Transcription
There is an interesting, uh, history behind, um, Taxi Driver. Scorsese had made Taxi Driver. He made the film for Columbia, and, uh, the MPAA slapped it with an X. And so Scorsese was now going to have to be faced with making a masterpiece and having to slash his canvas. The people at Columbia, who I don't have no clue who it is, were unsympathetic. They didn't care. They would just, just getting all, we don't care how you do it, just do it.
Scorsese stayed up all night drinking with a loaded gun. His purpose was, in the morning, he was going to shoot the executive at Columbia for making him cut his masterpiece. Well, apparently what ended up happening was just to desaturate the color in the final shootout by two degrees, turning what was candy apple blood red into a more burgundy blood, and the film got its R.