I wanted to get this out sooner than I did, fearing that my perceptive commentary on Ebert’s life and influence would already be old news after the hundreds of obituaries that beat me to the punch. Alas, that is what has happened. But such was Ebert’s reach.
I guess the most impressive thing to me about Roger Ebert’s legacy is that he brought criticism and reviewing (of any kind) down to an accessible level without sacrificing intelligence, wit and perceptive commentary. I’ve read Pauline Kael and, in the world of music, Robert Christgau. While they are undoubtedly intelligent, I also find them full of horsesh*t about half of the time. Ebert was never full of horsesh*t. I may have disagreed with him, but he was never critiquing for the purpose of looking like the smartest person in the room, where he felt he was doing you a favor by even trying to explain great (or crappy) art. He was smart and knowledgeable about film, but he still came across as a regular dude who liked movies. A lot. I read some interesting articles this morning about how Ebert was a huge influence on internet writing especially, in places like this blog. Where average folks who have a passion for topics feel free to write about them. Ebert was far from average, but he crucially (usually) did not write from on high. Reading his reviews often felt like sitting at a dinner table talking movies with a smart friend.
Ebert was also influential in helping to establish point/counterpoint television. And just like you can’t blame ‘Jaws’ for the bloated summer blockbusters that came in its wake, you can’t blame Ebert and Gene Siskel for Fox News and Sunday Morning News roundtables. It is not Siskel & Ebert’s fault that most TV critics and pundits lack the wit, warmth, nuance and intelligence that they possessed. When they started their weekly half hour movie review show in 1975, it wasn’t expected to amount to much. It started locally in Chicago as a show where Siskel and Ebert (working for the competing newspapers in the Windy City) would review new films, but more importantly, spiritedly spar when they disagreed. Fortunately, they often disagreed. In fact, we all watched their show hoping, praying, that they would disagree. But it was still going strong decades later and nationally syndicated, right up until Gene Siskel’s death in 1999. Siskel & Ebert brought movie criticism out of the universities and away from Europhiles and into middle America. It is crucial, I think, that both were Midwestern guys themselves. They showed that you could be smart about art (or just movies) even if you didn’t live in New York.
ABOVE: Siskel & Ebert rip apart one of the worst movies ever made, 'Jaws: The Revenge.' Siskel: "I wanted to go up and punch the screen."
I own and love all three of Ebert’s ‘Great Movies’ books. Wonderful essays about films that I love and films that I still need to see. But Ebert was often most fun when he disliked a film. In fact, his book ‘Your Movie Sucks’ is a hilarious compilation of his most notorious negative reviews. I recall a war of words with Saturday Night Live alum/tool Rob Schneider. Never a good idea to challenge Ebert in public. Some other critic had eviscerated Schneider’s 'Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo' (I know, shocking). Schneider shot back in a paid ad, questioning the critic’s credentials and asking “what makes you qualified? Have you won the Pulitzer Prize?” Ebert came to said critic’s defense in one of his most famous reviews: “As chance would have it, I have won a Pulitzer Prize [which he won in 1975], so I am qualified. Speaking in my capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.” (To Schneider's credit, when Ebert first announced that he had cancer, Schneider sent him flowers with a card 'From your least favorite movie star.') Or this one for Tom Green’s ‘Freddy Got Fingered’: “This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie is not the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as barrels.”
ABOVE: Go to 6:20 here and watch Siskel & Ebert play Nintendo Tennis against eachother. Siskel to his female avatar, "Come on, move over, Hon."
RIP Roger Ebert. The balcony is now officially closed. You and Gene can pick up where you left off in the hereafter, helping the angels pick out good flicks for movie night. And helping them avoid 'Jaws: The Revenge.'
2 comments:
"It is not Siskel & Ebert’s fault that most TV critics and pundits lack the wit, warmth, nuance and intelligence that they possessed." Amen.
Well-written, sir. Two thumbs up.
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