If you’ve seen a movie in the last 30 years, chances are you’ve seen Roger Ebert’s name — not on the credits onscreen, but on the posters and ads. With rival-cum-partner Gene Siskel, Ebert patented the “Thumps Up!” system of movie evaluation — first on the PBS series Sneak Previews, then through various re-names until it was just Siskel & Ebert. Their names were the brand.
The show is gone now, even with casting changes, and nothing has ever come close to replacing it, largely because it wasn’t the reviews themselves so much as the lively banter between the two hosts: The casual erudition of the lanky Siskel, and the bouncing populism of the portly Ebert.
Siskel died of a brain tumor in 1999, and Ebert follwed him just last year, at age 70. In his final years, he wasn’t the tubby leprechaun folks remembered anymore, but a man so ravaged by cancer he lost his jaw, with just the skin of his chin flapping as he smiled while a Hawking-like computer spoke for him.
But if Ebert lost his mouth, he never lost his voice. He left TV in 2006, but his blog continued (and continues still under the guidance of Dallas native Matt Zoller Seitz) and his gift with words (he won a Pulitzer, as he loved to mention as often as possible) made him a part of pop culture, the spokesman for the common moviegoer. (For the record, I was usually in the Siskel camp.)
Before he died, Ebert wrote a memoir, Life Itself, which Steve James — the director of Hoop Dreams, one of the many indie films Ebert enthusiastically championed) — has turned into a documentary. Siskel figures prominently in it, as does Ebert’s writing, his newspaper career, his writings and his opinions about movies. But what you walk away from the movie thinking most about is Ebert’s dignity and power, even after he became frail and in extraordinary discomfort. Ebert never shied away from allowing himself to be photographed, and there’s an openness, a bravery about how vulnerable he appears, yet how happy, that gloms onto you in ways you can’t really describe.
The movie isn’t perfect (James makes a big deal about having tons of written questions for Ebert to answer, but most of them are fairly sophomoric), but Ebert and his wife Chaz, pictured, are strong, memorable characters and you watch with awe and admiration. There’s really only one review you can give Life Itself: Thumbs up … way up.
Now playing at Landmark’s Magnolia Theatre in the West Village.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition July 4, 2014.