George W. Wallace, governor of Alabama and 1972 Democratic presidential hopeful, was paralyzed when Arthur Bremer shot him in the spine during the campaign (although Bremer wrote that Richard Nixon would have been a more satisfying, if less accessible, target). 

The assassination attempt got Bremer a 53-year sentence and some measure of immortality: Paul Schrader based the character of Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle on Bremer. The chain of inspiration continued when John W. Hinckley Jr. expressed his admiration for Jodie Foster, one of the film’s stars, by shooting President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Now Bremer is scheduled for release from the Maryland Correctional Institute on or before December 16^th. In his 35 years of incarceration, he has “never had an infraction,” according to a program manager at the Maryland Parole Commission.

Can this snake-eating-its-tail news to film to news cycle stand one more chapter? Bremer kept a journal of his nefarious intentions. The second half of it, “An Assassin’s Diary,” was published in 1973. The first half, which Bremer buried just before putting his plans into action, was excavated from a landfill in 1980. Adaptation attempt, anyone?