I have to add my thoughts to the many many voices who have expressed grief about the passing of writer and film critic Roger Ebert. These few words are just a few drops of the oceans of “ink” that have and will be spent celebrating his life and his work.
Roger Ebert was my kind of writer. A passionate opinionated man who loved what he wrote about – movies. He loved movies like people love their spouses: absolute, unquestioning love… flaws and all. He always tried to look at each film he reviewed as its own “thing” and not compare it to other, more popular films of its kind. This meant he sometimes gave great reviews to movies other critics despised and bad reviews to films that many others loved. This iconoclastic temperament set him apart, and you never knew what his reaction to a film would be.
I like so many of my generation learned about film criticism through his “Sneak Previews” show on public television. In those pre-Internet days his program was the only way I could see many of the clips or previews of new films, and his witty banter with partner Gene Siskel always made the show entertaining and fun. Siskel and Ebert were the “gateway drugs” for a film fan and aspiring writer like me. They were getting PAID to watch and write about movies! And they had a TV show, too! It was a dream job.
I never became a film critic, and though I continue to write about movies and film here, I can’t hold a candle to the prodigious output Ebert had. He, literally, wrote the book about the movies. Several, in fact.
While I never met the man, he has added value in my life in many ways. His books on film were educational and informative, his reviews kept me away from many a bad movie, and his audio commentary on the home video of Citizen Kane is one of the most learned insightful analysis of the film I’ve ever read or heard. He also founded the Overlooked Film Festival, an event that championed those movies that have fallen through the cracks of popular culture. I consider my Neglected Cinema feature here a similar exercise, and I give full credit to Roger Ebert for inspiring me to do the column.
When I spoke at a technology conference at the Gene Siskel Theatre in Chicago late last year, I saw a huge picture of Gene and Roger near the entrance… and it made me smile. While I will in all likelihood never have the kind of impact Roger Ebert did in my life, when I saw that picture I was taken back when an eight-year-old me watched them on PBS… And speaking on a stage in a theatre named after Gene, it kinda meant I “made it”.
Just a little.
When he suffered his cancer years ago, and I read about the torturous medical procedures that took both his vocal cords and a large chunk of his jaw away, I marveled at the amazing and positive attitude he had about the whole thing. While I’m sure there was plenty of moments of self pity and anger, he didn’t seem to have much of that in him… he just moved on and kept writing. He lost his ability to speak, but he never lost his voice.
We have lost that voice now, and that makes me sad. Roger Ebert was a fellow traveler, a geek like me and so many others who loved those flickering images in the dark… the stuff that dreams are made of.
Goodnight, Roger. Say hi to Gene for me.
