Had I never watched an episode -- had Siskel and Ebert at the Movies never existed -- I would have nevertheless discovered and played in the art of film criticism somewhere, but it would have come harder. As is life, from cradle to the hearse, the road's had a lot of potholes and drop-offs anyhow.
I was elated to win awards for film review writing on my campus newspaper at Wichita State University (Go Shocks!). My editor friend Mary -- a talented review writer who considered pursuing a PhD in film studies -- encouraged me. Like Ebert, who considered his newspaper columns his identity, Mary and I both caught that sickness unto death like it was yellow fever. "It gets in your blood," she said of reporting and newspapering. Unlike Ebert, always original in his critical style, Mary did like Blue Velvet.( "Heineken! Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!") Of course, Mary, myself and our contemporaries are as far away from Ebert's raw talent as a coke-addled 1970s Dennis Hopper was removed from reality. We're unfit for many things, the least of which --- kissing Roger Ebert's ticket stub.
Tributes to Ebert have been falling over cyberspace like the papers rolling off the presses and on to the sidewalk newsstand at the opening of every Siskel and Ebert show. He generated respect, while alive, as evidenced by his Twitter followers and the readers of his blog. But it was respect acquired over time, deadline stress and tears.
"The skinny guy's all right sometimes. I can't stand the fat guy."
That's the kind of thing my classmates in the community college theater department would say about those two guys on TV who (gasp) dared to dis top Hollywood stars and the money making crap they squeezed out.
"I think they were no-talents who couldn't make it as actors so they have to tear everyone down," the young thespians would say.
Actually, the only real thing Siskel failed at was his plan to become a lawyer. Ebert? He never got that English lit doctorate. Damn.
Back then, the only one of my friends who shared my appreciation for these film reviewers was my fellow writer-and-cigarette-smoking friend Steve. When I mentioned to Steve that I liked watching Siskel and Ebert, he replied, "I love 'em." We respected these astute critics for one reason:They could back up everything they said.
Steve and I would sit in front of the TV at 10:30 p.m., Sunday nights and critique the critiquers.
"I hate reviews like that," he said, feeling their review of Naked Lunch was wishy-washy. "Be definitive. Make a damn statement."
On a special At the Movies, in which they discussed "guilty pleasures," Ebert admitted a fondness for a maudlin Bette Middler movie, Stella about a feisty, uncouth singer and single mother, tending bar and trying to give her daughter a better life. Not my thing.
In a regular episode of the show, Siskel gave Rocky IV thumbs up and said, "I can't wait to see Rocky V". No Gene. Should've stopped after one.
What I now realize is that we were studying Siskel and Ebert and they were teaching us to become informed, critical thinkers and consumers of film art. From them, we learned that reviewing a movie -- or anything -- is much more than saying, "That movie rocks! That sucks." Judging a film's merits entails evaluating the dialogue, scenery, camera angles, writing, film editing, direction, plot believability...more than a critic can summarize into one review. It's the writer's role to discern the most salient points to mention.
Siskel and Ebert called the Hollywood Establishment to the carpet, when they felt it was warranted. These guys weren't taken in by celebrity, weren't like "insider political reporters" getting drunk on the power of a cocktail party. They were critical of the pomposity, prejudices and politics of the Oscars academy.
It's appropriate that non-actors and non-filmmakers scrutinize movies. We're buying their mansions, dishing out a ridiculous $10 a ticket, paying for the Netflicks and the damn popcorn. Probably what I've most taken from Siskel and Ebert, is that as an audience member I don't want to be taken for granted.
Around 20 years ago, Sly Stallone made a sorrowful action comedy, Stop or My Mom Will Shoot. One look at the trailers and I was saying Siskel and Ebert are 'gonna slam this." A week later I saw them on Letterman with Ebert calling it "the worst movie of the year."
And it probably was. It was laziness. It was Mr. Hollywood Superstar saying, "Hey, you love me. You're 'gonna pay to see me. I wrote my brilliant Rocky script in the '70s. I don't have to work for your love anymore." So he --- you know the formula. Mr. Action Star shows his softer, comedic side with some hackneyed, rehashed storyline about the perfunctory Tough Cop who's secretly a mama's boy. This Big Boy meets his match when diminutive spitfire Mom Estelle Getty comes to town and we're supposed to laugh when Little Miss Golden Girl takes down the criminals herself, while babbling about her little boy's diaper rash.
I'm calling bullshit. I'm offended, pissed off, when cynical Entertainment-Complex types insult my intelligence like that.
Apparently I owe a big thank you to a guy like Roger Ebert. He helped me see outside the Entertainment-Blockbuster-Complex box. A film about two guys having a conversation from across a table might be more entertaining than something chockablock with fight scenes and explosions. A documentary about a pig farmer or kids gearing up for a spelling bee might be riveting. If not for Ebert and his skinny rival, would I have written a review of a foreign film, Cinema Paradiso? Not at 20 years of age, not for an English assignment, I'll tell you that. I learned that if I were to watch a documentary about black drag queens in Paris and give it a thumbs up, I wasn't going to turn queer. (It was much more homophobic times 20 years ago.)
So yes, Ebert, like any gifted writer would, enlarged my mind. As his online columns of recent years have shown, his own mind was wide open. Along with his reviews, Ebert also weighed in on social issues like the Tea Party, racism, gay marriage and right-wing textbook revisionists. Not surprisingly, he was liberal. You can't be a puritanical social conservative and be an evaluator of art as he was. It'd be impossible.
Ebert's worldview complemented his approach to watching movies. As I listened in my car, NPR played archived audio of an old Ebert interview. He said through watching a great movie "I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief."It's happened in my lifetime. On occasion, a great film has prompted me to question, change or modify a particular view. Watching for and noting such things is part of what makes film review an art form.
The form been devalued in recent years. In the 1980s, my metropolitan area newspaper, The Wichita Eagle, had two film critics. Now it has none. Local TV stations will sit two bubbleheads on stools and they banter about how many boxes of popcorn to give a movie without any substantive explanation why. Critiquing is a craft and not everyone has a talent for it.
At the Movies jumped the shark after Siskel died and somewhere in Chicago, a balcony is closed forever. But when talking about Ebert's death, think about saving the art of film comment in our clickety-ADHD generation.
Loved it when they would fight.
