Reflections on Roger Ebert

by Brett Parker

When Roger Ebert passed away on April 4th, 2013 after a long and grueling battle with cancer, it was safe to say that we’ve perhaps lost the most recognized and popular movie critic we’ve ever had.  An exuberant and witty critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert first gained face value on At the Movies, a TV show where he faced off with rival critic Gene Siskel over opinions on all the latest releases, giving birth to the trademark seal of cinematic approval: “Two Thumbs Up!”  Yet years after Gene Siskel passed away and the TV Show went through several different incarnations, Ebert began to grow a really inspiring hold on the film community just as he was being tested with the most horrific battle of his life.  He had a battle with thyroid cancer that ended with the removal of his lower jaw, robbing him of his ability to speak.  It was during this period of silence in which Ebert churned out writing like never before, enriching his web site with all kinds of thoughts and essays, mostly on cinematic matters and human observations.  Since writing online became one of the few ways he could still communicate with the world, his personal homepage became a hub of cinematic communication across the world, as film minds from all over contributed their opinions to his page and Roger graciously gave them a platform to speak and converse with them.  Ebert’s enormous output and constant curation of his site makes one realize that perhaps he did more than anyone to alter the face of online film criticism as we now know it.

Yet when he passed away recently, I didn’t immediately feel like we had lost a seminal cinematic figure but more like I had lost one of my most treasured film buddies.  Mind you, I never actually got to meet Roger Ebert.  The closest I ever came to communicating with him was the time I posted a picture on his Facebook page of John Belushi and himself hanging out at a restaurant in Chicago sometime in the late 70s.  He commented back, saying he had fond memories of that restaurant while thanking me for the post.  It was a small exchange of perhaps the lowest communicative facet, but I was still as excited as a teenage 1960s girl who got to talk with one of The Beatles.  It was, however, a testament to his writing style that his good-humored, down to earth musings made one feel like they were hearing off-the-cuff thoughts from one of their closest friends.  His words were breezy and laid-back (which would make him unjustly accused of being dimwitted) yet were packed with overzealous love for the movies you could find in any enthusiastic cinephile.  While he had a scholarly knowledge of film and an intelligent grace for writing, he still made you feel like he was an eager movie nut just like you.

Like most people, I first became aware of Ebert when he became the co-host of At the Movies which would later go on to become known as Siskel & Ebert.  The show was not only the dawn of movie review blurbs on television, but some theorize it was the program that launched a thousand adults fighting like school children on talk show settings.  As a very young cinephile, I was curious to see the men behind the “Two Thumbs Up” seal that graced the many VHS boxes I had encountered in my life.  So I used to sneakily stay up late on Sundays to catch their show, and I was quickly hooked.  The sight of two grown men who looked like college literary professors arguing ferociously over their opinions of movies was, and still is, a hypnotically awesome sight.  Their thoughtful praise of good films and cynical nitpicking at bad films was nirvana for film nerds and a delightful education for unsuspecting civilians.  But of course there was nothing quite like their heated on-air arguments, which made most divorced couples look like Care Bears by comparison.  In fact, the most unpleasant antidotes in Ebert’s life story outside of his cancer are the nasty acts of sabotage and relentless bickering between the pair that allegedly happened behind-the-scenes of their show, according to eye witness accounts.  YouTubing “Siskel and Ebert Outtakes” will quickly give you an idea of what I’m referring to.

Once the internet eventually came about, I was excited to learn that every Friday, Ebert would have his print reviews released on the Chicago Sun-Times website (and later on his own home page, rogerebert.com).  I recall that the very first review I ever read of his was Charlie’s Angels, a film he rated with 1/2 a star, alerting me to the notion that it was theoretically possible to rate a film with 1/2 a star.  While I’ve always been entertained by Charlie’s Angels in the same way most people are entertained by train wrecks, Ebert was having none of that.  “Charlie’s Angels is eye candy for the blind,” he wrote, “this film is a dead zone in [the starring actresses’] lives, and mine.”  From this first review, I noticed qualities in his writing that would keep me coming back to him time and time again for his opinion: his sense of humor and his ability to see past a film’s surface to just what the hell is really going on.  Since the Chicago-Sun Times website and his own home page archived his reviews from his early days of being a critic, a ritual formed where every time I watched a movie, I would immediately seek out Roger’s opinion of the movie online.  He was great at getting to the essence of what a movie was trying to do and hinting at the unconscious ways it could effect your mindset.  The uncanny thing about him was that I would love a specific movie, he would hate that same film, yet I would agree with every single thing he wrote about the film.  I think the biggest gulf between our opinions ever was when I had absolute love for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village upon first viewing only to discover that Ebert couldn’t have hated it more.  Still, he wasn’t necessarily wrongheaded in his reasons for hating the film.  Besides, I would soon go on to discover that defending The Village as a really good movie is something of an uphill battle in the cinephile community.  

