Alyssa Bereznak

About 40 minutes into his 1976 grimy neo-noir drama Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese appears in the back seat of protagonist Travis Bickle’s cab with a series of demands. He orders Bickle (Robert De Niro) to pull over to the curb, put the meter back on, and just sit. “I don’t care what I have to pay,” Scorsese says in a pushy New Yorker’s staccato. “I’m not getting out.” He then directs Bickle’s gaze toward a silhouette of a woman in a second-floor window, explains that it’s his wife in another man’…