Roger Ebert
I’m emotionally impacted today by the death of Roger Ebert. (Please make sure to visit his website and read both the posted obituary and his last blog posting from yesterday "A Leave of Presence.") Roger was a mammoth cultural figure, overgrown far beyond what one would expect of a simple “movie critic.” I used to watch Roger and his late partner Gene Siskel on their "At the Movies" program, of course. They would also make the rounds together on the late night shows I've so enjoyed. Whenever David Letterman was asked why his talk show set had two guest chairs, he would answer, “Because of Siskel and Ebert.” Roger was the most widely-read and important film critic of all-time.
Like he did for so many others, Roger taught me to better understand the movies and to love them more-- movies of any age and of any genre. Though they were never laid out one-by-one, he and Gene are responsible for my most basic and firmly-set adopted rules about film. One of those is that you can always go by yourself to the theater because when it’s a great picture, you’re really just by yourself anyway. Two, if it’s alternately a “chick flick” or a “guys’ movie,” chances are that I won’t like it. The great films can be appreciated by all. They are gender-less. From Gene: a great movie has two great scenes and no bad ones. And most importantly, from Roger, the value of a movie never lies in what it's about, but how it is about it.
When Roger Ebert championed a movie that I also loved-- especially a small one like Eve's Bayou, I felt like we were thicker than thieves. Roger's greatest gift to cinema was actually helping to make small movies into big movies, as he did for Nashville, My Dinner with Andre, Sling Blade, and countless others. But it was really the last years of his life, his blogging years, that helped bond me to him for the remainder of my life. It’s kind of funny to think about this final prolific period of his writing, necessitated by his cancer fight, coming on the heels of an already-historic output of print. For more than three decades, he kicked out six or more movie columns a week for his Chicago newspaper, the Sun-Times, as well as essays, interviews, and question-and-answer columns pertaining to the movies. He became the paper's de facto obit writer for every film star that died. And all while he was also appearing frequently on both local and national television.
When he lost his ability to speak, the harvest of writing actually increased, and now he was writing also about his spiritual beliefs, his memories, his influences, his politics, his marriage, his employer, and his great loves—both human and in the humanities. I found myself a couple months ago cribbing from one of his last published books, a memoir entitled “Life Itself,” for my own theoretical autobiography. I told my brother only a couple weeks ago, as he was moving to borrower the book: “Look here at how he lays it out by chapter." There's one on his genealogy, one on his hometown, one on his parochial elementary school, others about his best friends, and his favorite places to visit, his alcohol addiction and recovery, a cherished one entitled 'How I Believe in God.' And he just pours out as many precious memories as he can for each chapter. "I could do that!” Or at least, I should try to do that.
I smile when I think even of the idea of Siskel and Ebert. Always biting and barking at each other, competitive, but with a deep love and respect at the core of their relationship. Ebert's Sun-Times obit today called the partnership "complex." And Roger also belonged in company with the great Chicago and national journalists that were outside the sphere of arts criticism, people like Studs Terkel and Mike Royko, who also both doubled as good friends of his. He was just a marvelously humane writer regardless of the subject, and I feel so fortunate just to have shared so many interests and passions with a man that had so much talent to contribute to them. I like to think of him now sitting with all of his dear friends who parted before him, all of them seated in a balcony somewhere, maybe discussing the movies, maybe not, but for sure, trying to break a subject down to its very essence.
posted by CM @ 7:04 PM
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