170: I dont know much about TAXI DRIVER... but Id like to

Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is someone who stood up. The following program is a proud member of the Palover family of podcasts.

Check out all the shows over at palaver.com. That's P-A-L-A-V-E-R dot com. The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised. It's showtime, folks.

Enjoy the show. Our nuclear reactor, pumping out 1 million kilowatts of power. Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me? And who else are you talking to?

Are you talking to me? Well, I'm the only one here. So you must be talking to me. And you are lying! Now catch Moose and Squirrel and next time use the CDI on them.

Way down among Brazilians, coffee beans grow by the billions. So they've got to find those extra cups to fill. They got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian.

I'm Greg. I'm Lucy. I'm Fred. And I'm Ben. So, yes, we would like to welcome Ben.

This is your first time, and your friend may have set you up and thrown you into this trap. We're actually a cult, and we just lure people in here. Oh, wow. Well, I've never been to a cult that serves delicious coffee. So that'll be a first.

There's an upside, you know. I'm definitely happy to be here, though. So, yes, we would like to welcome you into the mix here, and... To anyone else who is checking out the show for the first time because you actually heard about it at the showing of Taxi Driver recently, welcome. Thank you for listening.

And my advice to you is, before you get too far into it, just let me say, I think we're in acquired taste. So stick with it. I think the first episode, you might not know what to think, but, you know, once you're like 10 episodes in, I think you'll grow to love us. I mean, once you get attached to Fred and... Lucy says wonderful things.

Nobody really cares about you or I, Greg, so it's okay. But once you get in and you meet the rest of the cast, you'll just be attached. So just stick with us. We're an acquired taste. That's all I'm saying.

So with that, it is time for another episode of the Caffeinated Movie Geek. Cappuccino on my butt. I still drink coffee. The last fucking thing you need is another cup of coffee. It's time for the Caffeinated Movie Geek.

We are coming to you live via digital recording from Nancy's Bagel Grounds, where we get together, drink coffees, talk movies, and someday we'll wash away all the scum off the streets. Right. So, with the previously mentioned delicious coffee, Lucy, I ask you, what blend of coffee are we drinking this week? We're enjoying Pacific Blacktail right now. Ah, nicely delivered, by the way.

Let's back away slowly. Everybody just back away slowly. Nobody's saying anything ridiculous. Let it pass. Let it go.

So before we get too far into the movie, I also, while we're asking Lucy weird questions, we were going to throw it to you and let you tell people what you've got planned. I think long ago we probably mentioned you actually are involved in co-creating. Is that true? The Lexington Film League? I'm actually a lead camera to the Lexington Film League, but I am one of the co-directors.

We're going to give it to you. You created it. Yes, I created everything. Invented Lexington. Yes, I invented film.

So along those lines, you guys. I did, however, create, out of my obsession possibly, we'll go. Ahead with that. That actually might be a kind term. For Harry Dean Stanton, the Harry Dean Stanton Fest was born.

And we just finished programming it for this year. So we're very excited. This is actually kind of breaking news. I don't think I've said this publicly. So do you want me to give you a rundown.

Of the festival? You might as well. If anybody's in this part of the country, you know, we've got. Yes, or other countries. Or other countries, fly over.

But yeah, if it's, you know, in Lexington, Kentucky... I'm going to go ahead and call it. The International Heritage Standard. You might as well. Yes.

So it's May 18th through May 20th. Opening night will be Friday night and we're going to show Pretty in Pink outside at Triangle Park in beautiful downtown Lexington. And then Saturday. Afternoon we're going to show Straight Time at the Library Theater. And then Saturday night we're going to have a Repo Man event.

We're going to show the film at the Green Lantern and then The band The Palisades are going to play the soundtrack, beginning to end. Lots of fun, special guest vocalists. Nice. And then Sunday afternoon, we're going to do the director's cut, never before seen outside of his living room, I think, Tom Thurman's film Crossing Mulholland. which was a KET production. It's like an hour and a half.

It's going to be fantastic with all kinds of footage nobody's seen before. And then Sunday night is going to be Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid at the Kentucky Theater. And we're going to have Donnie Fritz, who, among other things, other than being a fantastic singer-songwriter, is one of Harry Dean's bestest friends ever. So he's got amazing stories about him. Hanging out with Harry Dean and working with Sam Peckinpah.

I think it's going to be a good night. I want those stories. How come I don't get those? Well, you get to share in them. No, I want to take them.

There's a store at Kentucky Viet. Or I want to start them. So we need to start hanging out with Harry Dean Stanton. And I'm going to have to work with Sam Peckinpah, which is a little more of a challenge. A little more.

I'm going to work on it. Zombie apocalypse is coming. We are a cult. Yeah, we are a cult. That's one of the many things we do here.

Revive people with coffee or something like that. My other question is, Friday night, are we allowed to yell out obscene things about Molly Ringwald? I mean, whatever you're comfortable doing in front of children. Oh, who are you talking to? Have you heard this show before?

Molly Ringwald. It's a good thing Harry Dean's in that movie. I don't even want to know what that means. I have to fight my Molly Ringwald annoyance. Oh, okay.

I thought you were going in a different direction with that. I'm not sure which direction you were going. Sorry. But, yeah, Harry will make up for the fact. That Molly's in.

I think the obsession repulsion is we were trying to figure out which line you were going down. Harry Dean's awesome. Molly, eh. That was always my feeling, even when she was popular. I'm like, I don't get it.

Eh, no thanks. Get me messed up Ally Sheedy any day. Yeah, I feel the same way. I was actually talking to somebody about that recently. I'm very excited that little girls get Emma Stone now.

Like, I feel like we got stuck with Molly Ringwald and probably worked an entire generation. We got stuck. I don't know. I don't know. She was okay.

And we had Ally Sheedy, too. Not that I was a young girl at that time. I was just thinking about it. This is like the Brat Pack version of the Ginger Mary Ann argument. Yeah.

Which do you want? Yeah, see, that was my generation. Yeah, which I still, you know, I'm on board for Marianne either way. Oh, yeah, me too. At that time, I was more of a Elizabeth Shue kind of guy.

See, I'll give you that one. Adventures in Babysitting kind of changed my life. At that point. Karate Kid. Karate Kid.

Karate Kid. Yeah, but Emma Stone is awesome. She is very cool. She's a badass. Yeah.

Yeah. And funny. And hilarious and smart. Yeah. So, she's the redhead of this generation.

We have all your goals. No, thanks. Can we send her back? And we got Molly Ringwald. And we got Molly Ringwald.

Damn it. Oh, God. I may want Molly Ringwald for the festival sometime. Oh, yeah. Just retract all of that.

Yeah. We'll forget about it. That's like a couple years off. That's fine. Maybe you could just get Ally Sheedy.

No, just Ally Sheedy, tell us what you think about it. It was like there was a redhead for every generation. For every generation, there is a redhead. She's like the slayer. Born unto every generation, there is a redhead, and she will kill vampires.

Or there's like a highlander. Is there one endangered species now? Are you getting any protections? I heard that was a rumor. That's not really true, that redheads are going to go extinct.

As long as Claire all exists, I don't think she will. Then you don't have to worry about it because if now we have Emma Stone, that means she decapitated Molly Ringwald. You don't have to worry about getting her for the show. There can be only one. All right.

On that, I think we should take a break and then come back and get into this week's movie. Doing the things that they want to do. It reminds me of the movies Marty made about New York. Doing the things that we want to. Those frank and brutal movies.

That are so brilliant. Doing the things that we want to. True love, meet. The rage and go. Doing the things that we want to.

They're very inspirational, I love the things they do. Doing the things that we want to. Doing the things that I want to. There's not much you hear on the radio today. But you can still see a movie.

Or a play. Here's to Travis Bickle and. Here's to Johnny Boy. Growing up in the mean. Streets of New York.

I wrote this song because I'd like to shake your hand. At our refreshment stand, your wish is our command. So the coffee we serve there is pure perfection. There is nothing mean about what the critics have to say about mean streets. Mean Streets deserves attention as one of the finer American films of the season.

An unequivocally first-class film, says the New York Times. Rolling Stone magazine calls it the most original American movie of the year. Doesn't just explode, it erupts with volcanic force. Newsday finds it exquisite, savage, and brilliant. While Pauline Kael of the New Yorker acclaims it as a triumph of personal filmmaking.

Mean Streets triumphantly heralds the arrival of director Martin Scorsese. De Niro's vivid performance should be preserved in a time capsule, says Newsweek. Mean Streets, from Warner Brothers. Rated R under 17, not admitted without parent. Coming May 26th and 27th.

Wonderfest. In this, their 22nd year. Wonderfest is still the annual expo for model and toy collectors, with a huge display and competition for plastic kits and garage kits. This year, in addition to all the events, they are also welcoming actress Joanna Cassidy from Blade Runner and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as well as Bill Moseley, Julie Adams from Creature in the Black Lagoon, and designer and illustrator Eric Chu, who redesigned the Cylons, Raiders, Vipers, and much of the universe for Battlestar Galactica. Plus lots of other guests and activities, So go to wonderfest.com and check it out yourself.

It's time for Sofa Theater. De Niro. In Bang the Drum Slowly, the critics called him a brilliant new talent. After Mean Streets, they said he was a genius. For his performance in The Godfather Part II, they gave him the Academy Award.

Come on, man. Just get me out of here, all right? Now, Robert De Niro creates a terrifying portrait of life on the edge of madness. David, just forget about this. It's nothing.

Taxi Driver, a film by Martin Scorsese. People do anything in front of a taxi driver. I mean anything. People are too cheap to rent a hotel room. Don't drive a hurry up, will you?

People want to embarrass you. It's like you're not even there. It's like, you know, like a taxi driver doesn't even exist. This city here is like an open sewer, you know? It's full of filth and scum.

I think I know what you mean, Pallas. But it's not going to be easy. The taxi driver is looking for a target. Getting ready. Getting organized.

Preparing himself for the only moment in his life that will ever mean anything. That taxi driver's been staring at us. You talking to me? You talking to me? I don't know who's weirder, you or me.

You talking to me? Who the hell are you talking to? You 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. I come from a long way away. And I know a fine thing when I see it.

See it! For the same reason no one ever pointed a telescope at the sun. Talking about the red angels of NY City. Who shot the shot? Who got us tonight?

