The
Delicate Art of the Rifle is an independent film of
1997 that was released to the general public in Los Angeles
during spring 1999. Directed by D.W. Harper, the movie portrays
the ninety-six minutes in which a student, Charles Whitman,
methodically gunned down forty-five strangers, killing fourteen,
from the tallest building on the campus of the University
of Texas in 1966 (filmed at North Carolina State University
in Raleigh). Who was responsible and why? Known in the film
as "Walt," Whitman (played byStephen Grant) admits,
atop the building, that he came from a long line of snipers,
and we know from news sources that he was an Eagle Scout and
Marine hero of Vietnam. Whitman’s father wanted him to go
to college, the film tell us, and he indeed had the brains
to do so, majoring in history with the ambition of writing
a family history about many generations of snipers in a book
to be entitled "The Delicate Art of the Rifle." But Whitman’s
emotions lay elsewhere. As a misfit, that is, a college student
with the temperament of a working class handyman, the pressure
become too great. His roommate in the film Jay (played by
David Grant) tries to stop him, but to no avail. A student
theater technician, Jay is instead nonplused as Whitman continues
to snipe, tempting fate (an inevitable SWAT team). After the
massacre, Jay returns to lead a normal life, and he reports
that nobody at school talks about the shooting, as if there
were no social or psychological reason imbedded in the violence-prone
American culture that sends young men to their death in Vietnam
and similar occasions when the government approves serial
killing. When the credits roll, we hear the familiar "Where
Have All the Flowers Gone?" and wonder when Americans
will stop glorifying violence. MH
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