Robert Englund as Han Solo? A Little May 4th Trivia

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Can you imagine how things might have played out if Robert Englund had played Han Solo?

It’s not as far-fetched as it might sound. In his autobiography, Hollywood Monster: A Walk Down Elm Street with the Man of Your Dreams, Englund mentions that he was one of the many actor who, in 1975, auditioned for a role in the first Star Wars film. It’s often forgotten that, before he became famous as Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare In Elm Street, Englund was a busy character actor who had roles in several big studio productions in the 70s. He was definitely a part of the “new Hollywood” that included people like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Jon Milius.

Though Englund doesn’t go into much detail, he does say that he read for the roles of both Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. At the time, Englund didn’t feel that he was right for either role and he went back to his apartment under the correct impression that he would not be cast. However, he did feel that his friend and then-roommate Mark Hamill would be a good pick for Luke Skywalker and Englund writes that he encouraged Hamill to try out for the role.

Would Mark Hamill have been cast if Robert Englund hadn’t told him about the audition? Probably. Given that Star Wars was Lucas’s follow-up to the very popular American Graffiti, it’s probable that every struggling young actor in Hollywood was hoping to audition. As well, Hamill was not totally unknown to George Lucas, having early read for a role in American Graffiti. Still, it’s nice to think that, long before he was cast as Freddy Krueger, Robert Englund may have played a role in casting one of the most successful films of all time.

What would Robert Englund have been like as Han Solo? He definitely would not have been as grouchy as Harrison Ford’s Han. Indeed, one of the striking things out about Englund’s pre-Nightmare career was how he was usually cast as friendly characters who were almost shy. Englund would have been friendlier and rather eccentric Han Solo but I think he would have been entertaining in his way.

Because of the film’s success, it can be a bit difficult to know who was actually considered for a role in Star Wars. Lucas has said that he originally wanted to cast Black actor Glynn Turman as Han Solo but he feared audiences would not accept the possibility of an interracial romance between him and Leia, even in a galaxy far away. (Lucas’s regret over that decision is one of the things that led to the casting of Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian.) The film’s IMDb trivia page insists that everyone from Al Pacino to Bill Murray to Marlon Brando to Chevy Chase was considered for the role of Han Solo and I have to say that this is a case where I doubt the accuracy of the IMDb. Harrison Ford, who had originally been hired only to read with people at the auditions, eventually got the role despite telling Lucas, about the script, “You can type this shit but you can’t say it.”

In several interviews, Christopher Lee expressed regret at having turned down the role of Grand Moff Tarkin, which was instead played by Lee’s best friend Peter Cushing. Interestingly enough, Cushing was also one of Lucas’s choices for Obi-Wan Kenobi so it’s easy to imagine a universe in which Star Wars reunited two Hammer films legends, along with setting box office records.

Famously, Lucas held joint-auditions with his friend Brian De Palma. De Palma was casting Carrie and just about everyone who read for one of the films also read for the other. Reportedly, William Katt came close to getting the role of Luke before instead being cast as Carrie’s doomed prom date. Amy Irving was also a strong contender for Leia, before instead ending up as Sue Snell in De Palma’s film. Some source that that Sissy Spacek also read for Leia, though I’ve also read that Spacek was not a part of the joint-auditions. That’s one thing about collecting trivia about classic films. It’s often hard to know what’s true and what’s just wishful thinking.

I should mention that another strong contender for Han Solo (and reportedly Luke as well) was Kurt Russell. It’s actually easy to imagine Kurt Russell as Han and, just as with Englund, it leads to an intriguing game of what if. Would Kurt Russell have gone on to have Harrison Ford’s career if he had been cast in Star Wars? Would Russell have gone to play Indiana Jones and Jack Ryan if he had been cast as Han Solo and would Harrison Ford have ended up helping the President to Escape from New York? Or is it just as possible that Star Wars have not worked without the chemistry of Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill? Would a Kurt Russell, Amy Irving, and William Katt version of Star Wars captured the imagination of audiences?

It’s a question to which there is no real answer, a bit like wondering if The Godfather would have been as big a hit if it had starred George C. Scott, Martin Sheen, and Burt Reynolds. Still, it’s interesting to consider.

Scenes I Love: Al Capone Takes Care Of An Incompetent Employee In The Untouchables

Posted on January 17, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Businessman and philanthropist Al Capone was born 125 years ago today. A beloved figure in Chicago and a noted family man, Capone was an early victim of the IRS and he spent what should have been the best years of his life locked away in a federal prison.

