Page "John Hinckley, Jr." Paragraph 3

Hinckley became obsessed with the 1976 film Taxi Driver, in which a disturbed protagonist, Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, plots to assassinate a presidential candidate.

He watched the film 15 times in a row on a continuous loop.

Hinckley developed an infatuation with actress Jodie Foster, who played a child prostitute in the film.

The Bickle character was in turn partly based on the diaries of Arthur Bremer, the attempted assassin of George Wallace.

When Foster entered Yale University, Hinckley moved to New Haven, Connecticut, for a short time to stalk her.

He enrolled in a Yale writing class, and began slipping poems and messages under her door and repeatedly phoning her.