American literary giant: 1974

Scorsese walked back from the window, rummaged through his briefcase, and handed Lynn a neatly bound script.

"This is Schrader's first draft of the script."

Lynn took it; the top had the Martin Scorsese film company watermark. The title read "Taxi Driver," and the screenwriter was Paul Schrader.

"Do you know why I wanted to make this movie?" Scorsese sighed.

Why?

“Because I grew up in this city. Little Italy, Elizabeth Street, my parents were both ironers.” Scorsese looked at Lynn. “Do you know what paths a kid from Little Italy has when they grow up? Either become a chef, or join a gang, or get out.”

Scorsese lowered his voice.

"But I chose the fourth path—to pick up a camera and film the broken New York. But honestly, I couldn't find the right angle."

He pointed to the script in Lynn's hand: "Until one day, I got into a taxi driver's car. It was full of the smell of smoke and sweat. The driver was Mexican, and he kept crying. He cried so much that his hands on the steering wheel started to shake. I asked him, 'Why are you crying?' Guess what he said?"

"What?"

Outside the window, the shadow of the Empire State Building loomed in.

"He said his parents died. They died on a street in Brooklyn. He didn't know why, he only knew he had to keep going to work, driving, working, and paying for the funeral."

Scorsese paused for a moment, then lit a cigar and returned to the window: "That's why I made this movie. Hollywood can't just be about jubilation and singing and dancing."

The presidential suite was deathly silent.

Lynn now understands why Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest directors in America.

He opened the script.

Scene 1: Night. Manhattan. A yellow taxi drives in the rain.

Scene 2: Inside. Taxi. The driver's face is illuminated by the green light of the dashboard.

The protagonist's name is Travis Bickel.

Lynn quickly glanced at the character introductions, then his brows furrowed.

Schrader's Travis Bickel is a 26-year-old white male, single, unemployed, who applies for a night shift driver job at a taxi company because he suffers from insomnia.

No more.

that's it.

Lynn flipped through a few more pages to confirm it again.

An ordinary young white man who drives a night shift taxi because he can't sleep. No past, no scars, no shadow of war, just a lonely soul wandering Manhattan in the dead of night.

This is different from the movies Lynn watched in her previous life.

He remembered clearly—Travis Bickel on screen was a Vietnam War veteran. The core of that character was the trauma left on him by the Vietnam War. The entire film's logic of violence, Travis's hatred of society, and the final bloody gunfight—all were built on the premise that "the protagonist had experienced hell in the jungles of Vietnam."

This layer was completely absent from Schrader's initial draft.

Lynn closed the script and looked up at Scorsese.

"This script is wrong."

Scorsese exhaled a smoke ring: "Something's not right?"

"Who is Travis? Schrader only wrote about a lonely soul, a misanthropic man." Lynn tapped the script cover. "Why does he suffer from insomnia? Why does he hate society? Schrader didn't explain."

"you mean?"

He's missing a wound.

"A wound?" Scorsese squinted.

"Yes. A wound from a bullet in the jungles of Vietnam. Try changing the protagonist to a Vietnam War veteran."

Scorsese didn't say anything. He had his hands in his pockets, and Lynn could see the muscles in his neck tense up.

"Vietnam War..." Scorsese repeated the word in a low voice, "Why write about Vietnam veterans? Go on."

Lynn stood up; he felt uncomfortable saying these things while sitting.

"In 1974, the Vietnam War was not yet completely over. Every day, hundreds of young people returned from Saigon and were dropped back into Kennedy Airport. They were dressed in military uniforms, carrying a canvas bag, standing at the exit, only to find that no one was there to greet them."

"The US government tells them they are heroes. But only they know they've seen hell, they came back alive, and then nobody cares about them."

"There were anti-war demonstrations everywhere on the university campus. They came back from Saigon, from the deep forests of Vietnam. Nobody paid any attention to them, and some even spat at them."

Lynn walked to the window and stood beside Scorsese. The reflection of the Empire State Building cast a huge shadow on the carpet.

"That's the kind of guy Travis is. He came back from Vietnam, but he didn't really come back. His body is in the driver's seat, but his mind is still in the jungle. Every time someone speaks loudly in the back seat, he reflexively shrank his neck, because in the jungle, noise means giving away your location."

Scorsese's breathing slowed down.

"New York was his enemy. The prostitutes, pimps, politicians—they were all enemies in his eyes." Lynn slowed down as well. "He lived in a war that would never end."

Scorsese didn't say a word; he just stood there, holding the cigar in his hand.

After about ten seconds, Scorsese slowly walked back to the coffee table, picked up Schrader's script, turned to the first page, and wrote a line in the blank space of the character introduction with the hotel's ballpoint pen.

Lynn couldn't see what he wrote; he could only see that his hand was trembling slightly as he wrote.

After Scorsese finished writing, he threw the pencil on the coffee table and slumped back into the sofa.

"Hold."

"Damn!" he said again, then looked up at the crystal chandelier on the ceiling.

"You know what, Lynn, Schrader has been giving me this script for three months. A full three months. I've always felt like something's missing, but I just can't fucking put my finger on it. I told Schrader what was missing in the Travis character, and he asked me what it was, but I just can't say."

He turned to Lynn.

"Now I know, what's lacking isn't skill, structure, or dialogue. What's lacking is a fucking war."

He picked up the script again and handed it to Lynn.

Lynn turned to the page with the character introduction, which contained a line Scorsese had just heavily written with a ballpoint pen:

A Vietnam War veteran. Marine Corps. Retired in 1974. No one was waiting for him at the airport.

Scorsese closed the script and looked at Lynn.

How did you come up with this idea?

"Because I pulled them," Lynn said calmly.