As I came out of Monday night’s Harry Brown screening at the Brill building, I saw a hand-written sign on a door that indicated Barry Levinson‘s You Don’t Know Jack, a Jack Kevorkian biopic starring Al Pacino, was being worked on inside. The HBO film, which costars Susan Sarandon, John Goodman and Danny Huston, debuts on 4.24.

“How do you like that word pairing: suicide doctor? Thats like pyromaniac fireman. Suicide doctor — what’s malpractice for this guy? You live?” — comic Rob Weinstein on jokes.com.

Yeah, yeah, very funny, but we all know that life for the terminally ill is always prolonged to the utmost by the medical establishment without the slightest regard for standards of decency and compassion in terms of quality of life. I don’t want to die so I laugh at Kevorkian jokes like everyone else, but if you want to go because you can’t stand it any longer and you just want to sleep, you should be allowed to do that.

And any doctor who stands up and says “if you’re of sound mind and you really want to leave, I’ll help you do that in a peaceful way” has my respect.