Remembering the Roger I knew

Werner Herzog and Roger Ebert at Ebertfest, 2007. Photo by Jim Emerson

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.

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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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