I never got around to posting about this film when it first got mentioned, but Al Pacino is set to star as Jack Kevorkian in You Don’t Know Jack, a biopic for HBO directed by Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Wag the Dog). The script is from Adam Mazer (Breach) based on Between the Dying and the Dead: Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s Life and the Battle to Legalize Euthanasia by Neal Nicol and Harry Wylie. Now Susan Sarandon and John Goodman have joined the cast. Goodman will play the book’s author, Neal Nicol, who was a friend and co-worker to Kevorkian and assisted him as a technician and in obtaining necessary medical supplies. Sarandon will portray Janet Good, an activist and strong supporter of Kevorkian and eventually uses his services upon learning of her own terminal cancer.
This is the sort of biopic I can get behind, since it’s fairly current and it deals with a yet-to-be-settled civil rights issue. I hate when filmmakers pretend to be bold by going back in time and asking audiences to simply applaud things long since achieved* rather than actually challenge them to consider ongoing rights battles.
*Lots of issues are considered closed in the grand or legal sense even if they remain in part in daily practical life.
