BEFORE: Now I'm transitioning into sort of a "Tribute Week", this started with a couple of biographical docs about comics like Robin Williams and Richard Pryor, and it kind of grew from there. I never got to meet Roger Ebert, but my BFF Andy knew him, both online and in IRL, and frequently attended that Conference for World Affairs in Colorado where Roger was an annual host and guest. So I guess I was two degrees away from him for a while - I've heard it said that if you pick any two people at random, there's a very good chance that Person A knows someone who knows someone who knows Person B, I guess that's three degrees of separation.
Errol Morris carries over again (apparently, let's hope...) from "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley".
THE PLOT: The life and career of the renowned film critic and social commentator, Roger Ebert.
AFTER: Yes, Errol Morris appears here, as hoped, so the chain is still complete. It turns out that both Siskel AND Ebert really loved his first major documentary, "Gates of Heaven", which I mentioned the other day, and they promoted it several times, and Morris feels he became very successful shortly after that. Now, I still don't have a back-up plan in place in case there's a break in the chain in five days, I might have to scramble. I think I could tear things apart once again and use the Jerry Lewis archive footage seen in today's film to connect to "The Last Laugh", but that connection seems so tenuous that I'd rather not go that way. Almost every film in the last week (except for "The Thin Blue Line" and "The Fog of War") ends up having 40 or 50 unexpected appearances in it, so my chances are really good of having several paths open up that I didn't even expect. The original plan was to go from "Life Itself" to "Trespassing Bergman" through Martin Scorsese (and also Isabella Rossellini, it turns out) and then follow the chain to connect with "October Sky" - only I was wrong, that path was never going to connect. Now I'm going to follow the same link out of this film, Scorsese, because I learned he also appears in that doc about Robin Williams. So that will be for tomorrow -
Anyway - when I was a kid, 9 or 10 years old, home video was just becoming popular, and a video rental store opened up in my home town. I'd seen movies, mostly Disney ones, and I liked them, but I hadn't really committed to them as a major part of my life and as a possible career. But I did love "Star Wars: Episode IV", which was the only episode we had at the time. I could rent it from the store, but the man who ran the video store had been in some kind of accident, so his face was badly burned and I think he had two prosthetic hands. Now, when you're 9 or 10 years old, and you don't have much experience with people who have been disfigured, it can be scary at first to interact - I think I'd go there to browse through the movies and hope that I wouldn't see him. But my interest in movies won out, I faced my fears and also learned a bit about dealing with other people who might look different and be differently abled, but still just normal people on the inside.
So I understand why Roger Ebert appeared in this film, and made public appearances after his surgery that removed most of his jaw - it might have been jarring at first for people to see him, but staying out of sight would send the wrong message, that people with injuries or aren't physically perfect shouldn't be seen. Anyway, it's another case where the love of movies trumps everything else, he'd connected with so many people and shared so many opinions about movies over the years, that it didn't make any sense to stop. There was a strong community of support for him, family and friends, co-workers and rivals, all willing to put aside any potential discomfort over his appearance, and continue on with their friendship, as if everything was perfectly normal. This is a grace that may not come easy to some, but if it comes it has the potential to lift the spirits of all parties involved. Besides, everyone's body is going to fail or break down at some point, so when we see it happen to someone else, we also try to understand that it could happen to us.
The film goes back to Ebert's beginnings, of course, growing up in Chicago and being a young newspaper worker who lucked into the film critic job at the Sun-Times when the old one retired. Hey, sometimes people strive for greatness, and sometimes people are just in the right place at the right time. Sometimes the universe has a plan for us, and it may seem like we're just along for the ride. It also seems that he sort of stumbled into screenwriting via a chance meeting with exploitation film director Russ Meyer. He was given a tall order, to write "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" and make it funny, sexy, relevant, an action film and a subversive parody all at once.
Then things really got rolling when he was paired up with Gene Siskel, despite being crosstown rival critics at two very different newspapers. Each critic would most likely have preferred to be paired with anyone else - but hey, at least they frequently were able to present two very different points of view on their PBS show, which later moved over to the syndication market. For years their show then aired in every market EXCEPT New York and L.A., where critics were a dime a dozen, it seems. But eventually these two frenemies were nationwide, arguing over what it meant to give a thumbs up to films like "Benji: The Hunted". Ebert gave a "thumbs down" on the same show to "Full Metal Jacket", and Siskel called him out on it - did that mean that "Benji" was a BETTER film than the Kubrick masterpiece? I've had this exact same problem with my blog - people have taken me to task for rating one film they LOVE lower than one that everybody seems to hate, but as Ebert said, everything is relative. The "thumbs-up" means that the dog film did what it set out to do, or it came into the reviewer's life on the right day, or spoke to him in some positive way. But a "thumbs-down" on a sweeping war saga could mean that the reviewer was expecting more, or had some technical or plot-related problems that he couldn't reconcile, or that the reviewer was having a bad day, or maybe one time Stanley Kubrick cut him off in traffic. Who knows?
It's the conversation that's important at the end, we talk about movies because we care about movies, because something in them matters to us, and with any luck, that's something which feels universal that everyone can access and understand. But then, often it's not, one movie speaks to THAT person and they connect with it and enjoy it, and over time it becomes their favorite film. But that movie may not speak to that OTHER person over there, for any of a hundred reasons. I love the film "Brazil" and I couldn't wait to show it to the woman I was dating, who I later married, and we went to see it at Film Forum, and then I couldn't wait to talk to her about it, but the first thing she said was, "What a terrible film!" and that really cut my conversation off at the knees. Two people don't have to love all the same things to be in a relationship, but they have to at least hate some of the same things. We go to see the "X-Men" movies together, but she fell behind with the "Avengers" and other Marvel movies and then had no interest in catching up - so I go to see them alone or with a geek friend.
