Roger Ebert Remembered

Roger Ebert (1942 - 2013)

"Thank You." Roger Ebert opened his last blog entry this way, a gesture of gratitude and reflection that hinted ominously at tragedy. Ebert went on to confess that he would be dialing back the near superhuman output of reviews, blogs, and other writings he had maintained for years. He is not as he was, he told us, but he would continue on at a pace more befitting a man of 70 with recurrent cancer. Two days ago he wrote this. And now, today, while at work, a friend of mine texted me the news. Roger Ebert was dead.



I don't believe I've ever written an obituary on this blog, nor anything that might be mistaken for one, but in this instance I feel it pertinent. It would not be an overstatement to claim that there'd be no blog herein to read such an obituary were it not for Roger. I owe one of my life's great passions to him. His love of film was infectious, and I was infected. I am one of many. He had a way if inspiring people to love film, a way that I believe stemmed from his willingness to relate to the average filmgoer such that no other critic ever has, or maybe even could.

I'm not sure what started it. I couldn't point to a single movie. I didn't grow up a movie lover, and I didn't become one overnight, but somewhere along the line, sometime around my transition from high school to college, I suppose, I fell in love with the cinema. Perhaps Roger did not trigger that passion, but he was always synonymous with it. He nurtured and developed it, graduating that passion (and me) from escapism into philosophy and then into a kind of existential reverie. His was often the only review I read. For the longest time I did not watch a movie without immediately consulting Roger's review. If we agreed, I was validated, emboldened, my position solidified and demonstrated in a way that I would forward in my discussions of the films with my friends. If we did not agree, there had to have been something I overlooked.

The movies were a way of looking at the world, and it was important to understand that when Roger wrote about movies, he was really writing about life. That is why he was the best. There was a man behind the analysis. With Roger it was personal. When Roger loved a movie, and certainly when he hated one, his argument was something we understood about him. Everyone brings their own pedigree of personal experiences to a piece of art. That is the risk that artists take when they turn them over to the world. Roger drew on a wealth of experience and wisdom that I would have traded for any critic's formal or technical knowledge of film composition or processes. Roger had that knowledge too, but it did not inform his criticism so much as compliment it.

After a year of college I elected to declare a minor in film studies. I began reviewing movies for the University newspaper. I started this blog. I networked with other movie bloggers around the world. I even joined an Ebert and Roeper Facebook group. There I met Jon Fisher from Australia, who has contributed to this site and still helps draft our annual Pantheon. I met Jen Klaus from Tasmania, who has contributed graphic designs to my various blogs over the years. Jon and Jen became dear friends. In September I will be flying to Melbourne to meet them in person for the first time. The trip will be my first overseas. I cannot imagine that any of this would have happened had Roger not enlarged me as a moviegoer, as a critic, and indeed as a person. I suspect this is a common narrative. Roger has undoubtedly touched many over his 46 years as the film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, but if that were not so, if he had only inspired me, if he had only transformed the course of my life, I would not have written this any differently. It wouldn't have mattered.