Leave it to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the Swiss-born Scottsdale resident who did groundbreaking studies on dying in the 1960s, to know how to say a final goodbye with grace and style. Kubler-Ross, the psychiatrist who wrote dozens of books about death and dying and helped start the American hospice movement, is now herself ready to die.

Her health has declined since 1995 through a series of strokes.

But thanks to her children, a filmmaker and the consular corps of Switzerland, Kubler-Ross, 76, got to make a public point this weekend.

The Swiss Consulate General of Los Angeles hosted a screening of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: Facing Death, a documentary by Swiss director Stefan Haupt, which ends with Kubler-Ross musing on dancing across the galaxies after she dies.

About 400 adoring fans proved Kubler-Ross' premature elegy a hot ticket.

The Swiss consul for Phoenix, Max Haechler, known locally as Max of Switzerland for the Scottsdale luxury-car dealership he once owned, greeted guests Friday at the Harkins Camelview 5 theater on Scottsdale Road.

Ken Ross, the psychiatrist's son, co-hosted but almost didn't attend because of a near-death experience five days earlier. The fine-art photographer, 41, who lives in Scottsdale, had a heart attack while flying into Hermosillo, Mexico, and discovered he's not ready to die.

"I thought of all the projects I wanted to do," Ross said. "I'm not like my mother - she's done her work."

Before the lights dimmed, the star appeared at the theater front, her wheelchair pushed by daughter Barbara Rottweiler of Wisconsin. Strausak introduced the tiny honoree, who was clad in a scarlet Chinese-style dress and tiny black slippers. The audience roared.

The film weaves Kubler-Ross' biography with her philosophy on dying.

She's choosy about whom she wants to see on the other side, she says. Ghandi tops the list.

Her life has been a struggle: getting a medical education, getting her work accepted by the medical establishment, getting her Virginia farm torched when locals feared her plan to open an AIDS hospice for infants.

But her great popularity as an author led to lecturing all over the world.

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