Scorsese, DeNiro to Create New “Taxi Driver” With Von Trier?

 
An interesting bit of news coming out of Germany’s Berlinale Film Festival is only slightly more odd than the idea of Werner Herzog redoing Abel Ferrara’s “Bad Lieutenant” with Nic Gage (which, if you don’t remember, actually happened). According to multiple reports coming out of Berlin, Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro are currently mulling a remake of of their classic 1976 portrait of paranoia, “Taxi Driver”, with the assistance of Danish cinematic gadfly Lars Von Trier. Lest you think this would be a straight-ahead sequel or a steroid-injected retread, sources say that Von Trier will make DeNiro and Scorsese jump through a series of conceptual hoops during this artistic exercise—much as he tortured his cinematic hero, director Jørgen Leth, when he challenged him to re-film his career-making short, “The Perfect Human”, under several different rules or “obstructions” in “The Five Obstructions”. Does this mean we’ll see “Taxi Driver” shot in Oklahoma, or, perhaps, redone in claymation? There’s no official word yet, but Scorsese did tell the Guardian that, “Bob De Niro and I are talking about something that has to do with that world. There’s no doubt about that. We’re working on something like that. But it’s from the vantage point of older men looking back. None of this running around stuff.” Interesting. We’ll keep you looped.

To contemplate a remake of your own while cruising around Scorcese and DeNiro’s locations for the original movie, pick up a copy of our “Film + Travel” guidebooks.
 
“‘Taxi Driver’ Remake the Buzz of Berlin” (Variety)
Scorsese Eyes New Fare for Taxi Driver (Guardian UK)
 
Image courtesy of Sony Video.