Pod Insights DISGRACELAND Martin Scorsese (Pt. 2): One Night. One Murder. Five Directors About this episode Hollywood:1975. Martin Scorsese sits in his apartment, enraged. He wants to literally kill the man who is ruining his to-be-released film, Taxi Driver. Scorsese’s friends, filmmakers Stephen Spielberg, Brian De Palma, John Milius, and Paul Schraeder rush to Scorsese’s side to talk him out of committing murder, but when they arrive, their friend Marty acts less like himself and more like his Travis Bickle character from the film he’s trying to save. This is the story of that night.
Martin Scorsese is certainly one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Jake wants to know: who is your favorite filmmaker? Tell us at 617-906-6638, [email protected] , or on socials @disgracelandpod.
This episode contains content that may me disturbing to some listeners, including graphic depictions of violence and self-harm.
This episode was originally published on February 25, 2025.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 This is exactly right.
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1:14 Jake Brennan? I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
1:44 Speaker 04 This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information.
1:52 Speaker 01 Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.
1:56 Jake Brennan? This episode tells the story of a longstanding Hollywood myth, one that Martin Scorsese eventually acknowledged in an interview with Steven Spielberg in 2015. Now Spielberg and director Brian De Palma have both recounted this story on the record in other places as well. Spielberg most notably in the excellent Peter Biskin book Easy Riders and Raging Bulls. I of course have no idea what specific words were spoken during the fateful night in question. However, just as the directors in this story, who are the main characters in this story, Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, John Milius, Paul Schraeder, and Martin Scorsese, just as they have done in the numerous films they've directed depicting real life events,
2:39 Jake Brennan? films like Schindler's List, The Untouchables, Dillinger, Raging Bull, and The Irishman, to name a few, I followed their lead and relied not only on research of the event in question, but also on research of the characters in this story to inform the dialogue herein. Mellow John!
3:10 Jake Brennan? This is a story of one of the greatest movies of all time. A movie that was fictional with real life murder coursing through the filmmaking. And this is a story about one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Actually, it's a story about a couple of the greatest filmmakers of all time. And it's about life, and death, and art, and all the things that make us suckers for great drama. It's a story about one night in particular, one time in Hollywood in particular, and revenge. It's a story about Martin Scorsese and his film Taxi Driver. A film whose composer died only hours after completing the movie's intense score. Great music.
3:55 Jake Brennan? Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Firing Squad Audition MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover by Paul Simon. And why would I play you that specific slice of internal rhyme cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on February 8th, 1976. And that was the day Taxi Driver hit theaters, marking the continuation of one of the greatest careers in filmmaking.
4:36 Jake Brennan? On this episode, life, death, art, revenge. 70s Hollywood and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace Land.
5:21 Jake Brennan? People think making a movie is a lot like making anything else. It's not. It's not like making a record. It's not like writing a book. It's not even like staging a play. It's infinitely more difficult than all of those things. People who make records and write books and stage plays, for the most part, cannot make movies. And there's a reason they don't. Because it's a savage endeavor that will quite literally kill you and destroy your soul if you're not careful and/or lucky or both. Some have compared making a movie to going to war. I've never been to war, so I'm not going to go that far. But I think a better analogy, though also imperfect, would be to say making a movie
6:04 Jake Brennan? is a lot like giving birth. Every day for two years straight.
6:11 Jake Brennan? I was there in the room for the birth of both of my sons. I saw the excruciating pain my wife went through as both of those big-headed Brennans passed through her birth canal. And before you guys send me your hate mail, I ran this analogy by my wife, who sanctioned it. The pain of birth is unimaginable to me, but I know that that pain is concentrated. At the most, we're talking 24 hours, but usually less. Imagine that pain, over and over again, every single day for two years, and now we're getting close to the pain involved with making a movie. Every day, a new fight, a new hassle, a new raging fire to put out, another existential
6:53 Jake Brennan? artistic challenge to navigate, another chip off your soul. I've made records, I've written and published a book, and yes, I even tried getting a big-budget Hollywood movie made with an A-list celebrity involved. And I can tell you, trying to make a movie is a brutal, soul-sucking endeavor that is not for the faint of heart. Hollywood is Sodom disguised as paradise. Its lot's wife bent brutally over the back of a casting couch. Its pimps bobbing through fresh chum for their 10%. Its shameless ambition wafting like beastly pheromones on the back of the Santa Anas. And once you make it over the moat, patrolled by an army of lizard-skinned assistants and
7:37 Jake Brennan? into the hallowed grounds of the studio system, that's when, quote, "all the animals come out: the whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal", unquote. Hollywood is relentless. It never lets you off the hook, no matter how successful you are, no matter how psychotic you are. So listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up.
