“The film had a rage in it that I saw in my grandparents. With Taxi Driver, I was going to blast that away. I didn’t think anybody was going to see it. I was going to make this musical New York, New York, which I thought everyone would want to see and nobody saw.”

Conversations with Scorsese, Richard Schickel via Hollywood Reporter

(via barriga)

“I think it’s one of the finest films that’s ever been made in America. It’s a statement about America. About violence. About loneliness. Anonymity. Some of the best works are those that have tried to imitate that kind of film, that kind of style. It’s just a classic. I felt when I came home every day that I had really accomplished something.”

Jodie Foster, on Taxi Driver 

(Source: khareen)

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Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) by DEVOLVE

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Jodie Foster and Robert De Niro on the red carpet at the 29th Cannes Film Festival for Martin Scorsese’s, Taxi Driver, which won the prestigious Palme d’Or that year (1976)

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“By the time I got the role in Taxi Driver, I’d already made more stuff than De Niro or Martin Scorsese. I’d been working from the time I was three years old. So even though I was only twelve, I felt like I was the veteran there. De Niro took me aside before we started filming. He kept picking me up from my hotel and taking me to different diners. The first time he basically didn’t say anything. He would just, like, mumble. The second time he started to run lines with me, which was pretty boring because I already knew the lines. The third time, he ran lines with me again and now I was really bored. The fourth time, he ran lines with me, but then he started going off on these completely different ideas within the scene, talking about crazy things and asking me to follow in terms of improvisation. So we’d start with the original script and then he’d go off on some tangent and I’d have to follow, and then it was my job to eventually find the space to bring him back to the last three lines of the text we’d already learned. It was a huge revelation for me, because until that moment I thought being an actor was just acting naturally and saying the lines someone else wrote. Nobody had ever asked me to build a character. The only thing they’d ever done to direct me was to say something like “Say it faster” or “Say it slower.” So it was a whole new feeling for me, because I realized acting was not a dumb job. You know, I thought it was a dumb job. Somebody else writes something and then you repeat it. Like, how dumb is that?

There was this moment, in some diner somewhere, when I realized for the first time that it was me who hadn’t brought enough to the table. And I felt this excitement where you’re all sweaty and you can’t eat and you can’t sleep. Changed my life.”

- Jodie Foster on working with Robert De Niro on Taxi driver, who was then 14, De Niro was aged 33 [x]

(Source: morffyne)

(via littlehope)

(Source: fuckyeahtaxidriver)

mattybing1025:

By the time I got the role in Taxi Driver, I’d already made more stuff than De Niro or Martin Scorsese. I’d been working from the time I was three years old. So even though I was only twelve, I felt like I was the veteran there.

De Niro took me aside before we started filming. He kept picking me up from my hotel and taking me to different diners. The first time he basically didn’t say anything. He would just, like, mumble. The second time he started to run lines with me, which was pretty boring because I already knew the lines. The third time, he ran lines with me again and now I was really bored. The fourth time, he ran lines with me, but then he started going off on these completely different ideas within the scene, talking about crazy things and asking me to follow in terms of improvisation.

So we’d start with the original script and then he’d go off on some tangent and I’d have to follow, and then it was my job to eventually find the space to bring him back to the last three lines of the text we’d already learned.

It was a huge revelation for me, because until that moment I thought being an actor was just acting naturally and saying the lines someone else wrote. Nobody had ever asked me to build a character. The only thing they’d ever done to direct me was to say something like “Say it faster” or “Say it slower.” So it was a whole new feeling for me, because I realized acting was not a dumb job. You know, I thought it was a dumb job. Somebody else writes something and then you repeat it. Like, how dumb is that?

There was this moment, in some diner somewhere, when I realized for the first time that it was me who hadn’t brought enough to the table. And I felt this excitement where you’re all sweaty and you can’t eat and you can’t sleep.

Changed my life.

—Jodie Foster

gasstation:

Taxi Driver

Child labor laws prevented 12-year-old Jodie Foster from taking part in some of the film’s most uncomfortable sexual scenarios. Luckily, her 19-year-old sister Constance “Connie” Foster stood in.

Photo credit: Steve Schapiro, Courtesy of A.Galerie

(via flavorwire)