BOBAM: Blue Collar (1978)

This episode is a little bit #BegleyOnBegley Action Month and a little bit WDIRT and a whole lot of f-words. I take a look at Paul Schrader's Blue Collar (1978) which is sort of a heist film, but mostly a hard-hitting take on labor relations in the auto industry. 

Zeke (Richard Pryor), Smokey (Yaphet Kotto), and Jerry (Harvey Keitel) have had enough of the awful conditions on the line of the auto factory where they work. The treatment they get from their union isn't any better so they hatch a plan to rob their local's safe. Also starring Lucy Saroyan, Harry Northup, Cliff DeYoung, and, of course, Ed Begley, Jr. 

Where to watch • IMDb listing • Wikipedia page

S2E1. I'm God's lonely man: Taxi Driver (1976)

Almost three months after the end of Season One Wake Up Heavy is back with our Season Two opener on Martin Scorsese's gritty-seventies-existential-nihilistic masterpiece Taxi Driver. WUH welcomes back Mike White from The Projection Booth podcast for another stimulating discussion.

Powerful in its cinematic style and controversial in its depiction of violence, Paul Schrader's script and Scorsese's frenetic direction imbue the film with a mounting tension that ultimately explodes in a "kill crazy rampage." By the end happenstance turns Travis Bickle, our Avenging Angel, into the "Hero Cabbie."

Robert DeNiro, in a role that has followed him through his career, leads a stellar cast including Cybil Shepherd, Albert Brooks, Peter Boyle, and, in one of five movies from 1976, 12 year-old Jodie Foster. Her role as a young prostitute was one of the more controversial aspects of the film, and would in turn inspire John Hinckley, Jr. to try and assassinate President Ronald Reagan.

Where to watch • IMDb listing • Wikipedia page • Roger Ebert's 1976 review • Travis Bickle as incel