Yet, Scorsese also told David Thompson, “I was shocked by the way audiences took the violence [in Taxi Driver]. Previously I’d been surprised by audience reaction to The Wild Bunch, which I saw in a Warner Brothers screening room with a friend and loved. But a week later I took some friends to see it in a theatre and it was as if the violence became an extension of the audience and vice versa.” “Shocked”? Really? You were “shocked”? So let’s get this straight, a Roger Corman alumnus, Martin “Boxcar Bertha” Scorsese, who came within an inch of directing I Escaped from Devil’s Island, directs
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