Many films have been inspired by Capone’s story and many notable actors have played him. In 1987’s The Untouchables, Robert De Niro brought Capone to life and, in a memorable scene, he showed how to deal with an employee who was not carrying his weight.

Horror Scenes That I Love: Piper Laurie in Carrie

Posted on October 15, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So far, this month, I’ve been doing these horror scenes that I love in alphabetical order based on who was featured in the scene. Originally, today was going to be devoted to Boris Karloff but, last night, I read the news that the great Piper Laurie had passed away at the age of 91.

Have no doubt that Boris Karloff will be honored tomorrow but, for today, I would be remiss if I didn’t pay tribute to Piper Laurie. Piper Laurie often said that, when she read the script for 1976’s Carrie, she at first didn’t understand the story’s tone until she realized that Margaret White was meant to be as comedic as she was frightening. Piper Laure’s performance as Carrie’s mother resulted in an Oscar nomination and it also revived Laurie’s career. (Laurie had semi-retired from Hollywood following her previously Oscar-nominated work in The Hustler.)

In the scene below, Margaret makes one last attempt to keep Carrie from going to the prom. Her line, “They’re all going to laugh at you” comes back to haunt Carrie in a very big way.

One final bit of Piper Laurie horror trivia: In 1959, when Alfred Hitchcock was casting Psycho, Piper Laurie was his second choice, behind Janet Leigh, for the role of Marion Crane.

Icarus File No. 11: The Bonfire of the Vanities (dir by Brian De Palma)

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2021, I finally saw the infamous film, The Bonfire of the Vanities.

I saw it when it premiered on TCM. Now, I have to say that there were quite a few TCM fans who were not happy about The Bonfire of the Vanities showing up on TCM, feeling that the film had no place on a station that was supposed to be devoted to classic films. While it’s true that TCM has shown “bad” films before, they were usually films that, at the very least, had a cult reputation. And it is also true that TCM has frequently shown films that originally failed with audiences or critics or both. However, those films had almost all been subsequently rediscovered by new audiences and often reevaluated by new critics. The Bonfire of the Vanities is not a cult film. It’s not a film about which one can claim that it’s “so bad that it’s good.” As for the film being reevaluated, I’ll just say that there is no one more willing than me to embrace a film that was rejected by mainstream critics. But, as I watched The Bonfire of the Vanities, I saw that everything negative that I had previously read about the film was true.

Released in 1990 and based on a novel by Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities stars Tom Hanks as Sherman McCoy, a superficial Wall Street trader who has the perfect penthouse and a painfully thin, status-obsessed wife (Kim Cattrall). Sherman also has a greedy mistress named Maria (Melanie Griffith). It’s while driving with Maria that Sherman takes a wrong turn and ends up in the South Bronx. When Sherman gets out of the car to move a tire that’s in the middle of the street, two black teenagers approach him. Maria panics and, after Sherman jumps back in the car, she runs over one of the teens. Maria talks Sherman into not calling the police. The police, however, figure out that Sherman’s car was the one who ran over the teen. Sherman is arrested and finds himself being prosecuted by a power-hungry district attorney (F. Murray Abraham). The trial becomes the center of all of New York City’s racial and economic strife, with Sherman becoming “the great white defendant,” upon whom blame for all of New York’s problems can be placed. Bruce Willis plays an alcoholic journalist who was British in the novel. Morgan Freeman plays the judge, who was Jewish in the novel. As well, in the novel, the judge was very much a New York character, profanely keeping order in the court and spitting at a criminal who spit at him first. In the movie, the judge delivers a speech ordering everyone to “be decent to each other” like their mothers taught them to be.

Having read Wolfe’s very novel before watching the film, I knew that there was no way that the adaptation would be able to remain a 100% faithful to Wolfe’s lacerating satire. Because the main character of Wolfe’s book was New York City, he was free to make almost all of the human characters as unlikable as possible. In the book, Peter Fallow is a perpetually soused opportunist who doesn’t worry about who he hurts with his inflammatory articles. Sherman McCoy is a haughty and out-of-touch WASP who never loses his elitist attitude. In the film, Bruce Willis smirks in his wiseguy manner and mocks the other reporters for being so eager to destroy Sherman. Hanks, meanwhile, attempts to play Sherman as an everyman who just happens to live in a luxury penthouse and spend his days on Wall Street. Hanks is so miscast and so clueless as how to play a character like this that Sherman actually comes across as if he’s suffering from some sort of brain damage. He feels less like a stockbroker and more like Forrest Gump without the Southern accent. There’s a scene, written specifically for the film, in which Fallow and Sherman ride the subway together and it literally feels like a parody of one of those sentimental buddy films where a cynic ends up having to take a road trip with someone who has been left innocent and naïve as result of spending the first half of their life locked in basement or a bomb shelter. It’s one thing to present Sherman as being wealthy and uncomfortable among those who are poor. It’s another thing to leave us wondering how he’s ever been able to successfully cross a street in New York City without getting run over by an angry cab driver.

