Yellow Cab

by Christophe Chabouté (Illustrations), Benoît Cohen

A burnt out filmmaker finds new inspiration behind the wheel of an iconic New York City taxi cab, exploring a world where he is the stranger and the city his new workplace.

After 20 years working on film and series shoots, Beno�t Cohen is drained. His enthusiasm gone, a desire to stop writing and put down the camera takes over. In the city for a year, he still wonders about how best to absorb the rich diversity of the cosmopolitan metropolis, settling on a simple idea: he will become a taxi driver.

Behind the iconic Yellow Cab, behind the fantasy of freedom and independence, behind the faces of his thousands of passengers, Beno�t discovers a world in which he is a stranger. First, the administrative maze that leads to the taxi driver's license. Then the world behind the scenes. And, finally, the prejudices that surround the profession and lead the customers, cops and entire city to look at it, quite randomly, either with indifference, kindness, or aggression.

Beno�t Cohen dives into his new life with the idea of turning it into a screenplay for a future film, but the material he collects from this social experiment marks him deeply, leading down unsuspected paths. The project transforms into an autobiographical novel interspersed with reflections on the creative process.

With the help of Chabout�, it is now a sensitive, deeply human graphic novel, with breathtaking illustrations that pay vibrant tribute to the most famous of American cities.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Bande Dessinée, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, New York, France

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 13, 2021

About the author

Christophe Chabouté is a French author and illustrator.

D’origine alsacienne, il suit les cours des Beaux-Arts d’Angoulême, puis de Strasbourg. Vents d'Ouest publie ses premières planches en 1993 dans Les Récits, un album collectif sur Arthur Rimbaud. Mais il se fait surtout connaître en 1998 en publiant Sorcières aux éditions du Téméraire (primé au Festival d’Illzach) puis Quelques jours d’été aux éditions Paquet (Alph’Art Coup de Cœur au Festival d'Angoulême). Il a également illustré des romans pour la jeunesse.

Reviews

[Sam Quixote · Rating 2 out of 5]

Christophe Chaboute adapts filmmaker Benoit Cohen’s 2017 book Yellow Cab into a comic of the same name, wherein Cohen decides to slum it as a NYC taxi driver for a few months in 2016 to gather material for a new film.

Chaboute is a fine cartoonist but even he can’t make anything compelling out of Cohen’s dreary memoir. Nearly the entire first half of the book showcases the administrative nightmare that is becoming a New York cab driver, which was simply tedious to read, while the second half is Cohen’s experiences ferrying people around the vast metropolis that is New York, none of which were memorable. It’s also not interesting reading about Cohen’s notes on his would-be screenplay.

Chaboute’s black and white artwork is first rate and he draws New York beautifully, which is by turns vibrant and intimidating, and I suppose the book is informative if you’ve ever wondered about the world of cab drivers (no, me neither). Overall though, Yellow Cab is a very dull comic that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone - check out Chaboute’s other books like his more successful (because exciting stuff actually happens in it!) adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick or his even better book The Park Bench instead.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very talented comics guy Christophe Chaboute adapts a novel by filmmaker Benoit Cohen who decides to reignite his work by going to NYC and becoming a cab driver! Manhattan! Where Cabs have their place in the world of the arts, such as Tax Driver! Cohen is not poor, but he wants to know what it really feels like to drive cabs and meet fellow drivers and interesting fares. Half the book is about all the boring details of getting the damned license, and then when it coms to the work itself, he fails to get us more than superficially engaged in the lives of the people he encounters. He has no real story here!

So why three stars instead of two, or one? Well, I stopped paying attention to the boring plot and just luxuriated in the Manhattan artwork of Chaboute, it's really wonderful, wasted a bit on this story, maybe, or else you can look at it as the main story, the visualization of Manhattan, cue Gershwin. I highly recommend you follow this guy, who has done a few (and usually wordless) comics novels such as Alone, Park Bench, Moby Dick, all great for various reasons.

