George Tiller: The Movie

I'm sure I have not waited the respectable amount of time to say this (what is the respectable amount of time, anyway, for a deceased person to become a historical figure and fair game for critique?) but I am wondering when we will see George Tiller: The Movie.

I mean, we just had Milk. I saw only the trailer, but it was enough to identify the genre of flick-as-hagiography for the first openly gay man elected to public office in California.

Next up is an HBO film about the Jack we didn't know, suicide specialist Dr. Kevorkian. Director Barry Levinson is in talks with Al Pacino for the starring role. Executive Producer Steven Jones said of the unceremonious dispatcher of 130 people from the land of the living, "He's a living icon. . . . He wants his story told. . . . He gave up eight years of his life to make a point. . . . The film's screenwriter Adam Mazer added, "Most of what we know of him has been told through the media and headlines, but he's a very complicated and complex man. . . . [He has] a terrific sense of humor."

It doesn't take a prophet to know someone in Tinseltown is already kicking around a Tiller movie. And I know just what they're working the bugs out of: How do we do this thing without showing little babies' heads being cracked open and their brains sucked out, and getting the right all riled up? Maybe we'll do what they did in the old Clark Gable-Claudette Colbert movie It Happened One Night and string up a blanket between the viewer and the censurable action. We can call it "The Wall of Jericho" like Frank Capra did.

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