Considering how thorough Girl is in her visual analysis of each episode you may already have caught this but the movie Marty is watching while eating dinner alone at his place is John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS.
For this show that is absolutely no coincidence. The Searchers deals with an obsessive hunt for a kidnapped girl.
Well it gets weirder if you want. If Pizzolatto was riffing on some of the elements from The Searchers he may be very aware that Martin Scorsese has explicitly stated that Taxi Driver is his update/remake of The Searchers. In Taxi Driver Travis Bickle, an obsessive loner who is angry at a sick twisted world ( Rust ? )
tries to help out an underage prostitute ( echos of Marty trying to help out Beth ). Also Marty is what Scorsese is very often called.
If Pizzolatto was using some elements from The Searchers and Taxi Driver as a bit of DNA for his story he may have found the color of Bickle’s cab ( yellow ) amusing. Not that it in any way connects to The King In Yellow but with all the sources he may have been building from another yellow reference would have been funny.
Unfortunately that’s about all I have down this road. I may be off about using Scosese’s name but it does seem funny, like Pizzolatto’s personal in-joke that Marty is the one watching The Searchers.
If he also referenced Taxi Driver I get the feeling the end may be similar. I haven’t seen the promo for next week ( I don’t want to know anything in advance ) but with the sense of doom and the ” we probably aren’t coming back from this” that was all through episode 7 it feels like it could end in a Taxi Driver like blood bath but without Travis Bickle alive at the end.
A Guy, A Girl and Cthulhu 
Great blog.
Considering how thorough Girl is in her visual analysis of each episode you may already have caught this but the movie Marty is watching while eating dinner alone at his place is John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS.
For this show that is absolutely no coincidence. The Searchers deals with an obsessive hunt for a kidnapped girl.
Fantastic observation, thanks!
I don’t know how much of The Searchers Pizzolatto may have been channeling but the person who kidnaps
the girl in the film is called Scar
Jebuz, this series is so intensely metatextual! I feel a new blog post coming on.
Well it gets weirder if you want. If Pizzolatto was riffing on some of the elements from The Searchers he may be very aware that Martin Scorsese has explicitly stated that Taxi Driver is his update/remake of The Searchers. In Taxi Driver Travis Bickle, an obsessive loner who is angry at a sick twisted world ( Rust ? )
tries to help out an underage prostitute ( echos of Marty trying to help out Beth ). Also Marty is what Scorsese is very often called.
If Pizzolatto was using some elements from The Searchers and Taxi Driver as a bit of DNA for his story he may have found the color of Bickle’s cab ( yellow ) amusing. Not that it in any way connects to The King In Yellow but with all the sources he may have been building from another yellow reference would have been funny.
“Well, it gets weirder if you want…”
IF WE WANT? Clearly, it is all we want! Thanks for this! Keep it coming!
-Guy
Unfortunately that’s about all I have down this road. I may be off about using Scosese’s name but it does seem funny, like Pizzolatto’s personal in-joke that Marty is the one watching The Searchers.
If he also referenced Taxi Driver I get the feeling the end may be similar. I haven’t seen the promo for next week ( I don’t want to know anything in advance ) but with the sense of doom and the ” we probably aren’t coming back from this” that was all through episode 7 it feels like it could end in a Taxi Driver like blood bath but without Travis Bickle alive at the end.