Taxi Driver: Martin Scorsese still thinks red spoils the movie

Fran Lebowitz confided in the Los Angeles Times about the regrets of Scorsese on this legendary film.

Taxi Driverback tonight on Arte, is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of Martin Scorsese. In June 2021, when the filmmaker had just made a series about his friend Fran Lebowitz (Fran Lebowitz: If it was a cityon Netflix), the latter confided in the Los Angeles Times (via NME).

During this captivating interview, she mentioned some discussions recorded on the set of the series between her and her friend, saying that Scorsese still hasn’t digested something unexpected, which happened during the editing of his work. from 1976.

Behind the scenes of Taxi Driver

But what is this thing? It is, quite simply, the color red. Scorsese is a perfectionist, who never seems satisfied with the progress of his work: “What takes a lot of time with Marty is editing, because he’s never convinced it’s over”, explains Lebowitz on this subject. This “error” would therefore be the fault of the studio, which did not give him enough money to correct the red color, which the filmmaker finds “horrible”. “I can guarantee you that if we hadn’t taken away Taxi Driverhe would still be riding it”, she assures.

A detail for us, but which always makes the director angry… We can understand that spending a lot of time for a project, of which we are only partially satisfied, leaves a bitter taste: “(when he talks to me about it), I answer him: ‘You know what’s wrong with Taxi Driver ? Nothing.’“, comments the famous American author.

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Moreover, this incident did not prevent the film from winning the Palme d’or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1976, which adds to the good successes that the filmmaker had already had two and three years earlier, with Means Streets And Alice is no longer here. Taxi Driver might also have a sequel. At the Marrakech Film Festival in 2018, Robert de Niro said: “For years I wondered where Travis Bickle would be today. I had spoken to Marty about it and the screenwriter, Paul Schrader, had come up with something (…) but it never worked out, we couldn’t find the right thing.”

No sequel planned, therefore, for Taxi Driver. However, the series of the two Scorsese-Lebowitz friends is available on Netflix and offers an excellent double program, to see before or after this cult film. Of his friendship with the filmmaker, Lebowitz said: “For me, friendships are emotionally like love stories – but I’m not saying that erotically. Neither he nor I remember where we met. But every time I saw him at a party, I spent the night talking to him.”

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