Cinema Speculation

Cinema Speculation

What If Brian De Palma Directed Taxi Driver Instead of Martin Scorsese?

Brian De Palma introduced me to Paul Schrader. We made a pilgrimage out to see Manny Farber, the critic, in San Diego. I wanted Paul to do a script of “The Gambler” by Dostoevsky for me. But Brian took Paul out for dinner, and they contrived it so I couldn’t find them. By the time I tracked them down, three hours later, they’d cooked up “Obsession.” But Brian told me that Paul had this script, “Taxi Driver,” that he didn’t want to do or couldn’t do at that time, and wondered if I’d be interested in reading it. So I read it and my friend [Sandy Weintraub] read it and she said it was fantastic: We agreed that this was the kind of picture we should be making.

—Martin Scorsese in Scorsese On Scorsese

Yes, that’s right, Brian De Palma was the actual first of the Movie Brats to read Paul Schrader’s screenplay and contemplate directing it.

The story goes Brian De Palma and Paul Schrader became friendly associates when Schrader—a critic at the Times—wrote a good review for De Palma’s new film, Sisters. Leading to critic Schrader interviewing the young filmmaker for his newspaper. During the interview, the two men continued to get on well, with Schrader revealing to De Palma that he plays chess. Since De Palma does too, they proceeded to play chess. Which, for these two career strategists, to start their relationship battling it out over a chess board is so metaphorically perfect as to be suspect as legend-building public relations.

While trying to capture the other man’s bishop, Schrader just happens to mention he’s written a screenplay. “Oh no, not another one!” De Palma groans.

Schrader calms him down; “I’m just saying, since we’re talking, I wrote a script once.”

The script he was referring to was the first draft of Taxi Driver.

And despite De Palma rolling his eyes at the mention of this film critic’s screenplay, he eventually did read it. And recognizing the material as a genuine piece of work, was tempted to do it himself.

In later years he shrugged it off as, “I just thought it was better suited for Marty.” But sometimes he admits the reason he didn’t do it. He didn’t think it was commercial enough.

Admittedly, that’s a rather depressing reason.

It wasn’t commercial enough?

So it was commercial enough for Columbia Pictures?

And it was commercial enough for the original director, Robert Mulligan?

And it was commercial enough for Mulligan’s original leading man, Jeff Bridges?

And then after winning Ellen Burstyn the Academy Award for Best Actress, it’s commercial enough for Martin Scorsese?

And after winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, it’s commercial enough for Robert De Niro?

But it wasn’t commercial enough for Brian De Palma?

In all fairness to the young De Palma of that era, a movie that would put asses in seats is what Brian was looking for. His brand-new Twentieth Century Fox rock ’n’ roll musical extravaganza Phantom of the Paradise was playing in New York to empty auditoriums.

He didn’t want that feeling of watching another of his movies being indifferently projected on a screen in a sparsely populated auditorium.

So the next film out of the gate should be a hit.

And while it’s clear he considered making Taxi Driver, he ultimately decided to enlist Schrader to write with him a Vertigo retread titled Obsession that would further play into De Palma’s “the New Hitchcock” personality. So the choice for De Palma in 1976 isn’t between Taxi Driver and Carrie. It’s Taxi Driver and Obsession. Brian De Palma does Taxi Driver in 1976, instead of Obsession, and still does Carrie later that year! Or he does both Obsession and Carrie but he holds on to the script of Taxi Driver, and does it after Carrie in 1977 instead of The Fury.

But just because Brian De Palma was commercially motivated doesn’t mean he was prescient. It was Taxi Driver that ended up connecting with audiences, and it was his slow, lush Obsession that audiences ignored.

Now Obsession isn’t a bad movie, just a bit of a dreary one. And Cliff Robertson’s lead performance is extremely unappealing, especially for a movie about a doomed love story. Robertson is about as sexy as grandpa’s big toe. But in all fairness, Geneviève Bujold’s tremendous performance is far more memorable than Cliff Robertson’s creepiness. And she’s at the center of, up to that time, Be Black Baby aside, the finest De Palma cinematic set piece of his filmography.

The sequence where Bujold in a closeup reverts back to a seven-year-old little girl, and remembers what actually happened the night of the kidnapping.

Despite all my misgivings about Obsession (Robertson’s lead performance, the film’s lack of humor), the doomed love story at its center kinda works. As does the impact of Vilmos Zsigmond’s dreamy-floaty camera and Bernard Herrmann’s lushly pounding score. So by the time you reach the climax at the airport—as Herrmann’s score seems to hurl the lead characters (Robertson and Bujold) towards each other—you could be legitimately on the edge of your seat.

Also Schrader’s melodramatic doomed love story—despite lacking common sense—also sorta works in a preposterous Magnificent Obsession kind of way.

It’s unmistakably a Brian De Palma movie.

But due to its complete absence of humor, it’s kind of a bad Brian De Palma movie.

All in all I wish De Palma had written the film himself. For a filmmaker who didn’t start out as a screenwriter, De Palma was a pretty good screenwriter. At least he knew how to write Brian De Palma movies better than Paul Schrader.

