You Fucking To Me? Jessie Andrews And Tommy Pistol In “Taxi Driver XXX”

You thought that if a porn parody were to make associations with a character created by Jodie Foster, more wholesome choices might have been "Nell" or "The Accused." But Jessie Andrews and Tommy Pistol are tragilicious in "Taxi Driver."

Taxi Driver: An XXX Parody

Studio: Pleasure Dynasty
Director: General Stone
Starring: Tommy Pistol, Jessie Andrews, Misty Stone, Chanel Preston, Aurora Snow, Nikki Charm, Lily Labeau, Sean Michaels, Tom Byron, Bill Bailey, Howard Levine, Girth Brooks, Scott Lyons, Eric John, Rob Black, Dan O'Really, Ron Jeremy, Evan Stone

Review by: Gram Ponante

Don't know the original? No problem. The talented Tommy Pistol reprises Robert De Niro's role as Travis Bickle, a 70's-era New York cabbie unlucky in love but chock-full of self-righteousness and working-class indignation. Which part of the porn viewing audience do you think this character study might appeal to?

Bickle spies the lovely Betsy (Lily Labeau) working at Palantine campaign headquarters and makes a move on her, but taking her to a porno theatre (where Chanel Preston and Aurora Snow work on Tom Byron) somehow fails to arouse her interest in Travis as a life partner. Strike One.

Then Travis sets his sights on teen prostie Iris (Jessie Andrews) and attempts to rescue her from her pimp, played by a hair-flipping, scenery-chewing Evan Stone channeling Harvey Keitel. (This behavior, in porn parlance, sets up Travis as a "Captain Save-A-Ho," the earnest admirer who professes to want to help the harlot abandon her wicked ways but who actually wants her just to himself).

Directed by "General Stone," whose porn work is known elsewhere under a different flavor and name, "Taxi Driver" lifts Paul Schrader's 1976 script almost word for word, and each performer does his/her level best in keeping up with the likes of De Niro, Foster, Keitel and, in Labeau's case, Cybill Shepherd.

The acting is measured and self-assured. Pistol is not doing a De Niro impression; he just happens to be using his native accent. Andrews is not imitating Foster; she's just acting like a mixed-up teen prostitute (if Andrews is going to be typecast as a prostitute, I'm OK with it; her performance in "Portrait of A Call Girl" was equally effective) and doing it well. Evan Stone? Well, how else are you supposed to play a pimp? Subtly? I don't think so.

Other standout performances are delivered by veteran porn salesman Howard Levine as "Angry Man" (I think Scorsese himself played this role in the original), Ron Jeremy as Ron Jeremy playing a fellow cabbie and, in my favorite sex scene of the movie, Nikki Charm and Sean Michaels as a cheating wife and the dude she's getting revenge on her husband with. Sorry to sound all inclusive and everything, but it's great to see older performers in movies; they appear more confident. In the context of this movie, set in the 70's, Charm and Michaels just seem right for the part.

General Stone mostly manages to keep the palm trees, L.A. street signs, and orange Metro buses out of the frame of a movie that's supposed to take place in New York, but we'll cut the production some slack. During a Palantine rally, the movie cuts from footage of what appears to be a Pride rally in Manhattan's Washington Square to Pistol, in Chatsworth with his mohawk. We appreciate the effort.

"Taxi Driver" takes itself seriously and is done so well that we do, too, and that's no mean street feat for a porn movie.

Once we have suppressed the urge to question "Why?" of "Taxi Driver," are we to give carte blanche to every porn parody that uses the scripts of the original? Perhaps not. But this porn adaptation has an interesting twist that almost gives the bleak source material a Hollywood ending and that, along with the solid performances (and real-life moving cab!) makes "Taxi Driver: An XXX Parody" worth seeing.

· Pleasure Dynasty (PDFilmsLLC.com)
· Buy "Taxi Driver" (tlavideo.com)