his character mirrored bickel who is a taxi driver, former army vet works wants to kill a presidential candidate to impress a woman he admirers and he starts focusing on jodie foster who played a prostitute in that move and becomes more and more obsessive. in his mind he wants to impress her and thinks the only way he could impress her is to shoot the president of the united states, so he hangs out at blair house during the transition period in 1980, in early 1981 stalking the president, watching the president-elect. he actually stalked carter. in october 1980 he was in dayton, ohio, and he got within arm's reach of the president, but he didn't bring his guns with him. left him in the leggage at the bugs station, and he regretted that. so he had been stalking presidents and stuff and there he was with reagan right there, and he's like -- he comes -- he's actually in l.a. takes a bus across country and arrives the day before the shooting, and at that moment from the documents i've read and the people that interviewed him, the doctors of psychologist, hasn't made up his mind to shoot the