The Gritty Crime Thriller That Shaped Guillermo del Toro as a Filmmaker Is Streaming On Prime: “I was blown away…”
In a conversation with A.frame (the official digital magazine of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) Guillermo del Toro shared his reverence for a Martin Scorsese picture that has been steeped in its fair share of controversy. More specifically, I’m talking about Taxi Driver.
The setup goes as follows:
Suffering from insomnia, disturbed loner Travis Bickle takes a job as a New York City cabbie, haunting the streets nightly, growing increasingly detached from reality as he dreams of cleaning up the filthy city. When Travis meets pretty campaign worker Betsy, he becomes obsessed with the idea of saving the world, first plotting to assassinate a presidential candidate, and then directing his attention toward rescuing 12-year-old prostitute Iris.
In the exchange with A.Frame, del Toro speaks to his experience bonding over movies with an uncle who shared his love of the macabre. The Oscar-winning filmmaker reveals he saw the film at a very impressionable age and left the theater completely awestruck.
He goes on to say:
“I was blown away by the depth of the movie and how he was able to do an incredible psychological portrait of this lonely outsider, which was not monstrous on the outside. But his view of the world was all askew. It was really interesting for me.”
Taxi Driver stars Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, and Albert Brooks. Scorsese directed from a script by Paul Schrader (Bringing Out the Dead).
If that endorsement from Guillermo del Toro has you game to pay Taxi Driver a repeat visit (or check it out for the first time), it’s streaming on Prime Video as of the publication of this post.
That’s all we’ve got for you, dear reader. Stay tuned to the site for more commentary from cinematic luminaries as we uncover it. Also, make sure to follow @DreadCentral on Twitter so you never miss an update.
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