Because the film can’t duplicate Wolfe’s unique prose, it instead resorts to mixing cartoonish comedy and overwrought melodrama. It doesn’t add up too much. At one point, Sherman ends a dinner party by firing a rifle in his apartment but, after it happens, the incident is never mentioned again. I mean, surely someone else in the apartment would have called the cops about someone firing a rifle in the building. Someone in the press would undoubtedly want to write a story about Sherman McCoy, the center of the city’s trial of the century, firing a rifle in his own apartment. If the novel ended with Sherman resigned to the fact that his legal problems are never going to end, the film ends with Sherman getting revenge on everyone who has persecuted him and he does so with a smirk that does not at all feel earned. After two hours of being an idiot, Sherman suddenly outthinks everyone else. Why? Because the film needed the happy ending that the book refused to offer up.

Of course, the film’s biggest sin is that it’s just boring. It’s a dull film, full of good actors who don’t really seem to care about the dialogue that they are reciting. Director Brian De Palma tries to give the film a certain visual flair, resorting to his usual collection of odd camera angles and split screens, none of which feel at all necessary to the story. In the end, De Palma is not at all the right director for the material. Perhaps Sidney Lumet could have done something with it, though he would have still had to deal with the less than impressive script. De Palma’s over-the-top, set piece-obsessed sensibilities just add to the film’s cartoonish feel.

The film flopped at the box office. De Palma’s career never recovered. Tom Hanks’s career as a leading man was momentarily derailed. Bruce Willis would have to wait a few more years to establish himself as a serious actor. Even the normally magnanimous Morgan Freeman has openly talked about how much he hated being involved with The Bonfire of the Vanities. That said, the film lives on because De Palma allowed journalist Julie Salomon to hang out on the set and the book she wrote about the production, The Devil’s Candy, is a classic of Hollywood non-fiction. (TCM adapted the book into a podcast, which is how The Bonfire of the Vanities came to be featured on the station.) Thanks to Salomon’s book, The Bonfire of the Vanities has gone to become the epitome of a certain type of flop, the literary adaptation that is fatally compromised by executives who don’t read.

Previous Icarus Files:

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Brian De Palma Edition

Posted on September 11, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today is the birthday of Brian De Palma and that means that it is time for….

4 Shots From 4 Brian De Palma Films

Carrie (1976, dir by Brian De Palma, DP: Mario Tosi)

Dressed to Kill (1980, dir by Brian De Palma, DP: Ralf D. Bode)

Blow Out (1981, dir by Brian De Palma, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)

Scarface (1983, dir by Brian De Palma, DP: John A. Alonzo)

Film Review: Hi, Mom! (dir by Brian De Palma)

Posted on April 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Released in 1970, Hi, Mom!, tells the story of Jon Rubin (played by a 26 year-old Robert De Niro). The somewhat spacey and kind of creepy Jon has just returned to New York City from Vietnam. After moving into a run-down apartment building and meeting the building’s superintendent (Charles Durning), Jon is hired to direct a pornographic film by producer Joe Banner (Allen Garfield). Jon’s idea to simply point his camera at his building and to film his neighbors as they go about their day. As quickly becomes apparent, Jon is mostly just looking for an excuse to watch and film Judy Bishop (Jennifer Salt).

Also living in the building is Gerrit Wood (Gerrit Graham), who is first seen triumphantly putting posters of Che Guevara and Malcolm X up in his apartment. Gerrit is a freshly-minted political radical and the leader of a group of performance artists who put on a show called Be Black, Baby, in which the white audience members are forced to wear blackface and are then chased, attacked, and assaulted by black actors wearing whiteface. (Gerrit himself is white.) Jon is hired to play the police officer who beats and arrests the members of the audience at the end of the performance. Of course, eventually, the real police show up….

