By Thomas A. Parmalee
By now, you’ve probably seen “The Burial,” starring Tommy Lee Jones and Jaime Foxx, which is loosely based on the true story of lawyer Willie E. Gary and his client, Jeremiah Joseph O’Keefe, who sued the Loewen Funeral Group and won a massive verdict.
“Loosely” is being kind: Other writers have already written about where the film abandoned the truth or modified it to fit the big screen. You can read an excellent article by Patti Martin Bartsche highlighting the story behind the film as well as the O’Keefe family here.
I had two immediate thoughts after seeing the film.
First, I thought it was better than I thought it would be.
Notwithstanding the inaccuracies of the film, I was surprised to find myself enjoying it. I can rarely sit through a movie, and even this one I had to watch over two or three sittings since I only get to watch television for 30 minutes or so at a time with three little kids. But it’s pretty good, which perhaps should not have been all that surprising to me given the solid cast.
The second thought I had was this: The movie does not make us look good.
By “us,” I mean funeral service – anyone who plays any part in honoring the dead and serving the living. That could be your local funeral director, it could be your monument company, or it could be your casket company. No one gets off easy in “The Burial” – and probably the large corporate-owned funeral homes end up looking the worst of all.
The third thought that came to mind took a little time to develop, and at first, I thought, “That’s a pretty daring thought.” But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, “That would work.”
And that thought was this: Every funeral home in America should be inviting their communities into their funeral home to watch “The Burial.”
This is not a huge leap for funeral homes, which often show movies and use them as a launching point for a discussion. Sometimes, a chat about preplanning even ensues. At the very least, families get to see your facilities, meet your staff and see that the funeral home is not as scary a place as they may have believed.
“The Burial” offers you the chance to do all of those things but on a much more meaningful scale: You can confront head on the misconceptions that many members of the public often have about funeral service and explain to them why you are different.
It gives you the chance to let your community know that “yes, there are bad apples in every profession,” but set their mind at ease that you are not one of those apples.
If you work for a large, corporate firm, it gives you the chance to explain why you don’t fit into the stereotypes promoted in the movie – and if you work for a small, independent firm, well, it gives you the chance to say, “Hey, we are not them.” Play up your local history, your record of service to the community and the fact that you have made your way through the boom-and-bust times just like the families you serve.
Showing the film is also your chance to shine a spotlight on the case itself, the good work that the O’Keefes are carrying out through a nonprofit family foundation, the parts of the story that the film got wrong, and how things have changed. You can even – gasp – talk about the Funeral Rule and how the law looks out for the interests of consumers. Perhaps you even want to lead a conversation about how you go above and beyond what the Funeral Rule requires by posting your prices online, assuming you do so, of course.
If you haven’t watched “The Burial” yet, you can see it for free on Amazon Prime if you are a Prime member.
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