8:19 Jake Brennan? Martin Scorsese twitched in the cutting room. It had been days since he'd slept. Insomnia, just like the lead character Travis Bickle, the revenge-minded lonesome cabbie motoring Scorsese's first studio film Taxi Driver. Things had been easier on the director's last film, Mean Streets. There was no studio, thus, little oversight. Taxi Driver was a different beast. Columbia Pictures ponyed up nearly $2 million. It might have been the director's vision, but it was their money, and they wanted a return on that money. And they weren't fucking around. And that's why Scorsese couldn't sleep. He needed this final scene of the film to be perfect.
9:04 Jake Brennan? The normally kinetic, fast-talking, East Coast director sat stone still, quietly observing the action on the projected picture. A young Robert De Niro mohawked and shaved for battle, creeping through the crime and grime of 70s New York City, into the climactic scene as the Taxi Driver character Travis Bickle.
9:30 Jake Brennan? Travis walked with purpose from the taxicab to the front stoop. That purpose had been missing from his gait in the earlier scenes. This was the climax. This was the moment the character was building toward all along. Finally, something for him to do, something big. He was going to rescue the little girl and kill anyone who got in his way, even if it meant dying himself. Dying would be a bonus, actually. What had this life given him, anyway? Nothing but loneliness and rage. Rejection at every turn. An extreme inability to relate to anyone or anything except for the needs of a helpless little 12-and-a-half-year-old girl
10:12 Jake Brennan? turned into a prostitute by this scum-of-the-earth pimp, Matthew, aka Sport.
10:20 Jake Brennan? Sport got it first. At close range. Travis shot him on the street outside the brothel with his stub-nosed .38. Travis then stormed inside and confronted the pimp's bagman, who collected the cash from the Johns outside the disgusting smelling room where Iris plied her trade. Travis took aim and fired. This time with the heavy artillery. With the .44 Magnum. The Elephant Killer. But the bagman was no elephant. The bagman raised his hand in defense. The bullet blasted off four of his five fingers. Blood splattered everywhere. All over the brothel's hallway. All over Travis's face. Just then, another gunshot. This one from behind Travis. From Sport. Who somehow survived the close-range bullet from the .38
11:05 Jake Brennan? and made his way into the brothel after Travis. The bullet grazed Travis's neck. More blood. Travis took aim with his .44. Blasted Sport away. And then stumbled into daze toward Iris in that room. Iris was the only thing that mattered. Saving her. Delivering her from this hellscape of a city. Avenging the sins that had been carried out against her. The defiling of this innocent young girl by predators she was powerless against. That dynamic resonated with Travis. He too was powerless. His innocence too had been stripped away by forces he couldn't control. Iris. Iris. Iris.
11:46 Jake Brennan? Travis put two more bullets into Sport for insurance and another into the bagman before making his way to Iris's room. Then the John emerged into the hallway and caught Travis off-guard, firing a bullet into his arm. Travis unloaded a full round into the John. At least three bullets in the face. More to the torso. Blood spewed, red and hot, from the John's cheeks and his chest. The John fell backward into Iris's room. And there she was. She screamed in horror at the dead man, who had just collapsed on the floor. Travis moved toward her but now the bagman was on his feet and on top of Travis. On his back, actually. Screaming. Ignoring him, Travis continued to march toward Iris. Iris was all that mattered. Iris was all there was.
12:30 Jake Brennan? And the bagman managed to tackle Travis to the ground. In the tussle, Travis stabbed him through his hand. Screams filled the whorehouse. Travis grabbed the dead John's gun lying on the floor and shot the screaming bagman through his face. Exiting his brains onto the wall next to Iris. Who was by this point hysterical. Travis's job was done. He'd freed Iris, avenged her stolen innocence, and by extension, his too. He put the gun to the bottom of his chin and pulled the trigger. The chamber was empty.
13:10 Jake Brennan? The scene was perfect. It was as violent a scene as a Hollywood studio had ever produced. Except the movie hadn't yet been fully produced. It was still being edited, and the studio had yet to approve the final cut. Three characters were killed in this fictional scene, and this scene was about to result in a very real death.
