50 Fun Facts About Taxi Driver

Which haircut, suggested by a Vietnam veteran in the cast, does Travis Bickle give himself in Taxi Driver?

A mohawk was the idea of actor Victor Magnotta, who told Scorsese that soldiers in Saigon wore one when they were ready for a Special Forces mission.

John Hinckley Jr., fixated on Taxi Driver and Jodie Foster, tried to assassinate which US president in 1981?

Ronald Reagan survived the shooting, and Hinckley's lawyers closed their defense by playing the film for the jury, which found him not guilty by reason of insanity.

Travis Bickle delivers the most quoted line of Taxi Driver, improvised by Robert De Niro, while facing what?

A mirror is his only audience as he rehearses drawing a gun on imagined enemies. Screenwriter Paul Schrader said De Niro improvised the dialogue.

A 1977 magazine quip said Taxi Driver did for cab-riding what which earlier thriller did for swimming?

Jaws was the comparison Ladies' Home Journal reached for in March 1977, summing up how uneasy the film had made a late-night cab ride feel.

Robert De Niro flew home from which country, where he was filming 1900, to drive a real cab for Taxi Driver?

Italy was where De Niro was shooting Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900: he would wrap on a Friday in Rome, fly to New York and pick up fares for a couple of weeks.

Taxi Driver lost the Best Picture Oscar to which 1976 film that also beat Network and All the President's Men?

Rocky took Best Picture, Best Director and Best Editing that night. Scorsese was not even among the four nominations his own film received.

Which 2019 film cast Robert De Niro as a talk-show host in a story that borrows heavily from Taxi Driver?

Joker grew out of director Todd Phillips's love of 1970s character studies, and Scorsese himself was at first attached to the project as a producer.

Robert De Niro was recognized only once while driving a cab for Taxi Driver, despite a recent Oscar for which film?

The Godfather Part II had won him Best Supporting Actor as the young Vito Corleone, yet only one passenger spotted him behind the wheel.

Where did the sound crew ride while scenes inside Travis Bickle's cab were being filmed for Taxi Driver?

In the trunk, while Scorsese and his cinematographer squeezed onto the back-seat floor and shot with whatever light was available.

What did Martin Scorsese alter in the final shootout of Taxi Driver so the film could avoid an X rating?

The color of the blood was muted from bright red to a reddish brown, a change Scorsese later called an improvement on the original scene.

Which condition leads Travis Bickle, a Vietnam veteran, to take a night-shift job in Taxi Driver?

Insomnia came straight from Paul Schrader's own life: the screenwriter had battled it himself and sought out places that stayed open all night.

Where does Travis Bickle take Betsy on the second date that ends their romance in Taxi Driver?

A porn theater is one of his regular haunts, and Betsy walks out at once. His attempts to make amends afterward fail.

Which actress plays Betsy, the campaign worker Travis Bickle becomes infatuated with in Taxi Driver?

Cybill Shepherd had made her film debut in The Last Picture Show five years earlier, and by her own account Scorsese had been looking for an actress of her type before casting her.

Which actor plays Sport, the pimp who controls 12-year-old Iris in Taxi Driver?

Harvey Keitel had worked with Scorsese since the director's first feature, Who's That Knocking at My Door, almost a decade earlier.

Which comedian made his feature film acting debut in Taxi Driver as Tom, Betsy's campaign-office colleague?

Albert Brooks was allowed by Scorsese to improvise much of his dialogue as the campaign aide.

What nickname does the fellow cabbie played by Peter Boyle go by in Taxi Driver when Travis Bickle seeks his advice?

Wizard listens as Travis confesses his violent thoughts, then brushes them aside and assures him he will be fine.

In Taxi Driver, what does Travis Bickle keep that supplies the voice-over narration heard throughout the film?

A diary gives the film its narration: his entries, read in voice-over, chart his growing disgust with the city and his deepening isolation.

The grateful parents of Iris, the girl rescued by Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, write to him from which city?

Pittsburgh is home for Iris, and the handwritten letter of thanks tells Travis she is safely back there and attending school again.

How do the newspapers portray Travis Bickle after the brothel shootout at the end of Taxi Driver?

As a hero: the press hails him for rescuing a child, though Paul Schrader has said Travis is not cured and will not be one next time.

Who spots Travis Bickle reaching into his jacket at Senator Palantine's rally in Taxi Driver, forcing him to flee?

Secret Service agents give chase, but Travis slips away and gets home undetected, then goes after Iris's pimp that same evening.

Which composer finished recording the score for Taxi Driver only hours before he died in December 1975?

Bernard Herrmann, the composer of Psycho and Vertigo, was Scorsese's first and only choice, and the film is dedicated to his memory.

Which top prize did Taxi Driver win at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, where its violence drew boos?

The Palme d'Or came in May 1976, a few months after the film opened in New York and well before its four Oscar nominations were announced.

Which playwright presided over the Cannes jury that gave Taxi Driver its top prize in 1976?

Tennessee Williams led a jury that also included Costa-Gavras, Charlotte Rampling and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Jodie Foster first acted for Martin Scorsese, before Taxi Driver, in a small role in which 1974 film?

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore gave her a minor supporting part as a street kid; her mother wanted her to move beyond children's roles into films made for adult audiences.

Before 12-year-old Jodie Foster could be cast as Iris in Taxi Driver, what did California authorities require?

