Terri Schiavo: The Movie

If like me, you were at all sympathetic to the plight of Michael Schiavo, husband of Terri Schiavo, now might be a good time to distance. Terri Schiavo you’ll remember as the brain dead coma victim whose parents insisted on keeping her lifeless body alive, against the objections of her husband Michael.

Eventually, after much protesting and news coverage, Michael won out and Terri’s body was allowed to join her mind. Then Michael, who’d already found a new woman, went out and signed a big book deal, and now he’s selling his book to be made into a movie. Dude… that just doesn’t look good.

Variety says it is producers Mike Farrell, Marvin Mirnoff, Kevin Brown, and Lawrence Bender who are resurrecting the most tiresome, over-hyped news story of the decade. You’d expect something like this to be a movie of the week, not a feature film. But Farrell and Lawrence aren’t limiting themselves to the Lifetime channel. They’re seeing dollar signs, and plan to hire a writer and then sell the movie to the highest bidder, whether it be a film or television studio. The script will be adapted from Michael Schiavo’s book “Terri: The Truth”.

Mirnoff says he sees the project as a Shakespearean love story, not as a tragedy cash-in. “It starts off so beautifully and then ends so chaotically." Beautifully? I’m going to go ahead and assume he means the start Terri and Michael’s marriage and not the beginning of her terminal coma.

Josh Tyler