April 23, 2010

By Dave Andrusko

Let's begin with the obvious, but not trite, observation that over the years, Jack Kevorkian has played the media like a violin. The staggering irony is that Jack Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder not because of his involvement in the assisted suicides of 130+ people, but because the ever-accommodating Mike Wallace and " 60 Minutes" gave him enough rope to hang himself with.

Al Pacino as Jack Kevorkian

I've described the setting this way. "Kevorkian and "60 Minutes" came to a mutually satisfactory arrangement. In a program aired on November 22, 1998, Kevorkian showed a ghoulish home movie in which he directly injected potassium chloride into 52-year old Thomas Youk, who suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease. This was the first time Kevorkian directly injected the patient--and taped it, to boot."

But once out of prison, more sure than death and taxes is that somebody would produce a sympathetic film about this "crusader." Enter HBO's movie, 'You Don't Know Jack" which premiers tomorrow.

Let me set the stage by providing a couple of comments from just two of many reviews of the Barry Levinson-directed film. Brian Dickerson's take is subtitled "Deconstructing Dr. Death." According to the short biography at the end, he is "the deputy editorial page editor of the Free Press and worked on "The Suicide Machine," a 1997 Free Press series and book about Dr. Kevorkian."

Check this lead out: "It's hard to think of a public figure who has eluded popular understanding more stubbornly than Jack Kevorkian. Now director Barry Levinson and Adam Mazer, who wrote the script for the new HBO movie 'You Don't Know Jack,' have managed to pin the mercurial Dr. Death on their specimen block and explain why journalists have found the same challenge so difficult."

Why Kevorkian has "stubbornly" eluded popular understanding is captured in the reviews, including lines from the HBO movie. Ten minutes in we find him tearing up as Kevorkian participates in his first assisted suicide, an almost ultra-hesitant actor in his own play. This is absurd. This is a man who happily concedes his obsession with death, with trying to understand its mechanisms, and with peering into the eyes of the person as he (or more often she) the instant they die.

I could probably never prove it, but it seemed clear to me that at least to some reporters, his conduct was so bizarre that they found it amusing in a demented sort of way. Take this example.

Dickerson writes, "Considerably lighter is the buddy-movie repartee between [Al] Pacino's Kevorkian and [John] Goodman's amiable Nicol. Reminiscing about their younger days on the staff of Pontiac General Hospital, Nicol recalls how he contracted hepatitis after allowing the young Dr. Kevorkian to transfuse him with cadaver blood. 'We had some good times,' Kevorkian agrees."

The Los Angeles Times' Robert Lloyd helpfully adds, "As Kevorkian's best friend and helper, Goodman is Hardy to Pacino's Laurel." Lloyd also quotes this zinger from the film: "Gas inhalation always leaves the deceased with a colorful, rosy afterglow,' Kevorkian happily tells a radio audience."

Like all but one of the reviews and previews I've read, Lloyd tells us that Levinson (and Mazer) "take pains to be evenhanded." But Lloyd is honest enough to admit "there is, of course, a kind of structural bias in favor of Kevorkian, who is, after all, the reason this meeting has been convened." Lloyd usefully adds, "The subject himself feels good about it: 'The film is superb,' Kevorkian told the New York Daily News.'"

One other thought. It's unclear who is speaking, but someone is quoted in "You Don't Know Jack" as saying Kevorkian flouting the law was "like Martin Luther King, like Galileo." The only thing you can say to this is…Only in the mind of Hollywood, friends, only in the mind of Hollywood.

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com and please read our new pro-life blog, "National Right to Life News Today" (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org).

Part Three
Part One