Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert^[5][7] was born on June 18, 1942, in Urbana, Illinois, the only child of Annabel (née Stumm),^[8] a bookkeeper,^[3][9] and Walter Harry Ebert, an electrician.^[10][11] He was raised Roman Catholic, attending St. Mary's elementary school and serving as an altar boy in Urbana.^[11]

His paternal grandparents were German immigrants^[12] and his maternal ancestry was Irish and Dutch.^[9][13][14] His first movie memory was of his parents taking him to see the Marx Brothers in A Day at the Races (1937).^[15] He wrote that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was "the first real book I ever read, and still the best."^[16] He began his writing career with his own newspaper, The Washington Street News, printed in his basement.^[5] He wrote letters of comment to the science-fiction fanzines of the era and founded his own, Stymie.^[5] At age 15, he was a sportswriter for The News-Gazette covering Urbana High School sports.^[17] He attended Urbana High School, where in his senior year he was class president and co-editor of his high school newspaper, The Echo.^[11][18] In 1958, he won the Illinois High School Association state speech championship in "radio speaking," an event that simulates radio newscasts.^[19]

Ebert began taking classes at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as an early-entrance student, completing his high school courses while also taking his first university class. After graduating from Urbana High School in 1960,^[21] he attended the University of Illinois and received his undergraduate degree in journalism in 1964.^[5] While there, Ebert worked as a reporter for The Daily Illini and served as its editor during his senior year while continuing to work for the News-Gazette.

His college mentor was Daniel Curley, who "introduced me to many of the cornerstones of my life's reading: 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, The Ambassadors, Nostromo, The Professor's House, The Great Gatsby, The Sound and the Fury ... He approached these works with undisguised admiration. We discussed patterns of symbolism, felicities of language, motivation, revelation of character. This was appreciation, not the savagery of deconstruction, which approaches literature as pliers do a rose."^[22] One of his classmates was Larry Woiwode, who went on to be the Poet Laureate of North Dakota. At The Daily Illini Ebert befriended William Nack, who as a sportswriter would cover Secretariat.^[23] As an undergraduate, he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity and president of the United States Student Press Association.^[24] One of the first reviews he wrote was of La Dolce Vita, published in The Daily Illini in October 1961.^[25]

As a graduate student, he "had the good fortune to enroll in a class on Shakespeare's tragedies taught by G. Blakemore Evans ... It was then that Shakespeare took hold of me, and it became clear he was the nearest we have come to a voice for what it means to be human."^[26] Ebert spent a semester as a master's student in the department of English there before attending the University of Cape Town on a Rotary fellowship for a year.^[27] He returned from Cape Town to his graduate studies at Illinois for two more semesters and then, after being accepted as a PhD student at the University of Chicago, he prepared to move to Chicago. He needed a job to support himself while he worked on his doctorate and so applied to the Chicago Daily News, hoping that, as he had already sold freelance pieces to the Daily News, including an article on the death of writer Brendan Behan, he would be hired by editor Herman Kogan.^[28]

Instead, Kogan referred Ebert to the city editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, Jim Hoge, who hired him as a reporter and feature writer in 1966.^[28] He attended doctoral classes at the University of Chicago while working as a general reporter for a year. After movie critic Eleanor Keane left the Sun-Times in April 1967, editor Robert Zonka gave the job to Ebert.^[29] The paper wanted a young critic to cover movies like The Graduate and films by Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut.^[5]

Beginning in 1968, Ebert worked for the University of Chicago as an adjunct lecturer, teaching a night class on film at the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies.^[30] The load of graduate school and being a film critic proved too much, so Ebert left the University of Chicago to focus his energies on film criticism.^[31]

