Inspired by real events, "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" remarkably chronicles the little known story of Sam Bicke who in 1974 attempted to hijack a passenger jet-plane from a Baltimore airport with the sole intention of crashing it into the White House on George Washington’s birthday.

The extraordinary directorial debut of Milwaukee native Niels Mueller showcases another Oscar-worthy performance by Sean Penn as an increasingly frustrated and emotionally unhinged individual, who has failed as a businessman, as a father and as a husband and pins the blame squarely on the elected official occupying the Oval Office.

The film also features memorable supporting work by Naomi Watts as Sam’s estranged wife, Don Cheadle as Sam’s best friend and would-be business partner, Michael Winslow as Sam’s disappointed older brother and Jack Thompson as his family values-minded boss.

According to Mueller, the U.S. president originally selected as the target of an obscure assassin was not Nixon but Lyndon Baines Johnson.

"I wanted to write about a would-be assassin whose assassination attempt isn’t noticed," said Mueller, 43, in a recent phone interview.

"Often with political assassins, there seems to this grand delusion that this act of violence is going to promote some kind of societal change and it doesn’t, life goes on."

Mueller, who holds a Master’s Degree from the School of Theatre, Film, and Television at the University of California in Los Angeles, began making notes in 1996 for a screenplay he called ‘The Assassination of LBJ."

"I tried to pick someone who nobody tried to assassinate, as far anybody knows," said Mueller.

In the course of his research into previous assassination attempts on American presidents, Mueller was startled to discover eerie similarities between his fictional creation and real life events.

"I ended up shifting my story from 1964 to 1974, changing the title and integrating all the true story elements that I came across."

While Mueller had originally opted for a more conventional attempt on the life of a U.S. head of state – i.e. shooting - much of what he already put on paper he found mirrored in a reality that he originally knew nothing about.

"The similarities were I had a guy who was separated from his wife and child and I had him working in sales and it being very important for him to succeed in sales and to be a self-made man. I also had him talking into this tape recorder. "

In real life, Bicke made a series of reel-to-reel audio tapes to provide a record of his actions.

"He actually sent the tapes to composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein and other prominent Americans, but in the film we simplified it to just Leonard Bernstein," said Mueller.

"There are sections from the tapes in the film such as, `I consider myself a grain of sand on this beach called America,’ which are exact quotes. The tape recordings we used are either verbatim or inspired by the actual tapes. We actually got the transcripts of all his tapes so we had a window into the spirit of the man. "

According to Mueller, the full transcripts were obtained from F.B.I. files through the Freedom of Information Act.

For reasons of privacy, Mueller and co-writer Kevin Kennedy, decided to alter the spelling of the last name of the actual would-be assassin.

"We fictionalized names and people around him. We combined characters but the broad strokes are all true," said Mueller.

"Sam was a man who was separated from his wife and children. He worked with a brother in the tire business and that didn’t go well. He applied for a Small Business Administration loan wanting to start his own mobile tire business and he was very disappointed when his loan didn’t come through.

"He very much wanted to be a self-made man. We had him work at an office furniture store. We moved away from a surface truth to dig for a deeper truth. I wanted the people coming into Sam’s store to be indexical of the segment of society that he talks about on the tapes, from which he feels disenfranchised."

"He sympathized with the Black Panthers and made donations to them."

Mueller admits the suggestion made in the film by Bicke to change the name of the Black Panther organization to the Zebras in order to promote racial harmony and attract an extended core of support was fiction.

"As far as I know," said Mueller.

"His pointing the gun at his boss and not being able to shoot is a fiction but, that said, was something Sam may have contemplated, I wouldn’t be surprised. The ending of the film is verbatim truth about what happens in the airport and on the plane."

So how does a first time director attract the attention of an actor the caliber of Sean Penn?

"There was a producer named Cary Woods, who was originally attached to produce. He sent the script to Sean."

Mueller had met Woods through filmmaker Alexander Payne, a former film school buddy whose recent work includes such independent hits as "Election," "About Schmidt" and "Sideways."

"The script was sent on a Wednesday, Sean got it on Thursday and called on Friday and said he loved the script and wanted to meet the director. Within half an hour of our first meeting Sean said let’s make the film and from that point was unwavering in his commitment to doing it."

Mueller said the film wasn’t made in 1999 because the financing fell apart.

"It is a pretty standard story to go through fits and starts, but this film, even with a great actor like Sean Penn attached to make it, was difficult to find the financing for because it is not your conventional Hollywood story."

Mueller said the task of raising the money become even more difficult after the traumatic events of September 11, 2001. On several occasions, both before and after the terrorist attack, he was asked by potential backers to change the ending of his story.

"Before 9/11 I could have considered it, because of the relative obscurity of the 1974 attempt, but after 9/11 you can’t change an ending like this."

Mueller acknowledged there appears to be a certain sense of destiny involved in the creation and completion of this motion picture, which finds strong ties between Nixon’s America and present times.

"We wrote the script during the Clinton years when we weren’t involved in a relatively unpopular war in a third world country, with shifting reasons for American involvement, with no end game strategy. So when you ask about destiny, I guess the film was supposed to come out around now."

Mueller, who co-wrote the script for the 2002 quirky, romantic comedy "Tadpole," also agreed it was daunting and exhilarating to have Penn in his first film as director.

"It was an intimidating thought to direct one of the greatest actors on the planet right now. But I ended up with a couple of them, because Don Cheadle is one of the greats and Naomi Watts is fantastic.

"One of the great benefits to the film falling apart for four years after I met Sean is that it gave us a chance to get to know each other and built a level of trust that only happens over time.

"With Sean, you minimally get what you dreamt of and, more often than not, you get far more than you can imagine," said Mueller.

" Because you don’t know how much you are going to get from what is happening in his eyes, or just the involuntary pinching of his forehead in a moment of consternation or pain, that allows you to cut out three lines of dialog that you thought got to the essence of the scene.

"This whole film rested on Sean and damned if he didn’t deliver it in spades. He is so great and I hope people take a peek."