An attempt at an episodic counter-culture comedy, Hi, Mom is definitely a product of the time in which it was made, both in its style and its thematic content. Today, it’s best-known for being one of Brian De Palma’s early independent films and for featuring Robert De Niro in one of his first starring roles. De Palma and De Niro aren’t exactly the first names that come to mind when one thinks about comedy and Hi, Mom shows that there’s a good reason for that. As both a screenwriter who felt he had something important to say and a young director who was obviously eager to show off everything that he could do with a camera, Brian De Palma simply cannot get out of his own way. Scenes are needlessly sped up. Scenes are pointlessly slowed down. The musical cues are obvious. The dialogue is often so broad that it comes across as being cartoonish. One gets the feeling that De Palma didn’t trust the audience to get the jokes so he went overboard to make sure everyone knew when to react. All of the pointless camera trickery serves the same purpose that a laugh track would on an old sitcom. Interestingly enough, the only sequence that really works as satire is the Be Black, Baby sequence and that’s because De Palma directs it in a semi-documentary fashion. De Palma gets out of his own way and allow the sequence to develop a natural rhythm. (Of course, seen today, the scene will bring to mind the upper class white liberals who pay money to have an activist lecture them about their privilege while having their friends over for dinner.)

As for Robert De Niro, he gives a typically nervy performance, one that feels like a dry run for his later work in Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and King of Comedy. Despite the reputation of those films, there are some genuinely funny moments to be found in all of them. Most of them, like the classic Taxi Driver conversation between De Niro’s Travis and Peter Boyle’s Wizard, are funny because of how people react to De Niro’s obviously unhinged characters. Both Taxi Driver and King of Comedy got mileage out of having normal people try to deal with De Niro’s unstable characters. In Hi, Mom, everyone is equally wacky and, as such, De Niro doesn’t really have anyone to play off. No one is really reacting to anything, De Niro-included. (There is some spark to his scenes with Charles Durning and Allen Garfield but even those scenes seem to drag on forever.)

On the plus side, Hi, Mom! is was shot on the actual streets of New York City, guerilla-style. (A “Re-Elect Mayor Lindsay” sign in the background confirms that the film was made on location in 1969.) When De Palma isn’t getting in his own way with all of his fancy camera tricks, he manages to capture so memorably bleak images of New York City. Hi, Mom! presents New York as being a dirty, crime-ridden, and menacing city but it also captures the odd grandeur of urban decay. At its best, Hi, Mom! captures the love/hate relationship that many seem to have New York City. The city feels both alive and dangerous at the same time. Hi, Mom! is too uneven to work as a sustained satire but, as a documentary about New York at the end of the turbulent 60s, it’s worth watching.

I should mention that this was not the first time that De Palma and De Niro teamed up. Indeed, De Niro was De Palma’s muse even before he met Martin Scorsese. Hi, Mom! was a loose sequel to an earlier De Palma/De Niro film called Greetings. (Like many of De Palma’s future films, both Greetings and Hi, Mom! were originally rated X but later re-rated R.) De Palma and De Niro, of course, would both go onto have long Hollywood careers. (They would later reunite for The Untouchables, a big-budget spectacle of a film that’s about as far from the grungy Hi, Mom! as one can get.) De Palma’s career has had its ups and downs but, as of late, many of his films have been positively reevaluated. As for De Niro, he can finally kind of play comedy. That said, I’d rather watch Hi, Mom than Dirty Grandpa.

8 Shots From 8 Horror Films: 1980

Posted on October 14, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This October, I’m going to be doing something a little bit different with my contribution to 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films. I’m going to be taking a little chronological tour of the history of horror cinema, moving from decade to decade.

Today, we take a look at a very important year: 1980

8 Shots From 8 Horror Films: 1980

Inferno (1980, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Romana Albano)

Without Warning (1980, dir by Greydon Clark, DP: Dean Cundey)

Friday the 13th (1980, dir by Sean S. Cunningham, DP: Barry Abrams)

Maniac (1980, dir. William Lusting, DP: Robert Lindsay)

City of the Living Dead (1980, dir by Lucio Fulci, DP: Sergio Salvati)

Dressed To Kill (1980, dir by Brian De Palma, DP: Ralf D. Bode)

Night of the Hunted (1980, dir by Jean Rollin)

The Shining (1980, directed by Stanley Kubrick, DP: John Alcott)

10 Shots From 10 Horror Films: 1975 — 1977

Posted on October 11, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, we take a look at three very important years: 1975, 1976, and 1977!

