Taxi Driver: is there definitive proof that Bickle really was a vet?

I watched Taxi Driver about a year ago and one thing that creeped up was: is this guy really a vet or, like everything else in his life, is it just bullcrap?

I think the movie does not give a 100% definitive answer (perhaps intentionally). Or did I miss a clue?

What do you guys think? He’s telling the truth or he’s just faking it?

 

Since Travis Bickle is a fictional character, you can look at what the creators of the characters intended when they created the character. Paul Schrader's script specifies that Travis is a vet, and Martin Scorsese has said in interviews that Travis is a vet. Although between the script and final movie, Travis was changed from serving in the Army to the Marines.

Within the film itself, there's not anything that evidences Travis not being a vet. But within the film, there is a newspaper clipping at the end of the film which describes Travis serving in the military in Vietnam. Maybe you can rely on the newspaper fact checkers in the movie's world. If you want to insist the newspaper article was wrong, then I guess you could also insist that the whole movie was just a dream by a turtle holding the world on its back, and make up other "what ifs".

This has good explanation of why Travis was a vet:
In the 1976 movie Taxi Driver, was Travis Bickle lying about being in the Marine Corps and serving in Vietnam? - Quora

 

I think he is. He has the jacket, some scarring on his body seen when his shirt is off, and he looks pretty comfortable holding weapons. I reckon his employer could verify his claims during the interview process.

I think giving him the military background makes the viewer more sympathetic of his situation. He isn't just some jerk who wants to hurt people. We can assume some of his troubles is due to the trauma he experienced in the war.

 

In the rules set up by the movie, he was a vet. But it would have helped if the writer, director or actor had served in the military and could have imbued Bickle with at least some semblance of being a vet for the sake of authenticity. If nothing else, vets have a certain understanding of and respect for firearms and don't need to go through sketchy back channels to get them, though it made for one of the most famous scenes in the film.

 

Agreed, there was a very relevant cultural subtext to being a Vietnam war vet in the 1970s that is probably lost on today's audience. Making him a war vet gave him aspects of sympathy that he otherwise would not have had. Plus, it prompts the questions: did PTSD from the war make him this way? Was he always this way? By just making him a vet, but not actually focusing the film on any of this backstory, it invites these kinds of questions from an audience in the 1970s. I think in the context of 1976, it makes more sense and is more powerful to a then-contemporary audience for Travis to be a person in some way damaged by the war, rather than having him as a damaged person who incorporates the war into his personal delusions.

On the other hand, I've gone and read a few interviews with Martin Scorsese about Taxi Driver, and he doesn't mention Travis being a war veteran in any of them. So, if nothing eise, I would say that this aspect of the film does not appear to be particularly important to Scorsese himself.

 

I dunno, one thing I do know Albert Brooks rules in this movie

 

Just says so in his "interview". I saw the film when it was released.

 

I never would have thought he wasn't a vet based on all the clues in the movie (and the script clarifies it more). Contrary to some public opinion, not all vets act or look the same -we are as varied as much of the public is as a whole.

 

Schrader’s inspiration for Travis Bickle was a real historical figure, a (non-veteran) would-be political assassin named Arthur Bremer, who tried to kill George Wallace, and wrote a series of diaries leading up to the attempt, detailing his actions. More broadly, Schrader was also responding to the rise of political assassinations (mostly attempts) that started with RFK in 1968 and grew from there.

Bickle’s being a veteran is, for me, kind of window dressing. He’s clearly a mentally troubled man who happens to be a veteran, and not meant to represent all former Marines, any more than the title character in Maniac Cop is meant to represent all police officers. Making Bickle a veteran might have been a nod to Lee Harvey Oswald (also a former marine).

Regarding the lack of respect for firearms, Bickle is buying a firearm in order to commit political assassination. It makes sense he would try to buy a gun that couldn’t be traced back to him.

 

I scanned the script, it says he wears a jacket, not that he is a veteran. The Quora link is interesting, because directly below the best answer is a guy saying exactly why I am suspicious:

'I have similar suspicions, but for different reasons. Bickle has a childish relationship with weapons and violence, playing with his guns, posing in the mirror practicing tough-guy lines, and wearing mismatched sets of Army-Navy surplus attire. We know he lies about himself, repeating a lie about being on a special mission for the government. His ideas about guns are naive and impressionable; he goes to the black market gun seller looking for a .44 inspired by the impotent ramblings of a cuckold who also fantasizes about violent retribution and ends up buying every gun the dealer pitches to him. His everyday jacket bears a patch with Army paratrooper insignia, and his decision to buzz his hair into a Mohawk before going into “battle” mirrors an Airborne tradition, inconsistent with his supposed identity as a Marine Corps veteran. I see Bickle as a frustrated man looking to the armed forces the same way a teenaged boy would, as a fantasy of power and violence.'

