In Memory of Roger Ebert

I have followed Roger Ebert's career since before I even knew exactly what the word "journalism" means.  At Dad's house, it was a Christmas tradition to find the latest edition of Ebert's annually updated book of reviews under the tree.  This tradition started Christmas of 1989, when I was 14 years old, and continued until Dad died in 2000.

I always admired Ebert's writing, even when Ebert inadvertently made himself a bit of a punchline with his blatant sexuality, as, for a time, his reviews tended to focus on the physical attributes of their leading ladies.  Rudy and I used to laugh about how, during his 1997 interview with Pam Grier, Ebert admitted that, instead of paying attention to Grier's statements during the interview, "as she's talking, I'm checking her out."

I also began to grow wary of Ebert's own prejudices.  He was too dismissive of certain genres -- growing almost indiscriminately weary of action movies, and dismissing slasher films almost en masse, missing out on the deeper socio-contextual meanings found by such other critics as, say, Carol Clover.  I also eventually grew to disapprove of his reviews' increasing tendency to replace objective analysis with undefended, unchecked emotional response, a tendency which reached its most ludicrous point in 2008, when Ebert slammed the movie Tru Loved, only to later admit that he'd only watched a few minutes of the film.

That incident pissed me off so much that I did the unthinkable, and stopped reading Ebert reviews for a while.  But the thing is, my personal ban of Ebert reviews was on moral grounds, not because I stopped liking his writing.  As Ebert would often observe in various wording, a movie, or a movie review, should not be judged just based on what it's about, but also "how it's about it" (meaning how it's presented), and as a writer, Roger Ebert was simply fun to read.

In my mind, Ebert redeemed himself a bit in 2010, with his reviews of Hereafter and Kick-Ass.  At the time, I was annoyed that film critics almost unanimously slammed Hereafter, despite its earnest attempt to examine the topic of death from an intellectual point of view, something those very same critics almost daily complained that Hollywood films never do.  Ebert at least gave credit where credit was due.  This was not just a matter of me agreeing with Ebert's opinion, this was acknowledging that Ebert seemed to be the one professional critic whose review lacked hypocrisy.

Like Ebert, I was offended by the level of violence in Kick-Ass.  A lot of people disagreed with Ebert and me about Kick-Ass, insisting that it was innocent fun as much as any other action film is, but for Ebert and me, it just went too far, and I felt vindicated that Roger had the nerve to say, "mindless action movie violence is one thing, but this is just too much."

Ebert and I traded a few emails over the years through his "Answer Man" column submission webpage.  Most of these exchanges were, to various degrees, humorous and/or insightful on both of our parts, but the one that he chose to publish -- both in his book and on his website -- was one in which I had mistaken the director David Mirken for David Mament.  Sadly, you can read from the context of my letter that this was no mere typo on my part, I'd honestly, embarrassingly, confused the credits of the film.  Out of all the emails we traded, this was the one he published?

Still, no grudges.  I continued to read his website even after his health problems led Ebert to review fewer and fewer of the reviews appearing on the site, because I kept hoping, "maybe this time, it'll be a real Ebert review," and I was always delighted when he made an appearance -- even if, by the end, he was little more than a guest writer on his own site.

I will miss reading Roger Ebert reviews.  Even when I disagreed with him, even when he praised a film I hated or slammed a movie I loved, I always respected the way he went about it.