Film critic Roger Ebert (70) has died

[J.A.W.]

NY Times obit: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/movies/roger-ebert-film-critic-dies.html?emc=na&_r=0

Edited April 4, 2013 by J.A.W.

[Tim McG]

Rest in Peace, Roger.

[danasgoodstuff]

I used to really enjoy his show with Cisco, even though I'm not much of a film guy and often disagreed with 'em both. Fantasized 'bout having a similar show discussing music...

[ejp626]

Guess I'm not terribly, terribly surprised, but am very sorry to hear this. I really liked his reviews and agreed with him maybe 75% of the time. I thought he had really good insights into what made certain films work, in contrast to the critic for the Chicago Reader (Rosenbaum?) who insisted on viewing all films through a political lens (his reviews were boring and predictable, though he did have a soft spot for Tati). I particularly like the Great Movies vol 1, 2, and 3.

I saw Ebert one time at the downtown Borders, where he was doing a book signing. This was after he had started losing weight, but before all the problems with his jaw. I actually lived in his neighborhood for a year or so (or maybe just a few blocks over) but never saw him around.

I am glad that he got around to writing his memoirs and the really personal blog spots, but I wish he could he been with us for several more years.

Anyway, RIP and thanks for everything.

[sgcim]

First Jess Franco, and now the screenwriter for Russ Meyer's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"?

Who's going to be left to make bad movies?

[BillF]

I always look on IMDB to see if Ebert has reviewed a movie. It's always worth knowing what he thinks.

[GA Russell]

Here's his LA Times obit:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-roger-ebert-20130405,0,5349930,full.story

[Scott Dolan]

He always struck me as a good cat that thoroughly enjoyed what he did.

His health was obviously declining the last several years, but I'm sorry to hear of his passing.

R.I.P., Mr. Ebert.

[Stereojack]

I was a fan going back thirty years, from when he hosted "Sneak Previews" with Gene Siskel. These days I often check Rotten Tomatoes for film reviews, and Roger was always among the critics I read. I didn't always agree with him, but I did respect his knowledge and love of the movies.

It was very sad to see his tragic health issues over the past few years.

[BeBop]

I haven't seen a movie or watched television since 1978, including of course Ebert's show. But I read his column a few times in Chicago and read some interview with him late in his life. Really a remarkable guy, seemingly upbeat despite many challenges. An inspiration as a human being, professional success aside.

[JSngry]

[Shawn]

I'll most definitely miss him. I started watching him on Sneak Previews on PBS circa 1981 or so and followed him throughout the years. I always appreciated the fact that he gave a fair shake to movies from all genres and didn't come off as completely elitist like so many of his contemporaries.

R.I.P.

[brownie]

One of the very few contemporary film critics I took time to read his reviews!

[BruceH]

Very, very sad news. He wrote engagingly on a variety of topics. RIP

[Larry Kart]

Check out Siskel Ebert Outtakes on YouTube.

Also this:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/03/siskel_and_ebert_an_oral_history_.html

[Soulstation1]

Sad

RIP

[Chuck Nessa]

I knew him a bit (I am sure Larry knew him better). Early on he was a jolly barfly. I used to run into him at John Barleycorn on Lincoln Ave. He was a bunch of fun in those days. Later he swore off alcohol and was a "calmer" person. He was a wonderful human being. All the best to his wife.

[Larry Kart]

I knew him a bit (I am sure Larry knew him better). Early on he was a jolly barfly. I used to run into him at John Barleycorn on Lincoln Ave. He was a bunch of fun in those days. Later he swore off alcohol and was a "calmer" person. He was a wonderful human being. All the best to his wife.

I knew Roger a fair bit, though not much socially -- I went home after work when I wasn't going out to review a show, not to O'Rourke's and similar watering holes. Siskel I knew much better. I also in later years became very good friends with Tribune writer Monica Eng, whose divorced mother Ingrid was Roger's ... mistress, I suppose you'd say, for many years. Afterwards they remained good friends. She, Monica, and her sister Megan all lived with Roger during that time; he was Monica's virtual stepfather and an exceptionally kind and thoughtful one. Here's the heartfelt piece she wrote about him:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ent-0408-ebert-appreciation-eng-20130408,0,6681153.story

[Larry Kart]

A key factor in the rampant rivalry-hostility between Ebert and Siskel was an aspect of journalism at the time that was to some degree unique to Chicago and is in any case almost forgotten. Roger and Gene were not just film critics but also their respective papers' chief feature writers and interviewers in the movie realm -- and this in a very competitive two-paper town. Combine this with the fact that Gene was among the most ferocious and often unscrupulous masters of gamesmanship on the planet (see for example the N. Kinski anecdote in the Slate story I linked to in a previous post), and one had a constant battle over who was going to get the juicy, "promotable" interview that week. Also, those interviews often were "exclusive" -- i.e. if Ebert got Harrison Ford that week, he would only be talking to the Sun-Times. Further, not that it needs to be said, Gene and Roger's editors were on their asses all the time to get the juicy interview that week, because if they did get it, without fail it would be on the cover of the paper's Sunday Arts section and be trumpeted in advertisements.

