Tarantino has spoken about Scorsese both as a viewer and as a colleague. Their conversation, published by the Directors Guild of America in 2019, offers a more precise view of that relationship than a collection of isolated praise: they ask questions, disagree, and examine how a film works.
Taxi Driver: Admiring an Uncomfortable Film
Taxi Driver was part of Tarantino’s selection for Sight and Sound in 2012. Years later, in the conversation with Scorsese published by DGA Quarterly in the fall of 2019, he explained his fascination with the violence of the ending and with the position the film gives the viewer. The admiration is directed at a specific cinematic experience, not at the behavior of its protagonist.
Travis Bickle observes New York through a mix of isolation, resentment, and a desire to find a mission. The film lets us approach his perception without turning every idea he expresses into a reliable description of the world. That closeness is uncomfortable because it does not always offer an alternative voice that immediately orders what we are seeing. The audience has to work with the distance between a subjective experience and its consequences.
The diary and the night drives reinforce that intimacy. We share an accumulation of impressions that can seem routine before it turns dangerous. The dramatic interest does not depend solely on when violence will arrive, but on how someone rearranges what he sees until he feels authorized to act. The film does not need to present that process as an explanation that excuses the character.
The taxi cab offers a singular position: Travis is close to many people and separate from them. He listens, transports, and watches without necessarily joining their lives. That physical closeness paired with isolation makes concrete a conflict that, expressed only as loneliness, would be much more abstract. The city keeps moving even if he cannot figure out how to take part.
In the 2019 exchange, Tarantino spoke about his cathartic response to the ending; Scorsese introduced his own relationship to threat and real violence. The conversation preserves a difference between intention, personal experience, and reception. The fact that a scene produces an emotional release does not, by itself, answer all the moral questions it raises.
From cinephilia to the craft of shots and rhythm
The DGA dialogue also addressed the editing of The Irishman and the choices about its length and ending. Tarantino asked Scorsese about the rhythm of a long-form narrative. That professional curiosity shows a kind of respect that does not need to be reduced to an award or a lofty line: what matters is knowing how another director solves a particular problem.
Rhythm is a good meeting point because it is not limited to speeding a film up or slowing it down. A pause can allow a situation to change meaning. Returning to a conversation after a violent episode changes the way we hear the people speaking. In Scorsese’s cinema, observing a group’s habits helps us understand what rules it considers normal before those rules produce a catastrophe.
Tarantino also works with conversations, routines, and delays, though their effects are not identical. The comparison is productive when it pays attention to the differences. A journey can bring the viewer closer to a character’s memory or make them wait for an explosion; a first-person voice can seduce them, limit their information, or expose a contradiction.
Instead of treating Scorsese as a sum of ingredients Tarantino inherited, it is better to recognize a dialogue between ways of seeing. Both give importance to the everyday culture of their characters, but they organize the relationship between memory, violence, and spectacle differently. Cinephile affinity does not erase the choices specific to each work.
Admiration That Leaves Room for Debate
The book Cinema Speculation, published in 2022, places 1970s American cinema within Tarantino’s formation as a viewer. His way of commenting on films usually starts from a personal reaction and moves toward an interpretation. Reading it as if it were a neutral record of production facts would lose that critical, subjective dimension.
The same is true of his opinions about the different phases of an auteur’s career. Preferring an early film does not automatically mean rejecting the later ones. An objection to one scene also does not erase admiration for the entire career. To talk about a specific critique, you have to identify which work it refers to and in what context it was expressed; a supposed permanent rivalry does not, by itself, explain his interventions.
The 2019 conversation offers precisely a less rigid relationship. Tarantino can describe the effect Taxi Driver has on him, and Scorsese can respond from the process that led him to make it. The result does not require both men to agree on a single interpretation. It lets us see how a film remains open even for those who know its construction closely.
The power of Taxi Driver in this exchange lies in that persistence. Its images allow for technical admiration, discomfort, and discussion about audience identification. Tarantino approaches them with visible enthusiasm, but also with questions. That attitude explains his connection to Scorsese better than any definitive ranking of which of his mentors comes first.
See the selection of filmmakers and actors admired by Tarantino.