Who shot the shot? Not even five enforcement. Agencies can save their own. Never mind the people. Tonight it's raining on the angels of the city.

Did anyone prophesize these people? Only Travis. Coming, Travis. All the animals come out at night. Queens, fairies, stokers, junkies, sick, fetal.

Someday a real. Rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets. We've got shots at night. We've got shots at night. Wait, what's the movie?

It's right there. Taxi. Remember? We're going to watch. Yes.

You guys all watched Taxi, right? With Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah. Oh, yes. Yeah, I mean... Oh, that existed.

We are going to have a lengthy discussion. It doesn't anymore. They erased it. It was all new. A lengthy discussion on the stellar acting, the social commentary, the visuals.

I mean, it's... Oh, man. I'd rather watch. That than that... Baseball movie he.

Made with Drew Barrymore or whatever. Fever? Fever pitch. It wasn't that like. A fairly good or somebody did.

It that shouldn't have done it. Who did it? The father of those. Everybody that shouldn't have done it. Jimmy Fallon, Drew Barrymore, take your pick.

I don't have high expectations for Drew Barrymore. No. Alright, welcome back to Movie Meltdown's Sofa Theater. This week's Sofa Theater feature is Taxi Driver. The year is 1976.

Director Martin Scorsese. The plot, and this is according to IMDb, a mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran works as a nighttime taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge to violently lash out, attempting to save a teenage prostitute in the process. Oh, okay. I mean, most of that stuff happened. It's oddly put together, but it's not wrong, I guess.

With that spoiler alert... For God's sakes, if you haven't seen Taxi Driver and you're listening to a movie show, what the hell is wrong with you? With that, yeah, go watch Taxi Driver. You should already be watching it most days of the week anyway. All right.

I again would say, where would you like to begin? But I think this one, that very first shot, the taxi emerging from the steam, I think already you're in for an amazing movie. Just that opening shot. It's pretty damn depressing. I don't know how they do it, but they made it so that the steam looks dirty.

Well, everything in this movie looks dirty. Wasn't it just filmed in the 70s? In New York City, in general. So to me, it was just like, if you didn't know what you were watching, that opening shot could be some horrible medieval monster movie. I mean, it looks like a big beast rolling out of the steam, which, again, as the movie goes on, kind of works.

Because, yeah, it just looks like really impending doom rolling at you. Yeah, then there's that sound yeah which i mean they have the little lilting part later and it's interesting that the music that a pimp puts on to chill down to romance is the same music they've been playing for us um yeah. We're all like that i haven't really thought. About that before but the other sound they have that just it's the sound i think of a giant beige filing cabinet just sitting there It's this big institutional hum that just comes and goes. There's something about it.

Nice. I've just forgotten the soundtrack. I had, too, and I was thinking about it. I was like, man, if I were a cab driver in New York City, I would totally make sure I played that in my cab. Even if they didn't really consciously know.

What was going on. It's funny. I was walking by Lynn's Paradise Cafe in my neighborhood today. And the sound coming out of it was the sound of the Madison dance in A Band Apart. Which was just like...

I wanted to look over there and see the... I had tried to force my kids to learn that dance if they had known it. They could have just. But they never did. I....

Got sick of the saxophone yeah it is a little syrupy isn't it yeah yeah it feels like it feels i don't know when you're back in the cab with them the music's playing and you're driving around town you feel almost that you know that coffee buzz late at night you're forcing yourself to stay awake you don't like where you are everything about it yeah and and If it weren't for the soundtrack, it wouldn't feel the same way. But it's dirty, it's. Unpleasant. I don't know what the case was, how Martin Scorsese approached Bernard Herrmann. If he just wanted to have that one long track as the entire score for the film, or if Bernard Herrmann was just like, nah, this is all...

Just gave it a little thing, didn't feel like doing anything more. So they had to keep. Looping that over and over. And they just had to pass off. I was like, no, it's supposed to represent the vicious cycle of city life.

It's like, no, this is all he gave us. I'm sorry, guys. He's a legend, but he was stingy for some reason. Stingy nothing. He died.

He recorded this, and that night he died. Literally, that is what happened. He went through a two-day recording process. He came in, he conducted the first day. The second day, they brought in another guy, but he was still on hand, and they completed it.

And that night, Christmas Eve, he died. Dang. And that's why... My work here is done. This was his last score, and that's why the movie is dedicated to him at the end there.

This was the last score he ever did, literally that day. It's his last wall. He said, I'm going to finish this, or it's going. To kill me. Both.

Well, I think it's, I think it's really good. I just, I agree with you on the sax part. It's like, there's two different halves. Like the rest of it is so Bernard Harmon and is so like amazing. Like that, that just, that sort of like banging, pulsing thing that's sort of driving him in the movie.

And yeah, it's, it's very like fits everything so well. And I think even the sax part fits a little bit. Like, At the beginning, maybe cruising the streets, and definitely when you get the Sybil Shepard slow motion shot, it's supposed to be there. That's kind of the whole reason he wrote that, I think, was for that scene. But then as it goes on, it does just sort of loop around a little too much.

But I think the rest of it is amazing. I think, yeah, without that sax part, the rest of it's just impressive. Well, I don't know that I object to the... To me, it kind of has that sickly sweetness that he kind of refers to Like, he's got those flowers sitting around his apartment forever, and he talks about just feeling the smell of it makes him feel queasy. And then I was thinking, why is this music got that kind of quality?

And then when, what's his name, puts it on for, I'm like, okay, all right. That's lovely. I just like that shot where he, he's just, you know, pulled off the massacre and everything at the end. And like the camera just is kind of the, the cops arrive and he's just, you know, sitting there covered in blood and everything. And he's doing the, the gun motion and making the sound effects.

He's here though. Those xylophone just like zooming back. Oh yeah. And that just gives the effect. Like this guy is nuts.

Like when you hear that xylophone just going up and. Down, uh, Again, it has ways to work itself into that movie that are amazing and couldn't be done any other way. It's as much a great film musically as it is. Was that xylophone? Sometimes I thought I heard harp arpeggios.

That's what it was. I don't know my instruments. That was totally a harp. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. That was a really great effect, I thought. Well, that's what I was thinking since we're already kind of gone into the music. I mean, that brings in what, as I'm, and again, it's been, I mean, I've seen it several times. I owned it on VHS, and now I've rewatched it again in the new formats, and I'm watching it, and it had been too long, and I'm watching this, and I'm watching the credits roll at the beginning, and I'm like, this is just the perfect storm of cinema.

I mean, it's Martin Scorsese directing, directing Robert De Niro, That alone shouldn't be good enough. Then you've got Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, Albert Brooks, written by Paul Schrader, Bernard Herrmann doing the music, Dick Smith doing the makeup effects. I'm just like, it's everybody that you would want in your movie, in their prime. I mean, it's, yeah, New York City in the 70s. It's like you can't get a more perfect scenario.

I enjoyed the willful omission of Sybil Shepard. He just needs every passive. truthfully at the at that time she was okay these days she gets on my nerves but I back in 70s and 80s I kind of liked her and she was and she's very good at doing what she needs to do in this movie now I don't know. These days I saw I was you know way too young to have seen younger civil shepherd obviously and. Then I saw the older civil shepherd. Where my dad you know liked her and I had no idea why And then it's when you watch this more as an adult, you're like, oh, okay.

She is, you know, much more feminine at the time. And, you know, young and youthful and cute. Really? Yeah. Maybe I'm not familiar with old Sybil Shepard, but last I checked in, she was funny as hell.

The sitcom version of her. I was on board for Moonlighting. I love me some Moonlighting. By the time it hit that 90s sitcom, yeah, she was not... I don't know.

I think it was called Sybil. I think it was called Sybil. I don't remember if it did anything. It didn't sit well with me. No, me either.

I didn't really see that. And then she had a touring one-woman show, too, where she was just thinking about how she had sex with Elvis. That is awesome. It is awesome, but her delivery and all this stuff. I didn't see that, but somebody told me about it, and it sounded pretty cool.

She was on a talk show, and somebody asked her about it, and she was like, yeah. And she said that Elvis didn't do oral sex. And she called him on it. And I'm like, wow. Cool.

Cool. I was like in her camp there. I'm like, Elvis, come on, dude. What kind of a king are you? Right.

Right. Man. Let down. I don't know. I haven't really followed her TV career later.

But, you know, she was in The Last Picture Show. I mean, she's good in The Last Picture Show. She's good in this. I feel like one of the most authentic, like authentically done shows. just accents I've seen like in any movie is just her like her saying the word naked as naked in that movie that always like I love that it always gets a chuckle from me like. Yeah she said she would never do that uh be naked in film again after that it was just too embarrassing but um.

That's a good performance like she was good when she was young it just I don't know as she got older I just I lost it I. Don't know yeah well it's sad about that my doctor thinks I'm getting older but they need to run some more tests. Years and years worth of tests in fact you're getting younger yeah could be. Shit you're a real cowboy that's nice man it's alright $ 15 15 minutes $ 25 half an hour oh shit. Cowboy huh.

I once had a horse in Coney Island she got hit by a car. Harvey Keitel. Oh, man. up some money, don't fuck her. You should be back here every night for some more, man. She's twelve and a half years old.

You ain't never had no pussy like that. Harvey Keitel. Oh, man. Oh. He's so...

He's so Harvey Keitel. That's really all you can say. Right. He's always been the same, hasn't he? He's...

Even when he's playing something that should be totally different for him, somehow he just puts his Harvey Keitel spin on it, and you're like, well, it works, and you're awesome, but Somehow he's still Harvey Keitel. It's very strange. Baby De Niro. Yeah. That's what was most shocking to me.

Because I hadn't seen. This film in, I mean, I've already dated myself with the Molly Ringwald stuff, so there's no turning back, but I hadn't seen this in 20 plus years. I mean, I saw it when I was like 13, and I watched it all the time when I was 13, but I had stopped watching it. So I hadn't seen it in so long. So when I saw it, the last time I saw it, He was a man.

So now, revisiting it, he's like this kid. It's such a different experience. Yeah, he's almost like Peter Parker. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Yeah. If he hadn't gotten bit by a spider, this is how it would have turned out. He's just finding his Kytel superpowers right about there, discovering how to use them. Hmm. I don't know, do we want to run through the cast, or do you want to just go into story, or how do you want to approach this?