It’s a little funny-peculiar that De Palma found Schrader’s script for Taxi Driver initially uncommercial. Because the commercial niche that Columbia Pictures later had no trouble exploiting was as a movie in the vein of Death Wish. The trailer suggested Death Wish with an even more seriously disturbed dude at the center. But the trailer decidedly does not announce itself as, “This is the story of a dude with a fucked up head.” Instead, it paints a picture of a lone man in the crowd, rising up to be heard, who’s had enough.

Like Billy Jack.

Like Joe Don Baker.

Like Mr. Majestyk.

Since Columbia Pictures did such an effective job selling Taxi Driver as a Death Wish–style vigilante film, it’s curious that aspect didn’t occur to De Palma after his first read. Especially, since I can see De Palma, right after Sisters, doing a remarkable job on a film like Death Wish.

That’s the kind of commercial gig Brian was on the hunt for (and he found when he read Carrie).

However once Marty read Schrader’s material that was it. Marty once told Paul, “When Brian De Palma gave me a copy of Taxi Driver and introduced us, I almost felt I wrote it myself. Not that I could write that way, but I felt everything. I was burning inside my fucking skin; I had to make it.”

But it’s still interesting to contemplate how close we came to a Brian De Palma directed Taxi Driver and exactly how that movie might have been different. I mean it would have been based on the same screenplay, how different could it have been?

I suspect, mighty different.

In fact, if the film’s original director, Richard “Summer of ’42” Mulligan, had shot Schrader’s screenplay with Jeff Bridges playing Travis, I think that version would have been closer to Scorsese’s version then De Palma’s telling of the same story (in 1978 Richard Mulligan would do his version of a Scorsese movie, when he adapted Richard Price’s second novel, Bloodbrothers).

The main difference I see between a Scorsese-directed version of Schrader’s screenplay and a De Palma–directed version would be the matter of point of view.

I think it’s entirely doubtful De Palma would have empathized with Travis Bickle the way Schrader does and the way Scorsese and De Niro did. With the film Martin Scorsese made, when you watch Taxi Driver, you become Travis Bickle. Regardless of whether or not you empathize or sympathize with the rituals of Travis’ existence, you observe them. And in observing them, you come to understand them. And when you understand this lonely man, he stops being a monster—if he ever was one to begin with.

Scorsese, Schrader, and De Niro make you witness a man—from that man’s perspective.

I’d speculate, when Brian De Palma first read Schrader’s manuscript, he didn’t see it as the first-person diary dream that Schrader intended. I’d bet De Palma’s first reaction would have been along the lines of, “Oh great, this can be my Repulsion.”

I do believe that De Palma would have observed Travis the way Polanski observes Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion. A De Palma Taxi Driver wouldn’t be linked with Death Wish. De Palma’s Taxi Driver wouldn’t have been a first-person character study disguised as a vigilante thriller. Nobody’s going to misinterpret De Palma’s Travis as heroic. Brian De Palma’s Taxi Driver wouldn’t have been just a thriller, it would have been a political thriller (kind of what Blow Out ended up being). De Palma would have focused on the story’s political assassination element: Travis Bickle’s story would have been how some looney becomes a political assassin. From Travis’ place of displacement inside of society, to getting the big idea to whack out Palantine, to every little thing he does along the way, leading to the assassination attempt by Bickle (in full Mohawk glory) at the outdoor rally.

As opposed to the big clumsy fiasco that Scorsese stages, I see Brian shooting it—like the prom sequence in Carrie—as one of his grand slow-motion ballets. An action set piece of Bickle’s failed attempt, scored by Bernard Herrmann—which would have no doubt been an extremely different score than the minimalist car noise—asshole with a sax—score Herrmann pawned off on Scorsese.*

And since Taxi Driver is the movie he would have done before he shot Carrie, you need not do anything but watch the whole Carrie prom sequence to see how De Palma would have orchestrated the assassination attempt scene in Taxi Driver.

What’s the bucket of pig blood scene but an assassination scene?

Carrie White and Tommy Ross win an election (king and queen of the prom).

The victorious candidates are brought on stage where they’re applauded by their cheering constituency.

However, among all this cheering, there’s an individual with an imagined grudge against the female candidate.

Nancy Allen’s blond-haired, red-lip-glossed Chris Hargenson, whose desire is to assassinate the candidate in front of her constituency at the very moment of her biggest triumph.

That filled-to-the-brim bucket of pig blood, falling with its full weight onto Carrie White’s face, is Jackie getting JFK’s brains blown in her face.

The assassin Chris enlists a likeminded army of volunteers to help her pull off this conspiracy (especially second-in-command evil girl Norma, played by baseball-cap-wearing, pigtail-sporting P. J. Soles). As well as a group of guys (John Travolta’s Billy Nolan and Norma’s boyfriend Freddy, played by Michael Talbott) who are duped and manipulated by the assassins into assisting.

