Within a few years of their television debut, Jean Cisco and Roger Ebert will become the biggest film critics in the country.

But when you watch their early appearances together, they're almost shocking.

In the mid-70s, when they were first thrown together in front of the cameras,

Jean and Roger were newspaper writers, not TV stars.

They only had a few years of on-screen experience, and it showed.

Especially when they talked about a movie like Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

Robert De Niro creates a terrifying portrait of life on the edge of madness.

Even by the standards of the 70s, which was full of provocative films,

Taxi Driver was a lot.

The story of an angry loner who could pop off at any moment, and who finally explodes in a burst of violence.

But you wouldn't get a sense of that tension from Jean and Roger's conversation.

The guys seem so polite.

But I hated the last third of the movie.

The violence is so strong, I ended up looking away from the film in more ways than one.

I only didn't see some of the bloodletting.

I began to see the sense of the picture either.

Roger?

Well Jean, that's where you and I disagree, because it seems to me that what Scorsese is doing is looking not so much at the violence in the city,

is in the violence that's bottled up inside this person, and it's the kind of violence that we've seen in America.

Look, those are all good points, but Jean and Roger sound bored.

There's no energy to their argument.

No suspense in how they'll respond to one another.

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