An Appreciation of Roger Ebert, 1942-2013
For me, Roger Ebert and my love and appreciation for film are so inextricably bound up that I cannot think about one without the other. When great actor passes away - a Robert Mitchum or a Paul Newman - we remember them, and their movies. With Ebert's passing, we think of the movies.
As a kid, I watched Ebert (and Siskel) before they were famous, back when WTTW's "Sneak Previews" was picked up by PBS. More often than not, they were reviewing films I was too young to see, but I was still enthralled by the discussions. What I came away with from those arguments was a perspective that remains part of who I am today: Cinema is not simply a pleasant diversion -- it is an art form worthy of serious consideration, one we should think and talk about, even if the talking leads to arguing.
The appeal of Ebert, for me, was the comfortable cohabitation of the Geek with the Intellectual. Here is a man whose list of "Great Movies" on his website includes "Star Wars," (the first one) "E.T., The Extra-terrestrial," and "Goldfinger." But you also will find "Cries and Whispers," "La Dolce Vita" and "Shoah." I remember when Ebert thrust his famous thumb up for "Raiders of the Lost Ark," but I also remember that some time later, he and his famous sparring partner devoted a show to exploring how the summer blockbuster juggernaut was dumbing films down, creating a cinema not for the adults who flocked to more serious fare during the 1970s, but for their kids who were treated to the spectacle of Indy cracking a whip or Roy Scheider blowing a shark to bloody smithereens with an oxygen tank.
Perhaps more than any single individual, Ebert's enthusiasm for films inspired me to go beyond the blockbuster (although growing up in what one might call the golden age of Spielberg and George Lucas, I certainly enjoyed those too) in search of ... something different. To seek out the masters who had, I would learn later, inspired that very same Spielberg and Lucas.
I remember there was one summer during high school where I watched something like 50 or 60 films on television, all on my local PBS station. (The only one I really remember was Dick Bogard's "The Servant.") To be a teen during the years that theaters were showing films like "Top Gun," "The Empire Strikes Back," and "Back to the Future" was to delight in the spectacle of films as a Carnival Ride. But having been groomed by Siskel and Ebert, I understood that films like that were part of a cinematic universe that was much vaster.
In college, I took classes in film studies - "Blacks in Film," "Vietnam on Film," and saw amazing stuff that I never would have heard of otherwise. I went to foreign films, where other seeds of my evolving intellect were planted: I saw Lina Wertmuller's "Seven Beauties" and was enthralled by the audacity of it. I saw "La Dolce Vita" and was mostly bored by it. Years later, I would see it again (a horrible, cropped VHS copy) and realize that something was there, even if it didn't completely speak to me. Then I saw it with my wife on our honeymoon in Vancouver, B.C. at a late show where the theater was packed, and it finally opened itself up to me. I got it. I am almost afraid to return to the film, because now I - a semi-retired newspaper journalist - am older than Marcello Mastroianni was when he made it.
I started working my way through Ebert's "Great Movies" list, and I bought his books. I sought out the films that he called attention to in his annual film festival. On and off through the years, I've subscribed to Cineaste, and sought out Film Comment and American Cinematographer at the library. When the Internet happened and everyone was online, I cannot say that I religiously read his stuff each week (and, truthfully, I stopped watching him on television before Siskel died) but I can say that in the last 15 years or so, before I saw virtually any film, I always made a point of finding out what Ebert had said about it.
When he started blogging and writing about other topics (he did a great piece on the importance of reading) I gradually realized that he was about so much more than movies. It was in essays like that that we finally got a sense of what Roger Ebert was all about. He was smart. He was funny. He had a superior bullshit detector, which accounts for his acerbic comments for the likes of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. Because he was never able to extricate himself from the orbit of the Democratic Party, his liberal politics were never in complete alignment with my own, but one never doubted his good sense and decency. He seemed motivated by humane principles and, more often than not, was pissed off about the right things. He was thoughtful, a very good writer (mentored by Mike Royko of all people!) and dignified.
I posted comments a few times on his blog, hoping he might respond. He never did. That disappoints me, of course, but at the same time, I can't be upset about it, because I know I was only one of millions who felt like I knew him.
There have been a few others who have shaped my thinking about film over the decades, both those I've met and otherwise. But Ebert was there first and has been with me the longest, and so in many ways he was arguably the most influential. I was so saddened to hear of his passing. If he had not been sick, I'll bet he would have had another decade or more in him, and he would have continued seeing movies, writing, blogging and tweeting right to the end. Which is exactly what he did. I'm will miss him, and I'll continue reading his best stuff. And until the day I see my last movie, it will be impossible to not see him in the theater with me.
