# The Doctor (1991 film)
**The Doctor** is a 1991 American drama film directed by Randa Haines, in which a self-centered cardiac surgeon, Jack MacKee, is diagnosed with throat cancer and experiences the hospital system from the patient's side of the bed. It stars [William Hurt](https://www.edgepedia.org/william-hurt), Christine Lahti, Elizabeth Perkins, and [Mandy Patinkin](https://www.edgepedia.org/mandy-patinkin), and is based on the book *A Taste of My Own Medicine: When the Doctor is the Patient* by Dr. Ed Rosenbaum, an internist who wrote about his own bout with laryngeal cancer.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58862-THE-DOCTOR?cxt=filmography) • [2](https://d23.com/a-to-z/doctor-the-film/) • [3](https://www.archindy.org/criterion/files/1991/pdfs/19910906.pdf)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | July 24, 1991 (Los Angeles and New York openings); general release August 2, 1991[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58862-THE-DOCTOR?cxt=filmography) • [2](https://d23.com/a-to-z/doctor-the-film/) |
| Director / writer / producer | Randa Haines; screenplay by Robert Caswell; produced by Laura Ziskin[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58862-THE-DOCTOR?cxt=filmography) |
| Source | *A Taste of My Own Medicine: When the Doctor is the Patient* by Edward E. Rosenbaum, M.D.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58862-THE-DOCTOR?cxt=filmography) |
| Cast | William Hurt (Jack MacKee), Christine Lahti (Anne), Elizabeth Perkins (June), Mandy Patinkin (Murray), Adam Arkin (Eli), Wendy Crewson (Dr. Abbott)[4](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-doctor-1991) |
| Technical | 123 minutes per AFI (other listings give 122); PG-13; Dolby Stereo; Panavision; distributed by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58862-THE-DOCTOR?cxt=filmography) |
| Box office | $38,120,905 domestic gross on a reported $12.0 million production budget[5](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0101746/) • [6](https://filmdb.co.uk/box-office/movie/the-doctor-1991-box-office) |
| Reception | 81% Tomatometer from 21 critics; 73% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes[7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1037015-doctor) |
## Spoilers
### Story
At the start of the film, at a Los Angeles hospital, Dr. Jack MacKee, along with his colleague Dr. Murray Kaplan, wisecracks, chuckles, and sings as they carry out life-saving cardiac surgery on a young man who had attempted suicide.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58862-THE-DOCTOR?cxt=filmography) MacKee is technically accomplished but emotionally detached: he instructs medical residents to avoid personal involvement with patients, believing it inefficient, and he flippantly tells a woman worried about her post-surgical chest scars that they give her the look of a "centerfold."[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58862-THE-DOCTOR?cxt=filmography) Roger Ebert, the longtime film critic of the *Chicago Sun-Times* and winner of the 1975 [Pulitzer Prize](https://www.edgepedia.org/pulitzer-prize) for criticism, described the character as an aloof, self-centered heart surgeon who treats his patients like names on a list.[4](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-doctor-1991)
**The turn.** MacKee's problem begins as a nagging cough, which he ignores until he coughs up blood. An ear, nose, and throat specialist, Dr. Leslie Abbott ([Wendy Crewson](https://www.edgepedia.org/wendy-crewson)), finds a malignant tumor in his throat. He needs radiation therapy, and if that fails, surgery that could cost him the power of speech.[4](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-doctor-1991) As a Spanish-language medical-journal study of the film puts it, his denial borders on the unbelievable, since a master of medicine cannot conceive of himself as a target for intervention.[8](https://revistas.usal.es/cinco/index.php/medicina_y_cine/article/download/29543/28565?inline=1)
**The patient's perspective.** Undergoing treatment in his own hospital, MacKee waits in waiting rooms, fills out pointless forms, and encounters the same bureaucratic red tape and dehumanizing conditions his patients face.[2](https://d23.com/a-to-z/doctor-the-film/) • [9](https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/film708504.html) In one scene, doctors hold a technical conversation practically across his cart as he is wheeled toward surgery; he lifts his head, offers expert advice, and tells them, "Yes! There's a person here!"[4](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-doctor-1991) He grows close to June ([Elizabeth Perkins](https://www.edgepedia.org/elizabeth-perkins)), a fellow patient with a brain tumor whom he meets daily during their treatments, and their bond becomes the catalyst for his recovery and for his realization that a healer must attend to the spirit as well as the body.[4](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-doctor-1991) • [2](https://d23.com/a-to-z/doctor-the-film/) The film also follows his strained relationship with his wife Anne and young son, and ends with June's posthumous letter telling the story of a farmer who unintentionally frightened away animals with a scarecrow.[4](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-doctor-1991) • [1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58862-THE-DOCTOR?cxt=filmography)
## Production
The project took an unusual casting path. The 19 July 1990 *Daily Variety* announced that [Warren Beatty](https://www.edgepedia.org/warren-beatty) had withdrawn from the forthcoming project, then titled *The Doctors*, citing "creative differences" with director Randa Haines; [Touchstone Pictures](https://www.edgepedia.org/touchstone-pictures) president David Hoberman reported the actor's disapproval of the script as the reason. On 10 August 1990, *Daily Variety* named William Hurt as Beatty's replacement.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58862-THE-DOCTOR?cxt=filmography)
