Sara Jane Moore discusses her 1975 attempt to assassinate President Ford in Suburban Fury.
A new documentary called Suburban Fury has come out, telling the strange and shocking story of Sara Jane Moore, a woman who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975. The film, directed by Robinson Devor, is different from most documentaries because it only features one interview: Moore herself. Now in her 90s, she reflects on her life and her crime, giving viewers an inside look at why she thought killing the president would make a difference.
Sara Jane Moore didn’t fit the usual image of a political assassin. She was a 45-year-old mother who had been married and divorced five times. She lived an ordinary suburban life in California, but she became deeply involved in radical politics during the 1970s. At the same time, she was also working as an FBI informant, which meant she was secretly giving the government information about the political groups she had joined. This strange double life is one of the many confusing parts of Moore’s story, but it helps explain how she ended up trying to kill the president.
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The documentary takes viewers through Moore’s life, showing how she became caught up in the intense political atmosphere of the 1970s. This was a time when many Americans were angry and disillusioned, especially after the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War. Moore was particularly influenced by the Patty Hearst kidnapping case, where a wealthy young woman was kidnapped by a group of radical revolutionaries. Moore sympathized with the revolutionaries, who wanted to overthrow the government, and she eventually joined similar left-wing groups in California.
At the same time, Moore was increasingly frustrated with the government. After Richard Nixon resigned, Gerald Ford became president, even though he had never been elected to the office. Moore saw Ford and his vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, as symbols of a corrupt system that only favored the rich and powerful. In her mind, killing Ford would expose the injustices of the U.S. government. She believed that if Rockefeller became president, it would prove how broken the system was.
On September 22, 1975, Moore stood in a crowd outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco and fired a gun at President Ford. Luckily, her gun didn’t work properly, and she missed. She was quickly arrested, but her motives were not entirely clear to the public at the time. Suburban Fury tries to answer the question that many people have been asking since: why did she do it?
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Throughout the film, Moore tells her story with confidence, and at times, her calmness is unsettling. She insists that she was not insane and that her attempt on Ford’s life was a rational decision. However, the documentary shows that Moore’s life was full of contradictions. She worked for the FBI while also supporting radical causes. She abandoned her children but was passionate about the political issues of the time. These contradictions make it difficult to fully understand her, and viewers are left wondering how much of her story is true and how much is her own twisted version of events.
One of the most interesting aspects of the documentary is how Moore never seems to regret what she did. In old video clips and her current interviews, she remains confident that her actions were justified, even though they could have had disastrous consequences. This lack of remorse gives the film a tense, eerie feeling, as viewers realize just how committed Moore was to her dangerous beliefs.
While Suburban Fury is a fascinating film, it is also troubling in some ways. Since the documentary only shows Moore’s side of the story, it almost seems to sympathize with her at times. The film never directly says that Moore was right, but it also doesn’t strongly challenge her reasons for trying to kill Ford. Some viewers might feel uncomfortable with how the documentary presents Moore’s justification for her crime, even though it’s clear that her logic was deeply flawed.
