Revisiting Taxi Driver and Bringing Out the Dead

Taxi Driver and Bringing Out the Dead: these two movies, both by acclaimed director Martin Scorsese, have a lot in common, despite being made 3 decades apart. They both feature protagonists who drive for a living, who narrate the story, and in both cases said men are both dealing with depression, partly due to their jobs.

I hadn't seen either of these films for way over a decade, long before I was accepting that I had depression myself. In the years that followed I did a lot of work to better myself, to handle my conditions and be a more responsible, comfortable adult: online reading, book reading, time spent in neuropsychology, counselling and psychotherapy, not to mention weekly support groups for 3 years. I'm far from perfect now, but I''m a lot more in control and happy than I was before I started to make these improvements, back in 2007. I've no idea when I last saw these two films, prior to last week, but at the time I was definitely in denial about my mental health issues.

Lockdown- both national and local, here in Oldham- has given me time to think. I've been quite level this year, as most things that cause a spike in anxiety are social situations, and there haven't been any due to COVID-19 restrictions. I found myself thinking of these films, and of how I related to them. (By that, I mean being 1 of the 1 in 4 peopleto have a mental health problem in the UK in the past year.  Not, for example, feeling the need to go shoot a pimp and blow his henchman's fingers off, or total an ambulance mid-emergency-call.)

There are a number of memorable scenes in both films, but let's start with Taxi Driver (1976). Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) takes a job as a New York cabbie to alleviate insomnia, a condition frequently connected to depression. The job, alas, makes both conditions worse.

Drummer Gene Palma has a cameo, demonstrating fellow drummer Gene Krupa's 'syncopated style.'

This scene was sampled in Apollo 440's 1996 song, Krupa.

This appears to be fronted by Paul Kodish, who now has his own clothing range. 

More info can be found on New York resident Gene Palma at John Greco's blog.

Like in Krupa, Taxi Driver's influence has embedded itself in other parts of popular culture. Who remembers this scene from Back to the Future Part III? It was years before I realised where both of these originated.

A personal favourite Taxi Driver reference is this gem from Human Traffic, featuring Danny Dyer (or Moff) on speed, babbling about his take on the movie.

Trivia aside, Taxi Driver is a rip-roaring depiction of depression, a bleak, cutting but addictive portrait of mental illness. The heartfelt music from Bernard Herrmann leaves one both invigorated and morose.

Hermann himself had quite the career- he started with Citizen Kane, and finished the Taxi Driver score before his death in 1975.

Cybill Shepard is stunning as love interest Betsy, 12-year-old Jodie Foster is disturbingly believable as child-prostitute Iris and a young Harvey Keitel delivers a menacing turn as her pimp, Sport. The film's narration comes in the form of diary entries, which we see Bickle write and narrate. Many sources including this from Mind list many beneficial factors of journaling. It's a routine that is known to help combat depression, but Bickle obviously needed somewhat more than that for support.

While Taxi Driver investigated the despair of depression, the crushing awkwardness and desperation of the condition (it turns out taking a girl to a dirty movie on a date is a social faux pas- who knew?!), Bringing Out the Dead (1999) is more a black comedy on the same theme.

This time, instead of a taxi driver with depression, we're following ambulance driver Frank Pierce (Nicholas Cage), who has the same issues- low mood, insomnia and the grind of New York City wreaking havoc on his mental health. Not to mention, he's haunted by the ghosts of patients he couldn't save.

We see Pierce head out in the ambulance. Instead of a morose, saxophone-led blues number accompanying the scene, we open to Van Morrison's TB Sheets, a morose, harmonica-led blues number about a woman dying of tuberculosis. 

Before long, though, we're charging through New York in sped-up footage, Pierce manically gripping the steering wheel, while Combination Of The Two by Big Brother & The Holding Company screams over the scene.

 

The main contrast in the films is tone. Taxi Driver: serious, slow, downbeat. Bringing Out the Dead: comedic, rapid, desperately optimistic. While Bickle does a lot of wallowing in self-pity before he goes on the rampage, taking some lives in the process, Pierce wants the thrill of saving a life. He knows the busier he is, the more he works, the more likely he is to save that life, and the less likely he is to stare into his own soul and plunge into the depths of despair. He knows staying active will keep him afloat.

The 90s and the 70s before them were very different times to each other, just like they both are to today's world, whether New York City or elsewhere. These days, more and more companies and organisations have mental health policies. Both employers would have at least been handed a leaflet and noticed the symptoms, signposting the protagonists to services. (It perhaps wouldn't have made quite the interesting movie. Or would it?)

As much as Taxi Driver is the better made movie, Bringing Out the Dead hammers home an important point: address the mental health problem, but stay busy to survive.