John Hinckley Jr., the obsessed man who attempted to Ronald Reagan to get the actress's attention, continues to make headlines forty years later. But she, her second victim, managed to overcome the trauma and not let this case define her public image.
On March 30, 1981, 25-year-old John Hinckley Jr. wrote the following letter:
"Dear Jodie,
There is a very serious possibility that I will be killed during my attempt to catch Reagan. That is precisely why I am writing this letter to you now.
As you well know by now, I love you very much. Over the past seven months, I have left you dozens of poems, letters, and love messages in the faint hope that you might develop an interest in me. Although we spoke on the phone a few times, I never had the nerve to approach you and introduce myself. Besides my shyness, I honestly didn't want to bother you with my constant presence. I know the many messages I left on your doorstep and in your mailbox were a nuisance, but I felt it was the most painless way to express my love for you.
I feel very good that you at least know my name and know how I feel about you. And hanging around your bedroom, I've noticed that I'm the subject of more than a few small conversations, however ridiculous. At least you know that I will always love you.
"Returning to his room at the end of the day, his roommate told her that the radio was saying that the person who had tried to assassinate the president was "John." Jodie responded: “Nonsense. You are imagining things"
Jodie, I'd drop this idea of getting Reagan in a second if he could win your heart and live the rest of my life with you, in total darkness or whatever.
I admit that the reason I'm going ahead with this attempt is that I can't wait any longer to impress you. I have to do something now so that you understand, unequivocally, that I am doing all this for your good! By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life, I hope to change your opinion of me. This letter is being written just an hour before I leave for the Hilton. Jodie, I'm asking you to please look into your heart and at least give me the chance, with this historic event, to earn your respect and love."
The addressee of the letter was the famous actress Jodie Foster (Los Angeles, 1962), who at the age of 18 had just entered Yale University to lead the anonymous existence of one more student. Or so she thought. John Hinckley never sent the letter; he dropped her off in his room at the Washington hotel where he was staying, loaded his gun, took a Valium, and headed for the lobby of the Hilton Hotel. He waited for the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, to come out and fired six rounds. He wounded his target, a police officer, a Secret Service agent, and press secretary James Brady, who suffered speech difficulties and was paralyzed from the waist down for life. There were cameras recording everything and the shooter was immediately arrested.
At first, Jodie Foster didn't realize that what happened had nothing to do with her. In an article published in the US edition of Esquire in 1982 entitled "Why me?" She recounts that it was not until hours after she discovered that this episode was going to affect her irrevocably. Returning to her room at the end of the day, with no time to put the key in the lock, her roommate answered and told her that the radio was saying that the person who had tried to assassinate the president was "John.". "John Hinckley," she clarified, a name they both knew well. Jodie responded: “Nonsense. You are imagining things ”, but immediately afterward, the dean called her to confirm that it was true, that they had found photos of her and her address in the defendant's room. “My body started shaking and I knew I had lost control… maybe for the first time in my life. I had to meet with the FBI at their office as soon as possible."
It was she who had to organize a press conference, write a statement and deal with unprecedented media attention in which experts from the university administration did not know how to advise her. In her appearance, the teenager explained that she had been receiving letters from an unknown person identified as John Hinckley for some time. “I considered them love letters,” she recounted Jodie. When asked how she linked the Hinckley in the letters to the one he had attempted against the president, she would reply, "How many Hinckleys do you know?"
To prove his strength to the world, Foster agreed to take part in a college play just three days after the shooting. Shortly after the performances, she found a note that someone had slipped under her bedroom door. It was a death threat
John Hinckley looked like one of many young, middle-class Americans. In 1976 he dropped out of school to move to Hollywood with the idea of building a career as a music composer. That same year, Taxi Driver was released, the Martin Scorsese film that won an award at the Cannes Festival and would end up being considered one of the most influential of the decade. The unstable Hinckley became obsessed with the play. He watched it fifteen times, listened to the Bernard Herrmann soundtrack over and over again, began to dress like its protagonist, Travis Bickle, in boots and military jackets, took to drinking peach brandy just like him, and acquired a gun. He even invented a fictional girlfriend by the name of Lynn Collins, based on the Betsy character from the movie, played by Cybill Shepherd. In the letters he wrote to his parents, who lived in Colorado, he told them about his relationship with Lynn, describing dates, trips, comings, and goings, all non-existent. But above all, he developed an unhealthy and unhealthy fixation on the actress Jodie Foster, who played Iris in the film, a 12-year-old prostitute who, bizarrely, the protagonist ends up redeeming.
Since he left Los Angeles in '77, Hinckley has led a lonely and erratic existence. He suffered from acute depression for which he took medication and displayed suicidal tendencies, racist ideas, and an obsession with violence and weapons. In 1980 he asked his parents to pay for a writing course at Yale University, and he went there, although his real goal was to be close to Jodie Foster, who had just enrolled at the prestigious center. As he would recount in his letter before the attack, he was never able to address her directly. He spied on her, followed her around campus, left letters from her in her mailbox or under her door, and called her twice on the phone.
Foster just delivered her messages to her dean, not giving them much thought. But sometime in 1980, Hinckley's mind caught the idea of going one step further in his Travis Brickle impersonation. Just as in the film he plans to assassinate the politician for whom the woman he has dated a few times works, he set out to do the same but with a much more notorious objective: the president of the United States, who at that time It was Jimmy Carter. He began to follow the president around the country, appearing at events he had in various cities on the occasion of the electoral campaign for the November 1980 elections. In between, he tried to meet, without success, with one of the leaders of the Nazi party. American. Carter lost re-election without giving Hinckley time to come up with his plan, so his target became the newly elected Ronald Reagan, famous for his film acting career before his political dedication.
The Hollywood factor has been around ever since investigators discovered Hinckley's obsession with Jodie Foster in her hotel room. Also, the first thing Hinckley asked is if the Oscars ceremony that was going to take place that night had been postponed (it was, it was postponed to the next day). As if an assassination attempt on the president wasn't already flashy enough, the presence of actors and stars reluctantly implicated in the case added new layers of morbidity and interest. On the same day of the attack, the FBI questioned the most visible people responsible for Taxi Driver: its director Martin Scorsese, its protagonist Robert De Niro and the screenwriter Paul Schrader.
The latter would tell The Guardian that since he found out about the shooting he had a feeling that it was related to his film: “I was looking for locations in New Orleans. It came over the radio that a white boy from Colorado had committed the attempted murder. I said to the driver, 'he's been one of those Taxi Driver guys.' In fact, John Hinckley himself had written to Schrader's office twice asking how he could get in touch with Jodie Foster. The scriptwriter had told his secretary to throw away those letters. Later, he would admit that he lied to the FBI when they asked him if he knew the young man or who he was. “I knew if I said to the FBI, 'Yeah, I got a letter from you once but I threw it away,' I'd be screwed, my secretary would be screwed. We would have to be endlessly answering questions about a letter we threw away and didn't remember. So I said, "No, I've never heard of it."
