Taxi Driver

 

Today is the 21st anniversary of Paul's death and this was the logical movie to watch.  It was his favorite movie and, in fact, his friend Paul K wanted to name his son after Paul, but since the name would have been the same his son's middle name became Travis, after Travis Bickle, Robert DeNiro's character.

DeNiro looks like a little kid in this 1976 movie, for which he won an Academy Award.  Bickle is an ex-marine, Vietnam veteran who writes notes and letters about his observations of New York City, which he finds ugly.  He wishes for a "real rain" to wash the "scum" off the streets..He is shy, but has no sense of how normal people live (he takes a lovely girl to the movies, a porn movie because he sees couples going in there and sees nothing wrong with it).

This is a brilliant movie, but it leaves out a lot of things.  It is not a story of Bickle, but more a series of days in his life without knowing what caused those days to happen.

Amazingly I had never seen this movie before and feel that today was the perfect day to watch it.

Ned fixed us clam dip and chips to eat and sushi for us to have afterwards, for dinner.