You know, for me, Wizard has always been one of the most memorable characters from that movie, and the scenes where they're just sitting around talking uncomfortably, and De Niro's attention always seems a little fractured, like he doesn't quite hear what people say. Or he blacks out, even. Yeah, or even talking to her, and Peter Boyle, man. He's so underrated. He was great.

I always remember the scene where De Niro is talking to him, and he says something like, to me, I think if you do something, then that's what you are. If you drive a cab, then that's who you are. I don't know, man. This is the stupidest thing I ever heard you do. Well.

What do you want from me? I'm just a cabbie, man. I don't even know what the fuck you're talking about. That's just a great scene. That almost seemed ad-libbed.

I think Peter Boyle has the ability that he could have. Just done that. Definitely. And those scenes, even, when they're just hanging out being cabbies, it almost seems more natural, like they're just in a role ad-libbing everything. Not everything, but portions of it.

And I think Peter Boyle probably could have done that. Because they're like well he's going to bring a problem to you just say whatever and I think I mean because he didn't really seem like he knew what was going on and he wasn't as a character he wasn't really supposed to know what was wrong with Travis and so he just said something you know just to try to move along the. Day I still like the wrap up of I'm real fucked anyway thank you there's the truth sir. Yeah, and it's just, in that scene, that's just the point for me when I realize, like, you see Travis just clawing at straws, just, like, begging, you know, Peter Boyle, just, like, save me. It's just, like, this guy is doomed.

He is. And that's usually what people do. Like, when you start to go down that road, you're throwing out the signs. I mean, there's always that, well, I noticed, you know, once somebody goes crazy, they're just like, huh, last week you said, you know, and you can kind of piece it together. They're like...

Sometimes they're throwing it out there and be like, if you can stop this, please do. And people are usually kind of oblivious and don't notice until it's too late. But, yeah, you can definitely see that's that last ditch effort of save me from what I'm about to do to myself and anyone else around me. And Peter Wohl is just kind of like, I don't know, we're all fucked, man. What do you want from me?

I drive a cab. I got my own problems. Seriously, I can't even buy my own cab. I drive someone else's. Yeah, the things that struck me that I didn't really remember so much, you know, I watched it this time with my kids, and they've never seen it.

So that's fun. How did they take it? They liked it. And my son, I can see him react like whenever Travis is being awkward or in conversation, like the moments where he says, I don't really follow music, but I'd like to. I can just see my son going, oh God, this is so sad.

And he does that several times. And it's like, well, I don't really know politics, but I'd like to know more about it. My boy's just shaking his head. Yeah, I don't know. But I think I saw it a little differently because I'm watching it with my kids.

And There were things that I didn't remember noticing so much when I'd watched it before, and one was that $ 20 bill that Sport throws in the cab. I didn't follow it through the movie as much, or I don't think I did, because it seemed to me this time that he doesn't seem like a terribly messed up guy in the beginning. He just seems like. He's not connected well. to anyone or anything he's not connected. To the.

I don't know the cultural moment or music or politics or just anything he's just a drift yeah and so he doesn't know what to do with himself but he has like and he's always trying to get organized and get his life together and be in shape but why what for he doesn't know what for um So I don't know. I think that is, if he's been a Marine, a Marine who's organized and in shape and ready for whatever's going to happen. So he almost resets to, if I know nothing else, if I have to get ready, I don't know what it's going to be, but there's going to be a mission, and I have to be ready for it. And so that's his training. And then driving the cab for a while, that works for him because his mission is just getting people from here to there.

And he doesn't care who they are or what they're doing. But I think it's when a teenage girl is pretty much kidnapped out of his cab. Yeah. Then you can't just be like, I don't care what's going on. And it offends him.

And the guy gives him money. And it's like now what he's doing is like tainted and messed up. And so later when he has to give Doughboy or the other guy back $ 5. 00, He gets out his money and you see that 20 and he sets it aside because he's hanging on to that 20 because it bothers him. That's not his money.

Yeah. He says that at the end. He's like, this is your money. And it makes him a part of it because he didn't do anything at the time. It makes him an accessory to her living this lifestyle now.

And I think that's why he feels so responsible by the end. And he's like, I need to rescue you because I'm partially responsible. I didn't stop it when it could have, you know, in the beginning there, I could have early on saved you a lot of this torment. And I don't know. I think that's a lot of it, too, is that he then, because he's still holding on to that, it's like a reminder that he's responsible for some portion of it.

Yeah. So he has this need to do something, but he's definitely not clear on what to do. I'll shoot a senator. Yeah. If that doesn't work out, I'll liberate a teenage prostitute.

I get the drive to liberate her. He's clearing up a problem that's following him. But I don't see. Where he jumped from, I'm supporting this guy. He's been in my cab.

I kind of see on par with him, I think. And then I'm going to assassinate him. He never really understood the guy to begin with. I don't really know his positions, but because he likes... This woman he's seen.

Because she's on his side. Then he must be a good guy. I'm going to hurt her because she hurt me. She's just like everyone else. That's the closest thing to making sense.

It's not a good plan. It's not any direct line of thought where at least if he had Which in a way makes it better, I think. If he had a very political agenda, if he had a reason to stop, he felt it was important to stop him, but he doesn't. It's way more realistic to the way people go crazy. It's just, I have to do this.

It's like he doesn't even know why, he doesn't even need to really. It's just like, this is the thing that occurred to me to do, and now that's my plan, and that's what I have to do. Yeah. And something violent has to happen, and that violence has to precipitate his own demise. Yeah, and he knows that.

He's by the end writing the note. He's like, well, I'll be dead soon. And when that goes wrong, he still wants to fulfill that. He still is going to go through with one way or the other, I'm doing something that's going to take care of all these problems in my life. Yeah, my kids really enjoyed the scene where he's watching the soap opera. they just really enjoy and just gradually tipping the TV and they're just watching it and they're like their eyes are like this is fun well his reaction is so.

Great I love that too that's so realistic I was just like oh man that was a stupid. That again this time watching it that was a very key moment for me I was just watching and I'm like again this is another one of those no turning back kind of things it's him sitting there doing it, and there's no reason for him to do it. It's his life. It's his situation. There's no reason for him to do this, but he's still doing it.

And he's watching himself doing it. He's like, I probably shouldn't. And he keeps doing it. And it's just kind of like, let's see what happens. Or if nothing else, this is going to change things.

Better or worse, this is going to change my situation here. And that's The big picture of the movie, really. There's a lot of truth in that. I think a lot of times people, you know, when they're just not happy in their life, they have to just do something to make something happen. Yeah.

Because they don't know what to do. They just know that something has to be different. Right. I think that scene where it really illustrates that is where he goes into the office where Sybil Shepard is and he has all that confidence and he's like, you know, I'm going to take you on a date. This guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

This other guy that's hitting on you. And you're like, oh man, he's the man. He's really pulling this off. Then they sit down in the restaurant and he's just like, uh, I don't know how to talk to people. I should have thought about this a little bit more.

That other guy is a jerk. He doesn't respect you. I sensed from him that you have no connection. That's the thing, again, watching it now, I'm just like, he's so childlike. Everything about him, he just gets himself into these situations and really, it's not that he's doing it to be a jerk, especially like, you know, the movie theater thing.

It's like, he just really comes off like, he doesn't know what the hell's going on. He doesn't understand how people operate. He doesn't understand how society works. You know, just basic niceties. He doesn't know how to do.

Yeah, it's like he's thrown into this life and he doesn't really understand how to make it work, which, again, is kind of how the whole movie is. It's seriously messed up if you don't know that, uh, pornographic movie is. Not it's not okay yeah you know certainly not. On your first honest in that oh i you know i didn't know he wasn't being you know. Again i don't know much about movies but.

Uh yeah I think this is one right here. I see couples go here all the time, sure. As two guys are leaving behind them, I noticed as he said that. It's like, well, yeah. That was a wonderfully sociopathic response.

I've seen couples do this. This is what couples do. Again, it's just not understanding the world around him, but sort of trying to mimic things that people do. It's just like, we go out on a date, right? Yeah.

Bright they sort of like he dodges about his education but he was in the military he's well here and there you did you go to school yeah a little bit sort of um he. Didn't say his a little bit he didn't say. A little bit a little bit. He said uh what here and there you know yeah well. It's it's kind of the same thing with the music like he doesn't know what he just like she says it so he goes to get it but it's not even like he means it in a really sweet way it's like he's just that's he doesn't know what else to do it's like he's so it's all so you know foreign to him that he's just like I think this is what people do right you bring a gift on a date or something I don't know it's like he's He's so grasping at straws for just, like, normal existence.

Well, he said something to Iris later about the money, like, I need something to do with my money. That's what you do. If you like somebody, then you. Give them something. You buy them things.

You buy them out of their head. Yes. That's how you solve problems. But, I mean, he doesn't really seem like all that unusually disconnected, because I've known people who seem pretty out of the loop. Or, you know, if not as out of the loop.

He's out of the loop on a lot of fronts. But I know a lot of people who, like, they don't really follow this that much. And, of course, I knew the one guy who had never seen any popular culture whatsoever except Sinbad movies. So he's just one step away. What kind of worldview would he like?

Only being exposed to Sinbad. Well, he was mysterious to us for a while because we'd be talking about movies and stuff, and he'd be like, I never really saw that. I guess I ought to check that out. It's called The Godfather. You might want to look it up.

And then one day, one of the guys was out driving with him, and he saw Sinbad billboard, and he was. Like, Oh, that's something I know. His movies are so funny. And he knew all of them. But that was the only popular culture he seemed to be familiar with.

Yeah. It's a legend. I brought him up. Tiffany. Yeah, Tiffany.

We named him. So he wouldn't know we were talking about him. Yeah, because he might listen to the show someday if he exposes himself. Pop-culturally savvy. And he'll be listening.

He'll go, Well, that sounds kind of like me. But that guy's name is Tiffany. It can't be me. Well, that's what I think I noticed. And again, you were talking about, Lucy, watching it years ago and then watching it now.