Again AFAIK this situation was unique to Chicago in the 1970s and '80s. For example, the NY Times movie critics back then either didn't do that kind of work or confined their non-review writing for the paper to the occasional "think" piece. Other staffers did the interviews.

BTW, this stuation led to one aspect of Ebert’s work back then that was IMO less than appetizing. Because the Sun-Times was a less important paper that the Tribune in terms of circulation and demographics, Ebert was always working at a disadvantage when it came to the getting-the-choice-interview battle. One of his solutions to this at times was to play on his relatively greater prestige as a critic and take a quite rosy view of, say, Francis Ford Coppola’s new film if it happened to be a relative dog (I recall in particular his review of “Rumble Fish”

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19830826/REVIEWS/50826002/1023

but there were others in this vein) -- the strategy being that even though the film was a dog and Coppola himself was at a fairly low point in his career, there probably would come a time when everyone would want to talk to Coppola again, and in Chicago he now would talk exclusively to Ebert, because he would gratefully recall the positive review of "Rumble Fish" that he got when he was down. The problem, of course, being that when those conditions prevailed in Ebert’s mind, he arguably was not telling his readers what he actually thought of the films at hand but setting himself up to pick a journalistic plum down the road. Not what one wants in a critic, I think. And Siskel, whatever his faults -- certainly Roger was the smarter and more sophisticated critic of the two -- never in my experience said anything about a movie that wasn’t exactly what he thought of it.

My evidence for this account of what Ebert was doing here? At this distance in time I can’t cite chapter and verse, but I do recall that just about everyone who was on the inside in Chicago features/entertainment journalism back then felt that that was what Roger was up to in those instances -- taking a dive (or rationalizing to a fare-thee-well) in a review in order in the hope of currying favor with a star director of actor/actress and then getting a choice interview from them down the road. If I’m right about this, how bad was that? Up to you.

[Dan Gould]

I have no idea if you are right or not Larry but is it not possible that Ebert actually liked the film? Its not exactly a valentine to Coppolla as he says up front that lots of people hate the film. Further, isn't it possible that the people 'in the know' are working backwards from the assumption that Ebert couldn't have possibly liked "(blank)" so he must have given it a positive review to cultivate favor with (the director, the writer, the lead actor)?

I mean, short of his editors blabbing that they had a meeting and convinced Ebert to 'take a dive', where's the real evidence?

[Noj]

Chuck's description makes me like Mr. Ebert even more.

RIP

Edited April 8, 2013 by Noj

[Larry Kart]

I have no idea if you are right or not Larry but is it not possible that Ebert actually liked the film? Its not exactly a valentine to Coppolla as he says up front that lots of people hate the film. Further, isn't it possible that the people 'in the know' are working backwards from the assumption that Ebert couldn't have possibly liked "(blank)" so he must have given it a positive review to cultivate favor with (the director, the writer, the lead actor)?

I mean, short of his editors blabbing that they had a meeting and convinced Ebert to 'take a dive', where's the real evidence?

I'm merely reporting what "just about everyone who was on the inside in Chicago features/entertainment journalism back then felt Roger was up to in those instances." Further, I'm placing it in the context of the fiercely competitive journalistic framework that prevailed between those two papers in that era. I was there.

As for that review of "Rumble Fish,"while it's not impossible that Ebert liked the film, what I think happened there, in addition to what I said in my previous post, is that Roger borrowed for the moment a bit of fancy-dan auteur thinking/reasoning, whereby any work of a filmmaker who has achieved auteur status has to be of value (in part and/or in a pinch) because it tells us something about who this auteur is, and applied it to the film at hand to rationalize what he wanted to do for the practical reasons I stated. As for "his editors blabbing that they had a meeting and convinced Ebert to 'take a dive'," no such meeting would have taken place because (a) there would have been no need for it to take place (the goals that I think were moving Roger here were ones that he would have incorporated for both practical and personal reasons -- the rivalry between the two papers along these lines, and between Gene and Roger of course, was fierce and omnipresent; again, I was there), and (b) because such an open request/suggestion/demand aimed at Roger (or almost any other journalist-critic in his shoes) would have been regarded by that person as offensive/outrageous in its vulgarity or what have you, a gross violation of journalistic ethics. Paradoxical perhaps, but that's the way things were, and the way one (or most journalists) thought.

