Unworthy of Your Love

I'm about two-thirds of the way through Martin Scorcese's brilliant film Taxi Driver. It's the story of a lonely guy who ultimately chooses political assassination. It's the movie John Hinckley saw fifteen times.

One of the film's producers, Michael Phillips, says in one of the DVD featurettes that this story is "a glimpse inside the soul of a man in pain." I can't imagine a better description. That's exactly what this movie is. And of course, that's what Hinckley needed most, to know that someone else felt like he did, that someone else understood his loneliness and his emptiness, his rejection, all of it. He knew that the people who made this movie understood him! Knowing now as much as I do about Hinckley, it's spooky to watch Taxi Driver and see how close they came to his life. It must've felt to him like someone was throwing him a lifesaver.

In a way, it reminds me of my own experience with Harvey Fierstein's movie Torch Song Trilogy. I remember when it first came out, I saw it at the Hi-Pointe five times in two weeks. I didn't know at the time why I needed this movie so much, but looking back, I can now see that it's because this was the first time I had seen a movie portray gay people in terms of love and romance and marriage instead of in terms of sex. I saw that movie and realized for the first time that someone else felt like I did about life and love. It was very reassuring.

When I watch Taxi Driver now in the context of Assassins, I just know that it was the same for Hinckley and I know how important an experience like that can be. In my case, it just comforted me, but in Hinckley's case it also suggested a plan of action. He actually tried to become Travis Bickle, the film's "hero," wanting to rescue Jodie Foster, shooting a political figure...

It's very weird seeing this movie again and experiencing in a new way this very sad story of a very lonely man. I think now I understand Hinckley more deeply than I did before. And I see pieces of myself in both Travis Bickle and Hinckley (at least as he is in the show). We all have those scared, lonely places. We all feel unappreciated, even ignored, at some point in our life. I watch this movie and I think about our show and I wonder to myself what were the variables that kept me from becoming Travis Bickle or John Hinckley? Why did they turn out so fucked up and I turned out... well, maybe a little fucked up, but not at least not shooting anybody...

But don't cross me...

I've asked a lot of the actors in Assassins to try going down unexpected paths with their characters, to look for things other productions (including ours) haven't paid attention to. With Hinckely, we're choosing not a radically different path, just one of slightly darker focus. Instead of just playing him as a loser/slacker, an object of ridicule, I've asked Jeff to let the audience really feel his deep sadness and pain, to let Hinckley be a human being, to let the audience care about him. In the book depository scene, Booth quotes that famous quote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." That's Hinckley's life -- until he finds his place as a force of history with the other assassins.

The shooting of Reagan in the show has to be Hinckley's great "triumph." He has come from this terrible sadness, this desperation to prove himself, to be worth something (hence the title of his song, "Unworthy of Your Love"). He knows that if Jodie Foster actually ever met him in person she'd dismiss him like everybody else does. But this act -- shooting the President -- might change that equation. It could prove that he's strong, not weak; powerful, not impotent. It is truly the act of a desperate man, a lashing out at the world. In those few gunshots, we see the full force and fury of all these years of abuse and ridicule, the full explosion of all those complicated, destructive emotions...

Strangely, the act of assassination itself (successful or not) seems to take each assassin character from the concrete, physical world to the metaphysical world of the show. Here they can address the audience, they can sing and comment upon the action... or even about the evils of capitalism in regard to gun manufacture...

Once they have committed the unspeakable act, they transform to a higher level of enlightenment and understanding, the place where we meet them and from which they watch the show. Here in this world, the assassins become the "zen assassins," no longer plagued by the difficulties and disabilities of the physical world; no, here they are their higher selves. (There's a smiliar moment when Dot appears in the last scene of Sunday in the Park with George). The assassins recount for us their stories, but they also can see both back and forward with equal clarity. Individually, in life, they meant very little; but together in the world of Assassins, they are a force of history. Only together are they interesting enough for a Sondheim musical.

Heavy shit. Somebody roll me a fatty!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott