Taxi Driver and Fight Club

'Cause movies are better than sleep.

Can't sleep? Then I've got the double feature for you. Insomnia-induced insanity or maybe insanity-induced insomnia link these two brutal features. Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), the Taxi Driver of the title, rolls through the streets of New York in his cab all night because of his inability to sleep. Fight Club's Narrator (Ed Norton) visits self-help encounter groups to work through his sleeplessness. Both characters start out a little tweaked and become completely twisted by the end of their respective films.

Fight Club is Peter Pan with sack. The Narrator, like Pan's Wendy, straddles adulthood and childhood with unease. A magical being enters his life, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), who teaches the Buddhist lesson that one must refute the master and look to oneself. The only real difference is that Peter Pan teaches his lessons with a sprinkling of Pixie Dust while Tyler does teaching while sprinkling the barroom basement with your pixie blood.

With Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese makes a movie that rises above the already masterful script of Paul Schrader. With a dash of The Searchers (One of Scorsese's favorites) Travis Bickle becomes obsessed with a girl (Jodie Foster) under the "protection" of a "savage" (Harvey Keitel). Simultaneously of its time and timeless, Taxi Driver takes on the plight of Vietnam vets returning stateside and trying to cope while still ensuring that the Mohawk will remain a symbol of pissed off youth long after punk rock fills classic radio station play lists.

Both of these films brim with righteous anger at the world. If you are inclined to release raging tirades at traffic, or answer an unexpected tap on the shoulder with a raised fist this double feature is for you. So shave that head, stay up late and wash that filth from the streets, you space monkey.

Jordan Rosa

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