The Greatest Column By Roger Ebert Had Nothing to do With Movies

It was
about the late movie critic's memory of eating, written after he
could no longer eat or even talk.

It's
filled with elegies for crap food that are by turns haunting
and hilarious:

Another surprising area for sharp memory is the taste and
texture of cheap candy. Not imported chocolates, but Red Hots, Good
and Plenty, Milk Duds, Paydays, Chuckles. I dreamed I got a box of
Chuckles with five licorice squares, and in my dream I exalted:
"Finally!" With Necco wafers, there again, the licorice were the
best. The peculiar off-purple wafers were space-wasters. As a
general rule in candy, if anything is black, red or green, in that
order, I like it.

This got carried so far one day I found myself googling White
Hen-style candy with the mad idea of writing an entire blog entry
on the subject. During visits to a Cracker Barrel I would buy paper
bags filled with licorice, root beer, horehound and cinnamon drops.
Searching for Black Jack gum, I found whole web sites devoted
licorice in its many forms. I even discovered and downloaded a
photo of a basket that seemed assembled from my memory, and it is
below.

And then there's slow-burning,
power-chord finish:

I came across this sentence in its web review, and it perfectly
describes the kind of place I like: " A Greek-style chow joint
replete with '70s wood paneling, periwinkle padded booths, a chatty
wait staff and the warble of regulars at the bar. Basically, if
you've ever had it at any place that starts with Grandma's, Uncle's
or any sort of Greek place name, you can find it here." Yes. If a
restaurant doesn't serve tuna melts, right away you have to make
allowances.

So that's what's sad about not eating. The loss of dining, not
the loss of food. It may be personal, but for, unless I'm alone, it
doesn't involve dinner if it doesn't involve talking. The food and
drink I can do without easily. The jokes, gossip, laughs, arguments
and shared memories I miss. Sentences beginning with the words,
"Remember that time?" I ran in crowds where anyone was likely to
break out in a poetry recitation at any time. Me too. But not me
anymore. So yes, it's sad. Maybe that's why I enjoy this blog. You
don't realize it, but we're at dinner right now.

Read
the whole thing.

Ebert also wrote
memorably - and movingly - about depression, boozing, and his
AA connections.

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In Memoriam: Roger Ebert

The
late Roger Ebert's writing would have left a mark if he had never
gone on television in his life, but it was his TV show with Gene
Siskel that made him a celebrity. You wouldn't have expected that
from their
first show together: two writers droning on, not always sure
where exactly they should be looking, with no excitement beyond the
possibility that Siskel's 'stache will start eating his face. But
it wasn't long before they perfected the bickering-brothers dynamic
that made their show more entertaining than at least 60% of the
movies they reviewed. Instead of suppressing their offscreen
rivalry, which is on display in various outtakes
floating around the Web, they channeled it into arguments about
movies; and made those arguments meaningful by actually giving a
damn about the pictures they were rating. They also had a healthy
sense of self-aware humor about their personas, as their inevitably
entertaining guest spots on
Letterman and other shows proved. The act could be
imitated but it could never be equaled, as countless other programs
-- including, eventually, Ebert & Roeper -- would
learn.

But if the TV show ensured that Roger Ebert was
famous while he was alive, it's his writing for newspapers and the
Web that should ensure he'll be remembered long after he's dead.
For one thing, he was an exceptional stylist. I might disagree
strenuously with Ebert's opinion about a movie; I might bristle at
a factual flub or two about the plot; but I was almost always awed
at his prose, which was thoughtful, graceful, funny, and
accessible. He didn't just write about movies: He had been a
sportswriter early on, and an interview he did for his college
paper with the left-libertarian author Paul Goodman was good enough
to get reprinted in
one of Goodman's books. (He invoked Goodman in at least one of
his reviews too -- a thumbs-up
take on Paul Schrader's underappreciated Blue Collar
-- and there was a time when I had hopes that underneath it all
Ebert was some sort of anarchist. Alas, when he unleashed his
political-pundit side late in life he turned out to be a
standard-issue liberal.) In the last few years he wrote many
wonderful memoirs for his website, and then a much-admired
autobiography. But of course it was his movie writing that
defined him, and it was here that he made his other great
contribution to American culture.