[António · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um dos meus autores de banda desenhada preferidos mostra-nos a cidade de Nova Iorque e a vida dos seus taxistas. Adorei o livro. Daria zero estrelas para a tradução, é mesmo muito má. Quando lemos algo como "Ouve alguns dias" sabemos que chegámos ao fundo.

[Rod Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

A French filmmaker moves to New York City and has a notion to immerse himself by becoming a cab driver. Much of this graphic novel is him jumping through all the many, convoluted, and necessary bureaucratic hoops and then sitting in his cab brainstorming scenes for his movie as he scrutinizes his passengers, his fellow cab drivers, and the people on the streets of the city. Instead of a film, the real Benoit Cohen turned this endeavor into a 2017 French novel, Yellow Cab, that Christophe Chabouté has now adapted into a graphic novel.

It sort of reminds me of stories about method actors going extra lengths to develop their characters, but mostly it reminds me of promotions I've seen for a cheesy reality show called Undercover Boss, where an out-of-touch CEO pretends he's just one of the guys to get the inside scoop on how the other half lives. Cohen's motives, casual deception, discreet recording, and failure to really delve into the ramifications of slumming amongst the common man while enjoying a more privileged lifestyle once he steps out of the cab just left me a bit queasy and uncomfortable. It didn't help when he decided to make his movie's lead character female and started conjecturing how he might have to adapt his experiences to how he imagines a woman might experience them. I'm not sure he has a firm grip on that point of view.

In the end, I was bored as he settled on having the city itself be the main character, focusing on all the little moments with individual people, as if every strange person he sees is his resource to exploit, and as if we haven't seen the same sort of thing done again and again before. Based on this adaptation, I wouldn't want to see his film if it ever does get made.

[Drew Canole · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty underwhelming book by Chaboute. He usually does his own beautifully illustrated comics. This one although pretty, is kind of clogged up by the plot and dialogue. It's a strange book to adapt. I'm not familiar with Benoît Cohen or his film work.

Cohen wants to do a film about NYC and gets a job as a taxi driver... sort of like Robert De Niro in preparation for Taxi Driver. I made me feel a bit uneasy, like I think it felt a bit like what people would call poverty tourism. He's living this grungy lifestyle, but at any point he can just quit and go back to his normal life. Maybe its just me, but I found that element distracting.

Honestly I would have preferred a tour of NYC drawn by Chaboute. Sort of like "The Park Bench", but just go all around the city.

[♥ Sandi ❣ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars

Another retelling of a classic - Yellow Cab by Benoit Cohen , the French Director, who finds new inspiration behind the wheel of an iconic New York City taxi cab, exploring a world where he is the stranger and the city his new workplace. This is Chaboute's graphic novel retelling of Cohen's classic.

Cohen expecting to turn this experience into a new film is stunned by the process of getting licensed to be a cab driver, the horror of learning the tricks of the city and those that enforce them, and then the trade who uses city cabs - their kindness, their indifference and their aggression.

Chaboute has again brought to life another story in black and white graphics. His artwork speaks without necessity of words, however I think this book has more words attached to the story than any other Chaboute book I have read. Whereas my all time favorite books by him, Alone and The Park Bench are almost wordless.

Slowly Chaboute's works are being translated from French, although not nearly fast enough for me. I believe this is the final book now translated, but I will watch for more. This man's talent is beyond reproach.

[Jovana Radovanović · Rating 4 out of 5]

bilo bi još veće uživanje da je svaki taksi bio obojen u žuto
iako se crtež potpuno razlikuje od onih na koje sam do sad nailazila, ostavlja upečatljiv utisak

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange slice of life story about a director who takes a job as a taxi driver for research purposes. The story was OK, the illustrations were stark and gritty.

The only ex-New York cabbie I know drives like a maniac, there may be a reason why they are unloved...

[Etienne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had heard of this original novel and the author on a French TV shows, La grande librairie, so I was glad to have the chance to get a copy of this adaptation. The black and white art was really nice, but the story a bit repetitive. This is a book that reflect a really nice experience and and author that would be amazing to have a drink with and discuss about it, but as a graphic novel, it felt a bit repetitive, because in most part of the very nature of the cab driver job. Still we get a good overview of the wild life of NY and how a cab drivers always pick pieces and pieces of so may lies everyday.

