Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "Analyzing Evil: Travis Bickle From Taxi Driver" video.
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Fascinating observation about his emblem that I had never noticed, despite seeing the film multiple times. And your insights were really interesting. I’m curious as to how old you are? Only in terms of how close a contemporary of Bickle’s character you are? You certainly got a lot out of this movie.
In fairness to the narrator, if you pay close attention to his choice of words, he would be right. The police back then were worse than they are now, and that part of New York was a notorious den of iniquity, patrolled by a jaded, underfunded and openly racist police force. But, whatever legitimate criticisms you could level at them, they certainly would have payed lip service to their duty. They would naturally reject all criticism, which was all the narrator really said. I suspect that any adult living in the late 1970’s would have scoffed at the notion of going to the cops, but it had to be considered in terms of Bickle’s options.
I’ve given a lot of thought to Travis Bickle’s back story. Probably too much? It occurred to me, with the current vogue for prequels and origin stories, “Travis,” would make a great prequel movie or mini series?
I could picture the schoolboy who doesn’t fit in, but wants to who, just like in the movie, gets an even stronger rejection from women who find him shockingly weird. So, he joins the marines, thinking he’ll fit in and find friendship there, and is then sent to Vietnam. At first, he thinks he’s found the answer and wants to go career, training well, committing 100% and loving the routine and discipline. He even gets on well with authority figures and his fellow marines, and is looked up to by his squad, because he is able to disregard setbacks and injury in a way they all take for his inner strength.
But the contradictions of Vietnam soon hit home when he’s deployed in the field. The one guy he gets close to, intimate with, (another undiagnosed mentally ill person) gets killed, horribly. And it’s only later that he discovers that his friend was murdered by his fellow combat troops during a combat mission, because they found him to be such a weirdo, and because he threatened to tell on them for atrocities they routinely carried out. Travis being Travis, there’s a scene where he takes a souvenir from his buddy, a finger or an ear, and we see him cut off part of his friend, wrap it up, and we never learn what it was.
The story culminates in a shootout, at the end of a particularly gruelling battle in which half of his platoon was wiped out. The showdown occurs in the gap between the end of the battle and the wait for inbound choppers to pick up the survivors. The army can’t get the truth out of him about what went down, though they’re sure he’s murdered other troops. So, they can’t award him a Purple Heart for his wounds, without stating how, when and where he received those wounds, so they discharge him honourably, but that’s why he has no medals, despite having exit wound scars.
The whole thing could be told in flashbacks, from the interview in which the top brass are trying to get the truth out of him, perhaps? Before we meet Travis, we can see him being described by the other survivors of that final battle, painting a picture of a man who frightens them (possibly into silence) and of a man with deep intelligence, despite no formal education. All of their descriptions could build him up to be at odds with the man when we finally see him. We’re expecting a giant, covered in scars, with steely eyes, but we get a small, mumbling, average looking man, deepening the mystery about people who know him, versus the impression he makes upon first meeting. Another reason why so many seriously deranged people fly under the radar is that they never look like the, “monsters,” we expect. Having done several prison visits, I have always been struck by how normal and average everyone looks and acts when you meet them, regardless of whether they’re petty criminals or monsters.
Anyway, Travis ends with him showing up in New York and using his discharge papers and veteran’s experience to impress the guy who owns the yellow cab company, where he gets a job . . .
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I noticed that tautology there too. However, the rest of it wasn’t so bad. It occurred to me, with the current vogue for prequels and origin stories, Travis would make a great prequel movie or mini series. I could picture the schoolboy who doesn’t fit in, but wants too, who just like in the movie, gets an even stronger rejection from women who find him shockingly weird. So, he joins the army, thinking he’ll fit in and find friendship there, and is sent to Vietnam. At first, he thinks he’s found the answer and wants to go career soldiering, training well, committing 100% and loving the routine and discipline. But the contradictions of Vietnam soon hit home when he’s deployed in the field. The one guy he gets close to (another undiagnosed mentally ill person) gets killed, horribly. And it’s only later that he discovers that his friend was murdered by his fellow combat troops during a combat mission, because they found him such a weirdo, and because he threatened to tell on them for atrocities they routinely carried out. Being Travis, he takes a souvenir from his buddy, a finger or an ear, in a scene where we see him cut off part of his friend, wrap it up, and we never learn what it was. And it all culminates in a shootout, at the end of a particularly gruelling battle in which half of his platoon was wiped out. The showdown occurs in the gap between the end of the battle and the wait for inbound choppers to pick up the survivors. The army can’t get the truth out of him about what went down, though they’re sure he’s murdered other troops. So, they can’t award him a Purple Heart for his wounds, without stating how, when and where he received his wounds, so they discharge him honourably, but that’s why he has no medals, despite having exit wound scars. The whole thing could be told in flashbacks, from the interview in which the top brass are trying to get the truth out of him, perhaps? And it ends with him showing up in New York and using his discharge papers and veteran’s experience to impress the guy who owns the yellow cab company, to get a job . . .
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My guess, as to his honourable discharge from the army, and the wound he carries, is that he might well have been through a similar outcome as the one in this movie? His attempts to fit in are misunderstood. He’s joined up to find friendship and understanding, but simply can’t. He would have been more harshly rejected by girls his own age, as he was by women in the movie, due to his shocking dissonance. And I could see an awesome prequel possibility in that story, which culminated in his murdering a bunch of colleagues, who had just committed a series of atrocities in the jungles of Vietnam. That would explain why he has an honourable discharge, yet no Purple Heart, despite being wounded in the inciting incident that saw him discharged. The military, not knowing what to do with him, just got rid of him, rather than explore atrocities committed by their own troops at a trial. And they couldn’t award him a Purple Heart without explaining where and when he got wounded, or making something up. So, here he is, confused, isolated and lonely, with a worsening mental health condition, undiagnosed and ignored, a walking time bomb, waiting to go off, while he pursues his occupation as a taxi driver in what was at that time, one of the world’s worst sewers in America; downtown New York.
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