The issue of assisted suicide is complex and goes to the heart of practical morality versus a doctor's ethical responsibility to do no harm.  What happens when the harm to the patient is more than death?  How does this not rest in the heart of what we affectionately dub "the gray area"?  And yet, wouldn't this debate be more compelling if the man who has come to represent this controversy, Jack Kevorkian, was constantly screaming every sentence?

Variety is reporting that Al Pacino has signed on to play the controversial "Dr. Death" in a film for HBO directed by Barry Levinson (the man with the most spectacular string of failures but I guess that "Rainman" cred is everlasting) and will focus on the construction of his "Mercy Machine" (I hope they show darkly humorous prototypes like an anvil that falls on you when you sit in a chair or a self-electrocuting bathtub) and the media frenzy surrounding his first assisted suicide.