May 10th. Thank God for the rain which has helped wash away the garbage and trash off the sidewalks. I'm workin' long hours now, six in the afternoon to six in the morning. Sometimes even eight in the morning, six days a week. Sometimes seven days a week. It's a long hustle but it keeps me real busy. I can take in three, three fifty a week. Sometimes even more when I do it off the meter. All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. I go all over. I take people to the Bronx, Brooklyn, I take 'em to Harlem. I don't care. Don't make no difference to me. It does to some. Some won't even take spooks. Don't make no difference to me.
Originally posted by AbnormalButSaneI know right!
Originally posted by QuincyPaul Schrader, what a guy. I have to quote him all the bloody times in essays
Paul Schrader wrote the script for "Taxi Driver" in five days. As he was writing, he kept a loaded gun on his desk for motivation and inspiration.
The story was partially autobiographical for Paul Schrader, who suffered a nervous breakdown while living in Los Angeles. He was fired from the AFI, basically friendless, in the midst of a divorce and was rejected by a girlfriend. Squatting in his ex-girlfriend's apartment while she was away for a couple of months, Schrader literally didn't talk to anyone for many weeks, went to porno theaters and developed an obsession with guns. Schrader was working at the time as delivery man for a chain of chicken restaurants. Spending long days alone in his car, he felt--I might as well be a taxi driver. He also shared with Bickle the sense of isolation from being a mid-Westerner in an urban center. Schrader decided to switch the action to New York City only because taxi drivers are far more common there. Schrader's script clicked with both Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro when they read it.
When Paul Schrader was first writing the script, he believed that he was just writing about "loneliness," but as the process went on he realized he was writing about "the pathology of loneliness." His theory being that, for some reason, some "young men" (such as Schrader himself) subconsciously push others away to maintain their isolation, even though the main source of their torment is this very isolation.
Originally posted by QuincyWell I quoted him in an essay about American indie cinema in the 80s and 90s and also in two essays about genre, basically Schrader not only is a damn fine scriptwriter, he's also a film academic and has written tonnes of essays and at least a few books I think on all different aspects of film
Woah cool man, what kind of essays???