“Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads…here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up. Here is…”
The Sun‘s Simon Boyle is reporting that Robert De Niro will reprise Travis Bickle in a currently lensing Uber ad campaign. De Niro will be riffing on the Bickle thing (“You talkin’ to me?”) in a series of spots being filmed in London this week. “He’s going to be Travis Bickle, saying some phrases and playing up to it,” etc.
First of all, Bickle died in that 1975 East Village shoot-out. As his soul hovered over the carnage Bickle dreamt that blowing away three guys (Harvey Keitel‘s “Sport,” that gray-haired asshole in the brown suit, that creepy-looking detective with the white shoes) had not only restored his life and made him into a hero (bullshit) but also persuaded Cybill Shepherd to find him attractive, but he’s dead so fucking forget it.
Secondly, even if Bickle had lived it would be meaningless to show him driving an Uber at 80 years of age. Complete bullshit.
However, if the Uber ads use the young Bickle of the mid ’70s…then we’d have something. Then all would be cool.