Taxi Driver It Is

THOUGH I am a Raging Bull man myself, happy to see Taxi Driver take the win in my Favorite Scorsese Film poll.

At least one voter was frustrated he could not vote for The Last Waltz, the director’s swan song for The Band and a whole generation of rock, blues and folk musicians. I love that film as well — in fact the complaining voter took me to see it when I was 10 years old at the Brattle theater — but realized if we included that one, we’d have to include Scorsese’s wonderful documentary on Dylan, No Direction Home, as well as his homage to Italian neo-realism and others. Some of these docs will show up on future polls.

Back to Taxi Driver, a film which captures the ’70s better than any movie I know: Surprised to say that Goodfellas nearly won — for most of the last few days it was leading.

Take a bow, Travis Bickle!