Jack Tuller’s story started when the musician and performer was first diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor in 1994. Remarkably, from the beginning, Jack looked beyond his own predicament. He wanted to share timeless and profound realities of life and death.

That is partly explained by the extraordinary circumstances of Jack’s life. He was given six months to live but defied the odds to last 25 years. Keenly aware of his mortality all those years, Jack was diligent about creatively documenting his life with photography.

It is that rich reservoir of material that we are drawing upon to make JACK HAS A PLAN. Inspired by similar personal works—such as TARNATION (2004) and STORIES WE TELL (2012)—the use of home movies, family snapshots, old industrial films, and recorded Facetime conversations allows us to go beneath the surface to explore the psychological dimensions of Jack’s unconventional mindset.

Jack was spontaneous and playful. But there was a serious purpose to his creativity. Jack wanted to demonstrate how dying can be approached with grace, humor and humility.

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Right-to-die laws were first proposed in the United States in the 1960s. Since that time, activists have worked tirelessly to establish compassionate choices for terminally ill patients. The ability to choose where and how to die, rather than suffer from disabling conditions, is viewed by growing numbers of Americans as a basic human right.

In June 2016, California became the fifth state to enact an aid-in-dying law. Five more states have since passed similar laws. Jack was one of 405 individuals who died following the ingestion of prescribed aid-in-dying drugs in California in 2019.

By 2021, ten U.S. jurisdictions have enacted assisted dying law, reflecting the seismic shift underway in how Americans view death. The medical establishment has historically focused on extending every patient’s life for the maximum number of days. But there is an emerging recognition that palliative care focusing on alleviating suffering is a more compassionate approach—helping families avoid the severe emotional and financial toll of invasive treatments in the final weeks of life.

This remedy, which validates the indomitable spirit of people to transcend illness, provided great solace to Jack and his diverse community of friends. Unfortunately, despite wide public support for assisted dying laws, the act remains illegal in most of the U.S. Given the demographics for those using Death with Dignity laws and the great expense and long-lasting debt incurred by families, compassionate end-of-life treatment is a matter of social justice.

The filmmaker’s relationship with Jack goes back for nearly two decades, so with that intimacy, we were granted access to Jack up until the last 20 minutes of his life. We hope that Jack’s story will allow audiences to find courage and meaning when faced with their own existential challenges.