Ebert's first review for the Chicago Sun-Times began: "Georges Lautner’s Galia opens and closes with arty shots of the ocean, mother of us all, but in between it's pretty clear that what is washing ashore is the French New Wave."^[32] He recalls that "Within a day after Zonka gave me the job, I read The Immediate Experience by Robert Warshow", from which he gleaned that "the critic has to set aside theory and ideology, theology and politics, and open himself to—well, the immediate experience."^[33] That same year, he met film critic Pauline Kael for the first time at the New York Film Festival. After he sent her some of his columns, she told him they were "the best film criticism being done in American newspapers today."^[11] He recalls her telling him how she worked: "I go into the movie, I watch it, and I ask myself what happened to me."^[33] A formative experience was reviewing Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966).^[34] He told his editor he wasn't sure how to review it when he didn't feel he could explain it. His editor told him he didn't have to explain it, just describe it.^[35]

He was one of the first critics to champion Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), calling it "a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance. It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking and astonishingly beautiful. If it does not seem that those words should be strung together, perhaps that is because movies do not very often reflect the full range of human life." He concluded: "The fact that the story is set 35 years ago doesn't mean a thing. It had to be set some time. But it was made now and it's about us."^[36] Thirty-one years later, he wrote "When I saw it, I had been a film critic for less than six months, and it was the first masterpiece I had seen on the job. I felt an exhilaration beyond describing. I did not suspect how long it would be between such experiences, but at least I learned that they were possible."^[37] He wrote Martin Scorsese's first review, for Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967, then titled I Call First), and predicted the young director could become "an American Fellini."^[38]

Ebert co-wrote the screenplay for Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) and sometimes joked about being responsible for it. It was poorly received on its release yet has become a cult film.^[39] Ebert and Meyer also made Up! (1976), Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979) and other films, and were involved in the ill-fated Sex Pistols film Who Killed Bambi? In April 2010, Ebert posted his screenplay of Who Killed Bambi?, also known as Anarchy in the UK, on his blog.^[40]

Ebert served on the jury at the 33rd Venice International Film Festival in 1972.^[41][42]

In 1975, Ebert received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.^[43] In the aftermath of his win, he was offered jobs at The New York Times and The Washington Post, but he declined them both, as he did not wish to leave Chicago.^[44] That same year, he and Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune began co-hosting a weekly film-review television show, Opening Soon at a Theater Near You,^[5] later Sneak Previews, which was locally produced by the Chicago public broadcasting station WTTW.^[45] The series was later picked up for national syndication on PBS.^[45] The duo became well known for their "thumbs up/thumbs down" reviews.^[45][46] They trademarked the phrase "Two Thumbs Up."^[45][47]

In 1982, they moved from PBS to launch a similar syndicated commercial television show, At the Movies With Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert.^[45] In 1986, they again moved the show to new ownership, creating Siskel & Ebert & the Movies through Buena Vista Television, part of the Walt Disney Company.^[45] Ebert and Siskel made many appearances on late night talk shows, appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman sixteen times and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson fifteen times. They also appeared together on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Arsenio Hall Show, The Howard Stern Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Siskel and Ebert were sometimes accused of trivializing film criticism. Richard Corliss, in Film Comment, called the show "a sitcom (with its own noodling, toodling theme song) starring two guys who live in a movie theater and argue all the time".^[48] Ebert responded that "I am the first to agree with Corliss that the Siskel and Ebert program is not in-depth film criticism" but that "When we have an opinion about a movie, that opinion may light a bulb above the head of an ambitious youth who then understands that people can make up their own minds about movies." He also noted that they did "theme shows" condemning colorization and showing the virtues of letterboxing. He argued that "good criticism is commonplace these days. Film Comment itself is healthier and more widely distributed than ever before. Film Quarterly is, too; it even abandoned eons of tradition to increase its page size. And then look at Cinéaste and American Film and the specialist film magazines (you may not read Fangoria, but if you did, you would be amazed at the erudition its writers bring to the horror and special effects genres.)"^[49] Corliss wrote that "I do think the program has other merits, and said so in a sentence of my original article that didn't make it into type: 'Sometimes the show does good: in spotlighting foreign and independent films, and in raising issues like censorship and colorization.' The stars' recent excoriation of the MPAA's X rating was salutary to the max."^[50]

In 1996, W. W. Norton & Company asked Ebert to edit an anthology of film writing. This resulted in Roger Ebert's Book of Film: From Tolstoy to Tarantino, the Finest Writing From a Century of Film. The selections are eclectic, ranging from Louise Brooks's autobiography to David Thomson's novel Suspects.^[51] Ebert "wrote to Nigel Wade, then the editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, and proposed a biweekly series of longer articles great movies of the past. He gave his blessing ... Every other week I have revisited a great movie, and the response has been encouraging."^[52] The first film he wrote about for the series was Casablanca (1942).^[53] A hundred of these essays were published as The Great Movies (2002); he released two more volumes, and a fourth was published posthumously. In 1999, Ebert founded The Overlooked Film Festival (later Ebertfest), in his hometown, Champaign, Illinois.^[54]

In May 1998, Siskel took a leave of absence from the show to undergo brain surgery. He returned to the show, although viewers noticed a change in his physical appearance. Despite appearing sluggish and tired, Siskel continued reviewing films with Ebert and would appear on Late Show with David Letterman. In February 1999, Siskel died of a brain tumor.^[55][56] The producers renamed the show Roger Ebert & the Movies and used rotating co-hosts including Martin Scorsese,^[57]Janet Maslin^[58] and A.O. Scott.^[59] Ebert wrote of his late colleague: "For the first five years that we knew one another, Gene Siskel and I hardly spoke. Then it seemed like we never stopped." He wrote of Siskel's work ethic, of how quickly he returned to work after surgery: "Someone else might have taken a leave of absence then and there, but Gene worked as long as he could. Being a film critic was important to him. He liked to refer to his job as 'the national dream beat,' and say that in reviewing movies he was covering what people hoped for, dreamed about, and feared."^[60] Ebert recalled, "Whenever he interviewed someone for his newspaper or for television, Gene Siskel liked to end with the same question: 'What do you know for sure?' OK Gene, what do I know for sure about you? You were one of the smartest, funniest, quickest men I've ever known and one of the best reporters...I know for sure that seeing a truly great movie made you so happy that you'd tell me a week later your spirits were still high."^[61] Ten years after Siskel's death, Ebert blogged about his colleague: "We once spoke with Disney and CBS about a sitcom to be titled Best Enemies. It would be about two movie critics joined in a love/hate relationship. It never went anywhere, but we both believed it was a good idea. Maybe the problem was that no one else could possibly understand how meaningless was the hate, how deep was the love."^[62]

In September 2000, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper became the permanent co-host and the show was renamed At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper and later Ebert & Roeper.^[5][63] In 2000, Ebert interviewed President Bill Clinton about movies at The White House.^[64]

In 2002, Ebert was diagnosed with cancer of the salivary glands. In 2006, cancer surgery resulted in his losing his ability to eat and speak. In 2007, prior to his Overlooked Film Festival, he posted a picture of his new condition. Paraphrasing a line from Raging Bull (1980), he wrote, "I ain’t a pretty boy no more. (Not that I ever was. The original appeal of Siskel & Ebert was that we didn't look like we belonged on TV.)" He added that he would not miss the festival: "At least, not being able to speak, I am spared the need to explain why every film is 'overlooked', or why I wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."^[65]

Ebert ended his association with At The Movies in July 2008,^[47][66] after Disney indicated it wished to take the program in a new direction. As of 2007, his reviews were syndicated to more than 200 newspapers in the United States and abroad.^[67] His RogerEbert.com website, launched in 2002 and originally underwritten by the Chicago Sun-Times,^[68] remains online as an archive of his published writings and reviews while also hosting new material written by a group of critics who were selected by Ebert before his death. Even as he used TV (and later the Internet) to share his reviews, Ebert continued to write for the Chicago Sun-Times until he died.^{[69][circular reference]} On February 18, 2009, Ebert reported that he and Roeper would soon announce a new movie-review program,^[70] and reiterated this plan after Disney announced that the program's last episode would air in August 2010.^[71][72] In 2008, having lost his voice, he turned to blogging to express himself.^[66] Peter Debruge writes that "Ebert was one of the first writers to recognize the potential of discussing film online."^[73]

