The legacy of Taxi Driver includes the gentrification of Times Square.
Taxi Driver, the claustrophobic street classic byMartin Scorsese, is a deeply nuanced masterpiece.
Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle, a cabdriver who wants to be a person, like other people.
But the star ofTaxi Driveris New York City.
Scorsese set most of his early films in New York.Alice Doesnt Live Here Anymorewas a notable exception.
It was only a tease of what was yet to come.
Taxi Driveris very prescient.
A terrifying creature that spawns the wannabe assassin turned mass murderer.
Travis Bickles eyes are as dead as a Hammerhead surveying the streets, sniffing blood, or worse.
The grill of the cab bares fangs, hungry pincers passing terminal bars looking to bite.
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Scorsese and Paul Schraders film is painted by the streets, concrete and steel.
I blameTaxi Driverfor the Disneyfication of midtown.
Travis Bickle wanted to clean the garbage off the street.
The days go on and on, he complains.
All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go.
I dont believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention.
The stink of the place that made him sick passes almost as fast as the night.
All the animals come out at night.
Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.
Everyone in the city is ultimately alone.
A crowd is a great place to dive for the cover of universal anonymity.
I go all over.
I take people to the Bronx, Brooklyn, I take em to Harlem.
Dont make no difference to me.
It does to some.
Some wont even take spooks.
Dont make no difference to me.
The idea had been growing in my brain for some time: True force.
All the kings men cannot put it back together again, the cabbie says.
He saw it all and envisioned a cleaner world and condemned us to live in it.
Mr. Clean with a .44, ever see what that could do to a womans face?
Not to mention the more intimate travesties it can impose.
Out with the old.
Bickle had something to do with that.
I was sure of it then and Im sure of it now.
Like rain dogs, lost forever in the puddles.
I remember when freebasing hit in the early 80s and you could get ether on 42nd and 44th Streets.
You could get chloroform too.
There are fucking Duane Reed stores superimposed on every frame of the old city now.
Joni Mitchell couldnt have seen that coming.
There were CTowns south of 110th Street whenTaxi Driverwas shot.
So much is obscured by those piles of brick and mortar.
Behind those street exteriors are the darkest parts of the interior minds of New York Citys loneliest outsiders.
Scorsese plants himself in the middle of the worst element of a lonely interior.
Travis says he doesnt carry a gun.
That changes after Scorsese pays the fare for an idling engine.
He looks just like De Niro plays him inAngel Heart.
Here is an example of where the old New York City comes in as a horror creature.
The gun dealer Easy Andy is a ghost of old gangster New York.
Easy Andy is from the street and knows what works out there.
Hes got it all and a cool leather bag to throw it in.
Hes got more than guns too.
Hes got everything the backgrounds promised as Bickles cab prowled the streets.
Guns, pills, dope, all COD.
Hes a wise guy.
They are load-bearing debris now.
The Wizard is like the L, he has a unique vantage point on whats coming and going.
Whats what on this side of the river and the specks of light in the expanse across the Hudson.
Hes got a philosophy that encapsulates the whole spectrum of thought in a mishmash of extremism and extreme tolerance.
That is very prescient.
The gentrification of the city killed a part of us thats been here since before the Five Points era.
Nothings really changed, its just been moved.
That is the journey Travis shared with the city.
But they both paid the full fare.
See, it was a sick mind that wanted to clean the sickness off the streets.
The rats are all wearing mouse ears now.
The problem is that the midtown area was envisioned by an equally sick mind.
Now its probably a Duane Reade.
Try getting cigarettes for fifty cents at a Duane Reade.