Including rigging the entire election, so the assassins can make sure candidates Carrie and Tommy will win.*

Even smiling Sue Snell (Amy Irving), Carrie’s secret campaign manager, standing with—yet apart from—the cheering crowd seems pleased with her media creation.

In De Palma’s Taxi Driver, I can see Cybill Shepherd’s Betsy (if made after Carrie, a great part for either Nancy Allen or Amy Irving) being enlarged to practically colead status. I wouldn’t be surprised if Schrader and Scorsese’s imperative—to not have any scene in the movie not from Travis’ perspective—wasn’t monkeyed with by De Palma in order to feature a few scenes from Betsy’s perspective. Maybe it’s even Betsy who figures out Travis’ plan beforehand, and it’s because of her that his assassination attempt is thwarted. I’m not suggesting any of these hackneyed ideas involving Betsy would be an improvement on the film Scorsese made. But the same movie done in a more Hitchcockian manner? I can see those changes woven into the scenario.

The other change from a De Palma version and a Scorsese version, would have been the whole Searchers angle. When Paul Schrader writes his thematic Searchers remake, then lucks out and lands Scorsese as helmer, he doesn’t just land an interpreter, but a coconspirator. Jesus Christ, Marty even features a clip from the fucking Searchers in Mean Streets. As Schrader tells Marty about the duality of Ethan Edwards and Travis Bickle, Scorsese doesn’t need subtitles, he tells Paul the Comanche-Buffalo story.

I think it’s fairly safe to assume that De Palma was not as enamored with either John Ford or The Searchers as Scorsese was. And it’s doubtful that Brian would have leaned into the similarities between the films as heavily as Marty did. I can hear him telling Schrader, after he’s heard Paul refer to the Ford epic one time too many, “Look, Paul, maybe the script you wrote was based on The Searchers. But the movie I’m going to make is going to be Repulsion.”

Next big question, if Brian De Palma shot Taxi Driver, who would have played Travis Bickle?

And if you just jump to Robert De Niro because of the two men’s past association—not so fast.

Despite Brian and Robert starting their careers off together, they wouldn’t work with each other again till The Untouchables in the eighties.

I always assumed the two men must have had a falling out.

But recently I asked Mr. De Niro about working with Mr. De Palma in the times of Greetings and Hi, Mom!, and the actor remembered the director fondly. “It was always good to work with Brian, he was a great audience and he knew what he wanted.” Then I asked was there any falling out between the two men? And De Niro categorically denied any bad blood between them. “No,” he explained, “When the two of us were in town [during the seventies], we’d get together and share a coffee and catch up.”

I asked how come they didn’t work more together, and Mr. De Niro said, “Well, Brian became a pretty big director then. And he was doing his stuff and I was doing mine.” And it’s true, if you think about the movies De Palma did in the seventies, none of them are conspicuous by De Niro’s absence. It’s not until Jack Terry in Blow Out that a role right for Robert De Niro presented itself.

But what about Taxi Driver?

Well, you have to remember, Robert De Niro wasn’t attached to Taxi Driver. The film was already set up at Columbia Pictures with Jeff Bridges in the lead role, and the Phillipses and Tony Bill attached as producers. Scorsese wanted De Niro for the role, but the studios didn’t think he was a big enough star yet. But he was playing the young Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming sequel to The Godfather. So, according to Schrader, they decided not to shoot it with Jeff Bridges (which meant saying adios to superstar producer Tony Bill), and wait for The Godfather: Part II to come out and hopefully make De Niro a bigger name. Well, that worked, Robert De Niro won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award that year for his role as Vito Corleone. But then Scorsese had another problem, De Niro had signed on to be one of the two leads in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Italian epic 1900. And now Marty had to sit on his hands and wait, seemingly, fucking forever for Bertolucci to finish his magnum opus.

That’s how convinced Marty and Paul were that Robert was the right actor to play Travis.

However, I can see Brian De Palma being very happy with a green-lit film at Columbia Pictures, produced by the three producers of The Sting, and starring Jeff Bridges. I don’t see De Palma waiting a year for Bobby. And even if Bridges dropped out, I can see Jan-Michael Vincent proving an effective Travis Bickle for De Palma.

But now comes the 64,0000 dollar question, how about changing Sport’s race from black to white?

I know I’m making a big deal out of this, because to me it’s a very big deal. The entire debate between social responsibility, social compromise, and integrity can be boiled down to this one decision.

As I’ve stated before, I don’t think Scorsese considered the changing of the character’s race as that big of a deal. And it does appear the producers and the studio properly intimidated the director with their worst-case scenarios of rioting black audiences. And as I also mentioned, Scorsese was looking for a good role for Harvey Keitel anyway.

But Brian De Palma wouldn’t be breaking his neck to get Harvey Keitel in the movie.

Would he have faced the same pressures brought to bear on Martin Scorsese?

Undoubtedly.

Yet, with a less sympathetic and more Repulsion-like Travis Bickle, events might have played out differently. The guy’s a fucking lunatic. A lunatic can kill anybody. Also, it must be said, if the director who brought you Be Black Baby felt the script should stay as it was written, I’m pretty positive De Palma would have been more successful.