Travis Bickle

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Travis Bickle
Travis Bickle at the rally of Senator Palantine
First appearance	Taxi Driver
Information
Aliases	Henry Krinkle
Age	26
Year of birth	c. 1950
Year of death	1976(?)
Occupation	Taxi driver
Portrayed by	Robert De Niro
Created by	Paul Schrader

Travis Bickle is a fictional character, the narrator and protagonist of Martin Scorsese's 1976 film Taxi Driver, in which he is played by Robert De Niro.

Bickle was named the 30th greatest film villain in AFI's top 50 movie villains of all time.

Bickle is a former Marine who served in Vietnam. He is socially inept, has no apparent friends, and is suffering from insomnia. He takes a job as a graveyard shift taxi driver to occupy his time. As he works late at night in dangerous neighborhoods, his customers tend to include pimps, drug addicts, and thieves. He is visibly disgusted by them, and begins fantasizing about "cleansing" such "filth" from the streets.

Bickle becomes smitten with a woman, Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who works in the local campaign office of a presidential candidate, a Senator Palantine. He often watches Betsy from his cab, and finally enters the office with the pretense of wanting to support the would-be candidate, and asks her out. They meet for coffee, and Betsy finds him odd but intriguing, and agrees to see him again. This time, he takes her to the porno movie theater he frequents, apparently seeing nothing unusual in his choice of date venue. She is appalled and refuses to see him again.

After Betsy rejects him, Bickle becomes increasingly paranoid and starts acting out his vigilante fantasies. He buys several guns and takes to carrying them, and knives secreted about his person — taped to his limbs, for example, or in hidden spring-loaded holsters. He famously practices a menacing, tough guy swagger in the mirror — You talkin' to me? — to use on whomever angers him. Eventually, he shaves his head into a Mohawk. He attends one of Palantine's speeches, apparently intent on shooting him. He draws the attention of Secret Service agents and flees, so it is never clear whether he would have carried out the assassination.

He also becomes obsessed with "saving" Iris (Jodie Foster), a 12-year-old prostitute he has seen on his route. He pays her pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel), for her time, but refuses to have sex with her, trying instead to persuade her to leave prostitution and return home to her parents. Iris rebuffs him, only increasing his anger and resolve to take her away from a dangerous life. He shoots and kills Sport, but is wounded in the process. He goes on a rampage through a brothel in which Iris is servicing a client, killing the client and a bouncer with a wounded arm.

The newspapers hail Bickle as a hero for rescuing Iris. While in the hospital, he receives a letter from her parents, thanking him profusely for returning their daughter to them (she had been sent home after the police arrived and found out she was a runaway). After recovering, he sees Betsy, who grants him an admiring, seductive smile.

[edit] Pop culture references

• Bickle's first name was an homage to the Mick Travis character (played by Malcolm McDowell) in If... (1968) and O Lucky Man! (1973), the latter of which was one of Scorsese's favorite films at the time.
• The Clash song "Red Angel Dragnet" from their album, Combat Rock, refers to Bickle, and quotes dialogue from the film.
• Rancid's 2003 album Indestructible includes the song "Travis Bickle."
• Blood for Blood repeatedly sample the musical score from the film, along with voice clips.
• The Scientists' song "If It's The Last Thing I Do" (a.k.a. "Travis") starts "Sometimes I feel like Travis Bickle/ Just wanna shoot up all the bad lurking in this town".
• Australian hip hop band Valentia have a song called "Travis", in reference to Travis Bickle, from their 2005 release Trapped in a Metaphor.
• Millencolin's song "Botanic Mistress", from their album Home from Home, begins with the line "I felt like Travis Bickle, tyrannical, lonely and blue", and later in the song has "And I'll feel like Bickle once more, And maybe I will lose it, Go insane and start a gun war?!".
• The Beastie Boys reference Travis Bickle in the song "High Plains Drifter", from their 1989 album Paul's Boutique, with the line "Bust a Travis Bickle when I feel that I'm getting pushed".
• Pantera samples sounds and dialogue from movie in their cover of Poison Idea's song "The Badge", which appears on The Crow soundtrack.
• Henry Rollins' video for the single "Disconnect" features him as the Travis Bickle character.
• Xzibit's album At The Speed Of Life includes sounds and dialogue from the movie in his song "At the Speed of Life".
• Lou Reed's song "Doin' the things that we want to" off his New Sensations album includes the line, "Here's to Travis Bickle and here's to Johnny Boy growin' up on the mean streets of New York." This is a reference to De Niro's earlier performance in Scorsese's film Mean Streets.
• Chris Farley's hotel scene in Beverly Hills Ninja portrays him practicing his De Niro impression on a mirror, with some improvisation.
• In Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film La Haine, one of the chief protagonists, Vinz, re-enacts Bickle's monologue in front of his mirror with a policeman's gun.
• The Powerman 5000 song "Even Superman Shot Himself" off of the album Mega!! Kung Fu Radio uses the lyric "Like Travis Bickle said, 'Suck on this'." The song "Organizized" came from a line of dialogue from the movie: "one of these days I gotta get myself organizized."
• In the film Trainspotting, murals depicting characters from Taxi Driver are visible in the bar scene, including one of Bickle as Mark Renton leans against the wall.
• In the song "Just Another Victim," by Helmet and House Of Pain (Featured on the OST For the film Judgment Night) the lyrics include: "Holy diver I'm a survivor/Feeling like DeNiro In Taxi Driver/With Jodie Foster And Harvey Keitel..."
• The 2005 video game Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories features a bonus taxicab dubbed "Bickle '76", a reference to both Travis Bickle and the year of Taxi Driver's theatrical release.
• In an issue of Transmetropolitan, Spider Jerusalem and his filthy assistants exit a cab owned by the Bickle Taxi Co., and their driver looks like Bickle, complete with mohawk.
• In the 2000 film The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, the character of Fearless Leader (played by Robert De Niro) delivers a version of Travis Bickle's "Are you talking to me?" dialogue.
• In the Element Skateboards film, "Element World Tour", the sound bite heard before Reese Forbes' part is taken from Travis Bickle's narrative about getting into shape.