Hey, remember that editorial I wrote about how you can’t make a movie that will piss off the right wing anymore? If not, click here to read it, but save me your hate mail – I already got a ton of it. Or save it for this piece. Anyway, it looks like I might have been very, very wrong – a quartet of producers have bought the rights to husband Michael “So the autopsy proved I was right, you fucking jackals” Schiavo’s book: Terri: The Truth.
"The story is almost Shakespearean in the warring of the families and the great love story between the (couple)," producer Marvin Minoff told Variety. His partners in this one are Lawrence Bender, Mike Farrell and Kevin Brown. "It starts off so beautifully and then ends so chaotically."
And before you ask, yes, I think it is that Mike Farrell. His years as an emergency surgeon in the Korean War truly prepared him to make a movie out of this story.
Of course you all remember Terri Schiavo, right? She’s the woman who was in a persistent vegetative state, who would never wake up, and who had been on tubes and machines for some time. Her husband wanted them removed, and her parents fought to keep her in a state closely resembling but not actually what we call “being alive.” In the end this family feud became a shocking Constitutional crisis as the President and Congress shamelessly overstepped their bounds and exerted powers they just don’t have to meddle in the affairs of private citizens. Seriously, if these people want to save some lives I can think of some American soldiers who wouldn’t mind getting on their list.
The producers haven’t hired a writer yet and won’t until they know if this is going to be a TV movie or a theatrical one. I have to imagine this is going to end up on TV, passing along in a slot on Lifetime. But all partisanship and understanding of basic medicine and biology aside, this could be a very compelling feature film in the tradition of Todd Haynes’ Superstar.: The Karen Carpenter Story. And if it was to become a feature film I predict that these wounds are fresh enough that the right wing will make one heckuva ruckus. Just the fact that Minoff talks about the "great love story" is enough to set off Governor Jeb Bush, who was willing to take whatever extralegal measures necessary to prove that Michael caused Terri’s coma.