Taxi Driver: The Movie’s screenwriter finally answers the question Scorsese fans have always asked

Warning – The article below contains “Taxi Driver” spoilers as it returns to the end of Martin Scorsese’s feature film. So please go ahead if you haven’t seen it yet.

We are no longer introducing you as a taxi driver. Hitting theaters in 1976, this seminal piece of the seventh art plunges into the New York night with taxi driver Travis Bickle, and is as captivating as ever. If we know almost everything about the Martin Scorsese movie you’ll probably never see a sequel to, there’s a gray area about its conclusion.

For reference, at the end of Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle, determined to save Iris (Jodie Foster), kills several people in a spectacular shootout, including a teenage pimp. Severely injured, he barely escaped death. After this moment of rare violence, Travis becomes a hero and resumes his life as a taxi driver, allowing him to find Betsy (Cybill Shepherd).

For many viewers, the conclusion of Taxi Driver would not be so obvious. A theory that has been mentioned and discussed frequently over the years suggests that Travis Bickle actually succumbed to his injuries and that the final scenes were just a figment of his imagination. Not a far-fetched idea in a film where the line between reality and imagination is sometimes blurred.

Is what we see at the end of Taxi Driver a fantasy? An interview on this topic recentlyPaul Schrader, screenwriter of the 1976 Palme d’Or, is very clear. “It was not our intention to do so, but it is a legitimate interpretation”, says the American. So the debate is closed: Taxi Driver’s final moments with Travis Bickle, who survives and returns to his job as a taxi driver, therefore represent the film’s true conclusion.

Want a new collaboration between Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro? The good news: The feature film Killers of Flower Moon, also starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone, hits theaters on October 18.

DiCaprio’s favorite movie scene is a scene from “Taxi Driver”: