Coming Soon‘s Ed Douglas, a good and bright fellow whom I’ve known for several years and with whom I’ve roomed during Sundance and co-recorded Hollywood Elsewhere podcasts, is in trouble. He was diagnosed with acute lukemia last week while attending CinemaCon in Las Vegas. Now he’s about to start chemo treatments in a hospital in Columbus, Ohio, which is near his family’s home. He has no insurance and needs help. Here’s a donation page.

I just spoke to Ed in his hospital room. He sounded alert, chipper, spirited. His cell phone is having issues (you can hear him and he can hear you but you can’t easily converse back and forth) but he gave me his hospital room phone #. (Get in touch if you want it — I’m sure he’d like to hear from friends.)

Before we spoke Ed had just received a bone marrow treatment of some kind. The plan, he said, is to go through 28 days of treatment and then go right back on the job. Good attitude! I told him I loved him and that everyone in the journo and industry community is supporting him big-time and that the fund is up to $15 K now and to hang in there. “Wow, that’s crazy,” Douglas said.

When I began talking about this with Sasha Stone this morning, the goal was $10K and the donations were somewhere around $3800 or $3900. Ten or fifteen minutes later the donations were up to $5 K. They kept going up and up. Now the goal is $50K and the donations are around $15 K.