13:33 Jake Brennan? Martin Scorsese sat pensively in his Mahone apartment high above Hollywood. The location had been prescribed by doctor's orders. Scorsese's asthma was so bad that his physician required him to live above the L.A. smog line. Hollywood, the only city in the world where this New York director could gain access to the resources needed to direct the kind of personal pictures he wanted to direct, on the same scale as the greats he admired who came before him, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Vincent Minnelli. This city was literally choking him to death. And if it wasn't the city itself, it was the studio. Scorsese had just returned from screening his final cut of Taxi Driver for Columbia studio executive Stanley Jaffe.
14:17 Jake Brennan? Jaffe hated it, too violent. And there was no way in his estimation that Taxi Driver would be granted an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. With the way Scorsese had constructed the final scene, an X rating was almost certain. And an X rating meant a major reduction in revenue. So, from the studio executive's perspective, there was only one option. He demanded Martin Scorsese re-edit the end of Taxi Driver to make it less violent in order to garner a more favorable rating from the MPA.
14:51 Jake Brennan? In the meeting, Scorsese said nothing. The rage inside him shocked him silent. Who was this guy to tell him how to cut his movie? His criticism wasn't reserved only for the end either. The executive, Jaffe, wanted Scorsese to lose the so-called artsy shots of Travis and of New York City from earlier in the film as well. Claiming they were disrupting the momentum and that audiences weren't going to flock to the theaters en masse to see a student art film. They wanted action. They wanted Charles Bronson blasting away bad guys in as many scenes as possible in Death Wish. But you know, not as violent as the ending of Taxi Driver that Scorsese was suggesting. Audiences, according to the executive, wanted action.
15:36 Jake Brennan? They didn't want Godard and Antonioni. Scorsese realized he was now taking orders from a Philistine. It wasn't worth the argument. So now, here he sat, in his apartment, pondering what to do. His rising headache made it nearly impossible to concentrate on finding a solution. He scanned the room. Script pages were scattered across the coffee table. The typewriter housed a sheet of paper covered with the filmmaker's manic ramblings. All caps, no spaces. And there were empty pill bottles, half-full open bottles of wine, a television on in the corner, and a circle of Johns keeping watch over the apartment. On the TV, John Ford's The Searcher showed John Wayne's Ethan Edwards character seeking
16:20 Jake Brennan? revenge. On the wall, a movie poster, John Huston's classic tale of vengeance, Moby Dick. And on the TV table, Scorsese's .44 Magnum. An exact replica, weapon of choice of his revenge-fueled character, Travis Bickle. Scorsese picked up the gun, and then picked up the phone.
16:48 Jake Brennan? Scorsese's friend, the young director, Steven Spielberg, fresh off the release of his perfect-studio-produced box-office smash, Jaws, ignored the phone and focused on the book he was reading: Jacques Vallée's The Invisible College: What a Group of Scientists Has Discovered About UFO Influence on the Human Race. Another of Scorsese's friends, another director, Brian De Palma, the man responsible for introducing Scorsese to Robert De Niro, he too ignored the ringing telephone on his nightstand, surrounded by notes with angry messages from a nerdy horror author up in Maine. De Palma ignored those messages just as he ignored his phone. Instead, he rolled over to focus on the naked beach-blanket hippie blonde in his bed.
17:31 Jake Brennan? The phone at director John Milius's place went unanswered as well. John had other things to do, like pack for his trip to the Philippines where the film he'd written, Apocalypse Now, for friend Francis Ford Coppola, was in production. Word was it was a disaster. And over at Paul Schraeder's place, as Paul cleaned his own gun, he too ignored his phone. Except Paul knew it was his friend Marty, calling with more bad news about the taxi driver's script that Paul himself had written, which Scorsese was having a hard time finishing. Paul Schraeder was as pissed off as John Milius was in a rush as Brian De Palma was indifferent as Steven Spielberg was distracted. But Martin Scorsese was determined. So he kept calling,
18:16 Jake Brennan? and the phones kept ringing, until one and then all of his friends heard the distraught state Scorsese was in on the other end of the line. He was like nothing they'd ever heard before. Even for the notoriously high-strung Scorsese, this state he was in was serious. Marty was as sleep-deprived as Travis Bickle and on twice as many pills. His anger was as palpable as the L.A. smog on a scorching summer day. He was rambling like a madman, talking twice as fast as normal. Something about the cocksuck studio fuck with the ricotta cheese for brains? How the Solus automaton didn't want violence? Well then, how would he deal with this kind of violence? The kind that drove a young, promising director to blasting his own brains all over the walls of his apartment?
