Jack on the box

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/04/2010 (5882 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

YOU might say it’s a role to die for.

At least, the prospect of portraying famous/infamous assisted-suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian was sufficiently interesting to lure Oscar winner Al Pacino away from his busy and lucrative feature-film career long enough to work on a made-for-TV movie.

"Jack Kevorkian is an incredibly complex character," said Adam Mazer, who wrote the script that attracted Pacino, Susan Sarandon, John Goodman and Brenda Vaccaro to the HBO movie You Don’t Know Jack, which airs Saturday night on HBO Canada (check listings for airtimes). "We didn’t set out to do a movie about assisted suicide; it’s a movie about Jack Kevorkian, and what makes him so fascinating is (that) this guy, as flawed as he may have been in some people’s eyes, was a renaissance man.

"He was a painter; he wrote poetry; he was a filmmaker who tried to make a movie 20-some years ago," says Mazer. "He composed music, painted, played poker with his buddies once a week. And the more we got to sort of understand who the guy was behind the headlines, he just became such an intriguing figure, and one Al completely embraced and embodied."

You Don’t Know Jack might not be intended as a single-issue movie, but there’s no question that assisted suicide, and Kevorkian’s campaign to change opinions, inclinations and laws in his country regarding physician-aided end-of-life strategies, is the centrepiece of the film.

The story opens in the late 1980s, with 61-year-old former pathologist Kevorkian, motivated largely by his experience watching his own ailing mother’s protracted and painful death, beginning to campaign for a more dignified and humane end-of-life option for the terminally ill.

Aided by his sister, Margo Janus (Vaccaro), longtime friend Neal Nicol (Goodman) and, eventually, Hemlock Society activist Jane Good (Sarandon), Kevorkian begins offering "death counselling" service and quickly attracts a large and clearly grateful list of potential clients.

The film follows Kevorkian as he wages a tireless crusade to change attitudes and legislation, helping more than 100 patients end their lives while fighting an endless series of criminal charges laid against him by the State of Michigan.

"Dr. Death" isn’t above engaging in dramatics and gimmickry to make his point — appearing in period costume, powdered wig and wooden head-and-wrist stocks while fighting an arcane common-law charge laid against him; embarking on a protracted hunger strike while being held behind bars — but he remains deadly serious about what he seeks to accomplish.

In a now-infamous 1998 appearance on the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes, Kevorkian allowed correspondent Mike Wallace to show footage of the doctor taking an active, rather than passive, role in ending the life of a man afflicted with Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS). Authorities charged him with murder; Kevorkian was ultimately convicted and served more than eight years in prison for his actions.

You Don’t Know Jack definitely portrays Kevorkian in a sympathetic light, but it stops short of taking an advocacy position on the issue of assisted suicide. It delves into the moral and legal issues without becoming preachy, and its strength as a drama lies in the effectiveness of its stellar cast.

Pacino, in particular, is impressive in the title role, fully disappearing into his character — despite the fact he’s one of Hollywood’s most recognizable actors, viewers will feel as if they’re watching Jack Kevorkian rather than watching Al Pacino play Jack Kevorkian.

And interestingly, while the movie’s writer and director (Barry Levinson) met with Kevorkian while preparing the script, Pacino made a point of not, in fact, knowing Jack before playing him.

When asked why he didn’t get to know Jack, Pacino was at a bit of a loss.

"I didn’t meet Jack," Pacino said. "I hope I will in the future. Sometimes, for some reason, I don’t take access to (meeting real-life subjects), and sometimes I do. I felt, with Jack, because I thought the script was so well (written) and was complete in its portrait, it felt as though I had so much research… In the end, I felt close to him in another kind of way.

"There are characters you do it with, and it works, and there’s some characters you just back away from doing it. I don’t know why. With Frank Serpico, I studied and went with him everywhere; I got to know him, to go back into his past. With Dog Day Afternoon, I didn’t feel like I wanted to know that guy for that role and my interpretation… And with this (role), who knows?… That I didn’t take access to (him) is a question. I don’t know why I didn’t."

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca