Director Martin Scorsese once claimed that the first fifteen minutes of the movie Taxi Driver (1976) were inspired by Van Morrison’s album Astral Weeks (1968). How is this violent movie connected to one of the most beautiful albums of all time?
Sources About the Connection
One of the main sources for the link is the essay, “Save the Last Waltz for Me,” where Greil Marcus wrote about the documentary The Last Waltz (1978) and hanging out with Martin Scorsese. The essay was originally published in New West (May 22, 1978) and reprinted in Marcus’s book, Bob Dylan: Writings 1968-2010
(p. 79).
Several Internet sources claim that the “first half” of Taxi Driver is based on Astral Weeks. These sources may be perpetuating misinformation from Wikipedia based on a later Marcus interview. Instead, Marcus’s 1978 essay actually asserts that much less of the movie is based on the album.
According to Marcus’s story, Scorsese put on the album when Marcus was visiting. “Madame George” came on.
Down on Cyprus Avenue,
With a childlike vision leaping into view,
Clicking, clacking of the high heeled shoe,
Ford & Fitzroy, Madame George
Marching with the soldier boy behind;
He’s much older with hat on drinking wine,
And that smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through
The cool night air like Shalimar;
And outside they’re making all the stops;
The kids out in the street collecting bottle-tops,
Gone for cigarettes and matches in the shops.
Scorsese said, “That’s the song.” He explained, “I based the first fifteen minutes of Taxi Driver on Astral Weeks, and that’s a movie about a man who hates music.”
The First Fifteen Minutes of Taxi Driver
During the first fifteen minutes of Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) drives around the dirty 1970s New York streets. He applies for and gets the job as a taxi driver. Writing a letter, he describes how he cannot sleep at night and that after his shifts he has to clean off the back seat of his taxi.
Additionally, we see Bickle going to a pornographic movie. There, he unsuccessfully tries to strike up a conversation with the woman who works at the concession stand.
Interpretations of “Madame George”
Critic Lester Bangs wrote an outstanding essay about Astral Weeks that gives some insight, even though he does not address the Taxi Driver rumor. But he did write about the “desolation, hurt, and anguish” in “Madame George.”
Bangs called the song, “Possibly one of the most compassionate pieces of music ever made, it asks us, no, arranges that we see the plight of what I’ll be brutal and call a lovelorn drag queen with such intense empathy that when the singer hurts him, we do too.” He added, “The beauty, sensitivity, holiness of the song is that there’s nothing at all sensationalistic, exploitative, or tawdry about it.”
A number of writers have offered various interpretations of the song “Madame George.” And Van Morrison has reportedly disputed some of the interpretations. But a piece in Rolling Stone correctly asserts that “Madame George” is “a cryptic character study that may or may not be about an aging transvestite but that is certainly as heartbreaking a reverie as you will find in pop music.”
The Connection Between Movie and Song?
So what is the connection between the movie and the ambiguous song? Part of the connection seems to be that both are about lonely men wandering the dirty streets.
There is heartbreak in both the movie and the song, so the connection seems more of tone than a literal connection. In his essay, Bangs also declined to “reduce” the other songs on the album by trying to explain them.
You should read Bangs’s essay, but I will follow his lead and not try to explain the unexplainable any further. But the next time you watch Taxi Driver, think of the poetry found in the misery. And reflect on the beauty of both the film and Astral Weeks.
Check out our other posts on connections between music and the movie Taxi Driver: Kris Kristofferson’s “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33” and Jackson Browne’s “Late for the Sky.”
Another Scorsese-Morrison Connection and Bonus Information About Taxi Driver: Martin Scorsese later used Van Morrison’s music for the beginning of another movie, Bringing Out the Dead (1999). That film features some similarities to Taxi Driver. Bringing Out the Dead opens with the main character driving a vehicle, although in this movie it is an ambulance instead of a taxi, and he is played by Nicolas Cage. During the scene, the music playing is Van Morrison’s “T.B. Sheets.” Regarding Taxi Driver, Obsessed With Film recently posted “50 Reasons Why Taxi Driver Might Just Be The Greatest Film of All Time.”
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