Dr. K on HBO

.
April 16, 2010, 6:00 PM ET

Anderson Cooper Interviews Jack Kevorkian About HBO Biopic, Personal History

Chances are, you’ve come face-to-face with a giant poster of Al Pacino’s weathered and bespectacled face in recent weeks. The image is part of the ad campaign for “You Don’t Know Jack,” a biopic of Dr. Jack Kevorkian airing on HBO April 24.

Pacino plays the pathologist-turned-assisted suicide proponent, who served eight years of a 10-to-25-year prison sentence for administering a lethal injection to Thomas Youk in 1998 and then sending a video tape of the proceeding to “60 Minutes.” Convicted of second-degree murder, Kevorkian was released on parole in 2007.

As a tie-in to the HBO film, Anderson Cooper interviewed Dr. Kevorkian this afternoon before a crowd that included Candice Bergen and Steve Guttenberg, as part of CNN’s Conversations on the Circle series in the Time Warner Center in New York City. CNN president Jon Klein introduced the duo on stage, joking that when his friends at Fox News heard that Dr. Kevorkian was coming to the building, they were all elated. He followed up by saying Cooper’s interviews were “the safest way to overdose on Jack Kevorkian.”

Cooper began the session by asking Kevorkian if he minded being nicknamed “Dr. Death.” Kevorkian, now 82, pretended to care before answering “No.” He then explained that he received the nickname long before he started assisting the terminally ill and infirm with taking their own lives, dating the name back to when he was a resident in a hospital and asked the nurses to let him know every time a patient was about to die. He went on to explain that he was interested in pathology because he cared about what he was eventually going to face when he died.

Kevorkian discussed his infamous Thanatron and Mercitron euthanizing machines (the former killed patient Jana Adkins, the first assisted suicide, in eight seconds flat; Kevorkian doubts she heard his last words of “Have a good trip”). He showed off his broad knowledge of history, commenting on ancient Greek and Roman attitudes to death, and modern-day events, like President Obama’s memo allowing the gay partners hospital rights.

Kevorkian also talked about his prison experience. “Most of the guards and nurses supported me,” he said.