DAVID HUDSON AT FANDOR
“Thank you,” began Roger Ebert in an entry posted just two days ago, announcing his “Leave of Presence,” a “wise and lovely phrase,” as Richard Brody has noted, and a phrase that resonates with a newfound beauty as we learn today that he has passed on, aged 70. “Forty-six years ago on April 3, 1967,” Ebert wrote, “I became the film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Some of you have read my reviews and columns and even written to me since that time. Others were introduced to my film criticism through the television show, my books, the website, the film festival, or the Ebert Club and newsletter. However you came to know me, I’m glad you did and thank you for being the best readers any film critic could ask for.”
In 2011, Salon posted an essay from Ebert’s memoir, Life Itself, which began: “I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.”
“It was reviewing movies that made Roger Ebert as famous and wealthy as many of the stars who felt the sting or caress of his pen or were the recipients of his televised thumbs-up or thumbs-down judgments,” writes Rick Kogan in the Chicago Tribune. “But in his words and in his life he displayed the soul of a poet whose passions and interests extended far beyond the darkened theaters where he spent so much of his professional life.”
When he started reviewing movies for the Sun-Times, “Ebert was 24,” notes Cheryl Corley at NPR, “one of a crop of young critics around the country hired to cover the edgy films being made during the late ’60s—movies like The Graduate, Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde. While writing reviews, Ebert also got some first-hand experience in the movie business, writing screenplays for B-movie king Russ Meyer. Ebert wrote the script for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and, under a pseudonym, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic ever to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Although his movie reviews were syndicated, it was his television work that took the heavyset, bespectacled Ebert to a national audience. In 1978, a three-year-old local film-review show he hosted with his chief Chicago rival, the Tribune‘s Gene Siskel, was picked up for syndication by PBS.”
And that’s when he “became a national institution,” as the Stephen Hunter put it in the Washington Post in 2005. “Then, he was my first film critic. I don’t mean technically. There were film critics before then, some of them awfully good: James Agee, Otis Ferguson, Dwight MacDonald, Arthur Knight. But they weren’t mine. They weren’t talking to me…. Ebert was different. He saw that the movies were changing and that they were full of ideas, and he wrote brilliantly but never condescendingly. He wasn’t a mandarin, a New York esthete slumming in the double features and issuing on-high epiphanies and bons mots with a snigger of aristocratic disdain, and he wasn’t the unofficial hack publicist. No, he was a really smart guy who got that movies were hard-wired into the baby-boom generation cerebral cortex, that they were in some sense that generation’s secret language, and that they bustled and seethed with anger, impatience, self-confidence and sometime insolence. He was there not merely to issue gratuitous opinion but to argue.”
Douglas Martin in the New York Times: “Mr. Ebert’s struggle with cancer, starting in 2002, gave him an altogether different public image—as someone who refused to surrender to illness. Though he had operations for cancer of the thyroid, salivary glands and chin, lost his ability to eat, drink and speak (he was fed through a tube and a prosthesis partly obscured the loss of much of his chin) and became a gaunter version of his once-portly self, he continued to write reviews and commentary and published a cookbook he had started, on meals that could be made with a rice cooker. ‘When I am writing, my problems become invisible, and I am the same person I always was,’ he told Esquire magazine in 2010. ‘All is well. I am as I should be.’”....
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Werner Herzog and Roger Ebert at Ebertfest, 2007. Photo by Jim Emerson
JIM EMERSON SCANNERS
Remembering the Roger I knew
Roger Ebert's last review is on the screen in front of me and I can't quite bring myself to deal with it. I'd like to get it posted right away because I know that's what Roger would want under the circumstances. ("We'll be getting a lot of traffic!") Actually, he filed two or three other reviews before his condition took a sudden turn for the worse. But this final one -- sent March 16 and labeled "FOR USE as needed," is of Terence Malick's "To the Wonder," which (spoiler warning) he liked quite a lot. Publicists might object that it hasn't opened in Chicago yet, but Roger wasn't just a Chicago movie critic (though he certainly was that). I can imagine his email now: "Who's going to complain? It's three and a half stars!"
In his 46 years as film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger wrote more than his share of obits and posthumous appreciations on deadline -- hardly ever in advance, like the ones most newspapers have on file, ready to publish at a moment's notice, but off the top of his head on the day the news broke. For years, I did that for other papers and web sites, too. But this isn't just another obit; it's one of the hardest things I've ever had to write. Still, I know he'd want me to do it -- and to get it online ASAP so he could, as he said, "socialize" it -- tweet it and Facebook it.
I honestly expected Roger to outlive me. As Pablo Villaca, one of Roger's "Far-Flung Correspondents" (or FFCs as they are affectionately known), wrote this afternoon: "We are orphans now." And that's the way it feels. (Oddly, my own father died six years ago on this very day -- which Roger would acknowledge is a kind of apt coincidence, though not anything of "woo-woo" supernatural significance.) But I want to avoid anything maudlin or sentimental because he hated, hated HATED that sort of thing.
The bond between a writer and an editor can be a surprisingly intimate one, and for almost 10 years Roger and I ran RogerEbert.com as basically a two-man operation. His Chicago Sun-Times editor for 20-plus years, Laura Emerick, edited all of Roger's writing that appeared in the paper, and we always tried to use her expertly edited versions online, but sometimes he'd write other stuff exclusively for the site, or that would appear on the web first, and I would edit those myself. At first our site also had the support of the Sun-Times, including Catherine Lanucha, John Cary, Jack Barry and the company's webstaff, but budget cuts and layoffs at the paper eventually left us with no day-to-day resources but ourselves: the only two employees of RogerEbert.com, as we liked to joke. But it was true. (BTW, nobody edited Roger's blog; it was direct from him to you, which is what a blog should be.)
Mostly, I maintained the site, reading, formatting and publishing reviews and articles new and old -- forever correcting typos, import errors and formatting glitches in the thousands of reviews in the database that went back to when Roger started reviewing for the Sun-Times in 1967.
Above all, I read and responded to emails from Roger -- thousands and thousands of emails (all archived, because I would often need to reach back years to remind him of how and why we'd made certain decisions, or to clarify matters). They ran the gamut of subjects and varieties -- questions, ideas, notifications, requests, bug reports, jokes, philosophical musings. It wasn't unusual to get 10 or 20 in a 14-hour stretch. And they were sent, and replied to, at all hours of the day and night, 365 days a year -- Roger using his MacBook in Chicago (or Cannes or Toronto or Telluride or Park City or Mexico or Los Angeles or Pritikin or wherever he happened to be) and me working mostly from home in Seattle.
As his output amply demonstrated, Roger wasn't just a recovering alcoholic (one of his favorite topics, along with Darwinian evolution), but a workaholic. He would invariably insist on writing something that just had to be posted on July 4 or Christmas Day (even though it had nothing to do with American independence or Christmas and could just as well have waited). He was oblivious to the concept of weekends, holidays or any limitations on working hours. He really liked to write. But, if you read him, you know that. (One Oscar night I got mad at him because Laura and I were waiting for the final version of his Oscar story and I discovered he was tweeting about other things while we were on a tight deadline. That's when I found out he was using a Twitter-scheduling app, so he could load up his tweets in advance and it would post them automatically. Yes, he practically worked round the clock, anyway -- but even when he wasn't working, he got software to do the tweeting for him.)
Now, I hate those "In Memoriam" pieces in which the writers overstate their closeness to the deceased. I started working with Roger in 1994, when I was the editor of Microsoft Cinemania, then became his web editor when we founded RogerEbert.com in 2003, and have remained so ever since -- the longest time I've ever held a single job, although the job kept changing and I stayed put.
I'm not so presumptuous as to say I knew All About Roger -- but I knew certain aspects of the guy probably as well as anybody, particularly when it came to his thoughts and feelings about various things that were dear to him, like the newspaper business, movie criticism and various ethical and philosophical issues. You don't read and correspond with somebody (particularly a writer) every day for 10 years without learning something about their tastes and sensibilities, their use of language, the principles they believe in, and how they prefer to conduct themselves in the world. But he had many, many different sides to him -- some of which he shared, some he didn't. I often learned personal details, particularly about his health, when he'd write something on his blog months or years after the fact.
I'm most grateful for Roger's friendship, trust, and generosity. As much as he lived his life in public, he was also intensely private. But he loved to gather people around him. In 1997 he extended the invitation for me to join the Floating Film Festival as one of its critic/programmers. It was helmed by Dusty and Joan Cohl, who quickly became two of my favorite people. He introduced me to the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, CO, where he conducted the week-long Cinema Interruptus (now the Ebert Cinema Interruptus) program for more than 30 years and asked me to join him in the process. A few years later, after he lost his ability to talk, I was able to step in and continue the tradition he had started.
And, of course, there was Ebertfest, where I instantly bonded with film scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, now good pals, and befriended Roger's Far-Flung Correspondents (the formation of which was an urgent inspiration he had one Thanksgiving weekend when I was in Oregon trying to have dinner with friends) and The Demanders.
For Roger, the ideal life was a moveable party, with him as the host, seated at a big table with a circle of friends and colorful characters. That's basically what Ebertfest was, but I sat at that table many other times in many other places, from the Red Lion, a lodge in the hills above Boulder, to ships cruising the Caribbean or the Panama Canal during the FFF. As much as he would sometimes complain about being a "celebrity," or being noticed because of "that damn TV show," nobody thrived in the spotlight more than Roger (with the possible exception of Quentin Tarantino).
I'm tempted to say that if Roger had never written a word, he'd be known for bringing people together. But the writing was what made Roger Roger. He wasn't just generous with those close to him. He told everyone a lot about himself -- sometimes, I think, more than he knew -- in the words he published: his reviews, his op-ed pieces, his interviews, his blog, his memoir -- even his tweets.
At this moment, I know that thousands of others all over the world are collecting their thoughts and memories of Roger. I often felt awkward and out of place, like I was just in the way, when I tagged along with him in public and he was surrounded by fans, well-wishers and gawkers -- and I feel that way now. I'm overwhelmed -- with affection, gratitude, regret, sadness. So I'm getting back to work.
In one of Roger's last emails, responding to my concerns that he was firing off messages that were garbled or didn't make sense, he said he sometimes felt that way himself, but wanted to assure me that he was still in possesion of all his marbles.
"JIm, old friend, I'm in bad shape. I type on my lap in a hospital bed. I'm on pain meds. Did the review of 'To the Wonder" make sense e to you? Such a strange movie.
"I need your help."
You've got it, R.
- - - - -
P.S. Last night, when I was publishing the new reviews for the week as usual (I haven't had a Wednesday off in years!), I wrote a headline for my review of "Room 237": "A whole world lies waiting behind door No. 237." I was going to call it to R's attention because he'd recognize the reference. It's from a song written by Jimmy Buffett and Steve Goodman, and Roger was a big fan of the latter. I think it would have made him smile.
I honestly expected Roger to outlive me. As Pablo Villaca, one of Roger's "Far-Flung Correspondents" (or FFCs as they are affectionately known), wrote this afternoon: "We are orphans now." And that's the way it feels. (Oddly, my own father died six years ago on this very day -- which Roger would acknowledge is a kind of apt coincidence, though not anything of "woo-woo" supernatural significance.) But I want to avoid anything maudlin or sentimental because he hated, hated HATED that sort of thing.
The bond between a writer and an editor can be a surprisingly intimate one, and for almost 10 years Roger and I ran RogerEbert.com as basically a two-man operation. His Chicago Sun-Times editor for 20-plus years, Laura Emerick, edited all of Roger's writing that appeared in the paper, and we always tried to use her expertly edited versions online, but sometimes he'd write other stuff exclusively for the site, or that would appear on the web first, and I would edit those myself. At first our site also had the support of the Sun-Times, including Catherine Lanucha, John Cary, Jack Barry and the company's webstaff, but budget cuts and layoffs at the paper eventually left us with no day-to-day resources but ourselves: the only two employees of RogerEbert.com, as we liked to joke. But it was true. (BTW, nobody edited Roger's blog; it was direct from him to you, which is what a blog should be.)
Mostly, I maintained the site, reading, formatting and publishing reviews and articles new and old -- forever correcting typos, import errors and formatting glitches in the thousands of reviews in the database that went back to when Roger started reviewing for the Sun-Times in 1967.
Above all, I read and responded to emails from Roger -- thousands and thousands of emails (all archived, because I would often need to reach back years to remind him of how and why we'd made certain decisions, or to clarify matters). They ran the gamut of subjects and varieties -- questions, ideas, notifications, requests, bug reports, jokes, philosophical musings. It wasn't unusual to get 10 or 20 in a 14-hour stretch. And they were sent, and replied to, at all hours of the day and night, 365 days a year -- Roger using his MacBook in Chicago (or Cannes or Toronto or Telluride or Park City or Mexico or Los Angeles or Pritikin or wherever he happened to be) and me working mostly from home in Seattle.
As his output amply demonstrated, Roger wasn't just a recovering alcoholic (one of his favorite topics, along with Darwinian evolution), but a workaholic. He would invariably insist on writing something that just had to be posted on July 4 or Christmas Day (even though it had nothing to do with American independence or Christmas and could just as well have waited). He was oblivious to the concept of weekends, holidays or any limitations on working hours. He really liked to write. But, if you read him, you know that. (One Oscar night I got mad at him because Laura and I were waiting for the final version of his Oscar story and I discovered he was tweeting about other things while we were on a tight deadline. That's when I found out he was using a Twitter-scheduling app, so he could load up his tweets in advance and it would post them automatically. Yes, he practically worked round the clock, anyway -- but even when he wasn't working, he got software to do the tweeting for him.)
Now, I hate those "In Memoriam" pieces in which the writers overstate their closeness to the deceased. I started working with Roger in 1994, when I was the editor of Microsoft Cinemania, then became his web editor when we founded RogerEbert.com in 2003, and have remained so ever since -- the longest time I've ever held a single job, although the job kept changing and I stayed put.
I'm not so presumptuous as to say I knew All About Roger -- but I knew certain aspects of the guy probably as well as anybody, particularly when it came to his thoughts and feelings about various things that were dear to him, like the newspaper business, movie criticism and various ethical and philosophical issues. You don't read and correspond with somebody (particularly a writer) every day for 10 years without learning something about their tastes and sensibilities, their use of language, the principles they believe in, and how they prefer to conduct themselves in the world. But he had many, many different sides to him -- some of which he shared, some he didn't. I often learned personal details, particularly about his health, when he'd write something on his blog months or years after the fact.
I'm most grateful for Roger's friendship, trust, and generosity. As much as he lived his life in public, he was also intensely private. But he loved to gather people around him. In 1997 he extended the invitation for me to join the Floating Film Festival as one of its critic/programmers. It was helmed by Dusty and Joan Cohl, who quickly became two of my favorite people. He introduced me to the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, CO, where he conducted the week-long Cinema Interruptus (now the Ebert Cinema Interruptus) program for more than 30 years and asked me to join him in the process. A few years later, after he lost his ability to talk, I was able to step in and continue the tradition he had started.
And, of course, there was Ebertfest, where I instantly bonded with film scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, now good pals, and befriended Roger's Far-Flung Correspondents (the formation of which was an urgent inspiration he had one Thanksgiving weekend when I was in Oregon trying to have dinner with friends) and The Demanders.
For Roger, the ideal life was a moveable party, with him as the host, seated at a big table with a circle of friends and colorful characters. That's basically what Ebertfest was, but I sat at that table many other times in many other places, from the Red Lion, a lodge in the hills above Boulder, to ships cruising the Caribbean or the Panama Canal during the FFF. As much as he would sometimes complain about being a "celebrity," or being noticed because of "that damn TV show," nobody thrived in the spotlight more than Roger (with the possible exception of Quentin Tarantino).
I'm tempted to say that if Roger had never written a word, he'd be known for bringing people together. But the writing was what made Roger Roger. He wasn't just generous with those close to him. He told everyone a lot about himself -- sometimes, I think, more than he knew -- in the words he published: his reviews, his op-ed pieces, his interviews, his blog, his memoir -- even his tweets.
At this moment, I know that thousands of others all over the world are collecting their thoughts and memories of Roger. I often felt awkward and out of place, like I was just in the way, when I tagged along with him in public and he was surrounded by fans, well-wishers and gawkers -- and I feel that way now. I'm overwhelmed -- with affection, gratitude, regret, sadness. So I'm getting back to work.
In one of Roger's last emails, responding to my concerns that he was firing off messages that were garbled or didn't make sense, he said he sometimes felt that way himself, but wanted to assure me that he was still in possesion of all his marbles.
"JIm, old friend, I'm in bad shape. I type on my lap in a hospital bed. I'm on pain meds. Did the review of 'To the Wonder" make sense e to you? Such a strange movie.
"I need your help."
You've got it, R.
- - - - -
P.S. Last night, when I was publishing the new reviews for the week as usual (I haven't had a Wednesday off in years!), I wrote a headline for my review of "Room 237": "A whole world lies waiting behind door No. 237." I was going to call it to R's attention because he'd recognize the reference. It's from a song written by Jimmy Buffett and Steve Goodman, and Roger was a big fan of the latter. I think it would have made him smile.