But I never dreamed I’d see myself on the screen, except now I have, thanks to an early screening of the new movie “You Don’t Know Jack,” which premieres tomorrow night on HBO.
I covered Kevorkian for years, for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire and many other publications, and I suspect I knew him better than any other journalist. Dealing with Kevorkian and his brilliant and flamboyant lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger, was a fairly strenuous occupation. Some people accused me of being too close to them; they screamed at me for being too critical.
There’s a hint of that in the movie, where Fieger threatens to cut off my access to Kevorkian when I criticized him.
These days, in fact, Kevorkian no longer talks to me; he says I am “too objective.” I had nothing to do with the making of the movie, didn’t know what it would show, and I had some butterflies about seeing someone play me on screen. Those vanished when I saw that while the character was called Jack Lessenberry, he really was a metaphor for journalism in general.
The movie shows him, in fact, simultaneously working for the Detroit Free Press – I never did – and the New York Times, something that would have been a conflict of interest.
The actor playing “me” – James Urbaniak, is younger, thinner, better looking and a tad scruffier than the real-life version, complete with a wonderful set of those early ‘90s aviator glasses.
The movie, being a work of art, doesn’t stick to the facts. The events are out of order. Kevorkian goes on a long hunger strike that is entirely fictitious. But the film does come close to depicting the essential nature of this very odd man, and of what remains an important issue.Medical science can now prolong existence for some long past the time when life has become a living hell.
Others face agonizing, painful and frightening death sentences from diseases for which there is no cure - such as bone cancer and Lou Gehrig’s disease. Kevorkian believes they have the inherent right to ask a physician to help them end that suffering.
He also believed he had the right to offer and perform that service. Thanks in large part to Fieger, who was actually more brilliant than the movie shows, Kevorkian made physician-assisted suicide de facto legal in Michigan for a time.
Then, by recklessly moving on to euthanasia and forcing the authorities to convict him, he self-destructed and sabotaged his own cause; in the end, for him, it sadly turned out to be all about him.
The years since Kevorkian went to prison have been very different from the booming 1990s. We’ve had September 11, two wars, and a severe recession, and the so-called “right to die” has largely vanished from our radar screens.
But because or perhaps despite Jack Kevorkian, two states now allow limited forms of doctor-assisted suicide, and we’ve had vast improvement in pain management and hospice care.
To understand why, you need to know something about Jack. And despite the title, this movie is a good place to start.
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