This message comes from NPR sponsor, Subaru.

This season, Subaru and its retailers are partnering with Operation Warm

and providing children in urgent need with brand new coats, shoes, and socks.

Subaru, more than a car company.

Learn more at Subaru.com slash help.

This is fresh air. I'm David B. and Cooley.

50 years ago next week, the movie Taxi Driver was released.

It established director Martin Scorsese as a vital new filmmaker and provided key early

film roles for everyone from Jody Foster and Harvey Keitel to Sybil Shepard and

Albert Brooks.

And, of course, there was Robert De Niro

in the title role as New York cab driver Travis Bickle. De Niro already had won a best-supporting

actor Oscar two years before, playing young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part 2. But taxi driver

is the movie that shot him into the stratosphere.

One of the most iconic scenes in that movie is one that the actor improvised, standing before a

full-length mirror in Travis's noisy apartment, and testing out a new weapon he'd jerry-rigged.

It was a pistol that would slide down from his sleeve ready to cock and fire.

And De Niro, as Travis, not only was staring down the image in the mirror, he was threatening him.

I'm standing here. You make the move. You make the move. It's your move.

I'm trying,, you f***. You're fucking.

You talking to me?

You talking to me?

...