10 Shots From 10 Films: 1975 — 1977

Deep Red (1975, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Luigi Kuveiller)

Trilogy of Terror (1975, dir by Dan Curtis. DP: Paul Lohmann)

Eaten Alive (1976, dir by Tobe Hooper. DP: Robert Caramico)

The Omen (1976, dir by Richard Donner, DP: Gilbert Taylor)

Carrie (1976, dir by Brian De Palma, DP: Mario Tosi)

Shock (1977, dir by Mario Bava, DP: Alberto Spagnoli)

The Hills Have Eyes (1977, dir by Wes Craven, DP: Eric Saarinen)

Suspiria (1977, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Luciano Tuvalia)

Eraserhead (1977, directed by David Lynch, DP: Frederick Elmes and Herbert Cardwell)

Shock Waves (1977, dir by Ken Wiederhorn, DP: Reuben Trane)

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Brian De Palma Edition

Posted on September 11, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today is the birthday of Brian De Palma and that means that it is time for….

4 Shots From 4 Brian De Palma Films

Carrie (1976, dir by Brian De Palma, DP: Mario Tosi)

Dressed to Kill (1980, dir by Brian De Palma, DP: Ralf D. Bode)

Blow Out (1981, dir by Brian De Palma, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)

Scarface (1983, dir by Brian De Palma, DP: John A. Alonzo)

What Could Have Been: George Hamilton as Travis Bickle?

Posted on August 7, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I was recently reading the IMDb trivia page for Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film, Taxi Driver.

Taxi Driver is often held up as the being the ultimate New York horror story as well as being the quintessential Martin Scorsese/Robert De Niro collaboration. In fact, the film is so identified with Scorsese, De Niro, and screenwriter Paul Schrader that it is easy to forget that it actually took a while for Scorsese and De Niro to become involved with the project. Quite a few different directors showed interest in Schrader’s script before Scorsese signed on. And, even though the role will always be associated with him, De Niro was not the only actor considered for the role of Travis Bickle.

That’s what brought me to the IMDb trivia page. I wanted to see who else was considered for the role of Travis. Here’s the list that I found: Jeff Bridges, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Burt Reynolds, Ryan O’Neal, Peter Fonda, Al Pacino, Jon Voight, Robert Blake, David Carradine, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Walken, Alain Delon, James Caan, Roy Scheider, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Elliott Gould, Alan Alda, and George Hamilton. That’s quite a list! And. for the most part, I don’t buy it for a second.

Don’t get me wrong. It is known that Al Pacino was sent the script before Scorsese came on board. And Scorsese himself has said that he offered the role to Dustin Hoffman. (Hoffman says he turned down the role because Scorsese’s intensity freaked him out.) Jeff Bridges was also a possibility and, if you read Schrader’s script and force yourself to forget about De Niro’s performance, you can actually imagine Bridges in the role. I could also imagine a youngish Martin Sheen in the role. He had just played Charlie Starkweather in Badlands so one can imagine him being considered for Travis. Peter Fonda and Robert Blake seem possible as well. Even David Carradine.

But some of the other names on that list …. Alain Delon? Paul Newman? Alan Alda? GEORGE HAMILTON?

This George Hamilton?

Listen, I like George Hamilton. He’s a good comedic actor. And I know that there were a lot of directors who took a look at Paul Schrader’s script and I also know that some of Travis’s most iconic moments — like the whole “You talkin’ to me?” scene — were improvised by De Niro and were not in the original script. Taxi Driver could have gone in a lot of different directions. But I’m just going to say right now that there is no way that George Hamilton was ever considered for the role of Travis Bickle. It’s totally possible that Hamilton was considered for another role in the film. I could imagine him as the presidential candidate, Charles Palantine. I could also imagine him in the role of Tom, Palantine’s campaign manager. Perhaps he was offered one of those roles and someone, reading that George Hamilton had turned down Taxi Driver, got it into their head that he was considered for Travis.

Or maybe …. someone just made the whole thing up. I enjoy the IMDb trivia pages but I’ve come across a lot of information that simply is not true. Despite what the page for the original Halloween says, I refuse to believe that John Belushi was considered for the role of Dr. Loomis. For that matter, I also refuse to believe that Bill Murray was a runner-up for the role of Han Solo in Star Wars. Sorry, IMDb trivia people. I just don’t buy it.

Arthur Bremer

Here’s what we do know. Paul Schrader was originally inspired to create the character of Travis Bickle by Arthur Bremer, a non-descript 21 year-old Midwesterner who, in 1972, shot and nearly killed presidential candidate, George Wallace. After the shooting, police turned up a diary in which Bremer wrote about his desire to be someone. According to Bremer, he shot Wallace not as a political act but because he wanted to be famous. Schrader later said that, while writing the script, the story became less about Bremer and more about Schrader’s own social isolation.

