In Memoriam: Roger Ebert
I love film. I always have. From the time I was a child and my mother played Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins on loop to calm me down, to my first memory of life: watching Star Wars: A New Hope. I grew up during the Disney Renaissance (Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Hunchback of Notre Dame) and during the rise of 90’s action films (Die Hard, Under Siege, Demolition Man).I have witnessed the end of some of the great careers in cinema: Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman, and Akira Kurosawa. And I have witnessed the birth of such great artists as Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers, and David Fincher.
My love of film started because of two people: my father and Roger Ebert.
I have never met Roger Ebert. I never wrote a comment on his webpage, although I have been tempted to on multiple occasions. I never wrote to ask him a question when he did his Movie Answer Man column. And yet, when I was growing up like so many of my generation, every Sunday, my father and I invited Roger and Gene into our homes. Growing up, my Sunday night ritual was watching Siskel and Ebert with my father. From that show, I learned how to argue. At first, I just wanted to mimic Siskel and Ebert so I argued without really any conviction about what I was saying, just as long as it was the opposite of what my father thought. Then I remember watching Ebert’s denunciation of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. He delivered it with such passion, with such conviction, accusing Gene of ignoring how Lynch humiliated his main characters and played the audience like a piano for no good reason. Ultimately, I ended up agreeing with Siskel’s opinion on Blue Velvet, but Ebert’s argument demonstrated something important to me.
1) Films can be powerful and thus a director must use his power over the audience for a respectable end goal.
2) You should have conviction and belief in your own opinions and defend them because you believe in them.
Ebert taught me not only how to defend my own opinion, but also how to form my own opinion. I read every book of his I could get my hands on. His annual volumes of reviews were always on my Christmas list and consumed before school began the following January. His Great Films books were playgrounds to learn about the great cinema that came before me. My father may have introduced me to Stanley Kubrick, my favorite artist of all time, but Roger brought me to Fellini and his 8 ½, which made me want to go into the film industry. He brought me to Ingmar Bergman and his Persona, which asks the existential question better than any work other than Hamlet.
Ebert showed me how to deal with the loss of a loved one. His tribute to Gene Siskel after his unfortunate passing remains with me today. As he said in his autobiography, Life Itself, “we never talked about it. And that was his right. The way he wanted it.” (Paraphrased).
But it has been in this past decade, as Ebert as suffered so publicly, that he has transformed himself again and again. He demonstrated to me the idea that we can reinvent ourselves and that it is okay to do that. He lost his jaw and his ability to eat to cancer. But what he lost more than anything was his voice. With his television show, Ebert’s voice had been something that he was renowned for. His sense of wit and canny were pure entertainment and now… he was without it. I would have given into despair or given up, but Roger demonstrated true courage by changing his voice to go back to his original love: writing. He poured himself into creating a voice online.
Like Ebert, I consider myself a writer. Someone who believes that words and stories have the power to move. I have learned this from books that I’ve read, from movies I’ve seen, from sharing my own story and seeing people moved. I have learned this from those who offer criticism on those works. I have learned that watching Ebert in his later years share personal stories to discuss philosophy, art, and politics.
While I love Ebert for aiding me in helping find my own love of film, it has been his blog and his autobiography where he has blossomed into so much more than a film critic. Reading about his childhood and dealing with his alcoholism are demonstrations of the type of honesty we all owe each other. It represents the type of life lessons that I hope inspire my own stories. His courage in these end days to allow himself to be photographed, to allow the incredible Esquire article on his condition after the loss of his jaw show an honesty that is missing far too often. He lived in pain, and yet, he was happy.
And now, thinking about his loss, I am left like Marlowe in Conrad’s Hearts of Darkness (I hope Mr. Ebert would appreciate the reference to literature). Marlowe has journeyed into the heart of Africa to meet Kurtz whom he has heard so much about. But he receives news that Kurtz has died. When Marlowe hears this, he says that he realized he never imagined meeting Kurtz, but instead always imagined Kurtz as a voice and now he would never hear that voice. Roger’s voice was his strength throughout his entire life… he had a voice whether in print or in person, and perhaps more importantly, he used that voice to say important things. His article on keeping the 9-11 memorial green was truly inspirational. His denunciations of films that depict violence for voyeuristic sake, thought provoking. His championship of ending the death penalty, challenging. His chapter on God in his autobiography remains with me. But I am left wondering who will fill that voice in our culture. I hope that the group of far-flung correspondents, his wife (Chaz), Jim Emerson, and all those at Rogerebert.com continue to write to fill that void that he has left. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family, especially Chaz the rock who inspired him to find his voice again. And what a voice it was… I will miss hearing or reading him again.