[Olivier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un réalisateur français installé à New York se sent en manque d 'inspiration. Pour trouver son nouveau thème il décide de plonger dans l'âme de la ville et de devenir taxi.
Loin du cliché du Yellow Cab il découvre une profession detestée et que seuls les immigrés acceptent. Entre absurdités administratives, arnaques et stress, il va finalement découvrir la ville et ses dessous. Tiré d'un romande Benoît Cohen , les dessins en noir et blanc rendent hommage à la cité. Mais le fait qu un Français nanti fasse ce job pour l inspiration altère un peu la sympathie pour l histoire et le quotidien redondant du héros au volant de son taxi m a un peu lassé au fil des pages.

[Bojan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reminds you to stop and observe the world around you ❤️

[Vicky Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dare to Place Yourself on the Scene/ "Ousar se colocar em cena."

The art is what makes this work a must-have graphic novel! Chabouté's work is fascinating for anyone who loves comic book art. The story itself is probably more of a niche subgroup in comic realism within the alternative genre. The first third of the story is filled with Cohen's experiences with the bureaucratic red tape of getting a cab driving license in NYC, which took six months. The last two thirds covers his experience in the following six months; glimpsing the city through the faces and conversations taking place in his rented Yellow Cab.

Inspired by the day to day working life of New York City, French filmmaker Benoit Cohen tells the story of his experiences in New York City as a taxi driver. His 2017 novel has been brought to life in graphic novel format by Christophe Chabouté, a French Alsatian comic book artist, in vivid black and white frames in 2021. The hardback edition measures 11.42 by 8.66 inches and to my knowledge is only available in either French or Brazilian Portuguese. As a very low level reader in Brazilian Portuguese, I found this to be a basic reading experience, since it is filled with simple and yet often idiomatic language. That marks the whole work... the realism of the everyday common life through the immigrant's perspective.

"Faz um ano que a gente vive nosso sonho Americano... mas eu quería mergulhar mais fundo na cultura do país... viver a experiêncía maís de perto... de dentro... plenamente!!"

In English:

"It's been a year that we've been living our American dream... but I wanted to dive deeper into the country's culture, live the experience closer... from the inside fully!!"

Cohen was perhaps inspired by De Niro and Taxi Driver from the seventies. The idea of the anonymous lift of the taxi cab. Unidentified passengers. Invisible drivers. The immigrant experience. The streets of the city. All of this was for the purpose of giving Cohen a lift in his filmmaker career... to inspire him for a film. He had since recently been living a middle class life in Brooklyn, but wanted to see the city from the inside.

"E, afinal, também ganhar a vida, 'ganhar a vida,' nunca havia refletido sobre essa expressão, ela me parece particularmente adequada ao que sinto com essa experiêncía como taxista.
Eu ganho una vida nova, como num videogame."

In English:

"And, after all, also earning a living, 'earning a living,' I had never reflected on that expression, it seems to me particularly suited to what I feel with this experience as a taxi driver. I gain a new life, like in a video game."

All these words, and I am unable to show you the art! You will have to see for yourself. So, go ahead and place yourself on the scene. If this story is not for you, then check out some of the other graphic novel/ comic books by Chabouté online. He has much from which to choose. I obtained this Portuguese edition from São Paulo, Brazil through LT2 Shop, on Amazon. They provide excellent quality and speedy delivery.

[João Teixeira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Não é um livro memorável.
A culpa não será toda de Chabouté (que, de resto, desenha muito bem o argumento adaptado), mas talvez mais pelo livro original de Benoît Cohen. À força de querer contar tudo (a experiência kafkiana de obter a licença de condução de táxi em Nova Iorque, as suas motivações pessoais para ser chofer de táxi na cidade, as notas pessoais para um futuro filme a ser relaizado no futuro)... Demasiadas "linhas narrativas" (e quiçá, desnecessárias), quando aquilo que nos levou a pegar no livro foi a expectativa de histórias caricatas de alguém que se predispôs a transportar passageiros na cidade onde tudo pode acontecer. Chegados ao fim, ficamos apenas com a sensação de que este "táxi" poderia ter-nos levado a um sítio espantoso, mas a meio da viagem ficou sem combustível. Um livro que me deixou indiferente, na realidade como qualquer viagem de táxi que eu próprio já empreendi...

