“That’s the worst fucking idea I’ve ever heard”: the Robert De Niro sequel shut down in seconds
Can a sequel ever be better than the movie it comes after? Sometimes, a sequel proves to be just as good, if not better, than its predecessor, like The Godfather Part II. Other times, sequels threaten to taint the legacy of the first movie, like Exorcist II: The Heretic. A good sequel can’t just be a cash grab, which is sadly often the case.
In Scream 2, resident movie buff Randy claims that “by definition alone, they’re inferior films”. He argues with other cinema lovers about the merits of sequels in a meta-conversation about the industry, suggesting the divisiveness of the topic. It would not be unreasonable to say that while there have been some great sequels, some movies just don’t need them.
That is certainly the case for a specific Robert De Niro film that the actor was reportedly interested in making a sequel for – an idea that was instantly shot down. The actor has appeared in many acclaimed movies during his career, receiving his first Academy Award win from a sequel: The Godfather Part II. During the 1970s, he rose to become a key figure in the New Hollywood era, soon following his performance in the Oscar-winning film with a leading role in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
It was his second collaboration with Scorsese after Mean Streets, cementing them as an iconic Hollywood pairing who would continue to work with each other for decades to come. They went on to work on movies like Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon together, but De Niro once had an idea for another project that never came to fruition — Taxi Driver 2.
When Taxi Driver was released, it quickly became a cult favourite, winning a Palme d’Or and influencing many filmmakers and actors. Even Meryl Streep felt inspired to audition for movie roles after watching De Niro’s performance as the anti-hero Travis Bickle. A complex character, he drives around the streets of New York at night as a way to keep his mind occupied. Suffering from PTSD-induced insomnia, he spends his nights picking up a range of characters, observing the urban decay and corruption all around him. Bickle descends further into madness as he sets out to kill a politician and a pimp, becoming more violent and delusional.
In an interview with IndieWire, Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver, explained that De Niro had come up with an idea to make a sequel, which he was not impressed by. “Robert is the one who wanted to do that. He asked Marty and I. Now, I don’t want to slag De Niro, but a lot of his decisions sometimes have financial motivations. I’m sure someone had said to him, ‘You know, if you do Taxi Driver 2, they can pay.’”
He continued, “So he pressed Marty on it, and Marty asked me, and I said, ‘Marty, that’s the worst fucking idea I’ve ever heard.’ He said, ‘Yeah, but you tell him. Let’s have dinner.’ So we had dinner at Bob’s restaurant, and Bob was talking about it. I said, ‘Wow, that’s the worst fucking idea I’ve ever heard. That character dies at the end of that movie or dies shortly thereafter. He’s gone.'”
“‘Oh, but maybe there is a version of him that I could do. Maybe he became Ted Kaczynski, and maybe he’s in a cabin somewhere and just sitting there, making letter bombs. Now, that would be cool. That would be a nice Travis. He doesn’t have a cab anymore. He just sits there making letter bombs,’ But Bob didn’t cotton to that idea, either,” he concluded.