I spent my college years studying cinema at Purchase College in New York, and it was amongst my film professors and fellow classmates in which I discovered that there are, in fact, a number of people who have very little respect for Roger Ebert as a film critic.  The main problems his detractors have with him is that they find his writing style and opinions of movies to be too simple-minded, they feel he champions frivolous flicks too often, and that he’s too hyperbolic in his praise and too condescending in his put-downs.  While there are film writers out there who hold a more academic vocabulary and scholarly thought process than Roger, it’s still a sin to mistake his simpleness for stupidness.  His achievement is to make the idea of intelligent film criticism accessible and readable to people of any age, creed, or education, allowing everyday people to form their own intelligent thoughts about movies.  And he wasn’t above showing the public that he could have fun with silly flicks, too.  As Pauline Kael once wrote, “movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them.”  So I admire Roger greatly for favoring trash when he saw fit, while the pretentious idea would be to snobbishly frown down upon them.  You can say what you want about the man, but he stuck to his true opinions no matter what.  I’ll admit that I’ve gone on in life to find better film writers than him.  Pauline Kael, amidst all her cynicism and curious celebrity encounters, took my understanding of movies into a whole new stratosphere and, for my money, Tom Carson  gets my vote for the best film critic I’ve ever read, for most critics couldn’t match his wit and perceptions at gunpoint.  But still, I’m eternally grateful for Ebert pointing my understanding of movies into the right direction.  If he was indeed a gateway towards a grander academic understanding of cinema, I couldn’t have asked for a better entry portal.

No matter what you think about his movie opinions, you still have to admit that his online efforts during his period of physical silence was quite an achievement.  I can’t think of a film critic who has used online social media more shrewdly than he has.  I remember he used his Facebook and Twitter accounts wonderfully to dish out awesome links and articles regarding all things cinema and also found clever ways to make his older reviews relevant in the present (“Today would’ve been Humphrey Bogart’s birthday?  Why not check out my essay on Casablanca!”)  Since the loss of his voice gave him a more burning need to communicate, he started to go beyond cinema and began writing about matters of human nature and spiritual philosophy.  No matter what subject he wrote about, his words were always deeply heartfelt and surprisingly illuminating.  I remember his article about his battle with alcoholism, “My Name is Roger, and I’m an Alcoholic,” brought invaluable clarity to the horrors of the disease.  I sat down recently to read Life Itself, Ebert’s memoirs covering the entire scope of his life, and I have to admit that I was initially frustrated on first reading.  Usually when I read an autobiography, I urgently wish that the author would dive headfirst into the nitty gritty of why the subject is famous in the first place instead of lumbering endlessly through their early childhood and formative years.  And Life Itself displays Ebert so in love with every minute aspect on his life that he romantically rambles on over what seems to be every damn thing that ever happened to him.  If you want to read about his trips to Cannes, his fights with Siskel, and his ordeal with cancer, you must first read him go on and on about the books he loved as a kid,  what his catholic school looked like, his high school newspaper experiences, etc.  But once I stopped acting like a lunkhead towards the book did I truly see the beauty in what he was doing.  He undoubtedly knew he was facing the final years of his life, and he couldn’t help but be thankful and loving towards every single aspect of his entire life, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  The book revealed that Roger could spot all that is special and holy in every moment he every experienced and his touching perceptions of both the boring and exciting things are truly inspiring.  We should all be so lucky to recall our lives with such warmth and appreciation when we reach the end.

Once the full realization of Ebert’s passing began to sink in, I became filled with sadness knowing that I would never again get to read his opinions on all the new releases.  There would be no more eager rush to his website every Friday morning to find out all his latest thoughts.  And there would never again be any more of his treasured Great Movies essays, in which his re-evaluations of cherished classics would not only deepen your appreciation of said films but make you re-watch them with a rejuvenated enthusiastic glee.  I usually try to avoid hyperbole when writing about a famous person’s passing, but I truly do feel a void with Ebert’s loss.  As a devoted cinephile, I often wonder if they have movies in the afterlife.  Heaven just won’t be heaven without a movie theater that churns out all the new releases and beloved classics.  For Ebert’s sake, I hope such a theater really does exist.  It’s wonderful to ponder that perhaps he could use that big heavenly screen to help share his warm views and wonderful jokes with all the other movie-loving souls surrounding him in the other realm.