Ebert, you see, didn't care about those old
highbrow/middlebrow/lowbrow distinctions that occupied so many
debates about criticism in the middle of the 20th century. If you
were interested in learning about cinema as a high art, he could be
your gateway to the greats, writing capably about Bergman and
Welles and Kurosawa and other filmmaking giants. (I'm pretty sure I
first heard of Fassbinder in a Roger Ebert essay. Or, at least,
that essay was the first time I wanted to run out and rent a
Fassbinder movie right away.) On the other hand, if you wanted
to know if the latest spy flick was exciting or if the new Mel
Brooks movie was likely to make you laugh, Ebert was perfectly
capable of waxing enthusiastic about those kinds of films too. It's
not that he liked everything, you understand. (Check out his

evisceration of Priest.) It's that he was
capable of liking everything, or at least everything that
was done well. Even when he joined in the chorus denouncing the
slasher genre in the '80s, -- he had to confess that yes, he
was the guy who gave three and a half stars to
Last House on the Left.

And that
leads us to what may be my all-time favorite Roger Ebert review: a

joyful little essay about the pleasures to be found in even the
most indefensibly trashy pictures. The subject is a
blink-and-you'll-miss-it release called Rapa Nui. I've
never seen it, and I don't think I even would have heard of it if I
hadn't read Ebert's review. He gives it just two stars, and much of
the piece consists of a litany of everything ridiculous about the
picture. But then he says this at the end:

Concern for my reputation prevents me from recommending
this movie. I wish I had more nerve. I wish I could simply write,
"Look, of course it's one of the worst movies ever made. But it has
hilarious dialogue, a weirdo action climax, a bizarre explanation
for the faces of Easter Island, and dozens if not hundreds of
wonderful bare breasts." I am however a responsible film critic and
must conclude that "Rapa Nui" is a bad film. If you want to see it
anyway, of course, that's strictly your concern. I think I may
check it out again myself.

My head can't bring itself to believe in an afterlife. But my
heart hopes that Ebert gets another chance to see it.

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Roger Ebert Taught People How to Argue About Movies

In the
pantheon of movie critics, there are few who can claim as much
influence as Roger Ebert. You could reasonably argue that Pauline
Kael was more important, that her influence on the form was deeper
and more lasting, that she, unlike Ebert changed the way that
movies were made.

Yet there’s a crucial distinction between the two: Despite
Kael's love of glorious trash, she was, at heart, an elite
moviegoer writing for other elite moviegoers. Ebert, on the other
hand, was far more concerned with mass appeal, and his
straightforward prose was accessible and to the point in ways that
Kael never really attempted.

That's no small thing for a pop culture critic, whose ultimate
job is to educate the wider public about the form. And his
insistence on accessibility not only helped Ebert reach a bigger,
broader audience than Kael, it made him a more popular cinematic
guide for the general public. Kael may have changed movie making,
but Ebert changed movie watching.

And a big part of the way he did that was by making debate about
film accessible. Siskel & Ebert, the TV show he
co-hosted with rival Chicago movie critic Gene Siskel, was billed
as a movie review show, and that’s true enough. But as much as it
was a show about reviewing films, it was even more a show about
arguing about movies.

The cantankerous duo showed viewers what it meant to enjoy
movies in the company of another, offering a feisty, competitive
model of film-fan friendship. Their unscripted on-screen dialogues,
meanwhile, helped a generation of moviegoers understand that it was
not enough to merely have an opinion about a film; you also had to
defend it. Indeed, a round of opinionated post-film jousting could
be an essential part of the moviegoing experience.

That sensibility helped put movie watching in a social context.
The show recognized that movie viewing and criticism was not a
strictly solitary affair, but a community project; it operated on
the assumption that a critic’s views are shaped as much by the
people he argues with as the movies he watches.  That, in
turn, allowed the program to transform the lonely work of critical
assessment and argument into a popular and engaging spectator
sport, and inspired legions of film nuts and amateur film critics
to engage in their own friendly duels with each other.

That probably explains a lot about why Ebert took so well to new
media late in life: It wasn’t just that he had always written in
the conversational style that became the norm on the web. It was
also that he relished the sport of debate, the ruckus of
freewheeling conversation about the things he loved and hated in
the world, with movies at the top of the list.

At times Ebert was a hater; more often he was prone to
celebration (a little too much, in my opinion). But a subtext of
virtually all of his life and work was that if you loved movies,
you would argue about them — and also for them.

The same, I think, should go for those of us who also love movie
criticism. I disagreed with many of Ebert’s critical judgments, and
I wasn’t particularly drawn to his plainspoken style of reviewing,
which often seemed hasty and, at least when reviewing new releases,
could be overly focused on character and story basics at the
expense of cinematic craftsmanship.

