Vitals

Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, disturbed taxi driver and Vietnam War veteran

New York City, Spring to Summer 1976

Film: Taxi Driver
Release Date: February 9, 1976
Director: Martin Scorsese
Costume Designer: Ruth Morley

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Happy International Taxi Driver Day to all cabbies whose alienation doesn’t drive them to a violent murder spree shooting up a brothel! This observance commemorates when the first gas-powered taxi cabs reportedly arrived on the streets of London on March 22, 1907.

The profession was immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver, written by Paul Schrader and filmed on location in New York City during the scorching summer of 1975. Two years after his first Academy Award win (for The Godfather, Part II), Robert De Niro received his second Oscar nomination for his performance as Travis Bickle, the lonely Marine-turned-cabbie whose PTSD, insomnia, and paranoid psychosis becomes a dangerous powder keg in the squalid decay of 1970s New York. Continue reading →