His final television series, Ebert Presents: At the Movies, premiered on January 21, 2011, with Ebert contributing a review voiced by Bill Kurtis in a brief segment called "Roger's Office,"^[74] as well as traditional film reviews in the At the Movies format by Christy Lemire and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky.^[75] The program lasted one season, before being cancelled due to funding constraints.^[76][5]

In 2011, he published his memoir, Life Itself, in which he describes his childhood, his career, his struggles with alcoholism and cancer, his loves and friendships.^[15] On March 7, 2013, Ebert published his last Great Movies essay, for The Ballad of Narayama (1958).^[77] The last review Ebert published during his lifetime was for The Host, on March 27, 2013.^[78][79] The last review Ebert filed, published posthumously on April 6, 2013, was for To the Wonder.^[80][81] In July 2013, a previously unpublished review of Computer Chess appeared on RogerEbert.com.^[82] The review had been written in March but had remained unpublished until the film's wide-release date.^[83] Matt Zoller Seitz, the editor of RogerEbert.com, confirmed that there were other unpublished reviews that would eventually be posted.^[83] A second review, for The Spectacular Now, was published in August 2013.^[84]

In his last blog entry, posted two days before his death, Ebert wrote that his cancer had returned and he was taking "a leave of presence."^[85] "What in the world is a leave of presence? It means I am not going away. My intent is to continue to write selected reviews but to leave the rest to a talented team of writers handpicked and greatly admired by me. What's more, I'll be able at last to do what I’ve always fantasized about doing: reviewing only the movies I want to review." He signed off, "So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I'll see you at the movies."^[86]

Ebert cited Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael as influences, and often quoted Robert Warshow, who said: "A man goes to the movies. A critic must be honest enough to admit he is that man."^[87][88] His own credo was: "Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions never lie to you."^[5] He tried to judge a movie on its style rather than its content, and often said "It's not what a movie is about, it's how it's about what it's about."^[89][90]

He awarded four stars to films of the highest quality, and generally a half star to those of the lowest, unless he considered the film to be "artistically inept and morally repugnant", in which case it received no stars, as with Death Wish II.^[91] He explained that his star ratings had little meaning outside the context of the review:

When you ask a friend if Hellboy is any good, you're not asking if it's any good compared to Mystic River, you're asking if it's any good compared to The Punisher. And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if Superman is four, then Hellboy is three and The Punisher is two. In the same way, if American Beauty gets four stars, then The United States of Leland clocks in at about two.^[92]

Although Ebert rarely wrote outright scathing reviews, he had a reputation for writing memorable ones for the films he really hated, such as North.^[93] Of that film, he wrote "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."^[94] He wrote that Mad Dog Time "is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. Oh, I've seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line" and concluded that the film "should be cut up to provide free ukulele picks for the poor."^[95] Of Caligula, he wrote "It is not good art, it is not good cinema, and it is not good porn" and approvingly quoted the woman in front of him at the drinking fountain, who called it "the worst piece of shit I have ever seen."^[96]

Ebert's reviews were also characterized by "dry wit."^[3] He often wrote in a deadpan style when discussing a movie's flaws; in his review of Jaws: The Revenge, he wrote that Mrs. Brody's "friends pooh-pooh the notion that a shark could identify, follow or even care about one individual human being, but I am willing to grant the point, for the benefit of the plot. I believe that the shark wants revenge against Mrs. Brody. I do. I really do believe it. After all, her husband was one of the men who hunted this shark and killed it, blowing it to bits. And what shark wouldn't want revenge against the survivors of the men who killed it? Here are some things, however, that I do not believe", going on to list the other ways the film strained credulity.^[97] He wrote "Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them."^[98]

