Insider of the Month | Fernando Mateo

April 18, 2011

The outspoken head of NYC’s largest
taxi union goes on the meter for the
new 35th anniversary Blu-ray edition
of Taxi Driver, with Robert De Niro.

By CRAIGH BARBOZA

In his wide-ranging career, Fernando Mateo has been an entrepreneur, political fundraiser, philanthropist and community activist. He was honored with the Point of Light award in 1991 from President Bush. Mateo is now the founder and spokesman for the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, a non-profit trade organization representing as many as 30,000 drivers, more than any other taxi union in the country. But he is perhaps even more famous for his efforts to curb violence and reduce recidivism. His 1990 program, Mateo Institute of Training, provided vocational training and jobs for Riker’s Island inmates and his 1993 Christmas

initiative, Toys for Guns, let residents exchange firearms for cash and toy certificates; in three weeks, more than 8,000 guns (everything from assault weapons to Uzis) were removed from the streets.

In this week’s column, Mateo watches Martin Scorsese’s 1975 urban classic Taxi Driver, starring Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd and Jodie Foster. It’s about a pistol-packing psychopath who becomes hell-bent on purifying New York after roving the city streets behind the wheel of a checkered cab. “The film takes you inside this cab driver’s head,” Mateo says. “The ’70s is when you had this transition from the hippie movement to the drug movement and when I was growing up on the city’s Lower East Side back then it was the heroin capital. In my tenement building, if you walked out of your door you would run into people on the staircase with needles in their arms, some of them dead. The walk from my parent’s apartment to school was an area where every 20 or 30 feet there was another dealer trying to push drugs. Hookers would hang out at night, people were getting robbed.”

Mateo, whose father was a struggling taxi owner, says Taxi Driver brought back some of those memories. “Scorsese really wanted to portray the way the city was back then and what better way to do it than through the eyes of someone who drives a yellow cab, which has become a New York City icon.”

WHERE YA HEADED? “Taxi Driver is the tale of an outsider named Travis Bickle (De Niro) who returns from Vietnam and decides to get a job driving a Manhattan cab at night to solve his insomnia. On his shift, the guy just becomes obsessed with the ‘scum’ he sees on the streets. When he fails to win over a pretty campaign worker (Shephard) and he can’t convince a 12-year-old prostitute (Foster) to leave her pimp, he cracks. He buys a bunch of guns and basically does what he feels he has to do.”

TRAVIS BICKLE DOES NOT CARE ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE “Travis is clearly a racist character. He calls blacks ‘spooks’ and aims a gun at a black couple dancing on Soul Train. I wasn’t surprised by any of that. There’s always been a lot of racial tension in New York and a lot of hatred directed at blacks. A great example is the scene midway through the film in which Travis picks up a fare who has him drive to this apartment building. When they get there, the deranged passenger (played by Scorsese) has him pull over. He tells Travis to look into one of the building’s windows. ‘You see that woman? That my wife,’ the guy says. ‘You know who lives there? Of course you don’t know who lives there. A nigger lives there.’ The sicko passenger tells Travis he’s going to get a .44 Magnum and shoot her.

“The truth is a lot of cab drivers fear blacks and Hispanics. Last December, I said something very controversial. I said that drivers should profile their passengers based on race. My father’s black-skinned and my mother Hispanic. We’re considered African-Caribbean. But the fact is, if you look at statistics, blacks and Hispanics are responsible for 99% of all crimes committed against cab drivers. So there’s something there. These cabbies don’t want to get robbed or killed or even assaulted.”

ORGANIZIZED “One scene that always stuck with me is the one in which Travis shaves his head into a Mohawk and shows up at a political rally with a gun. I really thought he was going to shoot Senator Palantine (Leonard Harris). It shows how dangerous it is to have a psychopath doing a job that you would think only normal people would do.

“I’m always afraid that at some point we’re going to get a radical driver. I respect Muslims. I think Islam is a great religion but you have these extremists, and I am afraid one of them could be in a cab and that will get them into a place other people couldn’t get into because of that yellow vehicle he’s driving, and he’ll cause major damage.”

THE LIFE OF A CABBIE Late in the movie, Travis, who has been in a dark place and has been having some ‘really bad thoughts,’ goes to a fellow cabbie named Wizard (Peter Boyle) for advice and leaves even more confused.

“[You have to remember, it’s not an easy profession. A taxi driver has to be many things to many people.] He’s a psychiatrist, a transporter, a man or a woman who opens the door to let a total stranger into the car every few minutes. Every person

they pick up comes into their car with a different issue, a different problem, a different attitude. Some get in, get from point A to point B, get out and run. They don’t pay ’em. You know, people get into cabs that are about to get divorced, commit suicide, go to a hospital; they’re terminally ill. They just found out they have AIDS. You name it. That cab driver is dealing with every issue you can imagine on a daily basis.

“[I know in this film it’s the cab driver who acts out violently but it should be noted that] drivers sometimes talk people out of doing bad things too. And if the driver makes it through the day and/or night, he has to go home to his family.”

TAXI DRIVER 2 “I wish Scorsese would have a sequel to Taxi Driver. He could revisit De Niro’s character many years later. Maybe Travis has done some time and now he’s waiting awhile, appealing to get his TLC license, and when he does he goes out there and does it all over again.

“In fact, it would be better if they focused on a livery driver instead of a yellow cab. Remember, yellow cabs work very safe neighborhoods. They pick up tourists. It would be nice to show another type of driver. Livery cabs work the outer boroughs.

They’re usually dispatched from a base and a lot of the times the livery drivers will pick up street hailers, illegally. But they do it.

“You know a few months ago there were a few guys that got into a cab. They knew the cab driver so they had called him up. The driver was familiar with them so he was friendly with them. The guys took him and they did an armed robbery of a bank. [He laughs.] They put on masks. They left one gunman with him in the car and said, ‘If you move, we’ll kill you.’ They did their thing and came out.

“Then, worst of all, after they rob the bank and get away, the criminals tell the driver, ‘We gotta kill you because you know who we are.’ You know what? The driver convinced them not to kill him, called the F.B.I. and got it done. It’s been kept quiet because the F.B.I. asked me not to make it public. Something like that would make a great movie.” ⏏

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Craigh Barboza is the Editor of MyDVDinsider. He’s taken yellow cabs, limos and livery cars all over New York City.

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