The late-night drives are like so many others as an insomniac man steers his cab past the scum on two feet, wandering out on the New York City streets. This seems like a nasty reality and feels like a bad dream inTaxi Driver, an early film from directorMartin Scorsese. The music fromBernard Hermannstirs up the misery and danger to Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), the titular driver who is repulsed at the “scum,” unable to see what he’s becoming. In one scene, Travis picks up his next passenger who won’t be the silent type, a man he’s never met before and will never see again. The small role is played by the movie’s director, Scorsese, who has since popped up in cameos, but his appearance inTaxi Driveris nowhere near thelighthearted cameos inHugo. Scorsese wasn’t meant to step away from the director’s chair to play this character who makes a scary, vile impression that lingers in Bickle’s mind, and he will linger in yours too.
‘Taxi Driver’ Gives Martin Scorsese One of the Most Haunting Monologues of the Film
Travis Bickle is an anti-herostruggling with a deteriorating mental state. He’s a Vietnam War veteran, a chronic patron of a porn theater, and suffering from insomnia, all of which factor into his disgust for the “scum” he sees around in New York City. Unable to sleep, he becomes a taxi driver. Attracted to political campaign volunteer, Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), Travis misses a major social cue by taking her to the porn theater he frequents. She rejects any further advances and his continued loneliness pushes Travis into a dark place. He makes a death list, placing the presidential candidate Betsy is working for on it and the pimp of young Iris (Jodie Foster) that Travis hopes to rescue. In between the taxi driver’s angry outburst to Betsy and his commitment to killing men he loathes, there is a stranger he meets who will give anyone the creeps. Except Travis, who seems to listen intently.
During a graveyard shift, Travis meets the “Passenger Watching Silhouette,” the name given toMartin Scorsese’s cameo. The Passenger is a quick-talker with a short temper, when Travis slows down at the location he was directed to, the Passenger urgently demands to not stop the rolling fare meter. He doesn’t care how much he will have to pay, he just wants the cab to come to a stop and pull over near an apartment building. The coal-black hair and beard to the man, along with the black suit he’s wearing, keeps him practically consumed by the nighttime shadows. After getting what he wants in Travis parking, the Passenger wants to observe what’s happening on a higher floor. In a four-minutefrightening monologue, director Martin Scorsese plays the stranger as someone who calmly ruminates on raw, enraged thoughts that an average person would even be reluctant to confess to their closest friend or loved one. Here, the Passenger shares it with his taxi driver.
Martin Scorsese’s Cameo in ‘Taxi Driver’ Is One of the Scariest Non-Horror Characters
“Can you see the woman in the window?” the Passenger asks. If you follow where he points, you’ll see, like Travis does, the man’s wife in an apartment that isn’t her home and with a man that isn’t her husband. The Passenger shares plans to attack his wife (never hiding his misogyny) and the Black man (never hiding his racism) she’s having an affair with by either murdering them, disfiguring them, or both. He rants about extreme violence without any concern Travis may notify the cops, which Travis doesn’t. There is no kindness coming from the laughs the man lets out, not likeMartin Scorsese’s infectious laughterhe is known for. There is a coldness to the Passenger, especially in how he laughs the hardest after he admits his worst inner thoughts. He’s got nothing left, but a need for revenge and a meanness, and thoughTaxi Drivernever returns to see what this Passenger is up to, it doesn’t hint at anything pleasant. This nameless guy is one of thescariest non-horror charactersin a movie where there are many other kinds of monsters. The Passenger’s unresolved plans are terrible enough, but he also offers Travis a deadly idea of his own.
The Passenger mentions how lethal a .44 magnum pistol can be in his grotesque fantasy of using it on his wife and her lover, inspiring Bickle when he goes to buy a weapon for his personal revenge fantasy. The interaction is a significant moment inTaxi Driver, one of many times the movie throws the audience off balance. This approach to do the unexpected just so happened to Scorsese, himself, when he reluctantly stepped in for the cameo. It wasn’t even his first appearance in the movie, he shows him as a man who leers after Betsy when she steps into the campaign office. He explains inTaxi Driver’s 1990DVD commentary track, “I was supposed to just have a little walk on,” about his first cameo that hides him in plain sight and requires no dialogue from him. But the second man he plays, unrelated to the first, is a cruel surprise.
A Last Minute Recast Turned Scorsese and De Niro Into Scene Partners
From the DVD commentary, Scorsese talked about how the role was supposed to be for actorGeorge Memmoli, who had a part inMean Streets(1973). The director mentions how Memmoli was a comic and a large man (according to Scorsese, Memmoli was about 400 pounds), both of which would have created a very different presence compared to Scorsese’s smaller height and fresh-faced in acting. But Memmoli suffered a severe head injury in an onset accident on another project around the timeTaxi Driverwas in its last week of filming, forcing Scorsese with no other option but to do the cameo himself. He didn’t like being in front of a camera or hearing his voice, whether it was in film or as he admits, in a DVD commentary track. Although hesitant, he was confident that having Robert De Niro as a scene partner would help Scorsese’s performance.
Scorsese talked about acting with De Niro in a Hollywood Reporter oral historyonTaxi Driver: “I did one take, and he said to me, ‘When you say ‘Turn off the meter,’ make me turn it off. Just make me turn it off. I’m not going to turn it off until you convince me that you want me to turn off that meter. So, I learned a lot. He sort of acted with the back of his head, but he encouraged me by not responding to me. And using that tension of the inherent violence, I was able to take off and riff some dialogue.” The scene the director references is the beginning of the encounter between Travis and the Passenger.
Martin Scorsese’s Cameo Is Another Angry Man That Surrounds Travis Bickle
It’s where De Niro stares at the man through the rearview mirror with annoyance, frustration, and probably confusion. Scorsese is talking for the both of them, words flying out fast: “Put the meter back on. Put it down! Why you writing? Don’t write!” The movie’s screenwriter,Paul Schrader, was concerned when he learned Martin Scorsese was doing the cameo, believing he wouldn’t like his acting and cut the scene entirely. The writer knew it needed to be kept in for how it related to the psychology of Travis and the themes of the movie. In the DVD commentary,Martin Scorsesesaid how he felt like the scene could have been left on the cutting room floor if his acting wasn’t good, but he felt it worked.
More importantly, he understood how crucial the scene was for Travis Bickle’s increasing turmoil. “You must think I’m pretty sick or something?” the Passenger says to Travis, a rhetorical question, one that the creepy stranger laughs at with no real joy. “I’m paying for the ride, you don’t have to answer,” the Passenger adds just as coldly. In an already disturbing movie, thisunnamed characterleaves a grim impact, which happened because Scorsese had to fill in at the last minute. Elsewhere, there’s a moment when Travis drives past a fire hydrant that is spewing water onto the street, the erupting water splashing onto the cab and striking the windshield, but it does little to scrub off the filth from the cab or for that matter, from the movie’s world.
Be it water from a fire hydrant or constant rainfall, it won’t cleanseTravis or any of the volatile meninTaxi Driver. Decades later, Martin Scorsese, once again, steps into a cameo forKillers of the Flower Moon(two if you can hear the scene with his voice), but the result is solemn. Scorsese appears as a radio show producer, who then breaks the fourth wall by speaking on the final years ofMollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone)without participating in the radio show’s sensational readings of the epilogue facts (and zippy Foley sounds). He is there to reiterate the three-and-a-half-hour Western epic you just watched is based on real-life atrocities. The sudden appearance of the director catches you off-guard, but it is nothing like the stranger who sits in the backseat of a cab, dwelling on dark impulses.
