"Jodie Foster, sitting for a new interview on a film she's been discussing for almost five decades, recounts how "gleeful" her director was to be making movies. "He was excited about how the blood got made," Foster says, her eyes widening to mimic Scorsese's delight. "And, when he was gonna blow the guy's head off, how they put little pieces of Styrofoam in the blood so it would attach to the wall and stick there.""
"'We had a great time,' Scorsese says. But then he pivots. He starts talking about how the studio 'got very angry at us because of the violence,' because of the language, because of the 'disturbing' depiction of New York City's 'seedy' underbelly. When the MPAA slapped 'Taxi Driver' with an X-rating, Columbia Pictures told Scorsese to edit it down to an R-rating - or they would."
The director displayed gleeful enthusiasm for practical effects, delighting in how staged blood was made and how it would adhere to walls. The film provoked studio anger over its violence, language, and a disturbing portrait of New York's seedy underbelly, prompting an MPAA X-rating and demands to trim the film to an R. The director reacted with near-hysteria, considering retrieving or destroying the rough cut rather than allow the studio to alter it. Colleagues were consulted and recalled his intense response, illustrating the tension between creative obsession and institutional pressure.
Read at IndieWire
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