Two personal notes: I almost got fired at the Tribune when I wrote a very negative review of IMO a very bad performance that Frank Sinatra gave at Chicago Fest (a very large, publicly funded event) -- the Trib's then-new and temperamentally explosive editor Jim Squires saying that I should have understood that it was my duty to praise Sinatra (in a review that was going to appear on the back page of the front section of the paper, surrounded by a bunch of concert photographs) instead of saying what I did. Acting behind the scenes, features editor Colleen Dishon saved my ass, but even though (as it happened) Siskel and I were the only two parties who came to my defense in a meeting that was held in Squires' office for the whole features staff, the consensus among the seemingly frightened crew who were present was that Squires' point of view here marked him out as something of a rube, in that editors of big-city papers didn't say such things openly.

BTW, what really ticked me off about this incident is that Royko, then at the Sun-Times, had been at the concert as an invited guest of Mayor Jane Byrne, and the day after my review appeared he wrote a column attacking/mocking what I'd written, saying that obviously I was a kid whose hearing had been ruined by too much exposure to rock music. What Royko wrote tickled me, but what I didn't like is that Squires said to my face in the meeting the next day that he had called up Royko, told him that he agreed with his column and had then offered him my job. That last was a joke of course, though Squires did say that to Royko, but it was also part of campaign that Squires had launched to get cozy with Royko and bring him over to the Trib, one that soon would be successful. I was furious, though -- you don't stab your own people in the back like that, even as a semi-joke in the course of an attempt to woo someone important over to your paper, and you also don't tell me and a bunch of my co-workers that you've done that.

Another story: I was reviewing a Chicago Jazz Festival concert on a night that tenorman Lin Halliday played with a group led by Ira Sullivan. Halliday was a somewhat eccentric, stop-and-start player with a lot of personal hang-ups, but I was familiar with his musical approach and usually admired the results -- often a great deal. And what I heard that night sounded like good or better Halliday to me, which is what I said in my review. The next day I ran into my old Down Beat boss Dan Morgenstern, who had been there the night before, and he said something that made it clear that he thought what I'd written about Halliday was a case of my "taking one for the team." That is, Dan felt -- based in part IIRC on the way Lin looked as he played (he could be quite twitchy or worse, I wasn't that close to the stage during the set) and perhaps also because he wasn't that familiar with the IMO interesting oddities of Lin's style -- that Lin's performance that night was more or less inept. I tried to explain that honestly that wasn't my view, that what I wrote was what I thought, but I could tell that Dan didn't really believe me. Weird feeling, though it didn't affect our friendship.

[jlhoots]

I always related to his reviews (maybe apples & oranges, but just like I related to Andrew Sarris).

R.I.P.

[Larry Kart]

Another much later semi-example** of Ebert in "Rumble Fish" mode, his review of Scorsese's generally reviled "Bringing Out the Dead" (this elbow-jog courtesy of A.O. Scott in his appreciation of Ebert in today's NY Times):

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19991022/REVIEWS/910220303/1023

I'm particularly struck by its bizarrely moralistic final paragraph:

"'Bringing Out the Dead' is an antidote to the immature intoxication with violence in a film like 'Fight Club.' It is not fun to get hit, it is not redeeming to cause pain, it does not make you a man when you fight, because fights are an admission that you are not smart enough to survive by your wits. 'Fight Club' makes a cartoon of the mean streets that Scorsese sees unblinkingly."

** semi-example because the fierce two-paper town, Siskel-Ebert rivalry of the '70s and '80s was at an end by then. But this review does strike me as a likely Scorsese suck-up. Old habits die hard. Too bad that Ebert didn't see that David Fincher (whose "Fight Club" Ebert weirdly mis-reads; that film doesn't "say" any of things that he claims it does) was likely to be a better meal ticket down the road.

Also from that review, Ebert in his by this time rather professorial auteur mode:

""To look at 'Bringing Out the Dead' -- to look, indeed, at almost any Scorsese film -- is to reminded that film can touch us urgently and deeply."

I am glad, though, to be told that "fights are an admission that you are not smart enough to survive by your wits."

[Larry Kart]

FWIW, Dave Kehr on Ebert:

"I, too, regret the passing of Roger Ebert. He wasn’t a close friend, though I spent many years sitting with him in small, dark rooms, but I can say that he was a man of good heart and great skills as a communicator. As our art form of choice passes into ever darker days, we will miss him as one of its great advocates with the general public; there is no one remotely like him left."

Interesting for what it does and doesn't say and quite fair-minded IMO. But then not everyone likes Kehr as much as I do.