Taxi: The Sitcom That Launched Careers Of Danny DeVito, Andy Kaufman, And Many Others

Taxi, the ground-breaking US sitcom that launched the careers of some of America’s finest character actors, celebrates its 40th anniversary this week.

Appearing just two years after Martin Scorsese’s seminal Taxi Driver, the show took a much lighter look at the New York City cab business but placed its emphasis on the same hangdog camaraderie that film portrayed in its central diner scene, where Peter Boyle’s Wizard holds court over a late night cup of coffee and Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) is advised to buy a handgun.

Charles Bukowski wrote about training to be a cabbie in Factotum (1975) and there’s plenty of his nicotine-flecked humor in there too, although the show was actually inspired by a New York Magazine article by Mark Jacobson, “Night-Shifting for the Hip Fleet”, about life at Greenwich Village’s Dover Taxi Garage #2… read more >