[Oskar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yellow Cab is a piece of fiction about a guy writing a piece of fiction—a concept I’m not personally a huge fan of. The artwork is excellent, and the second half offers an interesting and colorful depiction of the broad collage of characters you encounter while working in the modern service industry. Unfortunately, I felt that this aspect of the book played too small a role overall, and by the end, it seemed as though the story had perhaps tried to take on a bit too much at once. Also, I felt that the main character—and by extension the narrative—came across as a bit too smug at times.

[meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This graphic novel tells the story of Benoit, a film maker who decides to become a yellow taxi cab driver for inspiration for a film.

I am not familiar with any of the author's previous work, so this was my first experience with his work. It was a interesting read, the illustration style conveys the tangle of one way streets and the diverse people in the back seat.

I would recommend this book to folks looking for a gritty, realistic read about the challenges cab drivers face.

[Jesse Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perspective into a world just beneath or own

We are taken on a journey through the back rooms of life. A compelling tale of the struggles and experiences of those that are just a backdrop in our daily stories. This book was a joy to read. The art is supreme and the narrative emotional and compelling. The very definition of a character driven work. Highly recommend to any fan of story and art.

[Madhusree · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this graphic novel. The pictures are what drew me in & the story of the protagonist trying on a different life, aware of his privilege & wanting to milk his new life for a screenplay was an engaging story.

"Simone de Beauvoir said: there is something in the New York air that makes sleeping useless."

I miss NYC.

[Jan-paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved the art, reminded me a little of Eduardo Risso, but the story was...not so good. Nice street scenes and lots of diverse NYC characters, but one thing did bug me: the main character had the same scared/surprised expression on his face in so many panels.

[The Laughing Man · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars because he never really drove that damn cab. If he had, it would have been 5.

[Paulo Reis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Que maravilha de historia

[Pedro Alhinho · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Grande Maçã, mas tambem os povos e as personalidades do mundo, cabem no preto e no branco imaculados do Autor.
O taxi como alegoria dos encontros e da solidao, espaco onde se alimentam e se enterram os sonhos.

[Pat · Rating 2 out of 5]

The art is nice and some of the backgrounds are very striking. Unfortunately the story is a bit inane. I understand the purpose with brief interludes into people's lives but all I was left with was ok, so what.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

YELLOW CAB is a fascinating look into the culture of NYC taxi drivers, told from an interesting angle. A French filmmaker, desperate for an infusion of ideas and writing inspiration, becomes a taxi driver in order to develop material for his next screenplay. A quick decision made in the heat of the moment becomes a long, drawn out, bureaucratic nightmare as our protagonist attempts to navigate the months-long process of getting started in the business. Once he's driving, thought, he quickly realizes the job is not what he expected. YELLOW CAB provides an intimate and nuanced look into a part of NYC life that makes the city what it is-- the workers who keep driving in order to keep the city running. Its expressive art matches the text perfectly, its jagged lines and expressive faces noting exhaustion, desperation, and hope. Well done!

[Urbon Adamsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chabouté illustrations have a lot of charm and magic. We forget we're reading a book. Everything plays like a movie in our brain.

I also enjoyed the story. We follow the first hand experience of a man trying to be a taxi driver in New York city.

Fiction and reality get mixed together to the point that is no longer clear which is which.

[Marion · Rating 5 out of 5]

Une bande-dessinée hyper fidèle au roman : j'avais l'impression de relire exactement la même chose, une seconde fois. Le travail des planches est fou, tout un travail qui s'apparente aux planches des scénarios au cinéma sur le développement d'un personnage.
Et on ressent l'ambiance de New York dans les dessins : talent !

