‘People are still isolated and obsessive’: De Niro, Scorsese, Foster and Schrader reunite for Taxi Driver at 50

The director, screenwriter and stars of the 1976 classic film spoke about its making and parallels to the internet age at New York’s Tribeca film festival

It’s a half-century-old film so darkly prophetic and viscerally relevant that even its makers are still unpacking it.

“It’s a sense of being isolated, it’s about being lonely and not being able to communicate or connect,” said Taxi Driver ’s director, Martin Scorsese , last night. “For me, that’s universal. It’s always going to speak to young people.”

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of New York’s Tribeca film festival, Taxi Driver’s main players, including Scorsese and Robert De Niro , as well as Jodie Foster and screenwriter Paul Schrader , gathered for a screening at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center to mark the 50th anniversary of the movie and examine its lasting legacy.

“Obviously there is something in this film that doesn’t die,” said Schrader. “If we marked [the 50th anniversary of a film] in 1976, we’d be talking about a 1926 movie. So it is very peculiar.”

Released in February 1976, Taxi Driver was an electrifying sensation from the moment it entered into the American consciousness. Making stars of its cast and crew, it was awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes as well as receiving four Academy Award nominations, including for best picture, best actor for De Niro and best supporting actress for co-star Foster, who was just 12 when the film was shot.

A theme of alienation echoes hopelessly throughout the movie they crafted, with De Niro’s insomniac character driving his cab around the streets of a grimy New York at night: traversing its then rough-and-tumble underbelly while also ruminating on his own sense of isolation as a 26-year-old who has trouble connecting with anybody around him. It subsequently leads to violent results, as meticulously detailed in Schrader’s script. “Each page was like a razor blade,” Scorsese said last night.

“When we all read the script, everybody felt really good about it because we identified with it in some way,” added De Niro. “Today, I do understand that people are still lonely, especially with the internet, and in light of the pandemic. People are getting more isolated and getting into worlds they shouldn’t get into, becoming obsessed with something negative.”