‘Taxi Driver’ At 50 – Paul Schrader Recalls Making Movie History With Scorsese & De Niro: “Columbia Pictures Had Written It Off As An Outlier”

There was a lot going on in 1976. Underdog Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford for the presidency, China’s Chairman Mao Zedong died after 27 years in charge, and Australia passed the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, the first legislation in Australia that enabled First Nations people to claim land rights. While a heatwave swept Europe, pop culture caught fire; Abba put out “Dancing Queen”, The Eagles released their Hotel California album, and, in the year’s last month, The Sex Pistols cursed live on British TV.

But cinema was something else. People still talk in hushed tones about the Oscars that followed, where, for once, five stone-cold American classics made Best Picture: Taxi Driver, Rocky, All the President’s Men, Network and Bound for Glory. It was a glorious year for upsets and firsts; Martin Scorsese was snubbed, neither Dustin Hoffmann nor Robert Redford were even nominated for Best Actor and lost to the recently deceased Peter Finch. With “Evergreen”, from The Way We Were, Barbra Streisand became the first woman to win an Oscar for composing, and Italy’s Foreign-Language entry Seven Beauties made Lina Wertmüller the first woman nominated for Best Director.

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