Thank You, Siskel & Ebert

It must’ve been 4th grade. Mr. Skadden asked the class if we watched anything on PBS. Ooh, me. I watch Sneak Previews.

I recall being the only one who chimed in with that response. (I was already a bit of an oddball.) And I have no idea why I was watching. Basically all of I knew of movies was Star Wars, Close Encounters, Benji, Herbie the Love Bug, and Escape to Witch Mountain. But something about the show fascinated 9-year-old me. I loved that opening—that crazy soda machine didn’t work! The soda was coming down on an upside-down cup! What a mess! And then here were these two guys, alone in a movie theater, up in the balcony. I don’t think I’d ever seen a balcony before. It was a mellow, strange, special sort of thing to watch on a weekend afternoon.

It was my introduction to the world of criticism. Some movies were good, some were bad. Some were so-so. And they disagreed. Oh boy, did they. It seemed like these guys were angry at each other. But still, it seemed like they respected one another. So there was a lesson in that.

Also, Chicago: Where was that? And learning that cities could have two newspapers. (Back when cities had newspapers.) And one guy was skinny and one guy was fat and they did the thumbs-up/thumbs-down thing, all that was funny.

They moved to a new show, At the Movies, so I watched that. Sneak Previews kept going, with Jeffrey Lyons and Neal Gabler, so I watched that too. But they weren’t as good as Siskel and Ebert. So critics could be better than other critics? Huh. More critics entered my life: Joel Siegel on channel 7, Joyce J. Persico in the Trenton Times. Leonard Maltin on Entertainment Tonight. Medved in for Gabler. Rex Reed, whatever. But nobody was nearly as good as Siskel and Ebert.

They stayed with me, west coast to east coast, elementary to middle to high school, Sneak Previews toAt the Movies to Siskel & Ebert & the Movies. They’d be on with Howard Stern and Letterman—they were kind of cool, and good sports! In college I had a Siskel & Ebert page-a-day calendar. Drew a cartoon of Ebert in the school newspaper.

I paid more and more attention to critics. Record reviews in Rolling Stone opened up a whole other world. And movies, always movies. Elvis Mitchell and Janet Maslin and A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. Love it, love it, love it, and love it all still.

Siskel died. That was unexpected; that was sad. Still, Ebert carried on. A lesson in that too. But yeah, sure, who really wanted to see Richard Roeper. It wasn’t the same. It could never be the same.

And yet, Ebert persisted. (Lesson, check.) And with the Internet, and social media, against the odds he became a true force. Maybe more than ever. Then told illness and disfigurement to go fuck themselves; he kept on keeping on. (Enough with the lessons already, Roger.) In 2010, there was a new TV show, Ebert Presents: At the Movies. The son-of-a-bitch couldn’t even talk. I watched the first one, for old time’s sake. It bummed me out a little. But all along I always looked for his review of a movie—for me it always carried more weight. (No pun intended.) Sometimes I’d see a Sun-Times review, get excited, then realize it was some other generic schmuck critic—that was always a letdown.

Somewhere along the way, Ebert transcended movies. Somebody always seemed to be sharing a genuinely insightful essay he wrote, on a myriad of topics, and he always seemed to come down on the right side. Roger Ebert was a hero.

Now he’s gone. Did he know it was coming? Was it a coincidence that I read an article just yesterday about reducing his workload? At any rate, I’m glad he was on my mind till the very end. I love movies so much, and I love thinking about them critically. And I think that’s extended into thinking critically about the world around me. I can trace it all directly back to 4th grade and that lopsided soda cup on Sneak Previews. So belated thanks to you, Gene Siskel. And Roger, thanks for staying with me deep into my adult years, setting such a solid example in a hundred different ways. We’ll try to make you proud from here on out.