Martin Scorsese, a big-shot filmmaker, is known for showing his harsh and sometimes super violent side of American life. His movies are no joke, which made him a super famous director from the ’70s till now.
Scorsese has directed twenty-seven feature-length narrative films and seventeen feature-length documentary films to date. He won an Oscar for his movie The Departed (2006).
He is one of the most important filmmakers, especially in the late 1900s and early 2000s, producing movies like The Aviator, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas.
His movie Taxi Driver is one of his masterpieces, which shows how loneliness can hit you hard, like a virus, and can become your life support. The movie earned four Academy Award nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Actor’ for De Niro.
Dustin Hoffman dissed Taxi Driver and Labeled its Director As “Crazy”
Before De Niro was cast as Travis Bickle, they were eyeing other big names like Dustin Hoffman. Right, the same actor who rocked it in The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy, with both movies earning him Oscar nods.
It’s shocking to imagine an actor brushing off one of Scorsese’s awesome ideas. But the scoop is — back in the day, Scorsese wasn’t the mega-respected director he is now. So, when Hoffman discussed Taxi Driver, he didn’t like the idea of the director even referring to him as “crazy.” He explained this to Digital Spy in 2007,
“I remember meeting Martin Scorsese. He had no script, and I didn’t even know who he was. I hadn’t seen any of his films, and he talked a mile a minute, telling me what the movie would be about. I was thinking, ‘What is he talking about?’ I thought the guy was crazy! The film was Taxi Driver. I made so many dumb mistakes [turning down movies]. The list is endless.”
Instead of Taxi Driver, the actor did two flicks in the same year (1976). First up was All the President’s Men, where he teamed up with Robert Redford. Then he hooked back up with his Midnight Cowboy director, John Schlesinger, for Marathon Man, which was a box-office hit.
Dustin Hoffman Regrets Turning Down Some of the Major Classics
Dustin Hoffman noted he has certainly had a few oops moments over his long career. In an interview with TODAY, the 78-year-old spilled the beans, saying he had a weird issue with success. He loved the Close Encounters of the Third Kind (one of the all-time sci-fi greats!) script in 1977 but still didn’t want to do the role. He continued saying:
“I turned Woody Allen down four times. I turned ‘Schindlers List’ down. I turned [director Frederico] Fellini down. I turned [director Ingmar] Bergman down.”
It’s clear that besides Taxi Driver, he made the mistake of turning down some of the serious movie classics. According to an interview with The Guardian in 2012, the Hollywood star said he also passed on movies like Amistad, the romance movie Always.
Watch Taxi Driver on Netflix.
Also read: Digital Spy, TODAY
