Taxi Driver

“Insights on love, pleasure, fate, and other topics” collected from conversations with New York City cabbies (AM New York). The worse a town’s economy is, the better looking the guys who work at the local gas station are. I see more of what is going on around me because I am not concerned with finding a parking place. There is no chivalry. For that you have to go upstate. Real taxi drivers know more than how to get you there without a GPS—often, they know how to get you there in life. This twentieth anniversary edition of the wise and hilarious classic, as true now as ever, is a celebration of the witty, philosophical perspective on human nature culled from real quotations from real cab drivers who’ve been around the block.

Paul Schrader was in meltdown in 1972. Drinking heavily, living in his car, he was hospitalised with a gastric ulcer. There he read about Arthur Bremer's attempt to assassinate Alabama Governor George Wallace: the story was the germ of his screenplay for Taxi Driver (1976). Executives at Columbia hated the script, but when Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, who were flying high after the triumphs of Mean Streets (1973) and The Godfather Part II (1974), signed up, Taxi Driver became too good a package to refuse. Scorsese transformed the script into what is now considered one of the two or three definitive films of the 1970s. De Niro is mesmerising as Travis Bickle – pent-up, bigoted, steadily slipping into psychosis, the personification of American masculinity post-Vietnam. Cybill Shepherd and Jodie Foster give fine support and Scorsese brought in Bernard Herrmann, the greatest of film composers, to write what turned out to be his last score. Crucially, Scorsese rooted Taxi Driver in its New York locations, tuning the film's violence into the hard reality of the city. Technically thrilling though it is, Taxi Driver is profoundly disturbing – finding, as Amy Taubin shows, racism, misogyny and gun fetishism at the heart of American culture. In her foreword to this special edition, published to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the BFI Film Classics series, Amy Taubin considers Taxi Driver anew in the context of contemporary politics of race and masculinity in the US, and draws on an exclusive interview with Robert De Niro about his memories of making the film.

Cab drivers! What a strange lot! Why would anyone want to drive a hack for a living? Other than being capable enough to safely operate a vehicle, you don't need any special skills or training. You don't need a university degree in the humanities, though you may become a qualified human affairs expert after driving a cab for several years. Cabbies must be the most misunderstood creatures in the world! Why else would they do what they do? Without it being said, a cab driver works twelve hour shifts on a routine daily basis. They often get assaulted, and even more often than not, they get ripped off. Society as a whole views cabbies as individuals with the same I.Q. as a lava lamp, who only drive a taxi because they can't get a job anywhere else, and, they probably have a criminal record too! They get screamed at, threatened, spat on, slapped, punched, kicked, stabbed, and tragically, some get murdered. What person in their right mind would want to take on this kind of a life when they could earn a lot more money with a lot less aggravation and abuse by simply donning a pair of dark glasses and selling pencils on any street corner? I drove a taxi in the city of Winnipeg for about twenty years for Red Patch Taxi. These memories are my memories and I am gladly sharing them with you, the reader. My biggest thanks go out to the city of Winnipeg and to all of its citizens whom I found to be the friendliest people anywhere! I hope that these stories of mine will move you emotionally, either with a smile, a laugh or a tear. Winnipeg, thanks for the memories! Savour the stories!

A drama about a New York cab driver is driven to obsession when he attempts to save a teenage prostitute and embarks on a violent rampage against a world of filth and corruption.

Driving a cab for more than 30 years Gene Salomon has collected a remarkable selection of stories. He shares the very best in this unforgettable memoir.

One of a series of readers for African students which aims to help them to develop an awareness and a love of language, and consists of stories from all over Africa. In this story taxi driver Baba Oko hopes to make a lot of money on graduation night, and has a few drinks to help him drive faster.

In Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), the Vietnam vet turned New York taxi driver, Scorsese created a character who summed up perfectly the seething discontents of an American still traumatised by Vietnam and Watergate. In the context of director Martin Scorsese's many influences that led to Taxi Driver, from Dostoevsky novels to John Ford westerns and film noir thrillers, and the film's subsequent impact on the work of countless later directors, The Making Of Taxi Driver explores how this modern classic came together. And, looking at some of the myths surrounding the movie, asks why, 30 years on it still has such resonance with contemporary audiences.

A Kirkus Best Book of 2020 “A wild, funny, poetic fever dream that will change the way you think about America.” —George Saunders Hailed by George Saunders as “a true original—a wise and wildly talented writer,” Lee Durkee takes readers on a high-stakes cab ride through an unforgettable shift. Meet Lou—a lapsed novelist, struggling Buddhist, and UFO fan—who drives for a ramshackle taxi company that operates on the outskirts of a north Mississippi college town. With Uber moving into town and his way of life vanishing, his girlfriend moving out, and his archenemy dispatcher suddenly returning to town on the lam, Lou must finish his bedlam shift by aiding and abetting the host of criminal misfits haunting the back seat of his disintegrating Town Car. Lou is forced to decide how much he can take as a driver, and whether keeping his job is worth madness and heartbreak. Shedding nuts and bolts, The Last Taxi Driver careens through highways and back roads, from Mississippi to Memphis, as Lou becomes increasingly somnambulant and his fares increasingly eccentric. Equal parts Bukowski and Portis, Durkee’s darkly comic novel is a feverish, hilarious, and gritty look at a forgotten America and a man at life’s crossroads.