And it is one of those weird things where you watch it years later and the movie hasn't changed, but you see it very differently. Yeah. This time, it's probably more than anything frightening how similar I felt to Travis. I'm sitting there watching, and I'm like, I'm really kind of feeling for this guy, because I'm like, lonely, sad, depressed, yeah, yeah, check, check. Empty life, disliking of other people, yeah, check, check.

Affinity to hang out with young girls. Okay, sure, this is across the board. I'm finding myself way too connected to Travis. It's really sad. The sadness of the movie really weighed on me more this time than ever before.

I know there are some people who watch it like it's a badass movie. Yeah, see, that's the thing. And they will talk about, oh, Taxi Driver and Boondock Saints. Just shut up with that, please. Why do all those guys have to be douchebags?

You've got to blame the arm mechanisms for that right there. Those things are cool. It is cool. They've seen two scenes of the film. That scene and the end.

Just like Scarface, every boy has a Scarface poster on his wall and knows nothing about the film. It's that part where De Niro whips out the gun and says, say hello to my little friend. No, you're a little bit off. You're a little mixed up. A little bit off.

The other thing I noticed was after the failed assassination, I'd kind of noticed this before, but a lot this time, was how his motion becomes almost stop action a lot near the end. Like he comes home after the failed assassination and he like does mouthwatch and he's jerking his head around. And then later, and when he goes in, he's like a zebra or something being filmed with early film. And like when he gets shot in the shoulder, it's almost like animation. And I noticed that More this time.

I'd noticed it before. It's like, what is this stop motion quality? Yeah, like the cutting gets a lot more frantic. Yeah. Like I'm thinking of like, yeah.

Like the shootout where he like jerks a little bit or afterwards when he's in the cab and he looks back in the rearview mirror and it's like a quick double take. Yeah. And it's just like, whoa. Everything gets really angular. And in the shootout scene, all the colors are muted.

They're not. Yeah. Because everything before is, you know, bright and realize and then the color slightly off. And that's on purpose by. The way yeah so they didn't get like a yeah x rating.

They were going to be x they would not because it's so violent and there's so much blood if they would have had this blood red yeah they inferred the tone i guess overall if you throw all that together so yeah they had to totally mute the. Colors it really works well almost like it's because you know Like he's in a zone. Where his brain's not definitely not working right anymore. Even the color's not right. And it's almost like it's not even registering that there's blood pouring out of my neck right now.

That I'm just like, I keep going. I've got a mission, damn it. Oh, my favorite moment in that whole sequence at the end is right after he shoots Scooter. And he walks over and he sits down. He just.

I'm done. He just has to sit down and think for a moment. Because I didn't remember that last time. I didn't either. And I went, wait, when did.

Oh, wait, but that's so true. He just walks over and then he sits down for a minute. Doesn't even try to calm Jodie Foster. He's like, well, she thinks I'm a crazy person. There's no going back.

I'm just going to, you know, have a sit down and chill until the police arrive. But no, wait, maybe I'll go shoot some more people. And that's the. Also the desperation, but almost surgical way that he's trying to kill himself, and he can't do it. It's just like, oh, well.

And it's almost mission-based, and this is going to happen next. Again, very military. And then I can't do it. Okay, we're done. I'd forgotten, too.

I'd forgotten the... the Jackson Browne song on American Bandstand. So he's watching American Bandstand, and you start to hear this song, and you're just watching him watch American Bandstand. I'm like, is that Jackson Browne? Yeah. It's a very fitting song, the more you sit there.

I was like... huh i i forgot how good this works too what's with. Is that shoes they're in the middle of the floor on american bandstand they're like all dancing around. Oh yeah there's there's shoes or something just sitting in the floor and i'm I don't know what that was supposed to mean or. If it just happened to be in the footage or what. I just kept looking at that brother with the sweater wrapped around his neck.

I was looking for the American girl with the long hair that was always on that show. I was just like, that guy's not cool at all. Take that sweater off, dude. What are you doing? Wasn't he in menthol cigarette ads?

I think so. I just had that sweater tied around. You guys are supposed to be way cooler than this. Come on, man. That's the whitest thing I've ever seen.

Take that sweater off. So, yeah, but back to that other thing, I really, it is always kind of lumped in there over the years, the way that pop culture has latched onto it and made it a badass movie and he's so cool and, you know, he's so, especially the weird, like, punk thing that has attached itself to it over the years. I'm like, This time around, I sort of, like, all of that went away, and all I see is the sadness. Like, all I see is this lonely story about, you know, he bills himself as God's lonely man. That whole speech in the middle, I was just like, Jesus, this is terrible.

Like, amazing and terrible. His diary almost reads the way you think all of the papers on The Killer and Seven's diary would read. Just. not. Realistic and again to me it sounds kind of like a kid writing stuff the way that he words things is just like a child sometimes but at the same time it's like a child who's lived through this like you know 20 years of depression along the way. So yeah it's it's i don't know yeah him shaving his his head like that into the mohawk is i would say you know like closer to britney spears than Sid Vicious.

Like, it's just really sad. You're just like, this guy is falling apart. And they did, they did Paul Schrader reference that there's also, there was a movement in like the, the military in Vietnam that there were these guys that would shave their head like that. And that was them just going out in the field to kick ass. Like they were just, that was them in that zone.

And half the time, those guys probably weren't coming back either. So it really was sort of, based on a real thing not the crazy punk rock thing the this is it i'm going in to take care of business kind of thing and it's again i don't think i'd heard that before but it is it's weird how that part of the culture latched on to it because again watching it this time i was just like i'm pretty sure travis would hate a lot of you guys you feel like you have a lot of the same ideas but truthfully i think i don't think travis would be sold on all especially the The more douchebaggy ones. The ones that are probably hardcore and like the old stuff. But yeah, the new poser kind of punk rock kids that probably have that poster on their wall and have never seen the movie.

Yeah, I don't think Travis would like you guys. Yeah, and he's constantly trying to reinvent himself, but he doesn't know what exactly. He kind of wants to be a cowboy. Yeah. He's wearing those boots and the flannel shirt and everything, but he just kind of ends up looking ridiculous.

Yeah. He shaves his head, but there's no intentions of being punk rock or anything badass about it. Again, it was sort of before most of that was real. I was going to say, with 76, this was still like disco. You have to remember, because when we're thinking, how do they get the steam to look dirty?

I think at that time they probably had to clean the semen and blood off of it to get it to look that good. Ah, the 70s New York. Litter. Yeah, I mean, in every scene, like the one scene when he comes. Out of the taxi office and he's walking down the street the first time, there's just litter everywhere.

And at first I thought, did they plant that to make it look dirtier? No. No, it probably was like that. And, you know, New York has gone through such a change, you know, now. Yeah.

At least what you see. On television, even in film, never represented in a dirty way. Dangerous way at all. They've changed a lot. Well, they have their standard things they do when they want to give you that vibe.

But one of them, of course, this movie, as in all movies, if you ever go into a little corner bodega market, you know something bad is going to happen. You do not want to. It's one of those rules of life. Like, if you see Scorsese... shooting from above in a room, you do not want to go into that. You do not go in there.

Open the door and Scorsese's up there with a camera. No. I was supposed to deliver this pizza, but never mind. Yeah. Since a massacre set to Donovan music coming, so.

Yeah, and you go into a little bodega market. No, you better be prepared for something bad to happen. A robbery is going to go wrong. It's just like parking lot, parking structure. They only exist for cars to come whipping around and shoot at you.

That's the only thing. Or somebody to be attacked on the way to their car. And they drop their keys. That's the only reason they build them. It's like in soap operas, if you see them in a car, all of a sudden they're in a car.

There's no car scenes. That car is. Going over a cliff. It's like Cincinnati, I guess. It still has a little bit of that urban grit, but it's kind of like they have really good graffiti artists, though.

So it's kind of colorful, but Gritty, it's like a mix between The Wire and Sesame Street. Oh, wow. Oh my god. Elmo coming. That's all I ask of my graffiti is that it's good.

Most of the time I don't mind that it's there, just don't do half-ass graffiti. Do something impressive for God's sake. Yeah, and then they get to the scene where he sits down and has breakfast with Iris. I don't know. How natural is Jodie Foster in that scene?

I mean, just the way she's laughing, the way she's fumbling with her food. Just, yeah. Amazing. And back to the comment about his childlike quality. I mean, that's the first time he connects to somebody.

It's like they actually. There's nothing stilted about the conversation. It flows. Like, there's an actual connection that's happening because he is. This little kid.

Because he's 12 years old. Yeah. And, I mean, they were talking about, they were discussing how that whole scene worked. And the way that they got along so well, like, De Niro would actually, like, pick up Jodie Foster and take her to breakfast and, like, not talk about and they would just have to get used to each other sitting there. And then they ran that scene a million times.

But all the weird little mannerisms were based on an actual teenage prostitute that Schrader met and paid to sleep on his couch, I think is the way he put it, to not incriminate himself. But he was just trying to use her as the basis for the character. And he called De Niro, that was staying in that same hotel, and was like, we're going to breakfast tomorrow. All that stuff was real. This 15-year-old girl that was out on the streets that he was using as the basis for the character, who's actually in the movie, by the way, when he almost runs her over in the street, that girl that drags her along is the actual prostitute.

All the stuff with her sunglasses and changing sunglasses and putting sugar on her glasses. Damn sandwich. That was all real. That all actually happened with that prostitute, which, again, makes this even grittier and more grim. She does that, and De Niro also.

He puts. I thought it was, you know, I think when I first. Watched it, I thought it was cereal. Maple syrup and sugar. It's a lot of sugar.

I thought it was cereal, but it was bread. Yeah, it's bread. Bread and then milk with honey and sugar on top. Oh, it's got to be disgusting. You know, but that's childlike, too.

Yeah, very childlike. If a child doesn't know how to feed themselves. And that's what he eats, you know, Doritos. And coke, and he goes to the bodega and gets cupcakes, and. He doesn't know how to eat anything.

Shit, I just realized that's one more thing on my list. I even talked to him about it. He says, no more destroying my body. But then the next thing he does is he goes and he picks up cupcakes, even after he says that to himself. Well, you know, but it's true that at that time, a lot of people had very little sense about nutrition.

And we forget that they did because. That. Was the only thing on the shelves in the 70s. Yeah. People knew better in the 50s.

