“You talkin’ to me?”
Robert De Niro’s script reveals improvised line
Forty years ago, Taxi Driver (1976) was released to critical and popular acclaim and its most famous line, “You talkin’ to me?” instantly became one of the most memorable lines in film history. The film was the second of eight feature film collaborations (so far) between Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese and established Paul Schrader as one of Hollywood’s most important screenwriters.
Robert De Niro’s copy of the Taxi Driver script includes his handwritten notes and provides insight into how he constructed his performance and how improvisation is incorporated into the filmmaking process. This page shows Travis Bickle, the film’s main character, alone in his apartment, rehearsing for an impending violent confrontation. “You talkin’ to me?” is recorded only as a note — “Mirror thing here?” — at the bottom of the page.
What an edited script can reveal
This page is characteristic of De Niro’s scripts. Extensive background research and meticulous script interpretation are important parts of his process and are evident throughout his collection at the Ransom Center. Since the construction of a film performance is an understudied area in cinema studies, the De Niro archive is particularly rich with opportunities for research.
The Ransom Center holds the archives of both Robert De Niro and Paul Schrader. Both include rich materials related to their collaborations with each other and with Martin Scorsese.
Steve Wilson is Curator of Film at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin. The Ransom Center is an internationally renowned humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin that encourages discovery, inspires creativity, and advances understanding of the humanities for a broad and diverse audience through the preservation and sharing of its extraordinary collections.
