Roger Ebert (1942-2013)

Roger Ebert died today after a long battle with cancer. Through his over decade long illness, he continued to write, both his weekly reviews and on his blog. He continued his annual Ebertfest. He continued to work on new incarnations of his old TV show, At the Movies, which he started with fellow Chicago critic, Gene Siskel. That show, with its debating critics and signature "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" reviews, is the reason this blog exists. Roger Ebert is the reason I write about movies.

Growing up, I enjoyed film like most people do, mainly as a passing entertainment, but something about their debates struck a chord in me. It never occurred to me to be passionate about anything, much less argue about it. Even more so, it never occurred to me to think about film (or, for that matter, music, television, books, even sports) beyond its surface pleasures. Certainly, Gene and Roger weren't the first people to engage film in this way. Criticism is as old as the arts themselves, but for someone who didn't know any better, this was my initiation.

The show was in syndication and its airings often jumped around from early Saturday to late Sunday. In the days before the internet and onscreen channel guides, it was sometimes difficult to know when I could watch it. But often it would show very late on Sunday, usually past midnight Monday morning that it was a conscious decision to not get enough sleep for the beginning of the school week to watch. I almost never saw the movies they were reviewing until well after that episode aired, but it was a revelation to me that people could discuss movies beyond saying they liked it or disliked it. What a curious thing it was to me that movies could be deconstructed. That you could actually see the artistic choices being made if you just looked hard enough. That, even through disagreement (and maybe because of it), your enjoyment and appreciation of them were not diminished but enhanced. I didn't know what it meant to me then (I didn't even understand half of the arguments they were having). Today all I can think about is how it helped make me who I am.

I'm a bit of a late bloomer when it comes to my own cinephilia. It wasn't until college that I really began to take movies seriously and even today I feel like I'm playing catch-up. And it was during that time I discovered not only Ebert's reviews online, but more importantly his Great Movies column. It was a road map, a never-ending yellow brick road of cinematic history's greatest hits. Through it I was beginning to get a sense of which directions to take--the classics, auteurs, and national cinemas to explore. My own curiosity could lead me down any wormhole, but it was at Ebert's insistence that I had a real starting point. Toward the end of his piece "Great Movies: The First 100" he says: "There are no right answers. The questions are the point." He was the first person to teach me the value introspection and retrospection. And really, isn't that the bulk of what we do as writers?

In the years since then I have discovered many other critics who I love and enjoy reading (many of whom I first encountered through their guest spots on At the Movies, filling in after the passing of Gene Siskel). Their points-of-view and writing styles are as varied as the movies they cover. I will continue to read, enjoy, and learn from them. But Roger was the first. And for that I'll never forget him.