Paul Schrader speaks at IU Cinema

In the rear of the IU Cinema, the writer of “Taxi Driver” watched his film’s final shot as main character Travis Bickle’s “metal coffin” of a taxi continued to float through the sewers of the city. Cinema volunteer and master’s student Gabriel Gutierrez tapped the film’s screenwriter, Paul Schrader, on the shoulder.

“You know, I’ve never seen it, but that was amazing,” he whispered.

Schrader answered audience questions after Thursday’s screening and gave a public lecture Friday. Schrader touched on Bickle’s psyche, the uncertain future of film and the end of a cinematic era.

Schrader on the film

“This film is a loop ... a continuously repeating evil loop.”

“Travis Bickle’s a reptilian little creep. Maybe history has made him a good guy, but I never thought he was.”

“This character was the fruit of European existential fiction.”

“(Bickle) was saved by circumstance, made a hero by irony, but he is still trapped.”

“The best thing about the restoration is the sound.” The original soundtrack was in mono, and the 2011 digital restoration is in stereo.

Schrader on culture

“America has lost its culture ... that time when you had a unifying cultural aspect is gone. Springsteen, Bonnie and Clyde, the Beatles. Without a center like that you can never have movies. We’re all lost in the blogosphere.”

“It’s an odd thing, particularly in today’s culture, to say I wrote a movie for my own mental health ... and it worked.”

“We have a crisis of form. We don’t know what movies are anymore. The only interesting thing is technology.”

“In the end, filmmaking is just a cascade of decisions, several hundred decisions a day made extremely fast. You put it together and you say, ‘Well, I guess that’s who I am.’”