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Jake Brennan (1:14)
Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This episode tells the story of a long standing Hollywood myth, one that Martin Scorsese eventually acknowledged in an interview with Steven Spielberg in 2015. Now, Spielberg and director Brian De Palma have both recounted the story on the record in other places as well. Spielberg most notably in the excellent Peter Biskin book Easy Riders and Raging Bulls. I of course have no idea what specific words were spoken during the fateful night in question. However, just as the directors in this story. Who are the main characters in this story? Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, John Milius, Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese. Just as they have done in the numerous films and they've directed depicting real life events. Films like Schindler's List, the Untouchables, Dillinger, Raging Bull, and the Irishman, to name a few. I followed their lead and relied not only on research of the event in question, but also on research of the characters in this story to inform the dialogue herein. Mellow Jaw. This is a story of one of the greatest movies of all time. A movie that was fictional, with real life murder coursing through the filmmaking. This is a story about one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Actually, it's a story about a couple of the greatest filmmakers of all time. And it's about life and death and art and all the things that make us suckers for great drama. It's a story about one night in particular, one time in Hollywood in particular, and revenge. It's A story about Martin Scorsese and his film Taxi Driver. A film whose composer died only hours after completing the movie's intense score. Great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called firing squad mk2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to 50 Ways to Leave youe Lover by Paul Simon. And why would I play you that specific slice of internal rhyme cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on February 8, 1976. And that was the day Taxi Driver hit theaters, marking the continuation of one of the greatest careers in filmmaking. On this episode, life, death, art, revenge, 70s Hollywood and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. I'm Jake Brennan and this is disgrace. People think making a movie is a lot like making anything else. It's not. It's not like making a record. It's not like writing a book. It's not even like staging a play. It's infinitely more difficult than all of those things. People who make records and write books and stage plays for the most part, cannot make movies. And there's a reason they don't. Because it's a savage endeavor that will quite literally kill you and destroy your soul if you're not careful and or lucky. Or both. Some have compared making a movie to going to war. I've never been to war, so I'm not going to go that far. But I think a better analogy is, though also imperfect would be to say making a movie is a lot like giving birth every day for two years straight. I was there in the room for the birth of both of my sons. I saw the excruciating pain my wife went through as both of those big headed Brennans passed through her birth canal. And before you guys send me your hate mail, I ran this analogy by my wife, who sanctioned it. The pain of birth is unimaginable to me, but I know that that pain is concentrated at the Most. We're talking 24 hours, but usually less. Imagine that pain over and over again every single day for two years. And now we're getting close to the pain involved with making a movie. Every day a new fight, a new hassle, a new raging fire to put out another existential artistic challenge to navigate another chip off your soul. I've made records, I've written and published a book. And yes, I even tried getting a big budget Hollywood movie made with an A list celebrity involved. And I can Tell you, trying to make a movie is a brutal, soul sucking endeavor that is not for the faint of heart. Hollywood is Sodom disguised as paradise. It's Lot's wife bent brutally over the back of a casting couch. Its pimps bobbing through fresh chum for their 10%. Its shameless ambition wafting like beastly pheromones on the back of the Santa Anas. But once you make it over the moat patrolled by an army of lizard skinned assistants and into the hallowed grounds of the studio system, that's when quote, all the animals come out. The whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies. Sick, venal. Hollywood is relentless. It never lets you off the hook. No matter how successful you are, no matter how psychotic you are. So listen you fuckers, you screw heads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up. Martin Scorsese twitched in the cutting room. It had been days since he'd slept. Insomnia, just like the lead character, Travis Bickle, the revenge