‘You Talkin’ to Me?’ How Robert De Niro Came Up With His Famous ‘Taxi Driver’ Line
What To Know
- Robert De Niro improvised the iconic “You talkin’ to me?” line in Taxi Driver.
- He drew inspiration from a New York comedy routine during the film’s final week of shooting.
- The quote has become one of the most famous in movie history.
Even if you haven’t seen Taxi Driver — the 1976 Martin Scorsese neo-noir film celebrating its 50th anniversary on February 8 — you surely know its most famous scene. Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle, the titular cabbie driven to madness by the mean streets of New York, practices intimidating his foes in a mirror.
“You talkin’ to me?” he says. “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here. Who the f*** do you think you’re talking to?”
Over the last half-century, that quote has become iconic. The American Film Institute ranked it at No. 10 on its 100 Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time list, between “Fasten your seatbelts — it’s going to be a bumpy night” from All About Eve and “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate” from Cool Hand Luke.
Robert De Niro improvised the line
As Scorsese confirmed in his MasterClass seminar, De Niro ad-libbed the famous line. The filmmaker said Taxi Driver was “so strongly scripted” by screenwriter Paul Schrader that “it allowed us to open up two or three scenes” — and the mirror monologue was the “most exciting” of those improvisations, he said.
“That was in the last week of shooting,” Scorsese remembered. “And that’s when we were over schedule, and I knew that it’s written in the script that he’s practicing with these guns … in front of the mirror. He’s acting out this fantasy. But I want him to say something. We find ourselves sneaking the scene into the schedule.”
He added, “What you see on screen is really him revving up and finding that moment, finding that character, fully. But that really took, I’d say, eight weeks of shooting before getting to that, and we shot it within two hours.”
Apparently, the actor found inspiration in a comedy routine. “[De Niro] asked me what he would say, and I said, ‘Well, he’s a little kid playing with guns and acting tough.’” Schrader told the Sabotage Times. “So De Niro used this rap that an underground New York comedian had been using at the same time as the basis for his lines.”
The line has resurfaced in many films, including De Niro quoting himself
As the YouTube channel AFX illustrates in a compilation, many TV shows and movies have quoted or riffed on the “You talkin’ to me” line. On the big screen, Zac Efron dressed up as Travis Bickle and delivered the line in Neighbors. And Michael J. Fox uttered the line in back-to-back films on his résumé: 1990’s Back to the Future Part III and 1991’s The Hard Way.
The live-action films About Last Night, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, The Expendables 2, and the Parent Trap remake also reuse the line, as do the animated films The Lion King, Balto III: Wings of Change, The Land Before Time VI: The Secret of Saurus Rock. And there’s even a 1987 film called You Talkin’ to Me? about a young actor fixated on Travis Bickle.
Oh, and De Niro even quoted himself in the 2000 film The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle as he played the villainous Fearless Leader. “Are you talking to me?” De Niro’s character says in a high-pitched German accent as his stooges Boris Badenov (Jason Alexander) and Natasha Fatale (Rene Russo) give him an update on catching the cartoon characters. “Well, I’m the only one here, so you must be talking to me… and you are lying!”
Many TV shows & video games have also used the quote
Variations on the theme appear in animated TV shows for kids (Hey Arnold, Rugrats, and twice in Animaniacs) and adults (The Simpsons, South Park, and twice in American Dad).
In live-action TV, the line has popped up in procedurals (NCIS: Los Angeles, CSI: NY), mockumentary comedies (The Office, Parks and Recreation) and sitcoms (Roseanne, Home Improvement), genre fare (Doctor Who, Supernatural) hospital shows (Grey’s Anatomy, ER), a prestige drama (The Sopranos), and even a teen drama (the reboot 90210).
The website TV Tropes cites many more “You talkin’ to me” instances, including references in the Sonic the Hedgehog, Tales of Monkey Island, Tomb Raider, and Baldur’s Gate video game franchises. De Niro must be proud!
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