I just got done watching this classic movie for the first time, and boy did it suck. I love De Niro, but how anyone ever watched this particular movie enough to make those quotes memorable is beyond me.
What I’m wondering now (having not seen too many movies from that era) is whether the standards were just lower back then, or if there’s some other reason for the movie’s popularity (other than the eventual fame that De Niro achieved). Perhaps someone who was around back in ‘76 (Dave?) can tell us whether this movie was popular at the time, or whether it only became famous in retrospect?
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famous in retrospect is my vote.
have never seen taxi driver, noone I knew then saw it either, dont want to see it as it looks like it sucks and after reading your post I doubt if I ever will see it. the critics or someone loves it.
Re: movies sucking back then….?
Jaws came out in ‘75(I think), it was pretty good at the time, freaked me out next time I went surfing.
Funny I can’t remember any other movies from that time period.
just looked it up on google - Rocky I, came out in ‘76, pretty good for the time as the first one, pretty formulaic though.
Yep, that’s pretty much what I figured. I have seen Rocky and Jaws, but I get the feeling that those were more the exception than the rule.
I should add that I don’t even really know that Taxi Driver qualifies as famous now, it’s just that I’ve always heard about it, and the famous “are you talking to me” thing…
The thing that I guess I was surprised the most about was the quality of the writing and story. Of course I expect the movie not to “look” as good (in terms of technical production capability), and to not have access to filming techniques that rely on more modern equipment, etc. I’m fine with all of that. The problem for me (at least in this one) is strictly story related. I think writers in general must just have gotten better at plotting and scripting a story for film.
This one just came off as plain boring. I get the point that it was partially intentional, due to the story they were trying to tell about his life as a vet, and how his previous experiences had kind of messed up his head, but it just never seemed to explore anything around that subject in any level of detail. I guess you could interpret the whole picture as being a statement about how he must view the world now, and that’s why it has that dead feeling, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s they went that deep to me.
You CANNOT dis Rocky.
Also, some trend setting huge movies, —
American Graffiti,
Animal House,
Dirty Harry - so different when it first came out.
exorcist - scared me sooo badly.
Love Story - big date movie,
Rock Horror Picture Show - never saw it but many have many times,
Star Wars - duh I forgot about Star Wars.
many others.
yeah, taxi driver seemed to be a real negative movie from the looks of it.
After seeing the exorcist, my friend and I went to bills of meadowbrook across from hofstra, where the jets did summer training, we drank alot of beer to get the movie out of our minds and we played a new game called - pong.
Rocky was really good especially when it first came out.
noteworthy on the edge - clockwork orange ( maybe 60s) and harrod experiment.
saw harrod experiment at a college, cause it was too controversial to play in many theaters.
whoa - nudity and the idea of living together without marriage.
Who was dissing Rocky? Not me…
not me.
oh yeah, the original Stepford Wives came out around ‘75 and that one movie with diving and Stephanie Seymour & Nick Notle. Can’t remember the name.
I guess it’s possible that there were still plenty of good movies back then, and maybe the crap to good ratio was about the same as now, or even better.
It could just be that since there are so many more movies being made now, it seems that there are more good ones, because you tend to forget the bad ones or not pay any attention to them in the first place.
I see more movies now than in the 70s as then you had to physically go or wait for it to be on tv one night, years later after the release.
Just didn’t care that much.
I wonder how many 70s movies never made it to video.
Today’s movies seem better in general.
I would tell my kids about some movie and then we’d watch it and it was a let down compared to the quality of today. They were polite about it but would almost always say how much better the new one was. i.e. born free, orginal parent trap II, any james bond movie from the 70s.