Right. But all the marketing and... I don't know. I remember taking a health class in 7th grade and all the stuff they told you you should be eating. You could not construct a single meal that satisfied the nutritional guidelines because it was a gobbledygook of... advertising from the beef and dairy.

And so it really made no sense. It just made no sense. And at that time, I could tell that it was bullshit. I could tell that it didn't make any sense, but it never occurred to me. to me why it didn't make any sense. It was because of lobbying by producers.

They also, like that, the diet and everything else, his lifestyle as a whole, Schrader sort of describes it as self-imposed, as his loneliness and his demise and never being able to get organized like all these things that he does is sort of subconsciously sabotaging himself so that he will never get his act together he will never be able to be normal that he's sort of doing it to himself so that he's always going to be on this road and he's always going to eventually have to you know the only change he can have is this huge negative change because he's sabotaging himself along the way to never be able to make any positive changes that really make a difference that he always ends up back in that same because he's doing it to himself along the way.

What are those couple of lines very early on that just sort of reveal a lot? It's something, I don't believe a person should have too much morbid self-attention. I believe a person should become a normal person. Yeah, or like other people. Again, this is like echoes in my head.

Yeah. People should be normal. Why don't I get to be normal? Yeah, this is what he's saying. Those voiceovers are amazing.

And again, that's the basis of Schrader writing it and really tapping into this character. May 10th. Thank God for the rain, which has helped wash away the garbage and the trash off the sidewalks. I'm working long hours now, 6 in the afternoon to 6 in the morning, sometimes even 8 in the morning, 6 days a week, sometimes 7 days a week. It's a long hustle, but it keeps me real busy.

I can take in 3, 350 a week, sometimes even more when I do it off the meter. You know, I generally despise voiceovers. Yeah. I mean, that's like in Blade Runner. I can't.

Stomach it when he's got the voiceover. The one version. The one version. The laser disc. And I kept thinking, why does it work?

I was thinking yesterday when I was watching, why does it work in this and I'm okay with it? And I think the reason, and I'm going to go parallel this, probably the first person ever to parallel Taxi Driver with How I Met Your Mother. The way that reason, that worked show works so well. He's a narrator that's constantly in the show. He's unreliable.

He gets it wrong. He might be making stuff up. He might be intentionally throwing the children off. Whatever. Misremembering, whatever.

Same thing with Travis in this. What he's saying does not match up with what he's doing. He's not reliable and he's crazy or he's getting crazier. As it goes on and so it works that he's not. Telling you I think the problem that I have with narration is when they tell you exactly what they're showing you or what they should be showing you and you're like you know I'm smarter than that something where in this one it actually adds something else because it's not really what's.

Happening right I mean yeah like we're in his head and just the audience is at the mercy of his insanity. Basically yeah And I love how he's always wrong about everything, not just in the voiceover, but like the letter to the parents. He's like, well, I do know that July is Father's Day. Again, that's the first time I was like, wait a minute, that's not right. And also like that little, all there's like these little touches, like when he's, he's writing that one letter and he like, the way he pronounces the word mess.

I don't know if you guys remember that he said, he insists on mess. He goes, this crazy mess. Like he puts this weird Southern twang on it. Like, where did that come from? Like this guy is just like, he's just, He's just stumbling all over himself.

It's just crazy. Yeah, he does some odd line readings. And his little penchant for Hallmark card kinds of motivational things is part of his tremendous sadness. You know, the card that he picked out for his parents was very childlike. Yeah, for a couple of good scouts.

Yeah, again, it's... Well, and again, I think that's why we need that voiceover really because we're also we are like you said inside his head the whole movie is pretty much from his perspective minus like one or two scenes everything is about him and sort of you know the way if not from his perspective we're just seeing the world that he's like immersed in and we don't ever really leave that so it's yeah it's you kind of need that because it puts you in his head literally and then you also see what's going on around him that's equally as messed up. I think a great underrated performance in the movie is that uh the gun salesman oh. Yeah that guy's great right before that started i was thinking oh yeah it's the gun salesman and i pictured uh the guy from the strokes that's.

How i remember that yeah maybe it's his dad they have. Our quality or something. I can see that yeah. He just had that whole used car salesman. That's a beautiful gun right there.

Yeah. Every single gun is just a beautiful gun. Yeah. He was selling each one, but then he sold the same level of salesmanship on every gun. It's like you're not really, what's he going to take them all?

Oh, wait, he is. Yeah, he's a brilliant salesman. He approaches like, I hope he buys all these. Oh, he does. Oh, great.

I'm awesome. You're not going to want that. You're going to want this. Then he goes, oh. Oh, you're going to buy both.

All righty. I'm not going to argue. Let me get you a holster. Only a madman would carry that around. Oh, well, never mind.

I would recommend you take a desk drawer and pull the bracket off. And I love Travis's reaction when he started trying to sell him drugs and sort of those moments where you see his sort. Of moral indignation about the things that go on around him. It's like, Guns are good. Drugs are bad.

What are you doing, dude? Yeah, duh. The federal government gives you guns. Yeah. Oh, they don't give you drugs.

Sorry, that's another conversation. Oops. You don't knowingly get the drugs. When Sybil Shepard quotes that Christofferson song, you're a pusher, he's like, no, I'm not. See, again, I like that we get that from him because we do.

It's not like he... has one set, again, there's no agenda to it, but there's still this, like, sense of morality to it, and that, like, he's willing to do the terrible things he's doing and going to do, but at the same time, he can't stand, you know, Harvey Keitel, or he can't stand, you know, the trash on the street, but then the things that he's going to do are equally as bad. It's just, it's all perspective. It's all just the way that he sees it is, I don't know, I like that, that he, that it's not some sort of set-in-stone thing, but you still get this sense of, of good and bad that he has in his head. Yeah but it's it's sweet how he takes offense when uh someone says he's square and he tries to get a little slangy.

What about you're the square man no the only one that's better than that is him and harvey when he's like i'm hip Yeah. Which I believe was ad-libbed. I think that last part. That's such an awkward. Scene where he's not quite leaving.

And Harvey Cuddles was kind of looking left and right. He's like, you're still here. Yeah, he's like, go on, have a good time. He's still doing the gun gesture like, hey, you're. Still in the stoop.

You're funny. Look side of the day. De Niro can't quite come up with a comeback. He's just kind of like tilting his head back, kind of grinning. He's going to say something clever.

It's like, you got nothing. For a movie that's so sad and so depressing, there are moments that are just hilarious. That interaction, or even better is him and the Secret Service man. That is just funny. It's a funny moment.

And again, very childlike. It's mimicking this figure of authority. It is just like, this is how he does it. I want to be like him. And even to the point of telling him, lying as it goes on but telling him that's what he wants to do and he's i don't know i thought that was just one of the funniest scenes of de niro and his awkwardness i like how he i.

Think he said like de niro said that he he studied like the movements of a crab i'm like that makes so much sense because the way he like he can't quite sidestep people like he doesn't have a an idea of personal space like you're saying with the the security guard how he just kind of like you think he's gonna leave but he just kind of like kind of sidestepping back in like no i gotta ask this and it's just like oh man It's so awkward. Yeah. I have a neighbor who I always call Travis, not to his face, but just mentally, but he drives a cab and, uh, but he looks like a wizard. I mean, he looks a lot like him, not because he actually, if you put them side to side would look like him, but he's a big guy with a striking face like that.

So your memory goes, yeah, it looks just like him. Uh, But, you know, I have the hippie neighbors, and I have the hipster neighbors, but I've never mentioned the taxi driver who actually lived in the hipster house, but when it was sold, and it's renovated he moved over and he lives upstairs above the hippies now and we're a little concerned because if he moves again he's going to be in our house you really don't have any say nowhere else for him to go that's just how it works yeah But, yeah, he looks a lot like Wizard, and I always picture him. But I was told by the old World War II veteran who used to live in the old house before he died that he plays classical guitar. And he's been talking for two decades about how he needs to find something else to do besides drive a cab.

He doesn't even know his own cab. Right. Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know. What do you make of the...

That's what I don't know. I'm watching the movie with my kids, and it's like a huge movie for me. It's like, I don't know what to say, though. What does this movie mean to us? It's funny.

Again, as time goes on, it means a lot more. I looked at it when I was younger as a good movie as a impressive piece of cinema but i don't think i fully grasp it i think you need a little of that that he's going through to really full and maybe that's why kids have the poster on their wall and they don't get it maybe you need that that thing you know maybe you need that emptiness to happen in your life before you fully embrace it and i think that's kind of how they described it too that that's why it really was sort of this perfect storm time because all the main characters involved in the making of this movie were at that point. Most of this is kind of based around Paul Schrader's life, and he had gotten fired, and he was in the middle of a divorce, and he had a girlfriend, and they broke up, and she was out of town, and he's squatting in her apartment while she's out of town, and he doesn't really have a job, and then he's working as a pizza delivery man, and he's driving around, and all of this stuff He said he realized it had been a couple weeks and he hadn't talked to anybody.

And it all started, the wheels kind of were turning on how this was, how you could make this character and how he was becoming this character. And he said he kind of felt like he was at that point in his life and De Niro was kind of at that point. And Scorsese, they were all around the same age. They were all kind of at this trying to make it and nothing really has happened at this point phase of their life. And it all sort of clicked. the making of this movie.

So I don't know. I think that's what I, I, that's what I feel now is, is just sort of coming to terms with that. And again, I think that's almost the essence of the movie is, is that loneliness and that situation. And, and I guess whether or not you, you look at these three guys who were in that same situation and everything went right after that, you know, it's like it all clicked almost because of this movie. And, and, All their careers took off, and they've all done amazing things then, but you've got this character in the movie where things don't go right, and this is like the other side of it.

They were all at that crossroads, and this is what happens if you don't end up going down the right path. But here's the other thing he's looked at as a hero for being. Yeah, my daughter was like, well, it wasn't so bad. I mean, the ending was okay. Things turned out all right.

She said after watching Dwight Schrute in Taxi Driver, that movie, this movie was a breeze. What was the name of it? Super? Super, yes. Because I had forced her to watch Super, yeah.

Now, this movie was a lot easier. I don't know about that, but it's... It does definitely tread the same ground. See, my daughter, she flinches when the guy's fingers go flying off his hand. My son flinches when.