[Ema · Rating 4 out of 5]

O argumento deixa um pouco a desejar. Sendo uma adaptação de um livro que eu não li, apenas posso presumir que o problema fixa-se na obra original, por ser um pouco rasa e não se aprofundar em certos temas. No entanto, a arte do Chabouté é impecável. Num preto e branco marcado, com linhas delicadas, cenários lindíssimos, segmentos silenciosos e um ponto de vista que sabe contar histórias. A premissa da história é muito interessante e é prazeroso acompanhar o nosso protagonista e aquilo que vai aprendendo no seu percurso enquanto taxista na cidade Nova Iorque.

[Ray Nessly · Rating 3 out of 5]

YELLOW CAB. Art by Christophe Chabouté; story by Benoit Cohen. Three stars, maybe 3.5.
A bit of a disappointment, following my read this year of Chabouté’s superior, beautiful and moving graphic novel, Alone. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

In short, the art is great.
The story, based on Benoit Cohen’s novelized memoir, has some fine moments, but is overly episodic and suffers from repetition. Benoit is a filmmaker. Seeking material for a new screenplay, he decides to become a cab driver. Not a bad idea! Where? … Manhattan. Of course .....
“A Yellow Cab driver! Yellow Cabs are the very essence of New York. They’re movies: Taxi Driver, De Niro, Scorsese, Jarmusch. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Fincher’s The Game, Brando in On the Waterfront, James Cagney, Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara, Benny the Cab.”

[I don’t think anyone else noticed this in their review. Chabouté’s ode to Woody Allen’s Manhattan:]

a still from the film:



The bureaucratic hoops he jumps through to get his cab driver license are interesting. His cab becomes a parking ticket magnet for cops with quotas. It gets towed. So far, not a great deal of fodder for a future potential screenplay. Risky but potentially rewarding, he considers making his character a female driver, what with the additional conflicts she’d have to endure. Three guys in his car are spewing sexist banter. Benoit wonders …
“How would they have behaved if I was a woman? Would they have been more discreet, more misogynistic, tried to pick me up? [And how would my main character react?] Would she take the taxi school’s advice? Never respond to provocations, don’t discuss politics or other touchy subjects."

He observes his passengers in the rear view mirror, but it’s difficult drawing stories out of folks who mostly want to work/play with their phones. Women are especially reluctant to talk.

“Only women this morning. If I were a woman, maybe they’d talk to me, even if only to express their surprise at seeing a female cab driver.” ...
“Not much conversation. Weird feeling, feeling invisible. A very interesting idea, invisibility, to my actress character. Other people looking right through you: What could be more awful for an actress. Not something she anticipated, going into this line of work.”

Invisibility, to an actress ... A "very interesting" observation indeed. But by the end, Benoit realizes he doesn’t have enough material for a fictional screenplay. Or his imagination wasn’t up to the task anyway. So what the hell, he turns it into a memoir/novel about … someone trying to find inspiration for a screenplay by becoming a cab driver. And Chaboute turned it into a graphic novel about … guess what.

So while I liked the story more than some others, I did find it a bit lacking. The star here is Chabouté’s art. Black and white, from deepest black to whitest-white and every nuanced tone in between. (Hmm. Did I lift that from a detergent ad?). The mood is noir(ish). Skyscrapers lean in expressionist angles. Staircases. Chabouté is good with faces, and details like shoes hanging from a overhead wire. Close ups of "No Turns" signs, of his eyes and watchcap (always the hat) in the rear-view mirror. Manhattan was a perfect choice for the setting. The parade of interesting faces, of all ethnicities and eccentricities, outside, on the streets. And the faces of the "fares" in his cab.
Among the most interesting faces is that of the guy in the front seat, behind the wheel: Benoit himself, with perpetual beard, and enigmatic expression somewhere between befuddlement and a slight scowl. The surgically-implanted watchcap.

