Columbia Pictures

Power Couple

Sometimes, the highest compliment you can pay a movie production company might be, "They stayed out of the way." Basically, that's what Columbia Pictures did during the making of Taxi Driver. They hassled Martin Scorsese a bit about going over budget—which he admittedly was doing—but overall, they left him to his own devices.

This hands-off approach resulted in a masterpiece. (Of course, individual producers actually come up with great suggestions sometimes, and production companyies frequently struggle against out-of-control directors—for a disastrous example, look up the movie Heaven's Gate).

Originally, writer Paul Schrader presented the script for Taxi Driver to a pair of producers, a husband and wife team: Michael Phillips and Julia Phillips. Their L.A. home provided a hang out for Schrader and other writers, so the couple was a natural duo to take an interest in his work. They'd already produced the Oscar-winning, Paul Newman and Robert Redford-starring, mega-hit The Sting, but now they were going to take a chance on something on a smaller scale, Taxi Driver.

At first, Schrader and the Phillipses were thinking of casting Jeff Bridges (yup: The Dude himself) as Travis Bickle, and hiring director Robert Mulligan. However, when they saw Martin Scorsese's stunning debut, Mean Streets (which featured Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, who both appear in Taxi Driver), they realized they'd found their man.

Close Encounters of the Over-Budget Kind

Teaming with Columbia Pictures for funding, the movie was given a bargain-basement budget of 1.3 million dollars (though Scorsese ran over-budget, expanding the cost to 1.9 million).

As filming went on, Columbia reps wanted to keep the budget down, and constantly made suggestions on how to save money—at one point, sick of the thrifty advice, Scorsese threatened to leave the project, but the studio promised him he would have artistic freedom as long as he kept costs down.

Even though he actually went over-budget (as mentioned) he still apparently retained his freedom and did what he wanted. Overall, Scorsese had a lot more liberty than a young director would've normally had under the circumstances. 

Afterwards, Julia and Michael Phillips went on to produce Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a classic Stephen Spielberg spectacle about contact with aliens. It became a hit and an instant classic, but Julia managed to irritate revered French director Francois Truffaut, who called her "incompetent" (a word that sounds even more cutting when you say it with a French accent).

That's the way life goes: Sometimes, you help create a raw, gritty classic that elevates Martin Scorsese into the pantheon of great directors. Other times, you pee in the Cheerios of a French cinematic master. It happens. No one bats a thousand.

(Source: Les Keyser. "Bringing Home the War." Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio. Ed. Bernard F. Dick. 193-194.)