Writer-director Paul Schrader has reacted to a report that Robert De Niro will reprise his iconic Taxi Driver role of Travis Bickle for an Uber commercial being filmed this week in London.
The report indicates De Niro will be riffing on Bickle’s classic lines in a series of spots. The 1976 Martin Scorsese film is set in a noirish New York, with De Niro’s Travis Bickle cab driver slowly deteriorating into a vigilante. De Niro was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor.
Schrader noted the Uber ad report in a Facebook post.
“Ouch,” he wrote. “Why Bob would do this is beyond my reckoning. But I haven’t seen it. If I’m lucky I never will.”
The line believed to be used in the Uber ad shows the deeply disturbed Bickle beginning to talk to himself in the mirror, role-playing imagined scenarios. “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Well, then who the hell else are you talking – You talking to me? Well, I’m the only one here. Who the f**k do you think you’re talking to?”
Schrader is currently shooting Oh, Canada with Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi.
