Still a terrific read after all these years. Few scripts better got into the head of an assassin – indeed, few films could have claimed to inspire a presidential assassin. Lonely, tormented Travis Bickle is one of the all time great cinema characters – haunted, paranoid, lonely, desperate for a cause. We think he’s going to off a presidential candidate but he ends up taking out a pimp of a young girl. The only really bung note in it is the character of Betsy, the ambitious political assistant – I didn’t buy it even on the page she’d go near a guy like Travis. Schrader keeps specifying how handsome he is and I’m sure that in the 70s there was a man drought on as well but he must seem creepy. And he’s a taxi driver. But the rest of it feels all too real (Schrader himself drove a cab for a while and the authenticity seeps through. Apparently the script was originally set in Los Angeles which is hard to believe – it feels so New York.) Reading this I was surprised how small the part of Iris the prostitute was, but it is evocative. Powerful, delirious and a deserved masterpiece.
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