all the rest of the girls" and moved on to try to save Iris the 14 year old prostitute (Jodie Foster - weird) but that kind of failed too and then tried to assassinate a Presidential candidate as a last act of desperation. I kind of thought that the whole thing was a message towards the meaninglessness of life and how Travis couldn't really find anything to fight for or live for.

There's a great scene where Travis goes up to another older Taxi driver they call the Wizard and in a round about way asks him what the meaning of life is.

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Wizard: Look at it this way. A man takes a job, you know? And that job - I mean, like that - That becomes what he is. You know, like - You do a thing and that's what you are. Like I've been a cabbie for thirteen years. Ten years at night. I still don't own my own cab. You know why? Because I don't want to. That must be what I want. To be on the night shift drivin' somebody else's cab. You understand? I mean, you become - You get a job, you become the job. One guy lives in Brooklyn. One guy lives in Sutton Place. You got a lawyer. Another guy's a doctor. Another guy dies. Another guy gets well. People are born, y'know? I envy you, your youth. Go on, get laid, get drunk. Do anything. You got no choice, anyway. I mean, we're all f---d. More or less, ya know.
Travis Bickle: I don't know. That's about the dumbest thing I ever heard.
Wizard: It's not Bertrand Russell. But what do you want? I'm a cabbie. What do I know? I don't even know what the f--- you're talking about.
Travis Bickle: Maybe I don't know either.

Oh, and on Wikipedia (article) they said that the end is a dream sequence. That makes a lot more sense. Also, whenever this movie would come up while I was growing up my mom would always talk about this crazy guy who was obsessed with the movie and tried to assassinate Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. Here's the story. Weird.

Oh, and Julie -- the passenger in the taxi who was stalking his cheating wife was Martin Scorsese!