One of Martin Scorsese’s greatest movies is Taxi Driver, and his love for a John Wayne Western contributed to its creation. Taxi Driver tells the story of Travis Bickle, a Vietnam veteran who doesn’t fit into the real world and works as a cab driver in New York City. He meets a political campaign volunteer that he has fallen for (Cybill Shepherd) and a teenage prosтιтute he is determined to save from life on the streets (Jodie Foster). This leads to a violent confrontation with her pimp that results in bloodshed thanks to the vigilante antihero.

The film was controversial when released due to its violence, which almost resulted in an X-rating by the MPAA. It received intense criticism when released, but critics and audiences alike eventually deemed it a masterpiece. One thing that might have slipped past many critics and fans who dismissed it upfront was that it had the exact storyline of a beloved John Wayne Western that came out 20 years earlier. Thanks to the admiration of both Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader, Taxi Driver is a loose remake of the John Ford classic The Searchers.

Martin Scorsese’s Favorite John Wayne Movie Is The Searchers & It Directly Inspired Taxi Driver

Martin Scorsese First Saw The Searchers When He Was 13

Martin Scorsese has a great love of classic American cinema. He has an immense admiration for two of the earliest forms of American storytelling in cinema – the Western and the gangster films. While Scorsese mastered the gangster genre himself, he had such a deep love for Westerns that he brought some of those storytelling aspects into his films throughout his career. This is no more evident than with the John Wayne movie The Searchers. In an interview with AFI, Scorsese says he watched The Searchers when he was 13, and it had an undeniable impact on him.

Scorsese explained how this movie changed his view of John Wayne and the Western genre. He said Wayne typically played a kind and good man, but in The Searchers, Wayne carried the racist hatred that was seeping into America at the time. He said Ethan Edwards had such racist hatred toward others that he, at one time in the film, sH๏τ out both of a ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Native American’s eyes so he couldn’t go to his afterlife and his spirit would be forced to wander forever. That hatred was so deep and disturbing that it influenced Scorsese’s films years later.

Scorsese’s debut film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, featured the main character, J.R. (Harvey Keitel), talking about John Wayne and The Searchers. The film also made an appearance in Mean Streets. However, it was not more evident than in Taxi Driver. Part of that is the fact that Paul Schrader wrote the script, and he also had such a deep love for The Searchers that he later made his own loose version of the story with Hardcore.

How Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle & The Searchers’ Ethan Edwards Are Alike

Both Are Former Veterans, Seeking To Save A Woman, Who Live With Hate In Their Hearts

In the API interview, Martin Scorsese discussed Ethan Edwards and The Searchers, and more than once, he said “Travis” instead of Ethan. It was clear that he was explaining the parallel between the two characters. Scorsese said Ethan was “terrifying” and “acts out the worst aspects of racism in our country.” He then dropped in Travis’s name.

“It’s the old story. Travis has a fantasy. What makes him crazy and what makes another person not crazy is that Travis acts it out. So, this man [Ethan Edwards] is acting it out and he becomes obsessive.”

There is so much that ties Ethan Edwards from The Searchers and Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver together. Both are war veterans, with Ethan fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War and Travis, a Vietnam veteran. Both men are outsiders. While Edwards still has a family, he is shown as distant from them, and few people speak to him. Travis, on the other hand, is entirely alone. Then, the two men develop an unhealthy obsession when a woman they know is put in a compromising situation.

In The Searchers, a Comanche tribe abducts Ethan’s niece who, five years later, lives peacefully with them. Ethan has one goal, and that is to kill her to keep her from living this unclean life. He also wants to kill every Native American he can along the way. Travis befriends a teenage prosтιтute (Jodie Foster), and he wants to rescue her from her pimp. Neither the niece nor the prosтιтute asks to be saved, and neither might want to be saved, but these men are so toxic and filled with hate that the women’s choices mean nothing to them.

Finally, at the end, both men make their final moves, and this is where they change their stance. Ethan chooses not to kill his niece, but still slaughters the Comanche tribe she lived with. He brings her back home, and the film ends with him outside, framed by the doorway, as it closes, left alone. In Taxi Driver, Travis kills the pimp, and everyone he feels is controlling the young woman, but when he finishes, he is alone, possibly dying, and still has nothing to show for it. Both men end their films broken and still alone.