What does it take to get Al Pacino, Susan Sarandon, and Barry Levinson together for an HBO movie? Only the story of Jack “Doctor Death” Kervorkian. Al Pacino delivers an Emmy-stamped, nuanced performance as Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
‘You Don’t Know Jack,’ chronicles the period when Dr. Kervorkian was helping terminally ill patients commit suicide. This includes the 1998 incident where he assisted a patient with Als and sent the video to ’60 Minutes,’ which landed him in prison for eight years.
In addition to Pacino, who plays Kervorkian, and Sarandon, who plays his friend and euthanasia advocate Jane Good, the movie also stars John Goodman, Brenda Vaccaro and Danny Huston. Levinson, seen above with Pacino and Kervorkian, produced and directed the movie, the first time he’s directed a feature-length movie for television.
As the Barry Levinson biography opens, Jack is 61, somewhat retired and practically indigent. He becomes outraged over news reports of an ill man who begged to be allowed to die.
“You can’t put these decisions in the hands of patients, Jack,” one physician friend argues with him. “Whose hands you gonna put them in?” Jack retorts. With the help of his sister Margo (Brenda Vaccaro) and a friend, Neal (John Goodman), he builds a device that delivers a powerful sedative and then a drug to stop the heart, and so begins his notorious campaign of physician-assisted suicide, outraging religious activists and county prosecutors.
“You’re not a local quack any more,” Neal tells him. “You’re America’s quack.” Jack is befuddled by the protests and the legal threats. He believes he’s merely offering a humane solution to people who are suffering. Patients themselves pull the switch on his device.
(The film clarifies that Jack screened patients and turned down those who were either depressed or not near an end-of-life stage.)
No jury will convict Jack after watching video of his terminally ill patients begging for death, but with every trial, Jack becomes more belligerent and determined to take his case to the Supreme Court.
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