19:00 Jake Brennan? They all moved with sudden urgency. Into their cars, racing through the streets of Hollywood, up into the dead man curves of Mulholland, nearly killing themselves in the process. One by one, all four directors wheeled into Scorsese's driveway at the same time. Exited their cars, raced to the locked front door, tried pushing it open, banged on it profusely, rang the doorbell, readied themselves to batter ram it down with all of their combined force, and then...
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20:22 Jake Brennan? I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
20:53 Speaker 00 Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable. So over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party systems: cloud platforms, data pipelines,
21:38 Speaker 00 AI models, software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background. But when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift, organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility they actually have. So to understand the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to speak with IBM's Ona Paula Assis and acts as CIO, Giovanni Daniele, two people who think about these questions every day.
22:10 Speaker 00 Hear the full conversation at ibm.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts.
22:22 Jake Brennan? The massive shotgun blast rang in the new year. January 1, 1972, three years earlier. The shotgun was a substitute for fireworks. John Millius stood on the porch of Margot Kidder's Nicholas Beach A-frame and fired his gun out over the Pacific Ocean. None of Margot's guests were shocked, especially not Margot's boyfriend, Brian De Palma. Guns were always around, and why wouldn't they be? John Millius, who'd written the script for Apocalypse Now, and De Palma, who had written the excellent Hitchcock-style thriller Sisters, starring Kidder in her housemate, Jennifer Salt, and Steven Spielberg, who was also milling about the New Year's Day
23:03 Jake Brennan? party, he'd just released the excellent thriller Duel for Television, and Paul Schraeder, at the time a subversive film critic, but who was working on a script about a lonesome homicidal cab driver. All of these filmmakers were revolutionaries. So yeah, guns were up in the mix. Guns were necessary, if not literally, then figuratively. What these filmmakers were endeavoring to do creatively was high stakes, by any means necessary type stuff. Their goal, both collectively and individually, was as audacious as it was dangerous: to make extremely personal movies with the backing of the major Hollywood studios so that they could reach as wide an audience as possible.
23:48 Jake Brennan? It's not like the Hollywood studios hadn't made big-budget films that reached massive audiences before. Of course they had. But the studios had never turned control of those pictures over to a band of young outsiders who didn't come up as directors through the studios, who came instead from film schools, and who wanted to make movies that expressed their own personal experiences and that spoke to the tumultuous times they were living through and spoke directly to the young people living through those times at that moment. This was before Spielberg's Jaws and before any real success for any of these so-called Hollywood brats. This was the early 1970s. This was a moment in time in Hollywood that had never existed before and would never
24:32 Jake Brennan? exist again. A time when the town was still on a contact high from the success of 1969's Easy Rider, an adult movie written not just about young people, but for young people. The film changed the industry. Studio executives were forced to reckon with the fact that they were losing money because the films they were creating were out of touch. Therefore, they needed fresh creative perspective from young directors who came from outside the studio system, and for the first time in Hollywood's history, came from, like I said, film school.
25:06 Jake Brennan? That's where this group of young filmmakers came from. And that's why the mood was so jubilant. They knew that not only were they revolutionaries, some of them literally toting guns, they knew that they had Hollywood by the balls. And it was only a matter of time before one or all of them broke through in a big way.
25:25 Jake Brennan? The confidence did not, however, extend to Martin Scorsese, who was, at that moment, sulking on the beach, fully assembled in perfectly pressed pants, buttoned-up, big-collared starched shirt and shine shoes, looking as East Coast as one could on a West Coast beach, watching Margot Kidder and her equally sexy housemate Jennifer Salt sunbathe in their bikinis. Scorsese's own girlfriend, Sandy Weintraub, daughter of Warner Brothers studio executive Fred Weintraub, didn't seem to mind. She also didn't mind being referred to in mean streets as "the Weintraub broad" by De Niro's Johnny Boy character, but I digress. It was the early 70s. Liberation was in the air. Scorsese pondered his dilemma.
