Many people have helped throw someone the party of their life. But how about their death? In The Event, a gay man dying from AIDS is the catalyst for his family, friends, and the law to explore the moral, legal and ethical ambiguities behind assisted suicide.

An NYC gay man dying from AIDS, Matt Shapiro (Don McKellar) has skirted the threshold of sickness for the last time. If he gets ill again, he will likely never return, lingering in a painful, dependent state until death claims him. So, wishing to die with dignity, he asks his friends to throw one big, final blast, celebrating his time on this earth and, come evening’s end, his departure from it. Unlike 1996’s It’s My Party, however, Matt’s situation is complicated by the probings of an assistant district attorney, Nicole, (Parker Posey) into a series of similar suicides. Although Nicole recently saw her own father suffer an extended terminal illness — and pleadings for euthanasia — she steadfastly upholds the law: assisted suicide is illegal. Matt’s older sister Gaby (Joanna P. Adler), appalled by what her family and Matt’s friends “allowed to happen,” provides Nicole with enough information and leads to pursue her case, yet reluctant witnesses like Matt’s friends Brian (Brent Carver), drag queen Rory (Rejean J. Cournoyer), younger sister Dana (Sarah Polley) and mother Lila (Olympia Dukakis) muddy things up.

The Event was sublimely directed by openly gay Canuck, Thom Fitzgerald (The Hanging Garden, Beefcake). New York-based Dukakis, meanwhile, provides her most emotionally devastating turn yet as a mother who, albeit profoundly saddened, decides to respect and abide by her son’s wishes.

“I suppose in the end if you love somebody, you try and help them have what they want,” Dukakis opines. “Even if it can cause you tremendous pain, and I think that’s what happened. Lila knew that’s what her son wanted. I’m convinced she didn’t want to do it, but in the end she felt it was his choice.”

Dukakis, with a sigh of relief, reports that her own husband and offspring have been spared terminal illness or premature death, saying, “I have no idea how people survive the death of their children.” However, she has attended the real-life “events” of AIDS-stricken friends and at least one actual euthanasia ritual.

“I had a friend who got colon cancer very quickly,” she shares of the latter. “She picked the day, she picked the afternoon, and there were her family and daughters and like three other people. We were all in the room, she took whatever this medicine was, and they told us she would have like 40 minutes. She proceeded to say goodbye and her friends were first. Her daughter was the last one. Everybody left and she was just there with her daughter. But that was incredible, and I found myself behaving in ways... I spent the whole time massaging her feet. I don’t know how it got started... just massaging her feet. It was really something. What I did was walk away, realizing how extraordinarily she behaved, and I thought, ‘Could I do what she did? Could I? Say OK, I’m taking myself out of here?’ All of it is like a big question mark to me.”

Fitzgerald admits he has seriously pondered the euthanasia issue as well.

In fact, just after he received The Event’s script from writers Tim Marback and Steven Hillyer, a friend living with AIDS approached Fitzgerald and asked him to be the one to assist his suicide when the day comes. “He expected, of all his friends, that I would be the one who was hard-assed enough to do it,” Fitzgerald relays. “Which was really surprising to me and I’m sure that to some degree my taking on this project in such a do or die way had to do with needing to work out my own world view and feelings.”

The process of bringing The Event to the screen took over two years, essentially due to studio executives’ feeling that few paying moviegoers wanted to see a story about a homo with AIDS offing himself (with help from friends and family). Even Dukakis, who remained attached to the project throughout those years, remained dubious of the project’s viability.

“I thought ‘I wonder if they’re gonna make money to make this film?’” she replies when asked if the script made her cry.

Eventually, through the producers’ own family members (including a child’s $100k college fund and a mother’s $15k retirement fund) and a mysterious suitcase of $40k cash dropped off by a modeling agency (“It was like Pulp Fiction,” Fitzgerald muses), enough capital was raised to commence filming.

Set in NYC, the film was partially shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

For Parker Posey, close friend and confidant to gays both off and on-screen, the role of Nicole was a departure from form, personality and politic. “Of course I would leave them alone,” she affirms regarding those who have “events.” “These people are forced to make a party out of the death of someone they all love... and watching it I think about my friends dying a lot. This is kind of what this movie was triggering for me. It really stabs and totally twists and turns. It’s got real balls in that department.”

Asked whether she would want an event staged if she was stricken with terminal illness, Posey is forthcoming... in her party girl way. “Yeah, I think I would. But I’m a martyr, so maybe I wouldn’t tell anyone and write a really long letter or make a musical movie or something. My friends wouldn’t know I was dying, but they would be part of the song and dance numbers. Then when I would die they would all have a copy of the movie and they’d watch it and cry. I’d also make a point to hire some people to play people from the other side, like John Edward from ‘Crossing Over’ or something.”

Although heavily emotional, some laughs are interspersed within The Event: a fuming drag queen beats a deceitful guy down, Lila whips up a batch of pot cookies (Dukakis is an expert at weed pastries between this and “Tales of the City!”), and Fitzgerald memorably cameos as an insensitive commercial director who gives Sarah Polley an earful about her performance on a “Vagimar” feminine hygiene product shoot.

“That was a much briefer scene in the screenplay but I felt safe with Sarah,” Fitzgerald grins. “I’ve always wanted to talk that way to an actor. I can’t do it that way in real life so this was my big chance to share who I really am!”

As for whether he — or anyone else — could pull the plug on a loved one in real life, they ultimately reaffirm that one can only know the answer when such a moment arrives.

“I’d like to think I would honor someone’s wishes,” Dukakis proffers. “That I would be capable of doing that. Intellectually I understand it, but you have to live with that the rest of your life.”