Exciting news out of the Berlin Film Festival: Rumors of a collaboration between Lars von Trier, Martin Scorsese, and Robert De Niro on a Taxi Driver remake “appear to be true, at least for the time being,†says Variety. Von Trier has evidently challenged the pair to redo their 1976 film much like, for the 2003 documentary The Five Obstructions, he dared his mentor Jorgen Leth to remake the 1967 short The Perfect Human five ways, each time overcoming a different wacky obstacle (for one, von Trier demanded he do it in Cuba with no shots lasting longer than twelve frames; for another, he had to shoot in the “worst place on Earth†[Bombay’s red-light district], but not show that place on film). Obviously this project will never actually happen — von Trier’s business partner just denied it to Screen Daily — but if it does, how should Scorsese be “obstructed�
A few ideas:
• De Niro must learn to say all of his lines backwards so Scorsese can shoot the film in reverse, incorporating a bunch of funny effects, like in that awesome Pharcyde video.
• Scorsese must redo it as an animated film, hand-drawing it himself.
• All of the film’s action must take place inside the taxi.
• Scorsese must throw out all of Paul Schrader’s original dialogue and replace it with randomly selected lines from the 2004 Fallon-Latifah stinker Taxi and 1978’s The Driver.
• Jodie Foster (who starred as a 12-year-old prostitute) and Harvey Keitel (who played her pimp) must both return, but switch roles.
• Instead of making an assassination attempt on Senator Palantine, Travis Bickle must try to kill Emperor Palpatine.
• Not that it will make a difference on film, but Scorsese must also get a Travis Bickle mohawk.
Surely our readers have better ideas.