4 January 2009
Chapter 27; plane tickets
By the way, the date today is 4 Jan 09, not 1 Dec 05 - I'd just rather have blog entries in chronologic order, which I think is better for first-time visitors, and I can't figure out how else to get Blogger to do that

So...I finally watched Chapter 27. I say finally, because I’ve been reading about it since before its release at Sundance two years ago. I monitor the Web for mentions of Chapman, and I’d guesstimate that maybe half of them over this period have related to how much weight Jared Leto put on to play the part. And I must say, I think he puts in a fine performance; he’s quite convincing as a disturbed Chapman, positively radiating inchoate menace. He’s so good at it, it makes you wonder why Jude, Lindsay Lohan’s character, is attracted to him rather than looking for the exit the minute he steps on stage. I think this film is, in its way, as effective as The Killing of John Lennon in portraying the mainstream story: psychotic loner-fan kills object of his fixation. And it’s pretty faithful to Jack Jones’ account of Chapman in Let Me Take You Down, by which the movie is said to be inspired. By the way, you can read the book through without finding a single entry that would argue against the thesis that Chapman was set up by an MK-Ultra-type operation.

Now, my problems with it. First, a minor beef having nothing to do with the Big Picture: we hear “hey Jude” not once, but twice – first, early on from Jude’s friend Jeri, then again from Chapman toward the end. I mean, if you’re going to make a serious film about an event as darkly monumental as this, why throw in a cutesy little reference like that? Are we supposed to giggle? And the accuracy-sticklers amongst us will note that the now-ubiquitous substitution of “hey” for “hi” was nowhere in sight in 1980. But more importantly, of course, Chapter 27, like Killing, drops not a hint of the possibility of Chapman’s being a manipulated patsy. Killing (as I’ve noted in the comments section of this blog) does show us the image – without comment or identification – of Dana Reeves, the Georgia lawman who showed Chapman how to shoot and gave him the hollow-points he needed for the job. Specifically, Chapter 27 airbrushes several features out of scenes that might have raised some questions. When we see Chapman setting up the display on the dresser in his hotel room for the cops to find, omitted items include: his plane ticket (see below), the photo of him with a Vietnamese child at the Fort Chaffee refugee camp in 1975 (the photo is there in the corresponding scene in Killing), and an 8-track tape of Todd Rundgren, his actual rock idol. And, as in Killing, no one seems to care where his money came from.

Ah yes, the plane ticket. One of Fenton Bresler’s contributions was his investigation into Chapman’s plane tickets. The official story has Chapman flying from Honolulu to Chicago on 5 December 1980, landing at O’Hare early on the morning of 6 December, then changing flights and arriving LaGuardia that same day. It’s the United Airlines Honolulu-Chicago-Honolulu ticket (without the Chicago-NYC ticket he must have had) that was found on the dresser of his hotel room. And, as Bresler points out, plane tickets generally list all the flights for the trip on that airline, not just one. What Bresler reports (pp 174-185) is that Louis Souza, the Honolulu police captain who did the local follow-up investigation for the NYC police, told him that “beyond doubt”, Chapman had not bought a ticket for United flights from Honolulu through to NYC leaving on 5 December, changing planes in Chicago the following morning; in fact, he bought a round-trip ticket from Honolulu to Chicago, leaving on 2 December, with a return date 18 December, i.e. it looked like a two-week trip to Chicago where, after all, his grandmother lived. Chapman’s wife refused to talk to Bresler about this or anything else. The ticket found by the NYC police, of which Bresler had a photocopy, is for United Flight 2 leaving Honolulu on 5 December (consistent with the official story) to Chicago – and no mention of NYC. But the baggage claim tag attached to the ticket folder reads Honolulu to Chicago on UA flight 2, and to NYC on UA904. Bresler maintains that Chapman left Hawaii intending only to go to Chicago and back (and therefore not intending to kill Lennon); that he spent 3 December to 6 December in Chicago where he was tuned up to go through with the hit and bought his ticket from Chicago to NYC. And someone changed the departure date on the Hawaii-Chicago ticket, and the baggage tag. Why didn’t they alter the ticket to show the Chicago-NYC leg? Bresler speculates that it might have been a last-minute job and when they realized that the ticket had been purchased in Chicago, they just ditched it. When Bresler pressed the NY county DA’s office on the discrepancy and asked to see the 16-page chronology they had worked up on Chapman’s movements in the days before the assassination, he was told by Assistant DA Gerald McKelvey that the chronology “cannot be located in our files.”

Chicago. Bresler couldn’t get to Chapman’s wife Gloria, but he did find Ruth Brilhante, who had worked with her at a travel agency and was still friendly with her. She told Bresler that when she heard the news that Chapman had killed Lennon, she couldn’t believe it, because not only did she think that Chapman couldn’t possibly do such a thing, but “we did not know he was in New York. We all thought he was in Chicago. That is where he had gone to take his grandmother home after she was visiting out here.” Chapman’s taking his grandmother to Chicago en route to NYC is mentioned in two other newspaper reports on 10 December. Bresler tried to find the grandmother in Chicago but without cooperation of Chapman’s family, it was impossible. But if this wrinkle is true, then Chapman couldn’t have flown through O’Hare on 6 December, changed planes, and headed for NYC. Bresler tried to get records from United Airlines, but was told they are all destroyed after two years. But it appears that the official story can’t be true. And that something happened in Chicago