'On every street there’s a nobody who dreams of being somebody. He’s a lonely forgotten man desperate to prove that he’s alive.’

​

The making of Taxi Driver

By Jay Glennie

 

‘Taxi Driver is the fevered story of an outsider in New York—a man who can’t find any point of entry into human society.’

 

The opening sentence from Pauline Kael’s Taxi Driver review as seen in The New Yorker, February 2, 1976.

 

Travis Bickle, a Vietnam vet, who, haunted by his experiences, takes to driving a taxi cab during the night in attempt to battle his insomnia. Appalled by the Dantean nightmare he witnesses on the streets of New York, Bickle’s nocturnal life literally drives him to violence.

 

Upon its release Taxi Driver would become an unlikely box-office success, receive universal critical acclaim and win the 1976 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

 

The ultimate tale of an outsider Taxi Driver was brought to the screen by four outsiders working without compromise.

 

Actor Robert De Niro: “I thought Taxi Driver had a lot of power.”

 

Director Martin Scorsese: “Taxi Driver is a film that when I read the script it was something I really had to make.”

 

Screenwriter Paul Schrader: “That is what I was: this person in an iron box, a coffin, floating around the city, but seemingly alone.”

 

Producer Michael Phillips: “Taxi Driver was scary to the Hollywood Studios.”

 

Taxi Driver is the ultimate cinema of alienation and will receive the full large format treatment from Coattail Publications. Interviews are currently underway with cast and crew and Jay is already deep into the writing. The making of Taxi Driver marks the third Coattails book with the encouragement of Robert De Niro and we are determined to once again do justice to the vision he shared with Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Michael Phillips, Harvey Keitel, Jodie Foster, Cybil Shepherd, Michael Chapman, Marcia Lucas and many, many more. Keep checking back as we continue to share contributors and developments