I don't know much about music. I don't know much about music, but I'd like to. Those social situations are just like the moments. Where you just realize his. Barometer for just like interaction so out of whack you're just like.

Oh this is this hard it's like it's like. The office or something you know like the the tone of it like i can see the kind of influences that's super would have of like just kind of the imbalance of tone how like you know the presence of albert brooks kind of gives a light kind of comedy vibe at times and other times it just goes in this messed up just dark territory and you're just like you don't know what to make of it like when you first see. It we are the people We are. There's another improvised line. I love Albert Brooks.

I think he doesn't get enough credit for playing that guy, the one that is going to take the punches, basically. He's going to have to be the guy that gets beat up on verbally, even, and he does a great job with it. I, last time I watched it completely, you don't even think about that character. Yeah. And this time you're like, you're sitting there going, wow, you know, he's wow.

That's, that's as hard a role as any to do. Yeah. Yeah. And all of the, just all those moments where he's trying to be the, do the masculine thing and he's trying to throw it out and he's like, I'm going to call the cops. All of those moments are so perfect.

Oh, they're beautiful. And, you get a sense of them even before they come because he says, I'll play the male. And she's like, good luck. She's just watching like a bad card. So like, let's see how bad this guy can screw up.

Like she's amused. In a way he's equally as awkward at doing that stuff as De Niro is like from the other side. It's like he, he sort of knows how to do the basic social niceties, but like all he wants to do is, you know, be with Sybil Shepard you know you can see it it's obvious that's why he's like yeah this banter goes on all day long at the office and Sybil Shepard could care less about him makes it very obvious. Her character was so much more interesting to me this. Time that too yeah I honestly feel like maybe Travis's instincts were right on this and that she is as lonely and lost and strange as he is you know that conversation they had the whole the whole I'm Organized versus them.

Yeah, that's a good scene Moments where it's just like these blank stairs where nobody understands what the others talking about even though yeah about the same thing They just can't communicate and then the fact that at the end despite everything that she's been through and seeing him purchase like well this person is successful so I should I should want this person and I had the opportunity to be with them and maybe I can be with this person again and Despite, assumably, every instinct in a normal person's body would be, this person is way off. Of course they went nuts and killed a bunch of motherfuckers. Yeah. But he's so cute. He's adorable.

He is so cute. And the other thing is, I don't know, if you say that to anybody, I feel that you're unhappy. And you're lonely. If you shine that light inside yourself, you're going to find something. no matter who, you're going to find something there. Well, if you don't think she's messed up in the beginning, which the more you see that conversation and as awkward as it is, and she still goes to the movies with him.

So, I mean, she does have a little, I mean, there is, he is kind of right. She is a little messed up. She definitely is by the end because she comes back like after all. And, and for the wrong reasons, she wanted nothing to do with him when he was just that loser. But now that he's a hero, she's back and she wants something to do with him again.

And even he kind of sees that and, It's like, well, see you later. Cause I don't know. That always seemed like a cheap move on her part that, you know, she blew him off the rest of the time. But now that he's publicly perceived as this great person, now she wants to be, you know, have him back in her life. And it feels like.

She's never particularly committed to the campaign. She has a crush on the Senator. That guy. Yeah. Yeah.

I've got a question. You should bring it up her at the end. And, um, After, as I already mentioned, the view of the climax scene, him going into the whorehouse, after that you have the letter, you don't see him, and he's obviously gone through some kind. Of therapy, what have you, and then he's back on the. Streets, and it's only supposed to be because he mentions it, He's won the primary.

The election's coming up in a week or two or whatever, he says. You don't go into some kind of therapy for something like that. And get out that quickly, I don't think. And like I said, the view visually is different during that scene. You see the letter and everything, and everything is almost dreamlike from that point on.

The way. The ending is where he kind of cuts and looks back. The way he's standing around with the guys. Even her in the car has a softer tone to the look. Even cleaner.

Everything looks cleaner. And I wonder if he's fully crazy at that point. And she doesn't get in the car. Because why would she show up? The thing that threw me off is why would she show up at his work to get a ride home?

You don't go to the cab stations. to get a ride. Well, she was coming to see him, is the way I read it. She was finding him because now he's a big deal again. You never go full crazy. Well, right.

But I just kind of thought, well, maybe it's meant to be that she's not really there. He thinks she should be there now. But he doesn't want her anymore. She's just one of the other people. I mean, that fantasy wouldn't even be gratifying for him, I don't think.

Well, it would be like, showed her. Yeah, that angle. Because he doesn't want her. so he gets to tell her, I don't want you. Yeah, I don't quite see a big enough signal that we're changing reality. Well, I was going to bring that up at some point.

That's one thing that I've heard. Again, this is film classic. They throw out theories right and left in every chance they get. So one of them that I've heard is that he actually, you know, I guess we're to assume on the couch he actually does die. This is the last moments of his life, and this stuff of him becoming a hero and her coming back to him is all actually the dream, you know, the last moments of his life when he's, you know, living out this dream in his head, and none of that actually happens.

Yeah, see, I don't like that really, just because I think it diminishes the profundity of the ending. I mean, the fact, I mean, this is the cycle that's going to continue. He's He talks about his honorary discharge at the beginning. Clearly, he led this violent life, and this is sort of at the end of his honorary discharge of this period. Yeah, I never read it that way, and to me, yeah, like you were saying, to me, it's better... not be.

It makes it more tragic. Because he gets away with it. Because he does this horrible thing. He's treated as a hero. He's sent back out on the streets and he's going to go do something else.

It's not like he's better now. He's just back out and people love him now. He's encouraged to go do that again almost. M. Night Shyamalan would make that ending.

That's a Shyamalan ending. Yeah, he would spell it out right. In front of you. Big show is great. The voice of Iris' dad in that letter is Iris' dad.

You can't take that away from me. It's not in a Pittsburgh-ese accent. That's the thing that threw me. When he says Pittsburgh, I was thinking... Yeah, it sounded like farmland.

Further south, like Missouri or something. So I thought that was probably poorly cast. Or they just picked a city. Yeah. He's on the outskirts of Pittsburgh.

Why would you go to New York to be a hooker when you could do it? Yeah, look around Pittsburgh. Even in the 70s, come on. I think they had a better union. Hey, women?

That's one of my favorite lines. Women, they're like a union. That's funny, I'm sorry. I thought that was funny. So, I mean, we're kind of going into the grand themes of this.

Well, I could toss out, like, just my general reading of it is it just has to do with movies. And a movie, you know, kind of like a taxi ride, it just, it's not really concerned necessarily. What I said to my kids were, about the movie was, at this time, a lot of movies were just commercial vehicles, and I wasn't trying to make a pun, a meta-pun about that, but they were, and then these guys came along, and they took movies, and they tried to tell a story, and it was just like something you'd never seen before. So a lot of movies, they were genre movies, you knew what they were supposed to be, you knew. Where you were when.

You started and where you were going to be at the end of the movie, because it was all worked out. People knew what a movie was supposed to be. And then people like Scorsese and some others started making movies that were just really alive and different and visionary. And Travis's story, I don't like to focus on him being crazy so much, although, I mean, he's got issues, but... That's just such a generic term for how specifically messed up he is.

And he's disconnected and he needs a sense of purpose, but he doesn't know what he's doing. In a way, it's kind of like films. It's a meta reading of it, which I'm a little embarrassed by, but that's kind of how I see it. It's like the story, like what somebody once said about Nabokov. was that he was essentially a dandy. He was just a rider who was good at riding, and he didn't care about anything.

He was sort of a show-off, like people said about the Coen brothers. They were nihilist show-offs. They don't believe in anything, they don't care, but they're very good. But then, the story is like, at some point, he hits up against something that he can't not care about. And he can't just say it's just scum.

It's a girl gets kidnapped out of his cab and he knows he's supposed to do something. And I don't know, some people say that's what happened to Nabokov with Lolita. When he wrote Lolita, he was basically a dandy, but then that book mattered in a way. Of course, he always denied it. He always denied that he had any purpose doing anything ever.

Um, And people say that about Hitchcock, too, that he just refused to be serious. Yeah. But that's kind of the way I'm looking at Taxi Driver now, is that it's, you know, what is the, it's a young artist finding his voice in what he wants to do with film. It's the real story of Taxi Driver. A method in, we're just going to put it out there and, you know.

Yeah. And hitting at that perfect time, because that's what the 70s was. It was that revolutionizing cinema that you get. And it was perfect time for him. It's the birth of the anti-hero.

That Bonnie and Clyde thing kind of kicked in. It's like, oh, okay, they're not good, but we kind of like them. We're following their stories. That was the first time you could have a film. One of the first time.

Periods that you could have a film where you had an anti-hero. Yeah. Literally weren't allowed to yeah and. Is that i was going to say is that do you guys feel like that's what changes with this because he's obviously as you said crazy he's pretty messed up he does some horrible things but don't we all care about travis yeah sure he doesn't i mean don't you get attached to him and you start to as messed up as he is there's some parts of his brain you start to understand and you start to see why he's doing what he's doing even if it you at least start to see why he's doing it or that he's doing it for some reason, even if it doesn't make sense. Yeah, and I think part of what makes it matter to us is they capture such human moments.

Yeah. Just the little conversations and gestures, that's what makes it so real and so full of life. Yeah. For me, this time, I was much more aware of it being sort of more about the plight of the veteran following the Vietnam War. Yeah.

I don't think I'd realize that at all the first time. Being put back in society and not having a mission and needing a mission and all the days seeming so long because he doesn't know how to fill them. And then, you know, sort of this seething connection to violence that's sort of omnipresent. Yeah. It almost, if he'd just have someone who told him what to do, he'd be fine.

Yeah, and that's true. And that's true. Sometimes people, there are guys that come out of the military and retire, they just don't know what to do with themselves because they don't have, and they've had people telling them for a long time. I like the moment again where we get this, you know, you're saying the endless days and they go on forever and he doesn't know what to do with himself and he even has that, he's having that conversation with himself of, you know, nothing ever changes and then there is change. And it goes to him with the guns and that it is one of those.

He will make things change, even if it's for the worse, even if it's taking myself out in the process, I will make things change. And I think that, again, maybe that is a lot of that military tied into that. The only way I know how to deal with this stuff is with guns. Oh, just Scorsese saying. I guess we do have to comment on that.

Yeah, we would never forgive ourselves if we don't remark on that. I'm sure more than anyone he regrets that having to be in the movie. He was so good, though. Yeah, he's amazing. He's so authentic.

And he seems like really, even in some ways more than Travis is. Like a guy just coming unhinged in mid-sentence. Yeah. Some of his line readings are just, what? Yeah.

And that's just, okay. You don't have to answer everything. Oh, man. Put it in park. Put it in park.

I feel like him and Albert Brooks are like, maybe it's like their cadence or like their speed talk. Like this. I feel like in a lot of ways they're like the same person. Like I felt the spirit of Martin Scorsese every time Albert Brooks opened his mouth. It's like he's like, this may sound ridiculous, but it's true.

I'm going to tell you. He's like hitting the matches. He's like dropping it. It's like that's Martin Scorsese. It's funny because that's the character he didn't know what to do with.

That's why like that character was not really written. Like everybody else had their part and he knew how to deal with them. And he liked Albert Brooks as a performer and just brought him in and said, you know, if you want to flesh this out a little bit. And so a lot of his performance came from Albert Brooks because he told him, he's like, you're just a character. I didn't know what to do with it.

Because he doesn't understand that guy. The crazy guy, he totally gets. That's Scorsese. He's fine. But, yeah, this normal guy, I don't know how to do.

And after that scene. that's where it goes. That's almost like the switch that he becomes, oh, that's what. I have to do. But at the same time, he seems sort of uncomfortable with it. Like, Like, you're watching these two going, now that's a crazy guy.

Yeah. Yeah. Bigelow's terrifying in that scene. Yeah. I think some of the point of that was to show that Travis doesn't just, there has to be some sense to the violence.

Like, he doesn't, he's not okay with something. Like, I'm totally, I'm very thrown. Off by the firetrucks at this point. Random acts of violence? Like, it has to have a purpose?

Yeah, he's not okay with that. He's not okay with violence against women, and he's not just, like, a violence hound. Like, it has to be for a purpose. Right. Again, the cleaning up the streets idea that he had.

And I think that's the. Other thing that sort of makes the punk rock taxi driver connection sort of ironic, is that this guy is very much a man of the system who wants the system. He's ultra conservative. Everything he does, he does because he sort of believes in. This idea of America.

And this gum on the streets is punk kids. He's much more Superman than Batman. If he wants it to be ideal America, we're going to clean it up. Maybe that's what happened in New York, how it got cleaner. It was a taxi driver.

It is like this. We've got to clean this place up. Yeah, the mayor of New York saw the movie and was like, oh, man, this is bad. Was that under Koch that they started? Giuliani really is Disney'd up Times Square.

Didn't he really just kind of come in and take credit for it? I think it was like really happening already. Yeah, I don't know much about it. Because generally, since the 70s, crime and violence have just been steadily going down. And people, like everywhere, go around taking credit for it, but it's a little mysterious.

It's really a taxi driver. They were so freaked out by it, they were like, I'm not shooting any more people. We don't have any more Chops Pickles in our city. We won't allow it. Well, there is a weird way that it crosses over into reality.

And again, I knew the connection, but I think watching it this time, I'm like, oh my God, this is so, like everything about the weird assassination thing and the lone gunman idea that then gets, I mean, it was based on some stories. It then gets turned into other stories after the movie. I don't know. That's very weird watching it now, knowing, you know, again, it was based on like the George Wallace assassination attempt. And then there was another one, I think, right around that same time.

And then, you know, a few years later, we get one based almost on this movie. So, I don't know. How do you guys feel about the... Yeah, it wasn't... the reagan. Assassination shave his head too.

I think i think that's what yeah they said he did and it was specifically tied to jody foster. Yeah because he watched taxi driver yeah. Based on the movie so i don't know i didn't know what your guys thoughts were i really like jody foster but i think i've come to terms with i i don't Don't think I have a shot. There's still a little hope in my heart. Oh, you guys missed, well, no, no, no, that wasn't the Oscars, the Golden Globes, that moment.

Did you see that? No, which one? Where basically she got outed on the Golden Globes. I think I heard about that, but I'm like, really? Who's not paying attention at this point?

Obviously there's a joke about a beaver. And Jerry Foster. Well, she made that joke herself when she took that movie on. She set herself up years ago. But I don't know, just about movies crossing over into reality.

Do we want to address the, are movies responsible for how the public is going to take them? Well, you know, that's a big question. But, you know, some of the things that have been pointed out is that in the U.S., yeah, it seems to. People are always wanting to blame the media. But what's weird is that other countries have the same violence and the same media, and it doesn't happen.

So, well, you know, what's his name in his movie, Bowling for Columbine? Ask that question. And he talked to. Charlton Heston. Charlton Heston.

And I... felt like that scene wound up like really horrible yeah because he kind of like laid this dead girl at charlton's feet and that's a horrible gesture but he asked really good questions. He's not a bad filmmaker question. That was interesting to me it's like well other places have guns other places have the media why is it that here and i've thought about that a lot and i think maybe is it just that Americans are uniquely impressionable? Is that it? We don't have the education to know, to, you know, separate satire from actual, you know, something advocating violence.

Or to separate fiction from reality. Exactly. It's that simple. We can't keep it straight. We think we're going to be able to walk into the TV set or something.

There is that. I mean, even the to switch it to the everyday thing. I mean, how many times on this show do we refer to an actor by their character name? Yeah. Or vice versa.

I've done it in the middle of the show. So, I mean, we do blur that line. So if you broaden that picture, how much do we not know the difference? You know, how much of society doesn't really pay attention to when the TV stops and life goes on, you know? Yeah, it does seem like other cultures, they have a kind of saneness in them where they just...

Yeah, that's a video game. Yeah, that's a movie. Now let's do real stuff. But here we have a certain population of people who get confused. Well, okay, I'm going to kind of come back to that in a second.

Because I think, especially when I refer to people by their character, I'm more connected to the character than I ever. Am the actor. I'm usually just being a smartass. And I know they always hate me referred to by their character name. But what I'm saying is those are real, sometimes very real relationships that we have with characters that we spend endless amounts of time and we can even predict how they're going to react in situations.

And I think. Because of that, for me personally, there are a lot of life lessons and morals that I've learned from books. And movies and television that are very beneficial that I never could have gotten in the real world and I I can look at and I can see like Travis that's the line I'm drawing there I've seen. That played out in four different films and I know I'm not going to cross this and I've seen how you very realistically could go down the X, Y, Z path, and I'm not going to do that. And so I'm not going to say that that's a negative thing that we take from that.

I think if you talk about America setting out way too far into something more philosophical than we should, but I think it goes back to the root ideals of what America is and All Americans, at some point, their family member, a family member, a grandparent, great-grandparent, whatever, said, that's enough. I'm not taking it anymore. I'm leaving this country, and I'm going somewhere else. And there are so many of the 90% that stayed, and we're a collection of people, generations removed, that somebody said in our family. We're not going to do that anymore.

We're going to go off on our own. And face something that could kill us or whatever, and make a new life. I think there's something different about Americans because of that. Because we expect dreams to come true. That's what I'm saying.

It's what makes us different. We all think that we're owed something. If we go off and do this, we're going to get our prize. And I'm owed that prize and I'm going to get it. And Our forefathers fought for this, so it's ours.

Whatever it is. It could be a good thing and it could be a bad thing. It's just that capitalist idea anyway that we've all got a shot. We can all be whatever we want and we'll be millionaires as opposed to the other parts of the world that are just like, shut up, do your job, this is your day-to-day life, and you're not really going to get more than that, more than likely. You know, it's funny, because my daughter loves Downton Abbey, and we started that after Taxi Driver, and that has something in it, if you watch it, that Travis just doesn't have, which everybody in that show has a place in the world.

That's what it is. And they get up in the morning, and it's busy. because they have stuff to do and can you picture Travis Bickle in downtown oh man. In that world again if you gave him a job he'd probably be okay I think it's just that he needs something. To do in a sense of place. That even the cab becomes the problem is because it's just roaming it's aimless There is no from one minute to the next knowing what you're going to do.

It's just wandering around and maybe somebody comes along and wants to get in the back, but there's no specific idea behind it other than wait around and something will happen. Again, that's not really what he needs. He does need somebody telling him what to do. All the time. I'll tell you what unimportant can do that to you.

I mean, I was unemployed for, you know, over six months. And, you know, the lights at the end of the tunnel, you know that you're going to be hired back, but you're trying other things every single day, even though you're, you know, parent and husband. Well, and he is unemployed. Right. And there's so much time, and you just go.

A little bit nuts with, well, I have to do this, and. I have to do this, and I'm trying to, You're trying to put the best face forward with people that you're interviewing with, but you're at probably the worst point of your life at. The same time. It's not fair. It's not fair.

No wonder people with jobs get jobs, because at least they have somewhere to go. Oh, yeah, because it's like jumping on a moving train. it's more like jumping off. It is because, you know, it doesn't look that fast, but once you're. On there, it's like, oh, that's okay. But the impact is not going to go well.

Yeah, and so I think a lot of people, like, lose their confidence about, it's not that people don't want to work because generally people are happier doing stuff, but they lose their confidence about what they can do and how they can change their life But if you're watching Taxi Driver for the first time, when he goes in for a job interview, it's not clear that he's unemployed. Right. Because the guy asks, are you moonlighting? What's moonlighting? Right.

It's a show in citizenship. And he puts it like he is, because he says he's up all night anyway, might as well drive a cab. And it sounds like he's busy, but then you realize, no, he. Wasn't doing anything. He's busy going crazy is what he's busy doing.

Yeah, he wasn't doing anything at all. I think the violence and art argument, I'm just like, we as humans, this entire society of people since day one has been violent and was way more violent years ago when there were lesser forms of art, certainly not anything as fancy and sophisticated as motion pictures. So we've gotten less violent as a society and more controlled, truthfully. I don't think you should ever be able to take away from what art is trying to do with that lame argument of violence. I think the only thing is maybe, like you were saying, that certain cultures, certainly America, may take it and want to use it and sort of mirror it differently than any civilization before this would have ever had an opportunity to do.