To add to this: the way he scares of Tom with some weird karate stance. It comes off as something he's seen in magazines and tv. Not a trained soldier with actual battle experience.

See above, I think it looks goofy, like he's never had a day of arms training in his life. And a cabbie manager is never going to check references. Did he look like a guy who does that stuff to you?

But hey, it could all be down to the filmmakers not getting the details right. But it would be damn interesting if he really did make it up.

 

His plan to shoot the politician campaigning at a public event in broad daylight with plenty of witnesses around was a pretty good indication that he didn't care about the gun being traced back to him.

 

My experience is as An Army vet and I think I can clarify a couple of points:
1) Many (most) US soldiers do not receive pistol training.
2) some soldiers are very immature regarding weapons and their proper use. I have witnessed many soldiers acting like posers with various weapons, sad but true.

 

It probably wouldn't fit the story if he had been a veterinarian.

 

But he did change his appearance (Mohawk, shades), giving himself a look that his coworkers, or Betsy, might not recognize. Flimsy (especially given his encounters with one of his target’s volunteers), but he is a character with serious problems, who might not have thought this through deeply enough.

 

OP, your thread is about whether there is "proof" about an aspect of a fictional character. In a fictional world, the only way to discuss "proof" and what-is-or-is-not-the-case is to look at what the author intended, and whether the work itself is consistent with one interpretation or another.

I would raise who has the burden of proof to show whether Travis was a vet or not. In this case, I think you have to take a story for what it says the character is, unless someone can show that Travis was not a vet. Otherwise, you could post, "Travis behaves so weird, does anyone have proof that he is not an alien from another planet?" Or you could start a thread pointing out circumstantial evidence in Top Gun that Lt. Maverick is gay, and ask people to prove that Maverick is straight.

You can go down the "death of the author" route, and read the work solely as the reader (you) take it, and ignore any intent of the author. This can range from reading The Lord of The Rings as an allegory about such-and-such (many different theories out there) to reading Top Gun as the story of a man's struggle with his homosexuality.

 

In the interview at the beginning, Travis doesn't seem proud of being a veteran. He just says that he was discharged honorably in 1973 and corrects the guy when he asks him whether he was in the army. If anything he seems slightly embarrassed about it.

IMO there is zero indication that the movie doesn't intend to present him as a genuine vet.

 

Travis, thank you for your service.

 

one thing we know for sure, he is mentally unfit. To interpret his whacky behavior and appearance, clothes, hair as evidence of something that is inconsistent with what a vet would do just misses the mark. It is simply evidence of what a paranoid person with violent fantasies might do.
If you figure in the year that the movie was made it makes good storyline sense that Travis was a Vietnam Vet.
There was no need for a scene to show his discharge papers.

 

Something else worth considering - another inspiration for the movie was John Ford’s movie The Searchers. John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards is a Civil War veteran, and Scorsese and Schrader may have made Bickle a Vietnam veteran as an equivalent.

 

Not sure the words 'proof' and 'fictional character' go together. I'd ask - does the script, soundtrack, camera direction, and mise en scene ever make explicit that this character is supposed to be a Vietnam vet?

My answer - it is suggested but not made made extremely obvious. How boring would it be if everything was.

 

Anyway, it's a good question you raised for discussion. I never really thought about it.

 

.....Albert Brooks ....as Albert Brooks

 

I think there is an awful lot of overthinking regarding this, especially in the Quora link. I think given the time the movie was released, it makes sense for him to be a Vietnam war veteran, and Scorcese was staunchly against that war. Scorcese has not discussed whether he was truly a vet in any of the interviews that I read but most of those described it as a movie about a Vietnam vet.

Interesting topic, though.

 

Not offering this as proof, but related, I always find his line to the Secret Service agent "I was in the Marine Corps... I'm good with crowds" to be kind of alarming.

 

Did someone say Prequel ???