Psychological testing with a UCLA psychiatrist was meant to show the role would not scar her, and a social worker accompanied her on set.

Who stood in for 12-year-old Jodie Foster in the more suggestive scenes of Taxi Driver?

Her older sister Connie served as the stand-in, performing the provocative actions judged inappropriate for the young star.

Which actor turned down the role of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver because he thought Martin Scorsese was crazy?

Dustin Hoffman passed on the part, and Al Pacino, Jeff Bridges and Jason Miller were also considered before De Niro took it.

Robert De Niro reportedly took Travis Bickle's most quoted line in Taxi Driver from which rock star's stage act?

Bruce Springsteen is named in the memoir of his saxophonist Clarence Clemons, who said De Niro explained the origin while they made New York, New York.

Which fellow director introduced Martin Scorsese to both the screenwriter and the composer of Taxi Driver?

Brian De Palma had wanted to direct the script himself, but its producers thought Scorsese would be better suited.

Dan Perri, who designed the neon-lit opening titles of Taxi Driver, created the title sequence of which 1977 hit?

Star Wars got its receding opening crawl from Perri, who had made his name with the titles of The Exorcist.

Arthur Bremer, whose writings helped inspire Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver, shot which campaigning politician in 1972?

George Wallace was running for president when Bremer shot him, and De Niro listened again and again to a taped reading of Bremer's words.

Which John Ford western about a veteran rescuing a girl who resists him is often called a model for Taxi Driver?

The Searchers also follows a loner cut off from society, and Roger Ebert saw Scorsese's film as its spiritual successor.

Taxi Driver reunited Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese after which 1973 crime drama, their first film together?

Mean Streets convinced Paul Schrader that Scorsese and De Niro were the ideal pairing to bring his script to the screen.

Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver, worked again with Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro on which 1980 film?

Raging Bull, co-credited to Mardik Martin, was followed by two more Schrader scripts for Scorsese, including The Last Temptation of Christ.

Paul Schrader wrote the screenplay of Taxi Driver in under a fortnight, soon after spending weeks living where?

In his car is where Schrader spent a few weeks after a divorce and a breakup. The image of a lonely man in a yellow cab came to him in a hospital soon after.

Taxi Driver was filmed in New York during a 1975 summer heat wave while which city employees were on strike?

Sanitation workers walked out as the crew shot in a city on the brink of bankruptcy. Producer Michael Phillips recalled the whole West Side looking bombed out.

How did the crew of Taxi Driver film the overhead tracking shot after the shootout in a real apartment?

They cut through the ceiling of the building, and the single shot took three months of preparation.

Which studio released Taxi Driver in February 1976 after Warner Bros. had offered the filmmakers only $500,000?

Columbia Pictures gave Scorsese a budget of $1.3 million in 1974, and the cast took pay cuts to finish the film for under $2 million.

Julia Phillips, a producer of Taxi Driver, became the first woman to win a Best Picture Oscar with which film?

The Sting made her an Oscar winner alongside Michael Phillips and Tony Bill, and the Phillipses later produced Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Which actress said Robert De Niro's performance in Taxi Driver showed her the kind of actor she wanted to be?

Meryl Streep had not aspired to a film career until then, and De Niro's Travis Bickle changed her mind.

An album by which singer-songwriter, who had acted in Martin Scorsese's previous film, is featured in Taxi Driver?

Kris Kristofferson's The Silver Tongued Devil and I is the record, and the end credits thank him by name.

Robert De Niro's Best Actor nomination for Taxi Driver lost to which star, the first posthumous acting Oscar winner?

Peter Finch had suffered a fatal heart attack in mid-January 1977, two months before he was named Best Actor for Network.

Which cinematographer, who hid on the back-seat floor to film Travis Bickle's cab rides, shot Taxi Driver?

Michael Chapman said the crew borrowed the fast, available-light style of Jean-Luc Godard's films because they had neither the time nor the money for traditional setups.

Martin Scorsese said Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver was inspired by Alain Delon's solitary hitman in which French film?

Le Samouraï, Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 thriller, follows Jef Costello, a contract killer who lives alone in a bare Paris room.

Which 1980 film did Paul Schrader direct as the next of his 'Man in a Room' stories after Taxi Driver?

American Gigolo, Light Sleeper and The Walker complete the group, and Schrader regards their leads as one character growing older.

Which US body selected Taxi Driver in 1994 for preservation in the National Film Registry?

The Library of Congress chose it as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant, 18 years after its release.

Martin Scorsese appears in Taxi Driver as a passenger who tells Travis Bickle he plans to do what?

Kill his wife for cheating on him, he says. Scorsese stepped into the part after the actor first cast was injured during a stunt on another film.

When Travis Bickle pays Sport for time alone with Iris in Taxi Driver, what does he actually do?

He urges her to go home and give up prostitution, but Iris rebuffs him, which only hardens his resolve to get her out.

What does the black-market dealer known as Easy Andy sell to Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver?

Handguns, four of them, which Travis practices drawing at home and hides in a quick-draw rig up his coat sleeve.

In which branch of the US military did Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver serve before his honorable discharge in 1973?

The Marines are his answer at the cab-company job interview. Paul Schrader made Travis a Vietnam veteran because the war's national trauma seemed to fit the character's paranoia.