Ebert often included personal anecdotes in his reviews; reviewing The Last Picture Show, he recalls his early days as a moviegoer: "For five or six years of my life (the years between when I was old enough to go alone, and when TV came to town) Saturday afternoon at the Princess was a descent into a dark magical cave that smelled of Jujubes, melted Dreamsicles and Crisco in the popcorn machine. It was probably on one of those Saturday afternoons that I formed my first critical opinion, deciding vaguely that there was something about John Wayne that set him apart from ordinary cowboys."^[99] Reviewing Star Wars, he wrote: "Every once in a while I have what I think of as an out-of-the-body experience at a movie. When the ESP people use a phrase like that, they're referring to the sensation of the mind actually leaving the body and spiriting itself off to China or Peoria or a galaxy far, far away. When I use the phrase, I simply mean that my imagination has forgotten it is actually present in a movie theater and thinks it's up there on the screen. In a curious sense, the events in the movie seem real, and I seem to be a part of them...My list of other out-of-the-body films is a short and odd one, ranging from the artistry of Bonnie and Clyde or Cries and Whispers to the slick commercialism of Jaws and the brutal strength of Taxi Driver. On whatever level (sometimes I'm not at all sure) they engage me so immediately and powerfully that I lose my detachment, my analytical reserve. The movie's happening, and it's happening to me."^[100] He sometimes wrote reviews in the forms of stories, poems, songs,^[101] scripts, open letters,^[102][103] or imagined conversations.^[104]

Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, wrote of how Ebert had influenced his writing: "I noticed how much Ebert could put across in a limited space. He didn't waste time clearing his throat. 'They meet for the first time when she is in her front yard practicing baton-twirling,' begins his review of Badlands. Often, he managed to smuggle the basics of the plot into a larger thesis about the movie, so that you don't notice the exposition taking place: 'Broadcast News is as knowledgeable about the TV news-gathering process as any movie ever made, but it also has insights into the more personal matter of how people use high-pressure jobs as a way of avoiding time alone with themselves.' The reviews start off in all different ways, sometimes with personal confessions, sometimes with sweeping statements. One way or another, he pulls you in. When he feels strongly, he can bang his fist in an impressive way. His review of Apocalypse Now ends thus: 'The whole huge grand mystery of the world, so terrible, so beautiful, seems to hang in the balance.'"^[105]

In his introduction to The Great Movies III, he wrote:

People often ask me, "Do you ever change your mind about a movie?" Hardly ever, although I may refine my opinion. Among the films here, I've changed on The Godfather Part II and Blade Runner. My original review of Part II puts me in mind of the "brain cloud" that besets Tom Hanks in Joe Versus the Volcano. I was simply wrong. In the case of Blade Runner, I think the director's cut by Ridley Scott simply plays much better. I also turned around on Groundhog Day, which made it into this book when I belatedly caught on that it wasn't about the weatherman's predicament but about the nature of time and will. Perhaps when I first saw it I allowed myself to be distracted by Bill Murray's mainstream comedy reputation. But someone in film school somewhere is probably even now writing a thesis about how Murray's famous cameos represent an injection of philosophy into those pictures.^[106]

In the first Great Movies, he wrote:

Movies do not change, but their viewers do. When I first saw La Dolce Vita in 1961, I was an adolescent for whom "the sweet life" represented everything I dreamed of: sin, exotic European glamour, the weary romance of the cynical newspaperman. When I saw it again, around 1970, I was living in a version of Marcello's world; Chicago's North Avenue was not the Via Veneto, but at 3 A. M. the denizens were just as colorful, and I was about Marcello's age.

When I saw the movie around 1980, Marcello was the same age, but I was ten years older, had stopped drinking, and saw him not as role model, but as a victim, condemned to an endless search for happiness that could never be found, not that way. By 1991, when I analyzed the film a frame at a time at the University of Colorado, Marcello seemed younger still, and while I had once admired and then criticized him, now I pitied and loved him. And when I saw the movie right after Mastroianni died, I thought that Fellini and Marcello had taken a moment of discovery and made it immortal. There may be no such thing as the sweet life. But it is necessary to find that out for yourself.^[107]