26:09 Jake Brennan? How in the hell was he, a runty, fast-talking Italian kid from New York with no money, gonna make the types of movies he wanted to make? Movies that reflected the violence, spiritual confusion, and sexual frustration he'd experienced back in New York City's Little Italy neighborhood where he grew up amid real-life gangsters and god-like priests? How was that possible in a town like this? Where the sun and the smog and the smiles and the shit-talk hummed along an incessant contradiction? How had he ended up here? Him, Martin Scorsese, a tailor's son, on a god-forsaken beach with a studio boss's daughter as a girlfriend and ambition as big as the Pacific Ocean staring back at him,
26:53 Jake Brennan? threatening to swallow him whole? He did not have an answer. But at least he had friends. Steven Spielberg stopped by Scorsese on the beach on his way into the water and asked him if he wanted to join him for a dip. "Come on, let's go in the ocean," Spielberg directed. "No, no, no. It's very bad. It's evil. There's things out there you don't even want to know about," Scorsese replied. "You afraid of jellyfish?" "There's no jellyfish out there," Spielberg responded. "No, no, no. Things with teeth." Spielberg gave up and moved toward the water. His imagination burned like the hot sand beneath his feet.
27:36 Jake Brennan? Interior, Martin Scorsese's apartment, night. We fast forward into 1975 to "The Night Of." Back to the moment before our hero, Martin Scorsese, loses it and decides to call on his friends to come save him. The camera shows a close, full-body profile shot of our hero sitting in a comfortable chair, just a few feet from a small television on a small television stand. His leg extends out with his cowboy boot perched on the television. He carefully extends pressure from his foot to slowly rock the TV back and forth on its stand. We see that he is stoic and holding a massive black .44 Magnum pistol in his hand. Resting in his lap is a half-empty jar of peanut butter that our hero eats out of with a spoon.
28:21 Jake Brennan? The television plays an old black-and-white film, Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing," from 1956. Our hero stares at the action on the screen, still carefully pressing his foot against the television, causing it to teeter ever so slightly before returning upright, daring it to tip over. On the television, character actor Timothy Carey, one of Hollywood's great bad guys, leaves his hideout with his rifle concealed in a guitar case, and then speeds away off to the racetrack to pull a job. He posts up away from the track with a clear sightline to his mark, the thoroughbred racehorse that he must keep from winning, that he must kill.
29:02 Jake Brennan? It occurs to our hero, Martin Scorsese, in that moment that the studios are like the great thoroughbreds in Kubrick's film racing down the stretch. These big behemoths lumbering through our culture, winning and losing in equal measure with the highest of stakes, being ridden hard by their studio executives, stampeding over the souls of some of our greatest creative minds. Scorsese feels a tinge of rage. He presses harder against the television with his foot, causing it to wobble, almost to the point of tipping over, and then returning once more. On the screen, the thoroughbreds race around the track. Timothy Carey takes aim with his rifle, and when the moment is just right, he fires
29:44 Jake Brennan? without prejudice at the racing beast, stopping it dead in its tracks.
29:51 Jake Brennan? We hear the action from the film in the background, but our attention is drawn to the hushed manic mumbling from our hero sitting opposite the TV, still pressing against it with his foot, still rocking it dangerously back and forth.
30:07 Jake Brennan? As Scorsese watches the television action, he becomes disassociated. He's looking at the TV, but he's no longer seeing anything but visions of violence, his own violence. What was previously the sound of his mumbling morphs into the rambling of a madman as Martin Scorsese begins reciting his own taxi driver dialogue to bring to life the violent vision in his head.
30:35 Jake Brennan? We're gonna sit. See him? Do you see him?
30:40 Jake Brennan? You see him, right? I want you to see him because that's my movie.
30:47 Jake Brennan? But that's not my film.
30:52 Jake Brennan? It's not my film. You know whose film it is? Huh? No, you wouldn't know whose film it is, I'm just saying. But you know whose film it is? Huh? The studio's film. How do you like that? A studio executive owns my film.
31:08 Jake Brennan? And I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill him.
31:12 Jake Brennan? If there's nothing else, I'm just, I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill him. Now what do you think of that?
31:18 Jake Brennan? Hmm? I said, what do you think of that?
31:22 Jake Brennan? Don't answer. You don't have to answer everything.
31:29 Jake Brennan? I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna kill him with a .44 Magnum pistol.
31:33 Jake Brennan? I have a .44 Magnum pistol, and I'm gonna kill him with that gun.
31:38 Jake Brennan? Now, did you ever see, did you ever see what a .44 Magnum pistol could do to a studio executive's face? I mean, it'd fucking destroy it, just blow it right apart. That's what it can do to a face. Now, did you ever see what it can do to a studio executive's fat fucking mouth? That you should see. That, you should see what a .44 Magnum is gonna do to a studio executive's fat fucking mouth, you should see.