minded, lonesome cabbie motoring. Scorsese's first studio film, Taxi Driver. Things have been easier. On the director's last film, Mean Streets. There was no studio, thus little oversight. Taxi Driver was a different beast. Columbia Pictures ponied up nearly $2 million. It might have been the director's vision, but it was their money and they wanted a return on that money. And they weren't fucking around. That's why Scorsese couldn't sleep. He needed this final scene of the film to be perfect. The normally kinetic, fast talking east coast director sat stone still, quietly observing the action on the projected picture. A young Robert De Niro, mohawked and shaved for battle. Creeping through the crime and grime of 70s New York City into the climactic scene as the Taxi Driver character, Travis Bickle. Travis walked with purpose from the taxicab to the front stoop. That purpose had been missing from his gate in the earlier scenes. This was the climax. This was the moment the character was building toward all along. Finally something for him to do. Something big. He was going to rescue the little girl and kill anyone who got in his way. Even if it meant dying himself. Dying would be a bonus actually. What did this life give it him anyway? Nothing but loneliness and rage. Rejection at every turn. An extreme inability to relate to anyone or anything except for the needs of a helpless little 12 and a half year old girl. Turned into a prostitute by this scum of the earth pimp, Matthew, AKA Sport. Sport got it first at close range. Travis shot him on the street outside the brothel with his snub nosed.38. Travis then stormed inside and confronted the pimp's bag man, who collected the cash from the johns. Outside the disgusting smelling room where Iris plied her trade, Travis took aim and fired. This time with the heavy artillery. With the.44 Magnum. The elephant killer. But the bag man was no elephant. The bagman raised his hand in defense. The bullet blasted off four of his five fingers. Blood splattered everywhere. All over the brothel's hallway. All over Travis's face. Just then, another gunshot. This one from behind Travis from Sport, who somehow survived the close range bullet from the.38 and made his way into the brothel after Travis. The bullet grazed Travis neck. More blood. Travis took aim with his.44, blasted sport away, and then stumbled in a daze toward Iris. In that room, Iris was the only thing that mattered. Saving her, delivering her from this hellscape of a city. Avenging the sins that had been carried out against her. The defiling of this innocent young girl by predators she was powerless against. That dynamic resonated with Travis. He too was powerless. His innocence too had been stripped away by forces he couldn't control. Iris. Iris. Iris. Travis put two more bullets into Sport for insurance and another into the Bagman before making his way to Iris room. Then the john emerged into the hallway and caught Travis off guard, firing a bullet into his arm. Travis unloaded a full round into the John. At least three bullets in the face. More to the torso. Blood spewed red and hot from the john's cheeks and his chest. The john fell backward into Iris room. And there she was. She screamed in horror at the dead man who had just collapsed on the floor. Travis moved toward her, but now the bag man was on his feet and on top of Travis, on his back, actually screaming. Ignoring him, Travis continued to march toward Iris. Iris was all that mattered. Iris was all there was. And the bag man managed to tackle Travis to the ground. In the tussle, Travis stabbed him through his hand. Screams filled the whorehouse. Travis grabbed the dead john's gun lying on the floor and shot the screaming bag man through his face. Face exiting his brains onto the wall next to Iris, who was by this point, hysterical. Travis's job was done. He'd freed Iris, avenged her stolen innocence, and by extension, his too. He put the gun to the bottom of his chin and pulled the trigger. The chamber was empty. The Scene was perfect. It was as violent a scene as a Hollywood studio had ever produced. Except the movie hadn't yet been fully produced. It was still being edited, and the studio had yet to approve the final cut. Three characters were killed in this fictional scene. And this scene was about to result in a very real death. Martin Scorsese sat pensively in his Mulholland apartment high above Hollywood. The location had been prescribed by doctor's orders. Scorsese's asthma was so bad that his physician required him to live above the LA Smog line. Hollywood, the only city in the world where this New York director could gain access to the resources needed to direct the kind of personal pictures he wanted to direct on the same scale as the greats he admired who came before him. Howard Hawks, John Ford, Vincent Minnelli. This city was literally choking him to death. And if it wasn't the city itself, it was