Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [18]
In the fall semester of 1975, Hinckley chose to live alone. He rented a sparsely furnished off-campus apartment and spent most of his time watching television, writing songs, and fantasizing about becoming a successful musician. The following spring, he dropped out of school, sold his red Camaro, and flew to Los Angeles with the hope of selling some of his songs. He rented a small apartment a few blocks from Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and paid a few visits to music publishers. But in the end, his move to Los Angeles accomplished little: he had exchanged one drab apartment littered with fast-food wrappers for another. As before, he spent his days playing the guitar, watching TV, and going to movies.
One film in particular seized his imagination. Taxi Driver, released in February 1976, was the dark and disturbing story of Travis Bickle, an angry, alienated loner who, after being spurned by a pretty woman, purchases an arsenal of weapons and then plots the assassination of a U.S. presidential candidate. The movie ends in an orgy of violence as the taxi driver tries to rescue a young prostitute from her pimp. Directed by Martin Scorsese and featuring a brilliant performance by Robert De Niro, the movie was one of the most talked-about films of the year, in part because it explored two of the most troubling trends of that era, urban violence and political assassination. In fact, one reason the movie rang true was because the screenwriter, Paul Schrader, had drawn on the story of the near assassination of Governor George Wallace of Alabama, who was badly wounded in May 1972 while running for president. Wallace’s would-be assassin—a twenty-one-year-old busboy from Milwaukee named Arthur Bremer—had kept a journal about stalking both President Richard Nixon and Governor Wallace in the days leading up to the shooting; it was later published under the title An Assassin’s Diary.
Hinckley was all but hypnotized by Taxi Driver; he watched the movie at least fifteen times. Sitting in the famous Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, he felt as if he were watching his own life on-screen. He identified so completely with Travis Bickle that he began keeping a diary and buying guns. And, like the film’s taxi driver, he developed an unhealthy fascination with a woman. In the movie, Bickle is consumed by feelings for a campaign worker and then becomes fixated on rescuing the prostitute. In Hinckley’s case, he became obsessed with the young actress who played the prostitute. Her name was Jodie Foster.
CHAPTER 3
WITHOUT FAIL
His feet planted shoulder width apart, Jerry Parr dangled his hands loosely by his sides, ready to react the instant a paper target appeared at the other end of the firing range. The smell of cordite hung in the stuffy air. An ineffective ventilation fan rattled away. Suddenly the target snapped forward: it was an image of a well-dressed man aiming a large handgun right at him. His movements a blur, Parr’s right hand flicked his suit jacket away from his holster and drew his gun to eye level, while his left hand reached up and grabbed the butt of his weapon. Aiming with the revolver’s sights, he squeezed off two quick rounds and watched the bullets shred the target.
Parr holstered his handgun and waited for the technician to reset the target and run the drill again. The Secret Service could take no chances—assassins had to go down and not stand up again—so Parr’s revolver was a fearsome and reliable weapon. A Smith & Wesson Model 19, it had a 2½-inch barrel and fired hefty .38-caliber bullets that blasted from the muzzle at 1,100 feet per second. Getting shot by one was a bit like getting smashed with a sledgehammer,