Leonardo DiCaprio names the greatest independent movie of all time
Though he is one of the biggest Hollywood stars in the world, Leonardo DiCaprio is no stranger to the occasional independent project. Notably, he infamously appeared in Don’s Plum, a 2001 film shot five years earlier. That said, the release was eventually blocked by DiCaprio and co-star Tobey Maguire, who claimed they had been misled about the film’s intended length, resulting in a legal dispute with the director.
In terms of indies that he admires, DiCaprio’s answer is obvious but also entirely valid. In conversation with NPR, the star picked out a movie made by one of his favourite collaborators, Martin Scorsese, namely the 1976 classic Taxi Driver. He called it “the greatest independent film of all time”, singling out the scene where Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) takes a woman on a date to see a pornographic film. DiCaprio stated that this moment was the first time he ever felt embarrassed on behalf of a fictional character.
Widely regarded as one of Martin Scorsese’s finest works—and one of the greatest films of all time—Taxi Driver was made on a remarkably modest budget of $1.9 million. Even in the mid-1970s, that didn’t go far, prompting several actors and Scorsese himself to take pay cuts to ensure the film could be made. Initially, no one was interested in financing the project. It wasn’t until Scorsese directed Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, starring Ellen Burstyn—then a hot commodity following her success in The Exorcist—that financiers were finally convinced to back the film.
Scorsese wanted Taxi Driver to feel real, so it was mostly filmed on actual New York streets. This was during a time period when the city was not a safe place, especially at night, as a busted economy resulted in a wave of lawlessness. In the end, though, this combination of a low budget and strict time constraints might have actually benefited the film, as cinematographer Michael Chapman told The Hollywood Reporter.
“Much of the way the movie looks was dictated by the fact that we didn’t have a lot of time and didn’t have a lot of money and therefore couldn’t do traditional things,” he explained. “We couldn’t light the streets with big lights. We had to take our level of light down to let New York light itself.”
Chapman revealed that he was inspired by the work of Raoul Coutard, best known for working alongside French New Wave icon Jean-Luc Godard. “That turned out to be exactly the right thing to do,” he admitted. “I was eager to do it in a terrified sort of way. Thank God we didn’t have anymore time or money.”
DiCaprio’s admiration for Taxi Driver paid off in the long run, as he has appeared in many Scorsese films since his own ascension to stardom. They first teamed up for Gangs of New York, in which the actor portrayed the leader of a mob of Irish Catholics. Scorsese then directed DiCaprio’s next two outings, The Aviator and The Departed, and the two have continued to work together as recently as 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
Speaking of Scorsese’s Osage epic, it also gave DiCaprio a chance to star alongside Bickle himself, Robert De Niro, although the two actors had worked together many times before. In 1993, the Titanic star made his feature film debut in the biographical drama This Boy’s Life. A teenage DiCaprio appears as Toby Wolff, a young man trying to get through life whilst also facing the ire of his abusive stepfather, played by De Niro.