Thankfully, movies unite us more often than they drive us apart. Especially if we like the same ones, but arguing about them when we don't is almost as good. So there's a big section of this film about Ebert and Siskel becoming friends, despite their tendencies to argue while recording promos. But you can't share seats across the aisle for so many years and not become at least tolerant of each other, and then friends by default. And you just know Ebert kept pulling out that "Well, I've got a Pulitzer" info whenever he tried to get the show renamed "Ebert & Siskel" instead of "Siskel & Ebert".
After Siskel's death in 1999, Ebert kept hosting movie-review shows with other co-hosts, but then withdrew from TV after his second (?) cancer diagnosis. But he transitioned to the internet around the same time, creating a platform that would host all of his many past reviews, showcase his new ones, and also feature reviews from a group of guest critics that he selected. And even when he couldn't speak any more, he could still communicate via a speech computer and by writing his blog. So any way you slice it, he was a poster child for the concept of endurance. If you're unable to do something, find another way to do it, or something else to do.
I liked the segment that showed Ebert on his annual trips to the Cannes Film Festival - he didn't speak much French, but enough to order his daily coffee. He always ate at the same places and stayed at the same hotel, even if it wasn't the finest one in town. This reminded me of the 15 (or so) years I went to run a booth at the San Diego Comic-Con, I always went to the same sandwich shop when I hit town, and (more or less) the same restaurants for dinner, and I stayed at this converted YMCA for maybe 8 years in a row, it was also far from the finest hotel, but I didn't need much. I only stopped going there when it closed down, but finding a new hotel I could afford was close to impossible, so I used Air B&B for my last three trips. Maybe I'm just thinking about that because it's July and my body's sense memory feels like this trip should be coming up soon, only I don't do that any more.
I thought that I had read that Ebert's voice-synthesizer computer was created from his own voice, like some company had gone back through his many TV appearances and duplicated enough words that he'd said over the years to create some kind of library that would make the computer sound like him, but after hearing it in this film, I didn't think that it sounded like him at all. They hired someone with a very similar voice, or an impressionist, to narrate his written words for this film, and I thought that guy sounded more like Ebert than the computer did. I don't know, maybe he was using a different computer here...
But once again, I found myself watching a documentary film that started with a certain intent, and then ended up being a very different film from what was originally intended. Here the director wanted to document how Roger maintained such an active schedule despite his illness, but instead Ebert had to go into rehab for a hip fracture, and then got another cancer diagnosis, so it ended up being a chronicle of his final months, which is therefore heartbreaking - but this is balanced by chronicling his achievements, too, so it's heartwarming at the same time. It's got all the feels, as the kids would say.
Also starring Roger Ebert, Chaz Ebert, Ramin Bahrani, Richard Corliss, Nancy De Los Santos, Ava DuVernay, Bruce Elliot, Thea Flaum, Josh Golden, Werner Herzog, Marlene Iglitzen, Steve James, Rick Kogan, John McHugh, William Nack, Gregory Nava, Jonathan Rosenbaum, A.O. Scott, Roger Simon, with archive footage of Gene Siskel, Adam Baldwin (last seen in "Serenity"), Warren Beatty (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"), Saul Bellow, Ben Bradlee, Marlon Brando (last heard in "Listen To Me Marlon"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"), Chevy Chase (last seen in "I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story"), Jessica Chastain (last seen in "Molly's Game"), Tony Curtis (last seen in "Who Was That Lady?"), Catherine Deneuve, Robert De Niro (last seen in "The Comedian"), Gerard Depardieu (last seen in "102 Dalmatians"), Minnie Driver (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Keir Dullea (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451 (2018)"), Faye Dunaway (last seen in "The Champ"), Clint Eastwood (last seen in "The Mule"), Mia Farrow (last seen in "The Great Gatsby"), Peter Fonda (last seen in "The Most Hated Woman in America"), Henry Gibson (last seen in "The 'Burbs"), Christopher Guest (last seen in "Mascots"), Barbara Harris (last seen in "Nashville"), Hugh Hefner (last seen in "Long Strange Trip"), Charlton Heston (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Dennis Hopper (last seen in "The Pick-Up Artist"), John Huston, Al Jolson, Pauline Kael, Martin Luther King (last seen in "Capitalism: A Love Story"), Elias Koteas (last seen in "Gattaca"), Burt Lancaster (last seen in "Elmer Gantry"), David Letterman (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), Jerry Lewis (last seen in "Scared Stiff"), Peter Lorre, David Lynch (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), Kyle MacLachlan (last seen in "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding"), Michael McKean (last seen in "The Meddler"), Burgess Meredith (last seen in "Second Chorus"), Russ Meyer, Michael Moore (also last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Rupert Murdoch (also carrying over from "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley"), Jack Nicholson (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Al Pacino (last seen in "Frankie & Johnny"), Joe Pesci (last seen in "Betsy's Wedding"), Isabella Rossellini (last heard in "Incredibles 2"), Paul Rudd (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Arnold Schwarzenegger (also last seen in "Capitalism: A Love Story"), Harry Shearer (last heard in "Goosebumps"), Charlie Sheen (last seen in "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III"), James Spader (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2"), Studs Terkel, Marisa Tomei (also last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Deborah Kara Unger (last seen in "White Noise"), Orson Welles (last seen in "The V.I.P.s"), Mae West (last seen in "I'm No Angel"), Oprah Winfrey (also last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone").
RATING: 7 out of 10 family vacation photos
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