Yet I’ve always appreciated Ebert for the simple fact that he
did more than anyone else to make film criticism—and film
arguments—available and accessible to the world at large. In the
end, I’m glad he was there to argue with, to offer and defend
opinions, and, most of all, to show so many readers and viewers
that the arguments were not only worth having; at their best those
arguments could be as much or more fun than the movies
themselves.

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The Time Roger Ebert Dismissed Video Games and What Happened Next

Acknowledgment of Roger Ebert’s passing today
isn’t reserved to film buffs. His death is being noted by the
video game
press, thanks to some comments by the movie critic that
inspired defensiveness among gamers but also introspection within
the industry.

Ebert famously (among gamers anyway) declared “Video games can
never be art,” subsequently explaining and defending his position
in a
blog post at the Chicago Sun-Times in 2010. He
grappled with the always elusive definition of art and what has
become these days an elusive definition of what constitutes a
“game.” He concluded:

Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be
defined as art? Bobby Fischer, Michael Jordan and Dick Butkus never
said they thought their games were an art form. Nor did Shi Hua
Chen, winner of the $500,000 World Series of Mah Jong in 2009. Why
aren't gamers content to play their games and simply enjoy
themselves? They have my blessing, not that they care.

Do they require validation? In defending their gaming against
parents, spouses, children, partners, co-workers or other critics,
do they want to be able to look up from the screen and explain,
"I'm studying a great form of art?" Then let them say it, if it
makes them happy.

His attitude didn’t resolve the debate. That one blog post
garnered nearly 5,000 comments. A couple months later he
addressed the matter again, admitting that it was unfair of him
to judge a medium in part because he personally was not interested
in engaging in it. He preferred books and movies. He didn’t want to
play video games.

And yet, despite his lack of interest in the medium, the medium
was still very interested in his thoughts. Ebert’s comments

inspired a session at the annual Game Developers Conference in
2011. “Are video games art?” and “Can video games be art?”
are topics endlessly debated among gaming enthusiasts and
creators.

Ebert ultimately, accidentally, symbolized the engagement gap
between Baby Boomers and younger generations in the role of video
games in culture. It’s a fascinating rift because, really, Baby
Boomers invented video games. But very few early video
games ever aspired to anything as fancy as being “art.” Until the
development of the adventure game genre they hardly even had what
could be called a story.

Ebert could be excused for his ignorance of what has come since
then in much the same way as a young millennial could be oblivious
to the role of Motown on the development of the popular music we
still listen to today. The expansion of video games from a hobby to
a subculture to simply part of our culture — like every other
form of entertainment — happened through Generation X and is now
being passed along to subsequent generations. Baby Boomers just
weren’t culturally connected to it. Ebert couldn’t include video
games as art because video games didn’t include him and thus it
inspires no connection. It’s nobody’s fault. Definitions of art are
not timeless and rigid. Ebert himself acknowledged it and struggled
to come up with a definition that would explain why video games
should be omitted, but not other artistic endeavors, like
music.

What’s happening now is that the children who grew up on video
games are now the ones running the industry and have a cultural
interest in creating a lasting legacy. Ebert’s observations were a
challenge to them, whether he realized it or not. Generation X is
defined in part by video games. Games have as much meaning to many
of them as rock music and Motown did for Baby Boomers. The
defensiveness and insistence of gamers and the gaming industry
about elevating this culture into an art form may well be
subconsciously based on the knowledge that games are what Gen. X
will be primarily remembered for years down the line.

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Roger Ebert, R.I.P.

It's a sad day for fans of film
criticism: Roger Ebert, one of the most influential and famous
movie critics of the last four decades, has died of cancer. He was
70 years old.

Ebert reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46
years, and was the first film reviewer to win a Pulitzer Prize for
criticism. Here's how the Sun-Times obituary start:

For a film with a daring director, a talented cast, a
captivating plot or, ideally, all three, there could be no better
advocate than Roger Ebert, who passionately celebrated and promoted
excellence in film while deflating the awful, the derivative, or
the merely mediocre with an observant eye, a sharp wit and a depth
of knowledge that delighted his millions of readers and
viewers.

“No good film is too long,” he once wrote, a sentiment he felt
strongly enough about to have engraved on pens. “No bad movie is
short enough.”

You can read the rest of the obit
here. 

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