The script was optioned by the production team of Tony Bill and Julia and Michael Phillips. They had just recently produced the Oscar-winning The Sting. Originally, Tony Bill wanted to make his directorial debut with the film. That was when the script was sent to Al Pacino. Pacino turned down the role, reportedly because he didn’t want to work with a first-time director. (Tony Bill, a former actor, later directed several films, most of which appeared to be taking place in a totally separate universe from Schrader’s vision of urban Hell.)

The script was eventually read by Brian De Palma, who voiced an interest in directing the film. DePalma’s choice for the role of Travis Bickle? Jeff Bridges.

Today, it might be hard to imagine the affable, laid-back Jeff Bridges as Travis Bickle but, if you read the script, it’s easy to see why De Palma considered him for the role. Travis was written as being someone from the middle of the country, someone who was out-of-place in New York City. Travis was meant to be lost in New York. (Though Travis does say that he’s from the midwest in Scorsese’s film, Robert De Niro himself remains the prototypical New Yorker.) At least initially, Bridges would have been a bit less obviously unstable than De Niro. As good as Taxi Driver is, it always seems a bit strange that Betsy would agree to go out with De Niro’s Travis but it’s a bit easier to believe that she would take a chance on Jeff Bridges, with his charming smile and likable manner. Bridges’s descent into madness would have been all the more devastating because he was such an outwardly affable presence. I’m not saying it would have worked but I can still see what De Palma would have been going for in his version of Taxi Driver.

That said, De Palma did not make Taxi Driver. He instead decided to do Carrie. A young Steven Spielberg briefly showed interest in Taxi Driver (the mind boggles) before decided to do Jaws instead. Eventually, after being introduced to Schrader by De Palma, Martin Scorsese agreed to direct the film. After getting turned down by Dustin Hoffman, Scorsese offered the role to De Niro.

As for the rest of the cast, Rock Hudson would have been an interesting choice for the role of Sen. Palantine but he turned down the script because he was busy with a television show. There was also some talk of casting former New York Mayor John Lindsay in the role but, in the end, the role was given to a writer named Leonard Harris.

The role of Tom was originally offered to Harvey Keitel. Because Keitel wanted to play the pimp, Albert Brooks ended up as Tom. Because there wasn’t much to Tom in the script, it was felt that, as a comedian, Brooks could bring some sort of life to the character. Indeed, Brooks reportedly improvised the majority of his lines.

Despite the fact that producer Julia Phillips wanted to cast Farrah Fawcett in the role, Martin Scorsese selected Cybil Shepherd for the role of Betsy. If you believe the IMDb, Meryl Streep was offered the role but turned it down. (If I sound skeptical, it’s because Streep hadn’t even made her film debut at the time that Taxi Driver went into production.) Glenn Close, Jane Seymour, and Susan Sarandon auditioned for the role. Mia Farrow reportedly wanted the role but was turned down by Scorsese.

As everyone knows, Jodie Foster played the 13 year-old prostitute, Iris, in Taxi Driver. A man named John Hinckley, Jr. was so obsessed with Foster’s performance that he went the same route as Travis Bickle and attempted to assassinate the president in an effort to impress her. Foster, however, was only picked after Scorsese saw several up-and-coming actresses. Reportedly, due to the success of The Exorcist, Linda Blair was seriously considered for the role. Tatum O’Neal was also considered, after winning her Oscar for Paper Moon. Scorsese came close to casting Melanie Griffith but then Tippi Hedren read the script and nixed the idea. Among the others who supposedly read for Iris: Mariel Hemingway, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Heather Locklear, Kristy McNichol, Carrie Fisher, Ellen Barkin, Kim Basinger, Geena Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brooke Shields, Debra Winger, Rosanna Arquette, Bo Derek, and Kim Cattrall.

Finally, actor George Memmoli was injured on the set of another film, which led to Scorsese playing the passenger who talks to Travis about murdering his wife.

In the end, the right director and the right cast were selected and Taxi Driver became a classic of urban paranoia. Still, it’s always fun to play What If. On Earth-2, someone is watching Jeff Bridges, Rock Hudson, Jane Seymour, and Melanie Griffith in Brian De Palma’s Taxi Driver. And, on Earth-3, George Hamilton is polishing his Oscars and thinking about how playing Travis Bickle changed his life.