This Day in Indie History: Taxi Driver

Nominated for four Academy Awards, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver opened to the public at New York’s Cinema I on this day in 1976. Running with the tagline “On every street in every city, there’s a nobody who dreams of being a somebody,” the movie addressed not only the gritty realism of the city, much as Scorsese’s Mean Streets had, but also touched on the post-War environment and its affects on soldiers returning from Vietnam. In its immediate commercial success, the movie launched the careers of both Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster.

Film Factoid: Taxi Driver marked the second of eight films (s0 far) that Scorsese has directed De Niro. The New York duo also collaborated on 1973’s Mean Streets, 1977’s New York, New York, the Oscar-nominated Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Cape Fear and, most recently, Casino.