So maybe that's this new weird thing that's kicked in in the last, you know, hundred years that we're now just getting to the point of, okay, what the hell do we do? Because we've never been faced with that kind of thing before. But, but yeah, as human beings, I think we're way more violent with or without, we just are, we just, it's in, in our DNA to kill other people. So we've, we've tried to get away from that as we've, as we've, uh, developed over the years. And I don't think, I don't think art is anything to blame and certainly motion pictures are shouldn't have anything to do with that.

But it's weird how much focus gets put on that as these different violent movies and video games and stuff keeps coming out. You know, I read something about the Wild West. I think it was in Arizona Highways magazine or something. I don't know. My father-in-law, I guess.

And they hand us all their old magazines. But it said something about, because it was talking about the town of Tombstone. And the misconception that the Wild West was extremely violent. And it said that even in the year for the entire territory or whatever of Arizona in the Wild West days, the most shooting deaths were something like nine for the entire state of what became the state of Arizona in one year. And so we had this misconception that.

We built it up that way. But in the 70s, things were pretty violent. There was a lot of crime. And there was kind of an outlaw ethos everywhere that was not really very healthy. And it was a weird environment to be a kid growing up and to just have that sense of like that was the grown-up world that you were.

Moving toward going to be part of soon bunch of crazy people really oh lord so i think we've kind of hit most of our points on taxi driver don't you. I enjoyed it much more than i did and yeah it was probably 15 years. Ago Yeah, I could actually watch it again tonight. Can I address my new favorite shot? Which I don't think I ever noticed or remember when he's, you know, stalking her.

But later, after things have already fallen apart and he drives by the office building and there's, like, the two cups on the desk and the flowers. And they're not there. And it's just, like, the seething sort of, like, that's so brilliant. Yeah. Yeah, I forgot a lot of that camera work that he did that early on.

The hallway shot where he just drifts over while he's on the phone. Oh, I love that. God, that is amazing. It's like even the camera's like, I can't watch this. This is uncomfortable.

I'm going over here. It's like it's sparing the audience, you know, just the humiliation. Yeah, but it. Also kind of reminds you of all those half-heard phone conversations you've heard in scary hallways. Yeah.

The shot when he goes in the garage at the beginning and it leaves him and goes through the whole garage and then catches back up with him when he goes to the, like, leaving the place. That's just sort of surveying the whole place. That's a cool shot. See, I thought, and I thought when, and I look at it visually this time, when the camera goes up after the shooting scene, You almost think that he is, that's almost. Like out-of-body experience.

Leaving his body. He could be dead there. I was almost to the point where I was like, does he die? Did I miss that part? The other one, the hallway in the apartment building where it's just dark and that guy sort of disappears.

That's awesome. That's like a lynch shot. I was just like, holy shit, where did that come from? Yeah, it's amazing. I don't want to live in the worlds he creates.

Yeah, they're not fun. No, no. They're not fun. But yeah, it is one of those that I remember being an impressive movie, and now it's on that list of one of my favorite movies. I forgot how good it was, and I don't think appreciated it near as much until this viewing.

You never knew what I loved in you I don't know what you loved in. Me Maybe the. Picture of somebody you were hoping I. Might be Awake again, I can't pretend. And I know I'm alone and close to the.

End of the. Feeling we've known. How long have I been sleeping? How long have I been drifting along through the night? How long have I been dreaming I could make it right?

If I closed my eyes and tried with all my might. To be the one you need. Are you tired of film podcasts where the hosts exist in a constant blissful state of agreement? I mean, the main characters are two of the dullest main characters I have ever encountered in any film. Well, you're in luck.

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Ever I'm C. Thomas Howell and you're listening to Movie. Meltdown Staying old. But can it be when we can see? That's part of your problem, you know.

You haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies. And now, on with the show. You know, the same year as that movie, Jodie Foster was in Bugsy Malone. Have you ever seen that Creepfest movie?

I kind of would. I've mentally got it on my list. I think we need to watch it somewhere down the line. Because I remember liking it as a kid. So I'm afraid what I'm going to find when I go back.

I would think as a kid you could like it because it's fun. It's like a world populated by kids. And it's like the 20s and they're gangsters. And they have jobs and little speakeasies and stuff. It's a weird concept.

But to watch it as an adult. It's creepy as fuck. It is just the creepiest fucking thing I've ever seen. And it goes on forever, just being creepy. Yeah, and the kids sing.

It's a musical, but they don't sing in their actual voices. It's like, so they lip sync and dance. to these voices that are clearly not their own and they don't do a great job of it so it has this kind of stiffness to are. They grown up voices or are they. Other voices yeah they're grown up voices trying to be like kid voices self consciously trying to be like kid voices but also with that cutesy 1920s whatever that feminine crap. Was yeah yes yeah.

Just weird uh huh And then so Jodie Foster's in it, and it's before her dental work. She has that charming gap in her front teeth. She's so adorable as a kid. Yeah, she is, but no, I'm telling you, this is the creepiest thing. You've ever seen.

I believe it. And then they get into parts where they do things, it's like they're trying to be suggestive, but they're not sure how far. They can commit to it. Yeah, there's only so far you can push that, especially at that point in time. Yeah, and they have cabaret dancers...

And I guess there are different ways you could go with it, but the way they go is the cabaret dancers are all somewhat older. And they are like maybe 18, 19. They're more like grown-ups. Because I guess they don't want to have little kids doing what's going to be kind of suggestive dance. But then all the guys they're watching are like in middle school.

It makes it equally as creepy. To have adults interacting with these kids. Oh, this is weird. Yeah, I don't understand how Jodie Foster turned out okay. God, I don't know.

In a way, it seems like her whole career, which has so many great things in it, is what she's had to do to live this down. I suppose. Yeah, and what they do for violence is they throw pies and they have some sort of machine gun. Machine gun cream pie. Yeah, it's so weird.

Oh, man, it's bizarre. I don't know. Yeah. And it goes on forever, like they really committed to it. Definitely need to add this to the list.

How has it been like a midnight experience? How have I not heard about this movie? Bugsy Malone, and it introduces Scott. It's Scott Baio. It was like veering off his early happy days, I think.

I think he had been on like, because he's still a kid. It's those first couple of seasons they worked him in. He's young. I can't even hurt my stomach, Scott Baio. Well, it's funny, though, when he's that young.

We definitely need to work this one in. Yeah. And then, of course, you know, she was sort of like a slightly bad kid in Alice Doesn't Live Here anymore. Oh, a bad movie. Yeah, was Chris Christopherson in that?

Yes. I thought he was. He was the really kind of like the nice, solid country dude that she, you know, she's gotten rid of Harvey Keitel, you know, and she meets him and He kind of whips her kid into shape and everything. That's what brought her into this movie is that, because there were all these other people that were trying out to be Iris and then just, of course, he worked with her in that and was like, no, this is the girl. She, I see it.

She can play a 12 year old process. Yeah. If you didn't know that that was Jodie Foster in that movie, like it probably would have taken you a long time to figure out that it was a girl because they do a very good job of making her look like just like another kid friend, like the one that Like, her son's, like, just another, like, boy that he's hanging out with, and you're like, oh, no, it's, like, girl, that's weird. Nothing can top her in Candle Sheet. Candle Sheet.

Have you not seen Candle Sheet? Oh. Back when Disney movies didn't suck, like live-action Disney movies, they were a hell of a lot of fun back in that day, so. Yep. Jodie Foster.

What was the little girl who lives down the street? Is that what. Down the Lane? No, there's a little girl that lives down the lane, I think. There's a bunch of them in that era that kind.

Of worked in. Yeah, some weird stuff going on in the 70s. Lynn and I kind of had an argument. Well, not a real argument, but she was like, well, wasn't that her first role was in Taxi Driver? And I'm like, no she was in everything she started acting when she was she's.

The copper tone kid for god's sake. Yeah but then uh you get on wiki and it says her first major film role taxi drop and i'm like well now wait a minute but so i guess wikipedia is not gonna go like major role your wife had. Just edited wikipedia yeah yeah yeah like that time i made up that movie that uh hillary duff was saying you make up. All kinds of stuff all right i guess we should uh wrap things up here uh i did want to say um we we've actually had people uh taking advantage of the uh the tweaked audio code the meltdown code so if you hear that little uh promo in the middle of these you know breaks that you know I wouldn't just ignore it because people are actually making use of it and you get like 33% off.

So yeah. And they're pretty damn good. So thank you to the people who've been using it. And if not, you know, you're listening to this on something. So it does us a little good if you throw that in there.

So yeah, definitely. Thank you to everybody who's been doing that. And if you're not go use it. So, all right, then we didn't want to say thank you to Nancy's bagel grounds for letting us hijack the coffee shop. Once again, if you're in this area again, right before you get ready to go to Lexington and, See the Film Fest.

While you're in. You can consult HarryDeanStandardFest.org. While you're around. Come by, yeah, come by Nancy's and support them because they support us. So thank you to them once again.

Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week. Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening. I started writing this song about Chris Gantry.

Ended up writing about Dennis Hopper and Johnny Cash and. Norman Norbert. Funky Donny Frit, Billy Swan, Bobby Neuwirth, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Paul Siebel. Rambo and Jack Elliott had a lot to do with it. See him wasted on the sidewalk in his jacket and his jeans wearing yesterday's misfortunes like a smile.

Once he had a future full of money, love, and dreams, which he spent like they was going out of style. And he keeps. Right on a change. For the better or the worse, searching for a shrine he's never found. Never knowing if believing is a blessing or a curse.

If the going up was worth the coming down. He's a poet. And he's a picker He's a prophet and he's. A pusher He's a pilgrim. And a preacher And the problem when he's stoned He's a walking contradiction Partly truth and partly fiction Taking every wrong direction On his lonely way back home.

He has tasted good and evil. In your bedrooms and your bars And he's trading in tomorrow for today Running from his devil's lord, reaching for the stars Losing all the love along the way. But if this world. Keeps right on turning For the better or the worse, all he ever gets is older and around. From the rocking of the cradle to the rolling of the hearse, the going up was worth the coming down.

He's a poet and he's a picker. He's a prophet and he's a pusher. He's a pilgrim and a preacher and a problem when he's stoned. He's a walking contradiction, partly truth. And partly fiction.

Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home. There's a lot of wrong directions on that lonely way back home. That was one of the first movies. I think I can afford for this show that I have nothing bad. To say about it.

Yeah. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard!