Friday, May 29, 2009

Al Pacino Set to Play “Dr. Death” Jack Kevorkian

cross-posted from A Catholic View

“Say hello to my little friend … Jack Kevorkian.” At least that seems to be the message from Al Pacino, as the Hollywood star, who made famous the above phrase in the gangster film “Scarface,” is getting set to play the man known as “Dr. Death.”

Variety magazine reports that director Barry Levinson has chosen Pacino to play Kevorkian, 81, who killed more than 130 persons through lethal injection administered by what he called his "Mercy Machine," between 1990 and 1999, when the Michigan justice system put his macabre death-dealing career to an end.

The planned HBO biopic is based on literary paean, "Between the Dying and the Dead: Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the Assisted Suicide Machine and the Battle to Legalize Euthanasia" written by Kevorkian friends, Harry Wylie and Neal Nicol. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series has the tentative title, “You Don’t Know Jack,” but given the unapologetically laudatory nature of its source, critics are questioning whether viewers will really know Jack by the end of it.

story here

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