Call me a pinko comsymp bleeding heart what-have-you, but I was strangely moved by today's AP account of the release of would-be George Wallace assassin Arthur Bremer. I can't even begin to presume to consider evaluating the man's current state of mind, but the terse sentence in the AP report—"He didn't speak to reporters and doesn't want to, state prison officials said"—indicates he is leaving prison in a better state of mind than he entered it with. The mention that his release was earned "through good behavior and by working in prison" was also quite evocative. We well-behaved citizens like to pooh-pooh the experience of prison, or even jail. Whatever. It's not, you know, a picnic. (And no, I understand it's not meant to be.)
The thing about Bremer is, he's been, unwittingly, a profound influence on film and popular culture. Paul Schrader's revelations about the creation of the screenplay of Taxi Driver show us that the screenplay and, by extension, the film, would never have existed had not Schrader melded his own personal torment with the diaries of Bremer, published without Bremer's permission or participation in the wake of Bremer's attempted assassination of George Wallace. One could go on to say that without Taxi Driver we would not have had would-be Reagan assassinator John David Hinckley, who stepped outside the film, and proposed to be a real-life Travis Bickle to the real-life Jodie Foster by offing the 40th President of the United States. (I think we can all agree that had Taxi Driver never existed, Hinckley would have found another cultural vehicle to go off the rails with. Still....)
And now Bremer leaves prison, quietly, shunning the spotlight, largely or possibly entirely unaware of his cataclysmic impact on the culture, wanting only to complete his probation in anonymity, still loathed and feared and probably, somehow, scared, and certainly scarred, though not as scarred as he left George Wallace and Nick Zarvos and E.C. Dothard and Dora Thompson. And with, I reiterate, possibly very little awareness of how his actions inspired a film that, for better or worse, defined alienation for at least two generations of movie lovers. Strange. Sad.
And to think, Monsieur K., that there are those who think of you as a pedant, not a moralist. Well said.
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