A man of great sympathy but never self-pity
Words just seemed to flow out of him, so much so that even when you disagreed with him, you admired how well he argued his case.
Perhaps his best-known line was his oft-repeated assertion about the right length for a film: “No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.”
If Roger had had his way, he’d also still be doing television, something along the lines of the review show he did for decades with his friend and sparring partner, Gene Siskel, the Chicago Tribune critic who died in 1999. He actually launched a new televised film review show two years ago, with the help of his devoted wife of 20 years, Chaz Ebert. The new show, which lasted only about a year owing to funding issues (he declared it “on hiatus” hoping to bring it back), included a segment where Ebert would “talk” using a computerized voice.
When I asked via email how he would manage this, he was his usual assertive self: “Hey, I use a computer to talk. Live with it. I do.”
Roger was a man of great sympathy and empathy, who could bring intelligence and passion to reviews of everything from teen comedies to adult dramas.
“Your intellect may be confused,” he once wrote in a review, “but your emotions will never lie to you.”
He never fell prey to self-pity. When the extent of his facial disfigurement became known several years ago, after several attempts to surgically restore his jawbone failed, he refused to hide his very public face from view. He simply carried on, the way he expected his many worried friends and admirers to do.
“I was told photos of me in this condition would attract the gossip papers,” he wrote. “So what? . . . I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks. I still have my brain and my typing fingers. We spend too much time hiding illness.”
Roger preferred to joke about his condition, using a line from Raging Bull, a movie by his friend Martin Scorsese: “I ain’t a pretty boy no more.”
But for all of his bravado, Ebert’s absolute love of the movies and his dedicated film scholarship were never in doubt. In 1975, he became the first Pulitzer Prize winner for movie criticism.
Other critics might have groused (and some did) that the “thumbs up, thumbs down” feature of Siskel & Ebert’s TV show ushered in a dumbing down of film criticism, but the reverse was true: the two brought intelligent movie discourse to the masses, and the “thumbs” thing was just a bit of showbiz flourish.
If anyone had reason to gripe about the thumbs, it was Ebert himself. In recent years, he grew tired of people always saluting him with a thumb’s up, since he couldn’t hold a conversation with them. But he always smiled back.
When he could still talk, Roger loved to teach film students in his Chicago domain and elsewhere. He was also fond of analyzing classic films like Citizen Kane on a shot-byshot basis, a popular feature he brought to his frequent visits to the Floating Film Festival, a biennial movie cruise started by his late friend, Dusty Cohl, co-founder of the Toronto International Film Festival. Roger often sounded the alarm about changes to movies and moviegoing, things other critics and movie buffs were also concerned about. He didn’t like 3D, and often said so. He also disliked the U.S. film rating system, which often gives a family-friendly rating to movies filled with violence. He championed new acting talent and directors. Infuriated by the Academy’s failure to give Spike Lee an Oscar nomination for Lee’s racially direct 1989 film Do the Right Thing, Ebert and Siskel countered by devoting an episode of their TV show to the film. Roger wasn’t afraid of change. He was an early supporter and user of the Internet and of young writers on websites and blogs. And while Ebert could be imposing just by virtue of who he was, he was never threatening. He was always just Roger to other critics, young and old. While waiting in queues for films at TIFF, Cannes and Sundance, he’d discuss film with those around him, but he was careful about naming current festival favourites, lest he end up being quoted in a movie advert. He didn’t seek to pull rank, even though he was falsely accused of having a “hissy fit” at the 2002 TIFF when he and several other critics couldn’t gain access to an overcrowded screening of Far From Heaven. Ebert would later joke that while he may grumble, he would never stoop to hissing. When Ebert signed off this week from what would be his final blog entry, he thanked his loyal readers and made his usual optimistic promise: “I’ll see you at the movies.” He meant it, too, even as his illness made it harder for him to go outside his home. When I asked him a few years ago whether he thought this 20th-century creation would last long into the digitally fractured 21st, he responded with typical directness. “Is that a typo?” he said. “Did you mean 22nd? The art form will endure, in more technical forms than ever.” That was Roger, forever in darkened rooms but always seeing with a clarity that eluded many of us. He’ll be missed, on both sides of the screen.