Writer-Director Paul Schrader Calls This Movie "Three and a Half Hours in the Company of an Idiot"

...and Paul Schrader wrote Taxi Driver as directed by "his friend," Martin Scorsese.

Schrader gave out an interview (as I post this at the end of December, 2023) and covered a few topics. While he went out of his way to speak to Martin Scorsese as his friend and colleage, and brilliant, Schrader(after all, an accomplished screenwriter himself) felt the now-famous decision to give Leo (at Leo's request) the role of the killer rather than of the FBI man on the case...ended up in Schrader's case feeling "I was forced to spend three and a half hours in the company of an idiot."

In the same interview, Schrader sheds a little light on the "final movie" that Quentin Tarantino intends to make in 2024 -- The Movie Critic. Schrader wrote a violent revenge movie called "Rolling Thunder" in 1977 and Tarantino evidently has asked to use the UNFILMED ending of that movie in some way in "The Movie Critic." Evidently "The Movie Critic," set in 1977, will use clips from REAL 1970s movies AND some re-shoots of material. "Rolling Thunder" is the one in which bad guys force William Devane's hand down his garbage disposal and kill his family. Devane gets a hook on his hand and comes back(with Tommy Lee Jones) for revenge. Devane and Jones play Vietnam prisoners of war.

Its an interesting little interview with the now elderly Schrader.