Seeing this documentary about Roger Ebert was my personal me-time birthday celebration for 2014. I used to take in a movie back in my twenties but the tradition faded out when I managed to cooler fare as the thirties were better.
I really wanted to see this flick though. Roger grew to be more than just a film critic near the end of his life. I remember his eloquent rebuttal to Ben Stein’s bitching about receiving an unfair review for Expelled because it was filled with bunk. Roger tore Stein a new one with his explanation on how evolution works through a series of coin flips.
So Life tells Roger’s story up to his recent death. He was born and raised around my original nesting area, Champaign-Urbana, IL. Surprisingly his family was Catholic, Protestants dominate those towns, plus he was an only child. Dreams of attending Harvard like his personal hero JFK were unrealistic given the costs. Roger had to go with the University of Illinois, his backyard. After he was accepted for graduate school at the University of Chicago, he took a job with the Chicago Sun-Times. When the movie critic resigned, Roger got the gig and the rest is history.
The movie goes back and forth between Roger’s career highlights and his final weeks. I loved his honesty over working with Russ Meyer (he did it to get laid). His rocky relationship with Gene Siskel was nothing new but the outtakes were funny. Alcoholism was something I discovered. Since he gave up drinking in the late Seventies, it might be why I never knew. One bright spot from it, AA is where he met his wife Chaz. Roger was also a champion for the underdog. Two instances: he was first in line on a Sunday morning at Sundance to see this unknown director’s movie’s last screening (Roger promised he would see it); he gave a treasured gift to another upcoming director (you’ll have to watch the movie to find out).
Due to Siskel keeping his brain cancer a secret to the end, Roger vowed to be transparent if he ever got ill. This documentary shows he kept his promise. It’s painful watching him “eat” and communicate without a jaw.
Don’t let the cancer element scare you away. Life is filled with numerous interviews from his co-workers, friends and adopted family. You may recognize a couple, Martin Scorsese and Werner Herzog.
I want to close with my personal attachments to Roger Ebert which grew as I got older. Back in the Seventies, we subscribed to the Chicago Tribune off and on, aka the FIB Trib for a couple reasons. Not sure why. I guess it was easier to get downstate despite its editorial slant being contrary to my family’s political leanings. Gene Siskel was the movie critic I read and listened to on Sneak Previews. (I do need to ask my ex-roommate why the Sun-Times is perceived as the silver medal paper in Chicago. Maybe it isn’t anymore thanks to the Tribune Corporation’s numerous financial blunders.)
Roger’s background is somewhat similar to mine and my father’s. There’s glaring differences too, age bing a huge one for me. The point is, we’re Midwestern, from the unimportant part of Illinois (any place that isn’t Chicago), come from Catholic families, decently educated and didn’t attend the prestige universities out east. With Gene Siskel, the two became a movie criticism force the coasts couldn’t ignore after a decade. Johnny Carson loved having them on (course, he originated from Nebraska), they did SNL and loaned their voices to much more, my favorite was The Critic. Today we live in an era when many of the leadership caste attend a select few universities (the Ivy League primarily, Stanford or Berkeley), it’s encouraging to see a major tastemaker and thoughtful writer buck the trend. I have the same hypothesis regarding Scott Walker and Sarah Palin’s followers, but they’re both dropouts.
I completely endorse seeing Life Itself. It doesn’t drag on like many documentaries do. You see the many sides of Roger and discover how he used a chance assignment to transform how film criticism is viewed. He didn’t do it alone. Pauline Kael, Gene Siskel, Gene Shalit, Rex Reed and Leonard Matlin share the credit amongst others.