In her new foreword to the reissue of this insightful introduction to Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Taubin notes that New York has changed a great deal in the 36 years since the movie was made. America too has changed. Taubin sees racism and misogyny as more mainstream than before: "Obama's presidency has inflamed the racism that is entrenched in the American psyche." Indeed, her main criticism of the film is that Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader decided to "pull their punches" when it came to foregrounding Bickle's racism. In the script (which Schrader wrote in 10 days), the "three white scumbags" Bickle shoots are black. "We would have had fights in the theatre," says Schrader, explaining why this was changed. Downplaying Bickle's racism makes him more "worthy of identification", notes Taubin. The massacre at the end in which Bickle attempts to reinvent himself as a macho vigilante hero is both horrific and "as voluptuous as anything in American movies". Bickle becomes "the nightmare America deserves".