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About.com Rating
Scorsese + A Long Making-Of
Perhaps the best extra on the DVD is the 17-minute featurette "Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver," in which the director discusses his thoughts about the movie. He says, "If Taxi Driver comes out of any genre, it's kind of a film noir." He identifies several movies as having influenced him, including Fassbinder's The Merchant of Four Seasons, Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano, Louis Malle's The Fire Within, Hitchcock's The Wrong Man and the David Hockney semi-documentary A Bigger Splash.
Scorsese is one of many directors who sketches storyboards of complicated scenes before setting up to shoot, and you can see examples of this on the DVD in the eight-minute "Storyboard to Film Comparison." There's also a four-and-a-half-minute intro by Scorsese to the comparisons.
The DVD contains a making-of documentary for Taxi Driver that was made in 1999 and is well over an hour long. This bonus material is carried over from an older single-disc DVD edition, but it still does a good job of covering almost everything most people will want to know about the production. In it, all the key cast members, including De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle, Albert Brooks and Harvey Keitel, look back on making the film. Jodie Foster was only a kid at the time, but her mom was with her, and when a body double was needed for the child actress, they used Jodie's older sister. Also, the documentary covers some interesting technical details, such as how the climactic shootout sequence was done.
Miscellaneous Additional Bonus Materials
The DVD contains a 10-minute featurette in which producer Michael Phillips gives a fascinating account of the sequence of events from the time he first saw Schrader's screenplay to when Columbia greenlighted the project. If you're familiar with Manhattan, you'll enjoy the four-minute "Travis' New York Locations," a comparison of how eight of the movie's filming locations looked in 2006 versus how they looked in 1975. Also reasonably interesting is the 18-minute "Influences and Appreciation," a tribute to Scorsese by several people, including Oliver Stone and Roger Corman.
There are two extras on the DVD that seem to be public relations efforts. One of these, the six-minute "Travis' New York," is about how the city has been cleaned up and is much less squalid than it was back in 1975. The other, the 22-minute "Taxi Driver Stories," is about real-life New York cabbies, none of whom are anything like Travis Bickle. These two bonus materials failed to capture my interest, but I can understand why they were included. In any case, let me hasten to add that I love to visit New York, and on all my trips I take taxis.
A Disturbing Real-Life Connection
No discussion of Taxi Driver can be complete without mentioning John Hinckley, who shot President Ronald Reagan. Hinckley had seen the movie a number of times, and he became obsessed with Jodie Foster, leaving many messages for her. Unable to make meaningful contact, the psychopathic Hinckley turned his twisted mind to developing schemes that might get the actress's attention. In Washington, D.C., on March 30, 1981, he fired several shots at the President and his entourage. Reagan and three others were wounded, and Hinckley was immediately taken into custody. Although all four victims survived, one of them, Press Secretary James Brady, was permanently disabled. As for Hinckley, he was put in a psychiatric facility.
DVD Details
Below I have listed all the details for the two-disc Collector's Edition DVD set containing Taxi Driver.
Release Date: August 14, 2007
Number of Discs: 2
Disc 1:
Feature Film (1 hour 54 minutes)
MPAA Rating: R
Widescreen (1.85:1), Color
English 5.1 Dolby Digital, French 5.1 Dolby Digital
English, Spanish, French Subtitles
Audio Commentary by Screenwriter Paul Schrader
Audio Commentary by Professor Robert Kolker
Original Shooting Script
Disc 2:
Director Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver (17 min.)
Producer Michael Phillips on Taxi Driver (10 min.)
Screenwriter Paul Schrader on Taxi Driver (22 min.)
Influence and Appreciation: Scorsese Tribute (18 min.)
Making-Of Documentary (1 hr. 11 min.)
About New York Taxis (22 min.)
Manhattan's Post-1975 Gentrification (6 min.)
Movie's Locations in 1975 vs. How They Looked in 2006 (4 min.)
Intro to Storyboards by Scorsese (4 1/2 min.)
Storyboard to Film Comparison (8 min.)
Galleries (9 min.)