the studio. Scorsese had just returned from screening his final cut of Taxi Driver for Columbia studio executive Stanley Jaffe. Jaffe hated it. Too violent. And there was no way, in his estimation, the Taxi Driver would be granted an R rating from the Motion Picture association of America. With the way Scorsese had constructed the final scene, an X rating was almost certain. And an X rating meant a major reduction in revenue. So from the studio executive's perspective, there was only one option. He demanded Martin Scorsese re edit the end of Taxi Driver to make it less violent in order to garner a more favorable rating from the mpaa. In the meeting, Scorsese said nothing. The rage inside him shocked him silent. Who was this guy to tell him how to cut his movie? His criticism wasn't reserved only for the end either. The executive Jaffe wanted Scorsese to lose the so called artsy shots of Travis in a New York City from earlier in the film as well, claiming they were disrupting the momentum and that audiences weren't going to flock to the theaters en masse to see a student art film. They wanted action. They wanted Charles Bronson blasting away bad guys in as many scenes as possible in Death Wish. But you know, not as violent as the ending of Taxi Driver that Scorsese was suggesting. Audiences, according to the executive, wanted action. They didn't want Godard and Antonioni. Scorsese realized he was now taking orders from a philistine. It wasn't worth the argument. So now here he sat in his apartment pondering what to do. His rising headache made it nearly impossible to concentrate on finding a solution. He scanned the room. Script pages were scattered across the coffee table, the typewriter housed a sheet of paper covered with the filmmaker's manic ramblings. All caps, no spaces. There were empty pill bottles half full, open bottles of wine. A television on in the corner and a circle of johns keeping watch over the apartment. On the tv, John Ford's the Searcher showed John Wayne's Ethan Edwards character seeking revenge. On the wall, a movie poster, John Huston's classic tale of vengeance, Moby Dick. And on the TV table, Scorsese's.44 Magnum, an exact replica weapon of choice of his revenge fueled character, Travis Bickle. Scorsese picked up the gun and then picked up the phone. Scorsese's friend, the young director Steven Spielberg, fresh off the release of his perfect studio produced box office smash Jaws, ignored the phone and focused on the book he was reading, Jacques Vallee's the Invisible what a group of scientists has discovered about UFO influence on the human race. Another of Scorsese's friends, another director, Brian De Palma, the man responsible for introducing Scorsese to Robert De Niro, he too ignored the ringing telephone on his nightstand. Surrounded by notes with angry messages from a nerdy horror author up in Maine. De Palma ignored those messages just as he ignored his phone. Instead he rolled over to focus on the naked beach blanket hippie blonde in his bed. The phone at director John Milius place went unanswered as well. John had other things to do, like pack for his trip to the Philippines where the film he'd written, Apocalypse now for friend Francis Ford Coppola was in production. Word was it was a disaster. And over at Paul Schrader's place, as Paul cleaned his own gun, he too ignored his phone. Except Paul knew it was his friend Marty calling with more bad news about the taxi driver's script that Paul himself had written, which Scorsese was having a hard time finishing. Paul Schrader was as pissed off as John Milius was in a rush, as Brian De Palma was indifferent, as Steven Spielberg was distracted. But Martin Scorsese was determined. So he kept calling and the phones kept ringing until one and then all of his friends heard the distraught state Scorsese was in. On the other end of the line he was like nothing they'd ever heard before. Even for the notoriously high strung Scorsese, this state he was in was serious. Marty was as sleep deprived as Travis Bickle and on twice as many pills. His anger was as palpable as the LA smog on a scorching summer day. He was rambling like a madman talking twice as fast as normal. Something about the cocksuck studio fuck with the ricotta cheese for brains. How the soulless automaton didn't want violence. Well then how would he deal with this kind of violence? The kind that drove a young promising director to blasting his own brains all over the walls of his apartment. They all moved with sudden urgency into their cars, racing through the streets of Hollywood, up into the deadman curves of Mulholl, nearly killing themselves in the process. One by one, all four directors wheeled into Scorsese's driveway at the same time, exited their cars, raced to the locked front door, tried pushing it open, banged on it profusely, rang the doorbell, readied themselves to bataram it down with all their combined force. And then.