Paul Schrader believes that Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver was snubbed at the 1977 Oscars due to its “controversial” subject matter.
Before becoming a notable director himself, Schrader, 79, was an acclaimed screenwriter, best known for penning the screenplay for the Robert De Niro-led crime noir.
Starring De Niro as the disturbed insomniac Travis Bickle, who takes a job as a New York City cab driver, the movie follows his obsessive attempt to rescue 12-year-old prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster).
The cult classic landed four Oscar nods, including Best Picture. Both Schrader and Scorsese, however, were overlooked for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director, and the top prize ultimately went to John G. Avildsen’s beloved boxing drama Rocky.
“I wasn’t a bit thrown that Taxi Driver did not win,” Schrader said in a new interview with Deadline, celebrating the film’s 50th anniversary. “If you look at that category of Original Screenplay, it probably was the most original screenplay of that year, but it was just too controversial.”
He shared that, in fact, Columbia Pictures “was caught off-guard when it started doing as well as it did. They had written it off as an outlier and that’s why they didn’t market test it or put marketing behind it.”
Released in 1976, Taxi Driver was a massive critical and commercial success, grossing $27.6 million worldwide.
“It was one of those scripts that banged around town where everybody said someone else should make it,” Schrader added, “but not us.”
He also dismissed the Oscars as a “beauty contest.”
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“I remember saying this years ago to Marty, when he didn’t get an Oscar,” Schrader continued. “I said, ‘Marty, if your priority is to get an Oscar, you need some f***ing new priorities. Because the depths you have to sink to, to prioritize that award, it’s not worth it.’”
Schrader eventually made his directorial debut in 1978 with the crime drama Blue Collar, featuring Harvey Keitel, who played Iris’s exploitative pimp, Matthew “Sport” Higgins, in Taxi Driver.
Now 87, Keitel was cast as Sport after the filmmakers were pressured to make the character — who is killed in a deadly shootout in the film’s climax — white.
“They said we would have a riot in the theater if he appeared to be a racist who only kills Black people,” Schrader told Deadline. “That was fine with Marty, who wanted to give Harvey Keitel the lead, until everybody realized Bob was much better for it.”
