Kyle S. More on Playing Hinckley | Killing Reagan

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John was he was lonely and he was depressed. He wasn't a monster by any mean, you know he was a normal young man, um, who started getting sick and didn't get the right help in time. He wasn't medicated. Mental health was different back then; they didn't understand it as much as we do now. We still don't understand it to the point where we would want to.

You know, he suffered primarily from schizotypal disorder, uh, schizotypal personality disorder. It can be anything from, uh, a void of emotion or too much emotion, so then it's just kind of day to day. You know, he suffered from depression and borderline personality disorders during that time of struggle.

Taxi Driver came out, and I think he saw the movie 17 to 30 times. He had had obsessions; he had mental illness. So he began to really relate with the Travis Pickle character. And, uh, he was obsessed with the Beatles and Bowie and poetry. I mean, he was a hopeless romantic.

So I think when he saw that Jodie was going to Yale, you know, he saw her as a real person that maybe one day he would meet, and then maybe she would fall for him. And then it just kind of spirals from there. You know, the odds aren't as big as before. You know, she's going to college; she's normal. There's a chance that if I run into her, she could fall in love with me.

And then it goes from there to I think she already is in love with me, you know? So that's when the reality and fantasy start to unravel.