31:59 Jake Brennan? Just then, Scorsese's foot pushes the television a touch too far, toppling it over onto its back, exploding its tubes and causing a small plume of smoke to shock our hero out of his seat. Scorsese then stumbles hurriedly toward his phone. He dials, waits impatiently. On the other end, we hear Steven Spielberg.
32:17 Speaker 02 Hello?
32:19 Jake Brennan? Steven, I know what I'm going to do.
32:23 Jake Brennan? I'm going to kill him.
32:29 Speaker 01 We'll be right back after this.
32:35 Speaker 05 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
33:03 Jake Brennan? I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
33:34 Speaker 00 Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable, so over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party
34:15 Speaker 00 systems: cloud platforms, data pipelines, AI models, software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background. But when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift, organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility they actually have. So to understand the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to speak with IBM's Ana Paula Assis and Axe's CIO, Giovanni Doniello, two people who think about these questions every day. Hear the full conversation at ibm.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts.
35:04 Jake Brennan? Martin Scorsese's best friends in Hollywood: Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, John Milius, and Paul Schrader, all pulled into his driveway at the same time, ready to save their friend from doing something stupid that would change his life forever.
35:18 Jake Brennan? When they entered his home, they were shocked to see the broken television, the 44 Magnum, the empty wine bottles, and the pills and cocaine paraphernalia all out in the open. But none of that was nearly as shocking as the state Martin Scorsese was in. A manic, paranoid anger, on the verge of tears. Scorsese paced nonstop, his words coming out in a torrent. His friends tried to get him to slow down, but he would not. Eventually, they took the hint, sat, and let Marty vent.
35:48 Jake Brennan? The problem became evident immediately. Taxi Driver. The film was done as far as Scorsese was concerned. He'd shown it to the studio executive at Columbia responsible for the film, and before he got to his point, it was obvious to Spielberg and De Palma and everyone else that Scorsese did not get the response he wanted from the studio.
36:08 Jake Brennan? Taxi Driver had been years of work. It starred a young, incredibly talented Robert De Niro, fresh off his Oscar win for Best Supporting Actor in Godfather 2. And it had been written by Paul Schraeder, but it was Martin Scorsese's movie. The film was a perfect reflection of Scorsese as a person. All of the anger, all the alienation he felt, first as a small, weak boy growing up in a massive, violent city, and then as a vulnerable, creative young man trying to make it in a corrupt sodum like Hollywood. Taxi Driver, as it was, was as perfect as it could get from Martin Scorsese's perspective. He had squeezed every penny out of his meager $2 million budget. He'd milked every influence from every great director he'd studied growing up,
36:52 Jake Brennan? which is to say, all of them: Truffaut, and Bergman, Powell, and Pressburger, and of course, the Johns, Ford, and Huston. And too many others to mention. Every scene in the film was intentionally designed to move De Niro's Travis Bickle character toward his violent resolution. And every shot, carefully calibrated to emotionally impact the viewer. There was no more editing left to do. Martin Scorsese couldn't see how he could change anything in the film, even if he wanted to. By this point, he was creatively spent. Like his character Travis Bickle, Martin Scorsese hadn't slept in days. He felt the boundary between art and reality slipping away.
37:33 Jake Brennan? He was sure he tripped some figurative wire and was now clinically insane, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was making sure that his film was shown on screens in the way that he intended audiences to see it. "The studio executives, in particular Stanley Jaffe from Columbia Pictures, weren't going to allow that to happen," Scorsese explained to his friends in the room. Paul Schraeder, the film's screenwriter, wanted to know why. "The reason," Scorsese explained, "had nothing to do with the writing. It was because of the final edit and the final scene. The action was too violent, too bloody. The studio was convinced that if they submitted the film as it was to the Motion Picture Association of America, the MPAA, that it would most certainly receive an X-rating,
38:17 Jake Brennan? and an X-rating would kill box office returns. Only a fraction of the audience the studio was counting on would show up to see the film." Scorsese didn't want an X-rating either, but he wasn't convinced that his final scene, the one with Travis Bickle blasting the bagman's fingers off of his hand and blood splattering all over his own face before he blasted the brains of the bagman out of the back of his head and all over the brothel wall. Scorsese believed that even though this scene went for it in a way that other films hadn't, that audiences were ready for it, and the MPAA would not give it an X. It was 1975. Taxi Driver, he believed, would receive an R-rating. "But again," Scorsese explained, "the studio disagreed.
39:00 Jake Brennan? They were insisting that Scorsese cut the entire ending and come up with a less violent way to conclude the film." "But what did they know?" Millius asked. Scorsese thought about it. Big John was right. The studios didn't know shit. Scorsese looked at the broken TV on the floor and asked his friends if they knew what he'd been watching before they showed up. De Palma said, "Looks like bad television." The others laughed, because in 1975, there was only bad television. "An old Kubrick picture," Scorsese said. "The Killing." His friends nodded and smiled in approval. "Sterling Hayden," De Palma said affectionately. "Hayden was a commie snitch," Schrader quiffed.
39:42 Jake Brennan? "Hayden was a goddamn war hero," Millius protested. "Timothy Carey is my favorite in that film," Spielberg offered. Scorsese lit up. "That's right. Timothy Carey. Great character actor. Do you know the story of Timothy Carey and Harry Cone?" The others gave him blank stares. Scorsese took it as his cue to go on. Timothy Carey was auditioning for Harry Cone in the early 50s. Back when Columbia still had a lot of juice and Cone was the studio head, you know? I don't know for which picture Timothy Carey was auditioning for, but Cone was there in the audition and, you know, Cone was a real bastard when he wanted to be. You've heard the stories. Anyways, the audition isn't going well and I don't know what gets said, but something gets said. Maybe from Cone, maybe from the director, who knows?
40:27 Jake Brennan? The point is, Timothy Carey is standing up there acting his guts out for these fucking animals who know nothing about art, who know only from dollars and cents. And Timothy Carey's losing it, you know? So in the middle of the audition, Timothy Carey reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pistol. Cone and the others in the room get real stiff. Cone looks around for his fixer, but his fixer isn't in the room. There's no muscle. It's just him and whoever this blind director is that he's got in the room with him. Timothy Carey then holds the gun up, points the gun at Cone in the middle of the audition and says, very calmly, but you know, he's kind of trembling, he's so emotional, he's pointing the gun at one of the biggest studio heads in Hollywood and he says, "This is so humiliating, standing up here and acting for you people who know nothing about actors, nothing about my art."
41:12 Jake Brennan? And then, and then he fires the gun. The gun, though, fully loaded, yes, but fully loaded with blanks. Cone, of course, didn't know that. Cone must've shit his pants, but he had it coming. Timothy Carey was right to do it. These fucking executives, this guy, my guy, Jaffe, he doesn't know anything about film. So I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do what Timothy Carey did, but I'm gonna do it for real. I'm gonna shoot him. I'm gonna kill him for killing my film.
42:01 Jake Brennan? Back in the Mulholland apartment, Martin Scorsese sat on his sofa with his head between his knees, listening to his filmmaker friends talk him out of murdering the studio executive who was ruining his film. Spielberg, De Palma, Emilius, offered calm reasoning, but no solutions. Schrader offered nothing. He sat quietly, fingering his small .38 stump nose that he took everywhere. A real beaut, that gun. If you didn't know any better, you'd think Schrader, screenwriter of Taxi Driver, approved of Scorsese's plan to kill the Columbia executive. Scorsese picked his head up from between his knees, leaned back on the couch, stretched his arms, and surveyed his apartment that he'd destroyed earlier in anger. The
42:46 Jake Brennan? voices of his friends were distant, jumbled. It was as if he was disconnected from the reality he was situated in. He was there, but he wasn't. His sleep deprivation had pushed him into an ethereal realm of disassociation. The voices murmured in the background. His eyes took in the damage. Then he looked to the wall, and the John Huston Moby Dick movie poster caught his eye. His brain snapped into focus. "That's it. Of course!" He blurted out into the room. "Moby Dick!" Everyone else stopped talking. Looks of confusion on all of their faces save for Paul Schraeder's, who gave a slight chuckle and nod of acknowledgement
43:27 Jake Brennan? as he continued to fiddle with his .38. "That's it. That's the solution," Scorsese said, as he pointed to the movie poster on the wall. Spielberg got it next. A big smile came over his face. "That's right. The colorization." De Palma walked toward the poster, staring at it. "You mean, desaturate the colors in your final scene like Huston did in the whole picture?" "Uh huh," Scorsese said. Emilius chimed in. "Desaturating the Eastman color negative he shot on will do what? How does that solve anything? You've still got the bloodiest scene a Hollywood studio has ever potentially produced." Schrader, annoyed, answered for Scorsese.
