DVD Brief: Taxi Driver |
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Description: Director Martin Scorsese's landmark film about loneliness, alienation, violence and the media's search for heroes gets the royal treatment here. Columbia TriStar has added enough goodies to keep film buffs preoccupied for hours with this tale of a psychotic taxi driver. In addition to the requisite filmographies, stills and advertising materials one has come to expect, there's a wonderful non-DVD-ROM screenplay link that lets you run through Schrader's non-continuity screenplay and quickly jump to the corresponding scene in the film (at any time during the film a click of the "title" function allows you to jump back to the screenplay) as well as a comprehensive 70-minute "making of" documentary that is just about the best we've ever seen. The documentary features insightful interviews (illustrated with film clips) with Scorsese, De Niro, Foster, Boyle, Brooks, Shepherd, Keitel, Schrader, cinematographer Michael Chapman and make-up artist Dick Smith. There's a host of behind-the-scene's tidbits: Scorsese was urged by the producers to get more of a track record before tackling the film; De Niro bored Foster at numerous lunches to get her to act natural in their scenes together; Schrader befriended a prostitute to get more insights about the Foster role (the prostitute was in the film in an early shot, walking with Foster); Brooks had to play down his stand-up comic sensibilities to make his character more of a regular guy; De Niro, working in Italy on Bertolucci's "1900" at the time, flew back to New York on weekends, got a taxi license, and drove a cab to prepare for his role; Shepherd initially threw her script against a wall in disgust because she felt her role was too "small"; composer Bernard Herrmann at first didn't want to work on the film because he didn't "compose music about taxi drivers."
There's also an in-depth discussion with Chapman about the difficulties of
filming many of the scenes (shot entirely on location in Manhattan), including
how the crew took over and tore apart a dilapidated Brownstone for the bloody
finale (in order to get an R-rating, the color in that sequence was desaturated
to play down the color of blood). And Smith details the steps taken to create
the effects of body parts and blood being blasted over the brownstone walls in
an era well before computerized special effects. All-in-all, an impressive
effort.
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