Movie producer in need of transplant may have karma on his side

Steve Whitney, who was raised in San Jose and graduated from Saratoga High School and Santa Clara University, has built a career as a producer helping to turn compelling stories into movies. His credits include “Girl, Interrupted” with Angelina Jolie, the remake of “The Amityville Horror” with Ryan Reynolds or “A Wing and a Prayer,” a 2015 documentary about pilot Al Schwimmer and a covert effort to smuggle fighter planes and other weapons to Israel in 1948.

In 2015, Whitney was visiting the Bay Area when family members told him he didn’t look well. He eventually wound up at Stanford University Medical Center, where he was told that his kidney and liver were failing and he needed a transplant. This was a shock to Whitney, who had run two marathons, never smoked and considered himself in good health for a man then in his mid-40s.

Then in early 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was hitting the United States, Whitney developed a cough. Then, he was at the gym working out one day and couldn’t catch his breath. He went back to Stanford, where doctors were mystified by what was causing Whitney’s lungs to fail. “Eventually, it kept getting worse and worse until they said I needed a transplant,” said Whitney, now 51. “I couldn’t believe I was going through this again.

It’s not lost on Whitney that he might be the beneficiary of his own efforts to increase organ donor registration, a case of the good karma he put in the world coming back to him. And he’s optimistic about his chances, attributing it to his faith and his strong family. Earlier this year, he made a deal with jailed music producer Suge Knight to produce a movie about the life of the Death Row Records co-founder, with filmmaker Nick Cassavetes.

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