At age 50, Ebert married trial attorney Charlie "Chaz" Hammel-Smith^[228][229] in 1992.^{[11][230][231]} Chaz Ebert became vice president of the Ebert Company and has emceed Ebertfest.^{[232][233][234]} He explained in his memoir, Life Itself, that he did not want to marry before his mother died, as he was afraid of displeasing her.^[235] In a July 2012 blog entry, Ebert wrote about Chaz, "She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed to be heading... She has been with me in sickness and in health, certainly far more sickness than we could have anticipated. I will be with her, strengthened by her example. She continues to make my life possible, and her presence fills me with love and a deep security. That's what a marriage is for. Now I know."^[236]

Ebert was a recovering alcoholic, having quit drinking in 1979. He was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and had written some blog entries on the subject.^[237] Ebert was a longtime friend of Oprah Winfrey, and Winfrey credited him with persuading her to syndicate The Oprah Winfrey Show,^[238] which became the highest-rated talk show in American television history.^[239]

In September 2008, at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, during the premiere of Slumdog Millionaire, Ebert was attacked by New York Post film critic Lou Lumenick, who was sitting in front of him. Ebert was inconvenienced by Lumenick obstructing his line of sight, could not see the subtitles,^[240] and tapped him on the shoulder a few times to get him to move a bit to the side. Lumenick abruptly rose from his seat, shouting "Don't touch me!"; he did this again a few minutes later and then also hit Ebert with a large binder, causing a loud noise that reportedly startled the audience. He then understood that he had yelled at and hit Ebert, but reportedly did not apologize at the time.^[241][242]

In February 2002, Ebert was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer which was successfully removed.^[243] In 2003, he underwent surgery for salivary gland cancer, which was followed up by radiation therapy. He was again diagnosed with cancer in 2006. In June of that year, he had a mandibulectomy to remove cancerous tissue in the right side of his jaw.^[244] A week later he had a life-threatening complication when his carotid artery burst near the surgery site.^[245] He was confined to bed rest and was unable to speak, eat, or drink for a time, necessitating the use of a feeding tube.^[246]

The complications kept Ebert off the air for an extended period. Ebert made his first public appearance since mid-2006 at Ebertfest on April 25, 2007. He was unable to speak, instead communicating through his wife.^[247] He returned to reviewing on May 18, 2007, when three of his reviews were published in print.^[248] In July 2007, he revealed that he was still unable to speak.^[249] Ebert adopted a computerized voice system to communicate, eventually using a copy of his own voice created from his recordings by CereProc.^[250]

In March 2010, his health trials and new computerized voice were featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show.^[251][252] In 2011, Ebert gave a TED talk assisted by his wife, Chaz, and friends Dean Ornish and John Hunter, called "Remaking my voice"^[253] in which, he proposed a test to determine the verisimilitude of a synthesized voice.^[254]

Ebert underwent further surgery in January 2008 to try to restore his voice and address the complications from his previous surgeries.^[255][256] On April 1, Ebert announced his speech had not been restored.^[257] Ebert underwent further surgery in April 2008 after fracturing his hip in a fall.^[258] By 2011, Ebert had a prosthetic chin made to hide some of the damage done by his many surgeries.^[259]

In December 2012, Ebert was hospitalized due to the fractured hip, which was subsequently determined to be the result of cancer.^[260]

Ebert wrote that "what's sad about not eating" was:

The loss of dining, not the loss of food. It may be personal, but for me, unless I'm alone, it doesn't involve dinner if it doesn't involve talking. The food and drink I can do without easily. The jokes, gossip, laughs, arguments and shared memories I miss. Sentences beginning with the words, "Remember that time?" I ran in crowds where anyone was likely to break out in a poetry recitation at any time. Me too. But not me anymore. So yes, it's sad. Maybe that's why I enjoy this blog. You don't realize it, but we're at dinner right now.^[246]

A supporter of the Democratic Party,^[261] he wrote of how his Catholic schooling led him to his politics: "Through a mental process that has by now become almost instinctive, those nuns guided me into supporting universal health care, the rightness of labor unions, fair taxation, prudence in warfare, kindness in peacetime, help for the hungry and homeless, and equal opportunity for the races and genders. It continues to surprise me that many who consider themselves religious seem to tilt away from me."^[262]

