photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid
“The moment after I learned I had been named Person of the Year by the Webby Awards, I remembered that my acceptance speech, in Webby tradition, would have to be limited to exactly five words.
This is a mixed blessing. Since after surgery I cannot speak at all, it lessened the degree of my loss.”
“The moment after I learned I had been named Person of the Year by the Webby Awards, I remembered that my acceptance speech, in Webby tradition, would have to be limited to exactly five words.
This is a mixed blessing. Since after surgery I cannot speak at all, it lessened the degree of my loss.”
When faced with finding a 5 word acceptance speech, Roger Ebert turned to Twitter and crowdsourced it. That he never stopped moving forward and never sugar-coated what cancer took from him is what made Ebert such an icon. Well educated, well-spoken, and never at a loss for words (at least at his fingers), Ebert was one of a kind.
When Gene Siskel died in 1999 I remember being shocked and sad. I watched as longtime sparring partner and companion Roger Ebert calmly picked up the threads and quietly auditioned dozens of other reviewers for the other seat across the aisle. Secretly, I wished it could be me.
At the time, Mike and I had already started reviewing films (yes, most of them were miserable straight-to-video B movies, but you had to start somewhere) for the now defunct Apollo Movie Guide website. We even received payment for our first reviews (about 100 for me and more for Mike) when the reviews were syndicated and included on Rotten Tomatoes and other sites. I figured that payment made Mike and I “professional” film reviewers and I felt a special bond with Mr. Ebert.
I think I probably watched every episode of Siskel and Ebert’s various shows (Sneak Previews, At the Movies, and At the Movies with Siskel and Ebert) except for the year I was not in North America. When I was younger, I picked sides (more often siding with Siskel than Ebert) and I quoted them back to my parents when asked if I wanted to see a particular film. I distinctly recall the first time I judged a film unworthy based on the mediocre review it was given: The Black Stallion Returns. In hindsight, that may have sparked my general distrust of sequels.
When Ebert settled on Richard Roeper as his review companion, I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t like his style: he routinely made blanket statements that disregarded entire genres and didn’t seem nearly a match for Siskel, let alone worthy of the seat next to Ebert. Nevertheless, I watched and even, once or twice, sided with Roeper’s assessment of a film.
However, after Ebert left the air, it was just not the same. But then… Ebert found his voice on the internet, blogging, tweeting, and eventually even wading into Facebook. He continued to write reviews while he mentored a dozen or more others around the globe to follow in his footsteps. All of them are great reviewers but none has the same voice or trusted thumb.
I continue to review movies sporadically at our Medianook blog and I weigh in with comments from time to time at Good Film Hunting, but mostly I just love movies and I can’t thank anyone more than Roger Ebert for that.
p.s. If you have some tissues handy, you can read Ebert’s last blog post, published April 2nd, it’s a bit on the metaphysical and philosophical side but that only seems fitting.