This essay originally appeared on my Reading Everest blog on April 5, 2013.
As a kid, I watched Ebert (and Siskel) before they were famous, back when WTTW's "Sneak Previews" was picked up by PBS. More often than not, they were reviewing films I was too young to see, but I was still enthralled by the discussions. What I came away with from those arguments was a perspective that remains part of who I am today: Cinema is not simply a pleasant diversion -- it is an art form worthy of serious consideration, one we should think and talk about, even if the talking leads to arguing.
The appeal of Ebert, for me, was the comfortable cohabitation of the Geek with the Intellectual. Here is a man whose list of "Great Movies" on his website includes "Star Wars," (the first one) "E.T., The Extra-terrestrial," and "Goldfinger." But you also will find "Cries and Whispers," "La Dolce Vita" and "Shoah." I remember when Ebert thrust his famous thumb up for "Raiders of the Lost Ark," but I also remember that some time later, he and his famous sparring partner devoted a show to exploring how the summer blockbuster juggernaut was dumbing films down, creating a cinema not for the adults who flocked to more serious fare during the 1970s, but for their kids who were treated to the spectacle of Indy cracking a whip or Roy Scheider blowing a shark to bloody smithereens with an oxygen tank.
Perhaps more than any single individual, Ebert's enthusiasm for films inspired me to go beyond the blockbuster (although growing up in what one might call the golden age of Spielberg and George Lucas, I certainly enjoyed those too) in search of ... something different. To seek out the masters who had, I would learn later, inspired that very same Spielberg and Lucas.
I remember there was one summer during high school where I watched something like 50 or 60 films on television, all on my local PBS station. (The only one I really remember was Dick Bogard's "The Servant.") To be a teen during the years that theaters were showing films like "Top Gun," "The Empire Strikes Back," and "Back to the Future" was to delight in the spectacle of films as a Carnival Ride. But having been groomed by Siskel and Ebert, I understood that films like that were part of a cinematic universe that was much vaster.
In college, I took classes in film studies - "Blacks in Film," "Vietnam on Film," and saw amazing stuff that I never would have heard of otherwise. I went to foreign films, where other seeds of my evolving intellect were planted: I saw Lina Wertmuller's "Seven Beauties" and was enthralled by the audacity of it. I saw "La Dolce Vita" and was mostly bored by it. Years later, I would see it again (a horrible, cropped VHS copy) and realize that something was there, even if it didn't completely speak to me. Then I saw it with my wife on our honeymoon in Vancouver, B.C. at a late show where the theater was packed, and it finally opened itself up to me. I got it. I am almost afraid to return to the film, because now I - a semi-retired newspaper journalist - am older than Marcello Mastroianni was when he made it.
I started working my way through Ebert's "Great Movies" list, and I bought his books. I sought out the films that he called attention to in his annual film festival. On and off through the years, I've subscribed to Cineaste, and sought out Film Comment and American Cinematographer at the library. When the Internet happened and everyone was online, I cannot say that I religiously read his stuff each week (and, truthfully, I stopped watching him on television before Siskel died) but I can say that in the last 15 years or so, before I saw virtually any film, I always made a point of finding out what Ebert had said about it.
When he started blogging and writing about other topics (he did a great piece on the importance of reading) I gradually realized that he was about so much more than movies. It was in essays like that that we finally got a sense of what Roger Ebert was all about. He was smart. He was funny. He had a superior bullshit detector, which accounts for his acerbic comments for the likes of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. Because he was never able to extricate himself from the orbit of the Democratic Party, his liberal politics were never in complete alignment with my own, but one never doubted his good sense and decency. He seemed motivated by humane principles and, more often than not, was pissed off about the right things. He was thoughtful, a very good writer (mentored by Mike Royko of all people!) and dignified.
I posted comments a few times on his blog, hoping he might respond. He never did. That disappoints me, of course, but at the same time, I can't be upset about it, because I know I was only one of millions who felt like I knew him.
There have been a few others who have shaped my thinking about film over the decades, both those I've met and otherwise. But Ebert was there first and has been with me the longest, and so in many ways he was arguably the most influential. I was so saddened to hear of his passing. If he had not been sick, I'll bet he would have had another decade or more in him, and he would have continued seeing movies, writing, blogging and tweeting right to the end. Which is exactly what he did. I'm will miss him, and I'll continue reading his best stuff. And until the day I see my last movie, it will be impossible to not see him in the theater with me.
This essay originally appeared on my Reading Everest blog on April 5, 2013.