44:09 Jake Brennan? "Desaturating it makes the blood look less realistic." "But," Spielberg interrupted. Scorsese finished his friend's sentence. "Desaturating it like Huston did in his picture gives the scene an ethereal feel, and that works, you know? Because in that climactic scene, Travis is in a trance, and then we cut to the denouement without the saturation. The desaturation will make the look of the film less realistic, sure, but it'll actually make it more shocking," Spielberg said. "Right," Scorsese agreed. "More shocking, so I win. It's actually better, it's better." Scorsese fell out in laughter. Brian De Palma wanted to know if that put an end to Marty's revenge fantasy.
44:52 Jake Brennan? Scorsese just kept on laughing. John Milius offered to see if his buddy Francis Ford Coppola had a line on any tanks from the upcoming Apocalypse Now shoot. Big John would gladly storm the offices of Columbia and take Marty's guy out. Everyone but Paul Schraeder laughed. Schrader seemed disappointed. "Too bad," he said, staring wistfully at the 38 in his lap. Brian De Palma walked over to him and gave Schrader his best Sonny Corleone. "You wanna gun down a studio executive because he slapped Marty's film around a little bit, huh? What do you think? This is the army where you shoot 'em a mile away? No, you gotta get up close like this, bada bing, you blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit."
45:34 Jake Brennan? Schrader smiled, finally, and everyone else cracked up. Scorsese stopped laughing first and got real serious. "You know," he said, "it actually is a lot like Francis's film. It's a lot like The Godfather this year, except it's the opposite. When Hagan says, 'It's not personal, Sonny, it's strictly business.'" The apartment went dead silent. Scorsese went on. "Except it is. It is personal, making these pictures. It's personal for me, it's personal for you, and you, and you, and you. This one, I know, it's, it's personal for Bob, for everyone involved, except the business people.
46:19 Jake Brennan? Well, making movies, it's, it's not business. It's strictly personal."
46:28 Jake Brennan? Slow zoom out, high above the five filmmakers talking, hugging and exchanging goodbyes. Taxi Driver was released with the edit Martin Scorsese wanted and the desaturated film technique at the end of the movie shocked moviegoers and thrilled critics. Taxi Driver won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor for Robert De Niro, and Best Supporting Actress for Jodie Foster at the 1976 Academy Awards. The film generated nearly $30 million at the box office on a $2 million budget. Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver was a business success because the director kept his creation personal.
47:13 Jake Brennan? Any other way would have been a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is DisgraceLand.
47:35 Jake Brennan? All right, thanks for hanging out with me in 1970's Hollywood for this episode. I hope you dug it. Apple Podcast listeners, make sure you have automatic downloads turned on so you don't miss any episodes, okay? This week's question of the week is, who is your favorite filmmaker and why? Which director/filmmaker makes the movies that resonate most with you and why? I want to know. Hit me up and your answers might get played on the after-party episode, coming to your feed right after this episode. You know the drill. I'm at 617-906-6638. Leave me a voicemail, send me a text and let me know. You can also reach me at @disgracelandpod as well on Instagram, X, and Facebook. Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch. All right, here comes some credits. DisgraceLand was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.
48:20 Jake Brennan? Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a DisgraceLand All-Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership.
48:37 Jake Brennan? Members can listen to every episode of DisgraceLand ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand-new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelandpod.com/membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @disgracelandpod and on YouTube at youtube.com/atdisgracelandpod. Rocker roll.
49:10 Speaker 06 He's a bad, bad man.
49:13 Jake Brennan? Hey, guys. Time to dust off your detective skills while unwinding in the Caribbean on Virgin Voyages' second true crime voyage. It's back by popular demand. This five-night, adults-only escape sets sail March 20, 2027, to Grand Turk in the Beach Club at Bimini. The difference between this year and last will be that I will be on the cruise this year, along with Zeph, and he and I will be taping a live version of DisgraceLand, along with podcast hosts from Exactly Right's Buried Bones, Podcast of the Year Award winners Wisecrack, and other fan favorites. Get on this cruise with us, guys, and enjoy live podcast recordings, behind-the-scenes storytelling, exclusive meet-and-greets, and immersive true crime programming throughout this one-of-a-kind voyage.
49:57 Jake Brennan? Head over to www.virginvoyages.com/trucrime to secure your spot. I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
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