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

Taxi Driver, a film by Martin Scorsese.

One of the reasons that taxi driver is so iconic is because it acknowledged thoughts and feelings

that men had, you know, men who were extremely lonely and sexually frustrated, at least until a few years ago,

a lot of those feelings were not aired in public a lot. Paul Schrader has talked a lot about how

basically he wrote this movie as an exorcism for feelings that he was having about women at that

time, you know, a time when he was in extreme isolation.

I think for a lot of particularly men

who have seen this movie over the years,

it feels like an airing out of a certain secret knowledge.

I don't think it does anymore.

Travis Bickles' thoughts and ideas and feelings,

he says some very disturbing things about women over the course of

the movie. Like there's that scene where he says women, they're like a union. Or when he's, you know,

yelling at Sybil Shepard later on, he says, you're in a hell and you're going to die in a hell like

the rest of them. I mean, those are the sorts of thoughts that would be on a message board today.

But I think even as recently as 10 years ago, people watching this movie, like, it would have felt like, wow, somebody knows that these thoughts are going on.

There's a lot going on in the film thematically about, you know, masculinity.

Gender is obviously a major theme of the film.

But I think that another potential reading of it, which I think is working in tandem, is that it's simply a film about exclusion and one person's quest to be normal and kind of be accepted.

During Travis Bickle's monologues throughout the film, one of the things that becomes clear is above all else.

He wants to be seen as normal. He wants to be, one of the things that becomes clear is above all else.

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