LAPEER, Mich. – Oscar-winning director Barbara Kopple plans a film on assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian.
The film will be based on a 300-page, unpublished manuscript by Michigan authors and Kevorkian friends Neal Nicol and Harry Wylie. Kopple and producer Steve Jones say they plan to begin shooting in Michigan by early 2005.
“We’re at the beginning, just sort of starting to let this project seep into our souls,” Kopple, who won documentary Oscars for “Harlan County, U.S.A.” and “American Dream,” told the Detroit Free Press last week. “But we know the film is going to be a real, honest look at the journeys people make.”
“It will look at the life of Dr. Kevorkian and all the incredible layers of his personality. And it will look at a man who’s given up so much for what he believes,” she said from New York on Thursday.
Last week, Jones visited Kevorkian, 76, at the Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer. He is in the fifth year of a 10- to 25-year sentence for second-degree murder for giving a poison injection to 52-year-old Thomas Youk in 1998.
Kevorkian has said he assisted in at least 130 deaths, but has promised in affidavits that he will not assist in a suicide if he is released from prison.
Jones says Oscar winner Ben Kingsley tops his short list of actors to play Kevorkian.
“I don’t intend to make a film that bolsters euthanasia,” said Jones. “This is a story about an extraordinary life. No matter what you think of Kevorkian, he is a genius. His story is multifaceted and riveting.”
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