Paul Schrader - Taxi Driver: Breakfast With Iris lyrics

CUT TO: INT. ST. REGIS SUITE NOON Palantine, Tom and Palantine's Assistant are seated in garishly decorated suite. ASSISTANT: Well, at least it wasn't chicken. PALANTINE: It wasn't? I thought it was. It tasted like chicken. TOM: C'mon, Senator. That was a cla** dinner. The St. Regis is a cla** joint. That was veal. PALANTINE: Was it? It sure tasted like chicken to me. (a beat) Lately, everything tastes like chicken to me. ASSISTANT: Everything? Got to watch your gut. PALANTINE: What about it? I took 20 off before we started this thing. ASSISTANT: And you've put ten of it back on. PALANTINE: Ten? I don't think so. You really think so? Ten? TOM: Those TV cameras do. I caught the rally on CBS. You looked a little paunchy. PALANTINE: I don't think I gained ten pounds. Palantine gets up and walks over to the window. Its bars form a cross-sight on his head. He thinks to himself: PALANTINE (weary): Jesus Christ. He looks at the crowded traffic on Fifth Avenue eighteen floors below. It is a ma** of yellow. CUT TO: EXT. FIFTH AVE NOON Travis' cab pulls away from the yellow ma** and heads downtown. CUT TO: EXT. DOWNTONE COFFEE SHOP NOON Travis' cab is parked near a neighborhood Bickford's. CUT TO: TRAVIS and IRIS are having late breakfast at a middle-cla** EAST SIDE COFFEE SHOP. It is about 1:30 P.M. IRIS is dressed more sensibly, wearing jeans and a maroon sweater. Her face is freshly washed and her hair combed out. Seen this way, IRIS looks no different than any young girl in the big city. OTHER PATRONS of the coffee shop most likely a**ume she is having lunch with her big brother. They are both having an All-American breakfast: ham and eggs, large gla**es of orange juice, coffee. Outside here environment, Iris seems the more pathetic. She seems unsure, schizy, unable to hold a subject for more than thirty seconds. Her gestures are too broad, her voice too mannered. We sympathize with Travis' paternal respect. This girl is in trouble. IRIS: ... and after that Sport and I just started hanging out... TRAVIS: Where is home? Iris removes her large blue-tinted sungla**es and fishes through her bag for another pair. IRIS: I got so many sungla**es. I couldn't live without my shades, man. I must have twelve pair of shades. She finds a pink-tinted pair and puts them on. TRAVIS: Where? IRIS: Pittsburgh. TRAVIS: I ain't ever been there, but it don't seem like such a bad place. IRIS (voice rising): Why do you want me to go back to my parents? They hate me. Why do you think I split? There ain't nothin there. TRAVIS: But you can't live like this. It's hell. Girls should live at home. IRIS (playfully): Didn't you ever hear of women's lib? There is a short, quick silence; TRAVIS' eyes retract. He goes on: TRAVIS (ignoring her question): Young girls are supposed to dress up, go to school, play with boys, you know, that kinda stuff. Iris places a large gob of jam on her unbu*tered toast and folds the bread over like a hotdog. IRIS: God, you are square. TRAVIS (releasing pent-up tension): At least I don't walk the streets like a skunk p**y. I don't screw and f** with k**ers and junkies. IRIS motions him to lower his voice. IRIS: Who's a k**er? TRAVIS: That fella "Sport" looks like a k**er to me. IRIS: He never k**ed nobody. He's a Libra. TRAVIS: Huh? IRIS: I'm a Libra too. That's why we get along so well. TRAVIS: He looks like a k**er. IRIS: I think Cancer's make the best lovers. My whole family are air signs. TRAVIS: He shoots dope too. IRIS: What makes you so high and mighty? Did you ever look at your own eyeballs in a mirror. You don't get eyes like that from... TRAVIS: He's worse than an animal. Jail's too good for scum like that. There is a brief silence. Iris mind continued to whirl at 78 rpms. She seems to have three subjects on her mind at a time. She welcomes this opportunity to unburden herself. IRIS: Rock music died in 1970, that's what I think. Before that it was fantastic. I can tell you that. Everybody was crashing, hanging out at the Fillmore. Me and my girlfriend Ann used to go up the fire escape, you know? It was unbelievable. Rock Stars everywhere. That Airplane--that's my group, man. All Libras. But now everybody's split or got sick or busted. I think I'll move to one of those communes in Vermont, you know? That's where all the smart ones went. I stayed here. TRAVIS: I never been to a commune. I don't know. I saw pictures in a magazine, and it didn't look very clean to me. IRIS: Why don't you come to a commune with me? TRAVIS: Me? I could never go to a place like that. IRIS: Why not? TRAVIS (hesitant): I... I don't get along with people like that. IRIS: You a scorpion? That's it. You're a scorpion. I can tell. TRAVIS: Besides, I've got to stay here. IRIS: Why? TRAVIS: I've got something important to do. I can't leave. IRIS: What's so important? TRAVIS: I can't say -- it's top secret. I'm doing something for the Army. The cab thing is just part time. IRIS: You a narc? TRAVIS: Do I look like a narc? IRIS: Yeah. TRAVIS breaks out in his big infectious grin, and IRIS joins his laughter. IRIS: God, I don't know who's weirder, you or me. TRAVIS (pause): What are you going to do about Sport and that old ba*tard? IRIS: Just leave'em. There's plenty of other girls. TRAVIS: You just gonna leave 'em? IRIS (astonished): What should I do? Call the cops? TRAVIS: Cops don't do nothin. IRIS: Sport never treated me bad, honest. Never beat me up once. TRAVIS: You can't leave 'em to do the same to other girls. You should get rid of them. IRIS: How? TRAVIS (shrugs): I don't know. Just should, though. (a beat) Somebody should k** 'em. Nobody'd miss 'em. IRIS (taken back): God. I know where they should have a commune for you. They should have a commune for you at Bellevue. TRAVIS (apologetic/sheepish): I'm sorry, Iris. I didn't mean that. IRIS: You're not much with girls, are you? TRAVIS (thinks): Well, Iris, I look at it this way. A lot of girls come into my cab, some of them very beautiful. And I figure all day long men have been after them: trying to touch them, talk to them, ask them out. And they hate it. So I figure the best I can do for them is not bother them at all. So I don't say a thing. I pretend I'm not even there. I figure they'll understand that and appreciate me for it. It takes IRIS a moment to digest this pure example of negative thinking: I am loved to the extent I do not exist. IRIS: Do you really think I should go to the commune? TRAVIS: I think you should go home, but otherwise I think you should go. It would be great for you. You have to get away from here. The city's a sewer, you gotta get out of it. Mumbling something about her "shades" again, Iris fishes through her bag until she comes up with another 99¢ pair of sungla**es and puts them on. She likes these better, she decides. IRIS: Sure you don't want to come with me? TRAVIS: I can't. Otherwise, I would. IRIS: I sure hate to go alone... TRAVIS: I'll give you the money to go. I don't want you to take any from those guys. IRIS: You don't have to. TRAVIS: I want to -- what else can I do with my money? (thinks) You may not see me again--for a while. IRIS: What do you mean? CLOSE on C.U. of TRAVIS: TRAVIS: My work may take me out of New York.