Paul Schrader

Screenwriter in the Hands of an Angry God

Paul Schrader never saw a movie until he was seventeen. He grew up in a family that was fairly strict—they were devout Calvinists, a fact that definitely left an impact on Schrader's work. Like his character, Travis Bickle, Schrader is interested in, and maybe even obsessed by, what the Calvinists call "the total depravity of man"—the idea that original sin renders human beings incapable of performing any good deeds without the grace of God.

Rebelling against his background, Schrader tried to jump into the movie biz, having success with the script for the Robert Mitchum movie, Yakuza. However, despite this initial flush of victory, Schrader's life started to plummet. He left his wife for another woman, who then proceeded to dump him. He also had a falling out with his mentor, the esteemed movie critic, Pauline Kael. At one point, Schrader was sleeping in his car and driving around the late night porno theaters—a lot like Travis Bickle. It was a personal low point to say the least. (Source)

Inside the Assassin's Mind

Schrader said that, in writing Taxi Driver, and creating Bickle as a character, he was inspired by his own state of mind, by the diaries of Arthur Bremer—the guy who tried to assassinate segregationist politician George Wallace—and by Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground. Schrader also said that he was influenced by Truman Capote's true-crime book In Cold Blood, except in reverse: Instead of giving lots of background on the murderers like In Cold Blood did, Schrader decided to give Travis Bickle as little background as possible, making him look like a man who comes from nowhere.

According to legend, Schrader worked on the script with a loaded gun on his desk—to inspire him into a more intense frame of mind. (It worked.)

After showing the screenplay to lots of movie people—Schrader notes that it was "turned down by everybody"—it finally found a home with producers Julia and Michael Phillips and with director Martin Scorsese. Scorsese aided Schrader in refining the script for the next few years, from 1972, until Taxi Driver finally came out in 1976.

Obviously it was a big hit, and Schrader became one of the most famous screenwriters of all time—he started directing stuff too. He co-wrote one of Scorsese's other masterpieces, Raging Bull (similar to Taxi Driver in that it's about an angry guy whose machismo goes to dangerous extremes), and wrote the script for Scorsese's super-controversial The Last Temptation of Christ. He also wrote and directed a bunch of movies: American Gigolo, Light Sleeper, and The Walker.