‘If I didn’t write about him, I’m afraid I might become him’: the making of Taxi Driver at 50

Screenwriter Paul Schrader talks the inspiration and legacy of Martin Scorsese’s incendiary New York nightmare

If Travis Bickle were real and alive today, he would not be a taxi driver but more likely be sitting in his parents’ basement, exploring the dark, misogynistic depths of the internet.

“We call them incels now,” reflects Paul Schrader, who wrote the screenplay for Taxi Driver, released 50 years ago on Sunday. “‘Incels’ wasn’t a word at that time but it is these guys who are lonely, who see themselves unable to make contact with women, have a repressed backlog of anger and resentment and imagine some kind of glorious transcendent transformation through violence.”

The film, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel and Cybill Shepherd, is a masterpiece of urban alienation. It follows Bickle, a lonely, mentally unstable Vietnam war veteran working as a New York cab driver who, disturbed by the crime, corruption and moral decay he sees around him, develops a dangerous saviour complex.

Bickle narrates: “All the animals come out at night: whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies – sick, venal. Someday, a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.”