Roger Ebert: The Essential Man(esquire.com)
esquire.com
Roger Ebert: The Essential Man
http://www.esquire.com/print-this/roger-ebert-0310
9 comments
I actually found Ebert's online reviews more compelling than the TV show ever was. He could take his time in them and explore little facets of the films, relate them to obscure references and dote a bit on things he just plain liked.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?categor...
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?categor...
My recent favorite, Ebert's discussion of what it's like never to eat nor drink:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/01/nil_by_mouth.html
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/01/nil_by_mouth.html
I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.
Interesting that he says making yourself unhappy is where crime starts. I agree and I've often thought that the root of anxiety if selfishness.
Interesting that he says making yourself unhappy is where crime starts. I agree and I've often thought that the root of anxiety if selfishness.
Touching and beautifully written. :)
If by beautifully written, you mean incredibly ham-handed and melodramatic and full of bathos:
> Roger Ebert can’t remember the last thing he ate. He can't remember the last thing he drank, either, or the last thing he said. Of course, those things existed; those lasts happened. They just didn't happen with enough warning for him to have bothered committing them to memory — it wasn't as though he sat down, knowingly, to his last supper or last cup of coffee or to whisper a last word into Chaz's ear. The doctors told him they were going to give him back his ability to eat, drink, and talk. But the doctors were wrong, weren't they? On some morning or afternoon or evening, sometime in 2006, Ebert took his last bite and sip, and he spoke his last word.
> Ebert's lasts almost certainly took place in a hospital. That much he can guess. His last food was probably nothing special, except that it was: hot soup in a brown plastic bowl; maybe some oatmeal; perhaps a saltine or some canned peaches. His last drink? Water, most likely, but maybe juice, again slurped out of plastic with the tinfoil lid peeled back. The last thing he said? Ebert thinks about it for a few moments, and then his eyes go wide behind his glasses, and he looks out into space in case the answer is floating in the air somewhere. It isn't. He looks surprised that he can't remember. He knows the last words Studs Terkel's wife, Ida, muttered when she was wheeled into the operating room ("Louis, what have you gotten me into now?"), but Ebert doesn't know what his own last words were. He thinks he probably said goodbye to Chaz before one of his own trips into the operating room, perhaps when he had parts of his salivary glands taken out — but that can't be right. He was back on TV after that operation. Whenever it was, the moment wasn't cinematic. His last words weren't recorded. There was just his voice, and then there wasn't.
> Roger Ebert can’t remember the last thing he ate. He can't remember the last thing he drank, either, or the last thing he said. Of course, those things existed; those lasts happened. They just didn't happen with enough warning for him to have bothered committing them to memory — it wasn't as though he sat down, knowingly, to his last supper or last cup of coffee or to whisper a last word into Chaz's ear. The doctors told him they were going to give him back his ability to eat, drink, and talk. But the doctors were wrong, weren't they? On some morning or afternoon or evening, sometime in 2006, Ebert took his last bite and sip, and he spoke his last word.
> Ebert's lasts almost certainly took place in a hospital. That much he can guess. His last food was probably nothing special, except that it was: hot soup in a brown plastic bowl; maybe some oatmeal; perhaps a saltine or some canned peaches. His last drink? Water, most likely, but maybe juice, again slurped out of plastic with the tinfoil lid peeled back. The last thing he said? Ebert thinks about it for a few moments, and then his eyes go wide behind his glasses, and he looks out into space in case the answer is floating in the air somewhere. It isn't. He looks surprised that he can't remember. He knows the last words Studs Terkel's wife, Ida, muttered when she was wheeled into the operating room ("Louis, what have you gotten me into now?"), but Ebert doesn't know what his own last words were. He thinks he probably said goodbye to Chaz before one of his own trips into the operating room, perhaps when he had parts of his salivary glands taken out — but that can't be right. He was back on TV after that operation. Whenever it was, the moment wasn't cinematic. His last words weren't recorded. There was just his voice, and then there wasn't.
This undeserved downvoting I keep seeing might make me just vomit HN out of my life.
I agree with you, it was a bit melodramatic. And slow. I don't know if I should bother reading it.
I agree with you, it was a bit melodramatic. And slow. I don't know if I should bother reading it.
In an effort to find the YouTube videos (that were taken down) mentioned in the article I stumbled across this video [1] that seems to sum up Siskel and Ebert's great relationship. Just to warn you there is some foul language.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUMZjy8rXE4
Edited to add this is great too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkwVz_jK3gA
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUMZjy8rXE4
Edited to add this is great too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkwVz_jK3gA
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he is one of my favorite twitterers also: http://twitter.com/ebertchicago
hilarious, insightful and prolific
hilarious, insightful and prolific
Damn.
he began writing an online journal... It has become his life's work, building and maintaining this massive monument to written debate... Out there, his voice is still his voice — not a reasonable facsimile of it, but his.
"It is saving me," he says through his speakers.