Q: Much has been made of the decision to alter the color of the shooting scene at the end of the film to get an R rating in 1976. Why didn’t you restore it to the originally-shot, more colorful scene?
A: There are a couple of answers to this. One, which we discussed, was the goal of presenting the film as it was released, which is the version everyone basically knows. This comes up every now and then, but the director feels it best to leave the film as it is. That decision is fine with me. However, there is an impression from some who think we could easily “pump” the color back into that scene and that is not as easy as it sounds. The film was not just printed darker, or with muted colors, as some think. There are two sections of the original negative that were removed from the cut and assembled camera negative.
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The Digital Bits - Sony’s Grover Crisp on the new Taxi Driver Restoration: I didn’t know they altered the color for the purpose of getting an R rating.
The Bridge on the River Kwai is indeed quite wonderful on Blu-ray, so I’m sure they did a top-notch job on Taxi Driver, too. Looking forward to it.
