I kind of get the idea he was either a non-combat guy like a driver or a clerk or cook, or maybe he was even a 4-F who never served at all and bought his jacket at a surplus store to try to impress people. I know he had his name on the pocket label, but you can have that done easily.
shareIt's like saying do you think the Uni-bomber was a PhD student at U.Michigan? Mentally ill can sometimes get through early adulthood and accomplish things, before going off the deep end. You then ask well why didn't anyone notice, why didn't he get help? It happens. Lee harvey Oswald had mental problems but he was a Marine radar tech stationed in Japan as a 20yo.
shareI wasn't even thinking about mental illness when I began to doubt his combat experience. It's more that Travis just seems like the kind of person who would lie and exaggerate his personal experiences to make himself seem more impressive. He didn't seem to know much about firearms when he was buying the guns from Easy Andy, for one thing.
shareStolen valor back then would have gotten you a beating or worse from unhinged Vietnam vets. It’s not like today where they just harangue you on camera at the mall. Back then a lot of assaults and murders went unreported/unsolved…the world wasn’t very high tech.
No Travis was a combat veteran and his increasingly unstable behavior was at least in part caused by combat stress. Most combat vets have trouble reintegrating back into the civilian world…Travis’ behavior….the isolation, the inability to communicate with people…it’s classic ptsd from combat stress.
I'm seriously not looking to "gotcha" here, and I'm not sure that he has stated this in an interview somewhere else, but I was a "personal eyewitness" to Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader saying at a public pre-screening of Taxi Driver, in 1976 in Los Angeles, during the Q and A, this:
Q: So do you think that DeNiro's time in the military affected his psychology?
A: The movie never says he was in the military.
Schrader was rather dismissive of the question, then he drew out his answer a bit, like "I didn't write that."
But there are problems with my memory, to be sure. Maybe the Q and A went like this:
Q: So do you think that DeNiro's time in Viet Nam affected his psychology?
A: The movie never says he was in Viet Nam.
A mystery of memory. If the issue was just "Viet Nam," DeNiro might have done stateside service or Germany(like Elvis) etc (though how old was DeNiro when he made Taxi Driver?
What's important though, is that I remember Schrader vehemently deny DeNiro as military, or maybe as in Viet Nam.
Wish I could take a time machine back to 1976 and hear Schrader's answer to that question again.
But let's say he was trying to tell us this: I think DeNiro tells the taxi company interviewer that he was in the military, or Viet Nam.
Maybe he lied. Maybe he wsa delusional. Maybe he washed out and IMAGINED that he had been in the Marines or something.
All I can report is that Paul Schrader said "he wasn't" to something.
In the interview scene in the film Travis says he was a Marine who was “honorably discharged, May 1973”. I’m assuming most Marines during that time period were in Vietnam…but I could be wrong.
I don’t get the impression Travis (DeNiro) is lying about that.
https://youtu.be/fQXezb6V2Xc?si=VvAMt3XJFBNaEOpy
In the interview scene in the film Travis says he was a Marine who was “honorably discharged, May 1973”. I’m assuming most Marines during that time period were in Vietnam…but I could be wrong.
--
I'm sure you are not wrong. I had to write this post about what Schrader said (either Travis wasn't in the military or he didn't go to Viet Nam) without having the movie to check out exactly what he said.
The thing is, I remember Schrader saying somethign about Travis not being in the military/Viet Nam, and for years after, since everyone always said that Travis was in Vietnam(because Travis and THE MOVIE say so), I always remembered Schrader saying "no."
Of course, Schrader famously had a drug problem back then, so who knows what he was thinking.'
In fact, I realize this post is a real dead-end for me. We've got the movie and what Travis says. All I've got is a weak memory from 1976 of Schrader saying that. I think this post ends up being "the last word on something I can't prove."
---
I don’t get the impression Travis (DeNiro) is lying about that.
---
Its pretty specific. Marines and 1973. Oh well, I'll leave it to Schrader and the mists of time.
Paul Schrader is still alive as I post this ( 2024 )-- and making snarky comments in the press about Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon ("Three and a half hours in the company of an idiot.")
Maybe someone should ask him that "Travis Bickle Military Viet Nam" question now.
I grew up less than an hour away from a major military base that was a major cog for the US during the time of the Vietnam War. My mother knew civilians that worked there. Not all service people got sent to Vietnam in those days. The officers knew the limitations of the enlisted personnel and some were only good for painting walls or cutting grass. Some of those people stayed in one location their entire time in the service but most were moved around. There were security priorities there and it was important that certain people got moved around so there was little chance that security issues would happen because people got too comfortable. Command always wanted guards to worry about their fellow guards blowing them in if they got lax in procedures. Anyways, Travis could have served in a non-vital or non-crucial capacity during his time in the service.
shareAnyways, Travis could have served in a non-vital or non-crucial capacity during his time in the service.
---
I enter a sensitive area here, but if Travis said he was a Marine...that's pretty tough training(I know a few) and generally requires a certain level of intelligence to do the job that Travis(as played by DeNiro at least) didn't seem to have. Even when he leaped into that karate stance against Albert Brooks(!) my feeling was that Travis wasn't necessarily the real deal. But who knows?
I was just trying to say that not everyone makes the grade when training to be a combat soldier. The Marines would have a use for such a person not only to paint or mow lawn but work in the motor pool or be a cook. Travis might have had a fair grasp on physical training but he most likely had deficiencies that kept him out of combat. In those days the bar was set rather low for recruits unlike today.
shareI felt the same when he was at the firing range, that it was the first time -- but Schrader has answered this question over and over without confirming or denying. He simply says that Vietnam -- if he was there -- didn't create what you see -- i.e., it's no commentary about the effects of war on this character. I think part of his response has to do with the difference between his view and Scorsese's.
shareThat's a very modern opinion--"Angry white guy makes up everything about himself!"
shareYou don't even have to be white. https://twitter.com/darealagentwolf?lang=en
shareTarantino talks about this in his book cinema speculation. He had some good points. And says travis probably never served, and his making it up. Just like letter to is parents
share