General News
40th Anniversary – TAXI DRIVER Plays at The Hi-Pointe Beginning Friday
“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.”
TAXI DRIVER will be showing for one week beginning Friday, April 29th at the Hi-Pointe Theater
Before I saw TAXI DRIVER in 1976 at age 15, I only watched horror films and comedies. Martin Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece made me realize there were other types of movies out there and I became completely obsessed with the film. I saw TAXI DRIVER at theaters at least a dozen times in its initial run and remember riding my bike to see it at the Kirkwood Cinema five nights in row. I had the poster on my wall and would play the soundtrack LP over and over, memorizing the (cleaned-up) dialog. I actually went to High School dressed like Travis Bickle in a green army jacket and while the other kids were drawing Led Zeppelin logos on their notebooks, I was sketching pictures of Travis. My parents worried about me and I remember my dad calling me at college freaked out a few years later when he learned that John Hinckley Jr., who had shot President Ronald Reagan, claimed he was inspired by his own obsession with TAXI DRIVER. I assured him that my preoccupation with the film had waned, then mailed off my latest love letter to Jodie Foster.
Widely considered the crown jewel of Scorsese’s prodigious career, TAXI DRIVER centers around the alienated and quiet loner of the title, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro, in one of the greatest screen performances of all time), a cabbie who works the night shift in Manhattan. After failing to land a date with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a beautiful campaign aide for presidential candidate Palentine (Leonard Harris), an encounter with a twelve-year old prostitute, Iris (Jodie Foster), and her pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel), convinces Travis that the world is a rotten place. And as his frustration mounts, he assembles a cache of guns and learns how to use them…with deadly accuracy.
The 1976 film was nominated for four Academy Awards®, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Robert De Niro; and two Golden Globes. One of TIME Magazines ‘all-TIME 100 Movies,TAXI DRIVER was called ‘a brilliant nightmare,’ by the Chicago Sun-Times and praised by the Village Voice as ‘a phenomenon from another day and age.’ Sony Pictures digitally restored and remastered TAXI DRIVER to 4K from the original negative.
It’s been 40 years, but now it’s time to see TAXI DRIVER on the big screen again. St. Louis’ fabulous Hi-Pointe Theater (1005 McCausland Avenue) will showing the film for one week beginning Friday, April 29th.
Showtimes are:
Friday – Saturday: (5:00), 7:30, 9:45
Sunday: (5:00), 7:30
Monday – Thursday: (5:00), 7:30
The Hi-Pointe’s site can be found HERE
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