Cabbie as hero

I’ve been watching movies in between passengers. The iPad is a handy size to prop up on the dashboard, between the meter and the license holder. I crank the seat back, take a swig of cold coffee, and enjoy the show.

At least until some hound of a passenger interrupts me, wants me to drive him somewhere and accept money. Better than ad breaks, I suppose, but it sure cuts up the flow.

Anyway, I’ve been watching a movie about a heroic taxidriver. He saves hundreds from certain death, gets his passengers home safely – apart from one, who enters the cab in the first few minutes of the film and is still there at the end – battles with self confidence, makes love in the surf, and goes out to win one for the Zipper. It’s great stuff – a day in the life of a cabbie.

There’s singer Maureen McGovern, basketballer Kareem Al-Jabbar, people holding the sets together, an amazing juggling scene, and Girl Scouts fighting for their lives.

Our cabbie hero takes it all in his stride. Sweating buckets along the way, he does the job and gets the girl. It’s one of the ten greatest films in a crowded genre. Made on a shoestring but spawning a string of sequels. Thirty years later, there are people who can recite every line of the script. It’s a classic, and I love it.

I refer, of course, to Flying High. A jetliner with propeller sounds, no aircraft ever endured so much, or crammed in so many gags – in every sense of the word.

Robert Hays plays Ted Striker, Los Angeles cabdriver with girl troubles and a bad wartime experience as a fighter pilot. He boards a flight to Chicago to win back his stewardess girlfriend, the flight crew are dragged off with food poisoning somewhere over the Hoover Dam, and the only person on board who can bring the four engine jetliner in safely is Striker.

He’s a troubled man, and the audience feels every moment of his personal struggle. Taxidriving is like that.

And the best films show a hero overcoming adversity and internal conflict to win against the odds and find romance. This is one of the greats. This is a film to base a doctoral thesis on. This is what a cabbie does when he’s not driving.

Next week, playing on Cabbie Cinema for your viewing pleasure: Gone With The Wind – the story of lost property.