Remembering Roger Ebert, America’s Critic-Next-Door
By Chris McEwen
It might seem vaguely reductive to note that, as Matt Zoller Seitz so wonderfully put it in his eulogy, the late Roger Ebert served as a “gateway drug” for cinephiles — to suggest his work was in anyway basic, simplistic, or not worthy of a higher literary plain beyond that gateway. However, breaking down the perceived barrier between accessible and intelligent critical discourse was such an important part of what Ebert did, and his ultimate impact on the world of entertainment criticism, that such a description is wholly appropriate.
Ebert was the guy who helped champion little movies like Hoop Dreams and Monster on national television. He dissected the best films of the 1990s with Martin Scorsese, and in a manner that was as entertaining as it was informative. And he took full advantage of his web presence to lend further opportunities to young, up-and-coming writers in whom he saw potential.
In short, he felt like America’s critic-next-door in every sense, and the extent to which he used that position to popularize mainstream critical discourse can’t be overstated. At the Movies brought fairly serious discussion about film into ordinary households every week. More importantly though, Ebert and Gene Siskel (and later, Richard Roeper) didn’t come across as self-important or elitist — they were just regular guys who happened to know a lot about film, and loved discussing it, as well as (most memorably) arguing about it.
Of course, Siskel passed in 1999, and though the show was never quite the same, Ebert’s enthusiasm never dulled, both on screen (before he took a leave of absence in 2006 to pursue further treatment for his cancer) and in print. That’s not to say that Ebert loved everything — indeed, some of his sharpest work came when he absolutely hated a film; we’re talking about a man who named an entire book after a review that concluded with him telling Rob Schneider “your movie sucks.” Yet that negativity could never be confused with cynicism, as you got the sense that Ebert went into every movie hoping to love it.
Ebert certainly wasn’t right out of the gate every time either — from Blue Velvet to A Clockwork Orange, there’s a number of films that he outright didn’t get. But not only was he unafraid to go back and admit when he was wrong, you also always knew where Ebert was coming from in his reviews. Because like any critic worth their salt, Ebert wasn’t really writing about movies; what he was really writing about in each review, to borrow the title of his memoir, was life itself.
In 2011 Salon piece entitled “I Do Not Fear Death,” Ebert wrote the following:
“I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.”
By his own logic, Ebert’s work in the grand scheme of things may be as comfortingly ephemeral at that Eiffel Tower souvenir. All the same, though, his contributions will live on, if only because week-by-week, and review-by-review, he made managed to offer all of us a little more company at the movies.
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