English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean Subtitles
Return to Beginning of Review
About.com Rating
Scorsese + A Long Making-Of
Perhaps the best extra on the DVD is the 17-minute featurette "Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver," in which the director discusses his thoughts about the movie. He says, "If Taxi Driver comes out of any genre, it's kind of a film noir." He identifies several movies as having influenced him, including Fassbinder's The Merchant of Four Seasons, Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano, Louis Malle's The Fire Within, Hitchcock's The Wrong Man and the David Hockney semi-documentary A Bigger Splash.
Scorsese is one of many directors who sketches storyboards of complicated scenes before setting up to shoot, and you can see examples of this on the DVD in the eight-minute "Storyboard to Film Comparison." There's also a four-and-a-half-minute intro by Scorsese to the comparisons.
The DVD contains a making-of documentary for Taxi Driver that was made in 1999 and is well over an hour long. This bonus material is carried over from an older single-disc DVD edition, but it still does a good job of covering almost everything most people will want to know about the production. In it, all the key cast members, including De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle, Albert Brooks and Harvey Keitel, look back on making the film. Jodie Foster was only a kid at the time, but her mom was with her, and when a body double was needed for the child actress, they used Jodie's older sister. Also, the documentary covers some interesting technical details, such as how the climactic shootout sequence was done.
Miscellaneous Additional Bonus Materials
The DVD contains a 10-minute featurette in which producer Michael Phillips gives a fascinating account of the sequence of events from the time he first saw Schrader's screenplay to when Columbia greenlighted the project. If you're familiar with Manhattan, you'll enjoy the four-minute "Travis' New York Locations," a comparison of how eight of the movie's filming locations looked in 2006 versus how they looked in 1975. Also reasonably interesting is the 18-minute "Influences and Appreciation," a tribute to Scorsese by several people, including Oliver Stone and Roger Corman.
There are two extras on the DVD that seem to be public relations efforts. One of these, the six-minute "Travis' New York," is about how the city has been cleaned up and is much less squalid than it was back in 1975. The other, the 22-minute "Taxi Driver Stories," is about real-life New York cabbies, none of whom are anything like Travis Bickle. These two bonus materials failed to capture my interest, but I can understand why they were included. In any case, let me hasten to add that I love to visit New York, and on all my trips I take taxis.
A Disturbing Real-Life Connection
No discussion of Taxi Driver can be complete without mentioning John Hinckley, who shot President Ronald Reagan. Hinckley had seen the movie a number of times, and he became obsessed with Jodie Foster, leaving many messages for her. Unable to make meaningful contact, the psychopathic Hinckley turned his twisted mind to developing schemes that might get the actress's attention. In Washington, D.C., on March 30, 1981, he fired several shots at the President and his entourage. Reagan and three others were wounded, and Hinckley was immediately taken into custody. Although all four victims survived, one of them, Press Secretary James Brady, was permanently disabled. As for Hinckley, he was put in a psychiatric facility.
DVD Details
Below I have listed all the details for the two-disc Collector's Edition DVD set containing Taxi Driver.
Release Date: August 14, 2007
Number of Discs: 2
Disc 1:
Feature Film (1 hour 54 minutes)
MPAA Rating: R
Widescreen (1.85:1), Color
English 5.1 Dolby Digital, French 5.1 Dolby Digital
English, Spanish, French Subtitles
Audio Commentary by Screenwriter Paul Schrader
Audio Commentary by Professor Robert Kolker
Original Shooting Script
Disc 2:
Director Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver (17 min.)
Producer Michael Phillips on Taxi Driver (10 min.)
Screenwriter Paul Schrader on Taxi Driver (22 min.)
Influence and Appreciation: Scorsese Tribute (18 min.)
Making-Of Documentary (1 hr. 11 min.)
About New York Taxis (22 min.)
Manhattan's Post-1975 Gentrification (6 min.)
Movie's Locations in 1975 vs. How They Looked in 2006 (4 min.)
Intro to Storyboards by Scorsese (4 1/2 min.)
Storyboard to Film Comparison (8 min.)
Galleries (9 min.)
English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean Subtitles
Return to Beginning of Review