One doesn't just become a great writer like me overnight. Usually talent of this magnitude has extremely deep roots in high school essays, letters to the press, scratched-out items in notebooks, and other juvenilia. Here is an old review for the movie "Taxi Driver" that I found in a notebook, which wasn't scratched out. It seems to have been written in 1991, round about the time I was getting into rock journalism.
FILM: TAXI DRIVER
DIRECTOR: MARTIN SCORSESE
After watching this movie, John Hinckley went out and tried to kill Ronald Reagan. This would indicate that ‘Taxi Driver’ is a worthwhile movie. In more basic terms, however, the reason this is such a good movie is because it shows how close the categories of ‘hero’and ‘psychopath’ are, and indeed, how close these categories are to normal life.
Travis (Robert De Niro) is a young, lonely, slightly obsessive taxi driver, who displays in the course of the movie, the two main male passions – sexual love and fatherly love. The first of these is directed towards a young professional, Betsy (Cybil Shepherd), a campaign worker for a Presidential candidate; the second towards a child prostitute, Iris acted by Jodie Foster.
The first of these passions brings him into fleeting contact with the cold aloof world of US politics characterized by empty sloganeering and an absence of policies. By actually meeting the candidate, Palatine in his cab, Travis begins to instinctively realize the connection between the fucked-up New York streets, with their pushers and prostitutes and the opportunism and cynicism of those who defile their responsibility.
After being misunderstood and rejected by Betsy, these vague political misgivings crystallize around his dented male pride and lead him to plot the assassination of Palatine, As he prepares himself for this, however, his paternal feelings are aroused by the plight of Iris, the child prostitute, whom he resolves to rescue. Already living on the edge, he decides that the best way to do this is by killing her pimp.
In his mind these two goals become almost identical. Killing the apathetic. patronizing politician, who is socially or politically responsible, and the pimp, who is individually responsible for the abominations of modern city life, like child prostitution, have little to separate them. Indeed, only the candidate’s security guards make the difference.
Foiled in his first attempt, it is only the second of these goals that he manages to accomplish. Ironically, the courage that would have had him damned as a sociopath in the first case, allows him to become a hero in the second.
This film raises the question: Is someone who takes a gun and tries to blow away a President or one of the other fakirs of the frenetic passivity of ungovernment, a hero? The answer is probably yes.
DIRECTOR: MARTIN SCORSESE
After watching this movie, John Hinckley went out and tried to kill Ronald Reagan. This would indicate that ‘Taxi Driver’ is a worthwhile movie. In more basic terms, however, the reason this is such a good movie is because it shows how close the categories of ‘hero’and ‘psychopath’ are, and indeed, how close these categories are to normal life.
Travis (Robert De Niro) is a young, lonely, slightly obsessive taxi driver, who displays in the course of the movie, the two main male passions – sexual love and fatherly love. The first of these is directed towards a young professional, Betsy (Cybil Shepherd), a campaign worker for a Presidential candidate; the second towards a child prostitute, Iris acted by Jodie Foster.
The first of these passions brings him into fleeting contact with the cold aloof world of US politics characterized by empty sloganeering and an absence of policies. By actually meeting the candidate, Palatine in his cab, Travis begins to instinctively realize the connection between the fucked-up New York streets, with their pushers and prostitutes and the opportunism and cynicism of those who defile their responsibility.
After being misunderstood and rejected by Betsy, these vague political misgivings crystallize around his dented male pride and lead him to plot the assassination of Palatine, As he prepares himself for this, however, his paternal feelings are aroused by the plight of Iris, the child prostitute, whom he resolves to rescue. Already living on the edge, he decides that the best way to do this is by killing her pimp.
In his mind these two goals become almost identical. Killing the apathetic. patronizing politician, who is socially or politically responsible, and the pimp, who is individually responsible for the abominations of modern city life, like child prostitution, have little to separate them. Indeed, only the candidate’s security guards make the difference.
Foiled in his first attempt, it is only the second of these goals that he manages to accomplish. Ironically, the courage that would have had him damned as a sociopath in the first case, allows him to become a hero in the second.
This film raises the question: Is someone who takes a gun and tries to blow away a President or one of the other fakirs of the frenetic passivity of ungovernment, a hero? The answer is probably yes.
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