[Curtis · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you're a fan of Chaboute's other works, like Alone, Park Bench or his adaptation of Moby Dick, I wouldn't bother with this. To be honest, I can't really work out why he bothered with it. His time would have been much better spent on creating his own story than illustrating this one by Benoit Something-Or-Other.

It's basically a memoir of a screenwriter who decides to work as a cab driver in order to gather material for his next screenplay. Sadly, none of what he gathers is even remotely interesting, but instead of abandoning this unoriginal little experiment that smacks of middle-class privilege, he continues to waste everybody's time by writing a lot of boring chaff that doesn't go anywhere. I read the whole thing in one sitting of maybe an hour and still walked away feeling like my time had been wasted and that I'd learnt nothing whatsoever.

If you want a literary description of what it's like driving a cab for a living, read Bukowski's account of his time spent driving one to make ends meet (I think it's in Factotum). At least you'll get the real deal. Just make sure you skip this delusions-of-grandeur, 'I suffer for my art and treat everybody else's lives like a commodity that I can mine for content, and still fail to extract even one interesting moment from God knows how many customers because I'm far too interested in myself to give anyone else the spotlight for more than a couple of seconds' garbage. It reminds me of that book Palestine, by a similarly pretentious idiot who also deigned to take a break from his comfort to document the lives of those less fortunate for monetary gain.

The more I type here, the angrier I'm getting and the more I dislike this book, so I'm going to stop now. But seriously, don't waste your time.

[Laetitia]

Beno�t est un r�alisateur Fran�ais vivant � New-York avec �l�onore. Il se bosse des questions sur sa carri�re. Au d�tour de l'une de leurs conversations, il d�cide de mener une exp�rience : devenir chauffeur de Taxi pour s�impr�gner du m�tier afin d'imaginer un sc�nario mettant en sc�ne une actrice conduisant un de ces c�l�bres Yellow Cab. Mais avant de tenir un tel volant en main, c'est le parcours du combattant. Et une fois la licence obtenue, leur quotidien n'est gu�re plus confortable, bien au contraire.Je ne suis (toujours) pas fan des albums en noir et blanc... Mais j'ai appr�ci� la lecture de celui-ci. Le sc�nario est suffisamment r�aliste pour nous immerger dans l'univers, et suffisamment original pour retenir l'attention. Plusieurs sc�nes avec des passager.e.s sont muettes, ce qui acc�l�re la lecture en ralentissant le rythme. J'y ai d'ailleurs trouv� quelques longueurs, m�me si l'album se lit assez rapidement. Les dessins sont simples, sobres, rapides mais pr�cis, et compl�tement en noir sur blanc (pas de nuance, pas de demi-mesure). Les dialogues sont naturels et fluides, malgr� une typographie pas toujours simple � d�chiffrer.Je n'ai tout de m�me pas �t� emport�e par l'ambiance placide, lancinante, ni par le personnage principal, que j'ai trouv� trop banal. Bref, cela ne m'a pas emball�e, mais je pressent �tre pass�e � c�t� d'une belle oeuvre...

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Yellow Cab" sees comics creator Chaboute adapting a novel by Benoit Cohen. It shares the story of a French filmmaker who, looking for new material, decides to train to become a New York City cabbie.

The comic does a good job conveying the annoyances of the process: the paperwork and bureaucracy and classes filled with slobs who seem bored to be there. Chaboute introduces little slices of life as well, including hassles with the cops, the machinery of fighting tickets in court and jaded old cabbies trading tales of memorable rides.

Mostly, though, "Yellow Cab" is an excuse to show Benoit driving around the city and interacting with random passengers. Unfortunately, nothing memorable happens. Most passengers sit on their phones or trade a random anecdote before disappearing. It's probably true to life but not very engaging.

Benoit also passes some of his time brainstorming for the screenplay he's working on. It centers on a female cab driver, a former actress who has to contend with the sexism of this male-dominated world, but that never really goes anywhere either. Chaboute's black-and-white art is often striking, offering detailed street scenes and conveying a driver's weariness behind the wheel, but it seems incomplete, adding up to less than a full story.