BOBy

Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, US, 1975)

'You talkin' to me?'
Becoming increasingly neurotic,
New York cab driver Travis Bickle is alone in his seedy apartment,
having stocked up on arms to carry out a meaningless plan
to assassinate governor Palantine (Leonard Harris).
He's wearing a combat jacket and addressing the mirror,
but his words are delivered straight to camera. 'You talkin' to me?'
he snarls. 'You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?
Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me?
Well, I'm the only one here. Who the @!#$ do you think you're talkin' to?
Oh yeah? Huh?' The gun shoots out of his sleeve. 'Try it, you @!#$!'
According to screenwriter Paul Schrader,
the bulk of De Niro's narration was scripted,
although this particular scene was improvised.
„In the script it just says, 'Travis speaks to himself in the mirror.
' Bobby [De Niro] asked me what he would say, and I said,
'Well, he's a little kid playing with guns and acting tough.'
So De Niro used this rap that an underground New York comedian
had been using at the time as the basis for his lines.
Because the scene was filmed in one of Manhattan's noisiest areas,
Scorsese kept asking De Niro to repeat the line in case the microphone lost it.
But it recorded perfectly, and Scorsese kept it all.”