Martin Scorsese Appears in New Apple Ad with Siri, Plays on His Chilling Cameo in Taxi Driver

In 1976, Mar­tin Scors­ese made a chill­ing cameo appear­ance in his thriller, Taxi Dri­ver. Per­haps you remem­ber the scene: Play­ing a beard­ed, name­less char­ac­ter, Scors­ese enters a cab, boss­es the dri­ver around for a while, then pro­ceeds to explain, in an uncom­fort­ably mat­ter of fact way, how he plans to kill his wife. It’ll make your hair stand on end. In a new com­mer­cial for Apple, Scors­ese plays a bossy back-seat rid­er again. But this time, there’s no killing involved, just shilling. It’s an ad for Apple’s iPhone, and it’s the lat­est in a new series of ads fea­tur­ing celebs like Zooey Deschan­nel, Samuel Jack­son and John Malkovich.

Of course, the par­al­lel between the Siri ad and the 1976 film was spot­ted by Roger Ebert. All props to him.

P.S.: In case you think we’re see­ing a par­al­lel that does­n’t actu­al­ly exist, it’s worth not­ing that both cabs have the same num­ber. Great spot by @sinyc.