Rebecca Hall as Chubbuck in Antonio Campos’ film Christine. While some said Chubbuck didn’t seem to be experiencing mental health issues, her mother revealed she had suffered from depression, suicidal tendencies and had been under psychiatric care. But the crux of the situation was that she was a 29-year-old who wanted to be married and who wasn’t.” “We had just been through a particularly violent week, with a kidnapping-and-hostage situation, a shootout between some cops and someone else, and these had bumped a couple of her feature stories. “That incident didn’t happen because of our editorial policy,” he told the Ocala Star-Banner in 1977, three years after her death. As her final words suggest, it’s said she “detested” what TV news had spiralled into: a medium that exploited blood to pull in viewers.īut the station’s news director, Mike Simmons, disagreed that was enough to motivate the reporter to do what she did. Police gave Chubbuck’s family the only copy of the tape and they destroyed it.Īt the time of her death, and in the years since, reports have described a conflicted woman. Unlike modern times where off-script moments, no matter how tragic, can be captured and posted online by thousands of users, this footage is impossible to come across. It’s also claimed that an operator in the control room dumped the footage before it aired and instead cut to black before viewers could see Chubbuck open fire. Newspapers at the time describe Chubbuck slumping forward, striking her head on the desk and falling to the floor before cameras cut to black. There are conflicting reports about what happened next. “I think it was a culmination of a lot of things,” her brother, Tim Chubbuck told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune at the time. While both will try to shed light on her motivations, why Chubbuck’s life ended the way it did has never been clear-cut. The documentary Kate Plays Christine follows actress Kate Lyn Sheil as she prepares to play the role of Chubbuck in a film. The struggles the Florida TV news reporter was facing and her motivations for shooting herself that morning in 1974 will be the focus of two new films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.Īntonio Campos’ Christine, starring Rebecca Hall, follows the final days of Chubbuck’s life and is getting high praise from critics. More than 40 years later Chubbuck’s story continues to fascinate. She was rushed to hospital in a critical condition and died. Live on-air, her large, hollow eyes staring down the barrel of a TV camera, Christine Chubbuck said these words before holding a gun to her head and shooting herself. Rather, it's likely to have been caused by untreated mental illness.“IN KEEPING with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts and in living colour, you are going to see another first - attempted suicide.” While all of these things may have led to sadness in her life, it's highly doubtful they were the core reason for her depressive state. She had also had an ovary removed, and doctors told her if she wanted to have children, she would need to try to do so quickly. Her family explained that Chubbuck often complained about still being a virgin and not being married. She was a spinster at 29, and it bothered her. No close friends, no romantic attachments or prospects of any. But she had nothing else in her social life. She said constantly that if it ended tomorrow, she would still be glad she had had it. In it, she talks about her daughter saying: "She was terribly, terribly, terribly depressed. Peg Chubbuck gave an interview to a local newspaper while at the hospital shortly before her daughter's passing. ��On July 15, 1974, Sarasota news anchor Christine Chubbuck fatally shot herself during a live broadcast of her talk-show 'Suncoast Digest' /s3JIsT1kpQ Almost 50 years later and nearly all the questions have yet to be answered, and the video footage itself remains a mystery. But unlike the ones who would follow in the digital age, the video of Christine Chubbuck taking her life was viewed only by the TV audience and her colleagues at the station, leaving everyone else to wonder what happened. It was during this time that the first on-air suicide occurred, and the shock was absolute. Such was definitely not the case back in the mid-'70s when just cartoon violence and mild profanity were thought to be a bit too much. From the video Faces of Death to people who took their own lives on TV, there are always those who want to witness the genuine article. The Hollywood version of dying has desensitized most of society to the degree that it shouldn't even be a surprise when videos of the real thing become so popular. Considering the level of violence on TV today, it's no wonder that most people hardly even pause when they hear about murder and mayhem on the local news.
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