[Principal photography](https://www.edgepedia.org/principal-photography) began on 19 November 1990 in Valencia, California, where the film's hospital set was located. Production designer Ken Adam, after studying more than twenty hospitals in the Los Angeles area, created what he called "a hospital of heightened reality" designed to mirror the protagonist's experiences. Filming moved to San Francisco for four days of exteriors, then to Nevada for two days in Reno and on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Indian Reservation, followed by two weeks in Malibu, where a house surrounded by woods served as the MacKee home. Other locations included the California Medical Center in downtown Los Angeles, an office building in Beverly Hills, a Pasadena classroom, and the GTE building in Westlake Village.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58862-THE-DOCTOR?cxt=filmography)
Haines had waited four years after *Children of a Lesser God* (1986) before taking another feature, rejecting many scripts. Her mother had died of cancer when Haines was 15 after a harsh three-year illness, and when the script reached her she was 45, the age her mother had been at death; she later said the film offered "an opportunity to make peace with some demons inside myself."[10](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-21-ca-256-story.html) Before production she visited Hurt in New Haven, where he was performing a play, and arranged for them to watch an open-heart surgery together, his first time in an operating theater.[10](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-21-ca-256-story.html)
## Reception and box office
The film opened in late July 1991 to positive reviews, and several critics compared it favorably with *[Regarding Henry](https://www.edgepedia.org/regarding-henry)* (1991), which had a similar theme of a successful professional remade by a devastating event.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58862-THE-DOCTOR?cxt=filmography) Ebert wrote that in the wrong hands the material could have been simply a cautionary tale, but that Hurt and Haines made it the story of a specific, flawed, fascinating human being.[4](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-doctor-1991) David Ansen of *Newsweek* called it "that rare specimen, a big studio movie that treats the audience (and its own characters) with intelligence and respect."[7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1037015-doctor) On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 81% Tomatometer from 21 reviews and a 73% audience score.[7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1037015-doctor)
At the box office it earned $38,120,905 domestically ([Box Office Mojo](https://www.edgepedia.org/box-office-mojo) reports $38,120,905; The Numbers lists $37,497,480), against a reported $12.0 million production budget.[5](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0101746/) • [11](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Doctor-The) • [6](https://filmdb.co.uk/box-office/movie/the-doctor-1991-box-office) It received three nominations: Chicago Film Critics Association Award nominations for Best Actor (Hurt) and Best Supporting Actress (Perkins), and a [Young Artist Award](https://www.edgepedia.org/young-artist-award) nomination for Best Family Motion Picture, Drama.[12](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101746/awards/)
## Use in medical education
The film has had a second life as a teaching tool. A review of cinema in medical education notes that *The Doctor* is used by many authors to explore the doctor-patient relationship, communication skills, grief and bereavement, and cross-cultural issues in medicine.[13](https://paliativossinfronteras.org/wp-content/uploads/El-Cine-en-la-educaci%C3%B3n-m%C3%A9dica.pdf) A compilation of film clips for teaching the patient's perspective in medical interviews selects scenes from the film's first 20 minutes, which contain four instructive consultation scenes, and notes that in *The Doctor* the patient is himself a doctor.[14](https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/medicina_y_cine/article/viewFile/13748/14122) A physician writing in a BMJ-affiliated publication describes using the film extensively when teaching medical students, saying it has much to teach doctors at all stages of their careers.[15](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1828356/)
## References
1. [The Doctor (1991), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58862-THE-DOCTOR?cxt=filmography)
2. [Doctor, The (film), D23 (The Walt Disney Company)](https://d23.com/a-to-z/doctor-the-film/)
3. [The Criterion, September 6, 1991, page 12](https://www.archindy.org/criterion/files/1991/pdfs/19910906.pdf)
4. [Roger Ebert, "The Doctor" review, Chicago Sun-Times, July 24, 1991](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-doctor-1991)
5. [The Doctor (1991), Box Office Mojo](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0101746/)
6. [The Doctor (1991) box office, FilmDB](https://filmdb.co.uk/box-office/movie/the-doctor-1991-box-office)
7. [The Doctor, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1037015-doctor)
8. [Bottasso, Oscar. "Cuando los médicos nos volvemos pacientes. A propósito del filme El Doctor (1991)", Medicina y Cine](https://revistas.usal.es/cinco/index.php/medicina_y_cine/article/download/29543/28565?inline=1)
9. [The Doctor (1991), FilmAffinity](https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/film708504.html)
10. [Judith Michaelson, "What Took So Long?", Los Angeles Times, July 21, 1991](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-21-ca-256-story.html)
11. [The Doctor (1991), The Numbers](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Doctor-The)
12. [The Doctor (1991), Awards, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101746/awards/)
13. ["El cine en la educación médica" (Cinema in medical education)](https://paliativossinfronteras.org/wp-content/uploads/El-Cine-en-la-educaci%C3%B3n-m%C3%A9dica.pdf)
14. ["Film Clips that Illustrate the Patient's Perspective in a Medical Interview", Medicina y Cine](https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/medicina_y_cine/article/viewFile/13748/14122)
15. ["The Doctor", BMJ group article, PMC](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1828356/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1990s › Drama films early 1990s*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license