![]() Colloff was involved at times as an executive producer, but initially, she was trepidatious about the project he envisioned, she says. The “light bulb” moment for Maitland came when he read “96 Minutes, ” the exhaustive 2006 Texas Monthly oral history of the clock tower shooting written by Pamela Colloff. Rotoscoping enabled Maitland to emphasize small details - stacks of the best-selling In Cold Blood at the bookstore, for example - and dramatize the consuming hysteria that spread as the event unfolded. The film avoids the “talking head” style of documentary production by employing a mixture of black-and-white archival footage and rotoscoping, a process in which animators trace over live images - a technique popularized by the dean of Austin filmmakers, Richard Linklater, in his ground-breaking 2001 movie Waking Life. And while the documentary chronicles the carnage, it’s the story of the victims, heroes, and survivors that shines. Tower is a powerful, haunting depiction of the clock tower shooting that unfolds as if the audience is experiencing the incident in real-time. Maitland, a filmmaker, channelled his curiosity into Tower, a documentary which opened at New York’s Film Forum on October 12, and will roll out across the country in the coming months. I wanted to understand what happens when a safe place is terrorized and forever changed.” “I was shocked to find out there was no acknowledgment of it, no memorial, no mention of it the campus literature,” Maitland, now 40, tells The Trace.“When I asked, the tour guide told me they weren’t suppose to talk about it. It was the first high-profile mass shooting on a college campus in modern American history - and an event deeply ingrained in the state’s identity. From his outpost, Charles Whitman fatally shot 14 people, including a pregnant woman’s unborn child, before being killed by police. On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman, an engineering student and former marine, holed up in the tower with a rifle. He was most surprised about what he didn’t learn that day: anything about the terrible history of the 307-foot Beaux-art style clock tower that looms over the state’s flagship school. The University of Texas tower remained closed before reopening for tours in 1999.Twenty years ago, as an incoming freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, Keith Maitland was given a tour of his new campus. By the end of his rampage, 14 people were dead and more than 30 were injured. For 90 minutes, he continued firing while officers searched for a chance to get a shot at him. Packing food and other supplies, he proceeded to the observation platform, killing the receptionist and two tourists before unpacking his rifle and telescope and hunting the people below.Īn expert marksman, Whitman was able to hit people as far away as 500 yards. The following morning, Whitman headed for the tower with several pistols and a rifle after stopping off at a gun store to buy boxes of ammunition and a carbine. Upon returning to his own home, he then stabbed his wife to death. That night, Whitman went to his mother’s home, where he stabbed and shot her. On July 31, Whitman wrote a note about his violent impulses, saying, “After my death, I wish an autopsy on me be performed to see if there’s any mental disorders.” The note then described his hatred for his family and his intent to kill them. Unfortunately the doctor didn’t follow up on this red flag. ![]() He purportedly even told this doctor that he was thinking about going up to the tower with a rifle and shooting people. On March 29, he told a psychiatrist that he was having uncontrollable fits of anger. Whitman, a former Eagle Scout and Marine, began to suffer serious mental problems after his mother left his father in March 1966. Whitman, who had killed both his wife and mother the night before, was eventually shot to death after courageous Austin police officers, including Ramiro Martinez, charged up the stairs of the tower to subdue the attacker. Charles Whitman takes a stockpile of guns and ammunition to the observatory platform atop a 300-foot tower at the University of Texas and proceeds to shoot 46 people, killing 14 people and wounding 32.
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