Ebert was critical of political correctness, "a rigid feeling that you have to keep your ideas and your ways of looking at things within very narrow boundaries, or you'll offend someone. Certainly one of the purposes of journalism is to challenge that kind of thinking. And certainly one of the purposes of criticism is to break boundaries. It's also one of the purposes of art."^[263] He lamented that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn "has regrettably been under fire in recent years from myopic advocates of Political Correctness, who do not have a bone of irony (or humor) in their bodies, and cannot tell the difference between what is said or done in the novel, and what Twain means by it."^[264] Ebert defended the cast and crew of Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow (2002) during a Sundance Film Festival screening when a white member of the audience asked “Why, with the talent yup there and yourself, make a film so empty and amoral for Asian Americans and for Americans?” Ebert responded that "What I find very offensive and condescending about your statement is nobody would say to a bunch of white filmmakers, ‘How could you do this to 'your people'?...Asian-American characters have the right to be whoever the hell they want to be. They do not have to represent 'their people'!"^{[265][266][267]} He was a supporter of the film after the incident at Sundance.

Ebert opposed the Iraq War, writing: "Am I against the war? Of course. Do I support our troops? Of course. They were sent to endanger their lives by zealots with occult objectives."^[268] He endorsed Barack Obama for re-election in 2012, citing the Affordable Care Act as one important reason for his support of Obama.^[269] He was concerned about income inequality, writing: "I have no objection to financial success. I've had a lot of it myself. All of my income came from paychecks from jobs I held and books I published. I have the quaint idea that wealth should be obtained by legal and conventional means–by working, in other words–and not through the manipulation of financial scams. You're familiar with the ways bad mortgages were urged upon people who couldn't afford them, by banks who didn't care that the loans were bad. The banks made the loans and turned a profit by selling them to investors while at the same time betting against them on their own account. While Wall Street was knowingly trading the worthless paper that led to the financial collapse of 2008, executives were being paid huge bonuses."^[270] He voiced tentative support for the Occupy Wall Street movement: "I believe the Occupiers are opposed to the lawless and destructive greed in the financial industry, and the unhealthy spread in this country between the rich and the rest." Referring to the subprime mortgage crisis, he wrote: "I have also felt despair at the way financial instruments were created and manipulated to deliberately defraud the ordinary people in this country. At how home buyers were peddled mortgages they couldn't afford, and civilian investors were sold worthless 'securities' based on those bad mortgages. Wall Street felt no shame in backing paper that was intended to fail, and selling it to customers who trusted them. This is clear and documented. It is theft and fraud on a staggering scale."^[271] He was also sympathetic to Ron Paul, noting that he "speaks directly and clearly without a lot of hot air and lip flap".^[272] In a review of the 2008 documentary I.O.U.S.A., he credited Paul with being "a lonely voice talking about the debt", proposing based on the film that the US government was "already broke".^[273] He opposed the war on drugs^[274] and capital punishment.^[275]

Laura Emerick, his Sun Times editor, recalled: “His union sympathies began at an early age. His father, Walter, worked as an electrician, and Roger remained a member of the Newspaper Guild throughout his career — though after he became an independent contractor, he probably could have opted out. He famously stood with the Guild in 2004, when he wrote to then publisher John Cruickshank that ‘it would be with a heavy heart that I would go on strike against my beloved Sun-Times, but strike I will if a strike is called.'”^[276] He lamented that "Most Americans don't understand the First Amendment, don't understand the idea of freedom of speech, and don't understand that it's the responsibility of the citizen to speak out." Regarding his own freedom of speech, he said: "I write op-ed columns for the Chicago Sun-Times, and people send me e-mails saying, 'You're a movie critic. You don't know anything about politics.' Well, you know what, I'm 60 years old, and I've been interested in politics since I was on my daddy's knee.... I know a lot about politics."^[277]

Ebert was critical of intelligent design,^[278][279] and stated that people who believe in either creationism or New Age beliefs such as crystal healing or astrology should not be president.^[280] He wrote that in Catholic school he learned of the "Theory of Evolution, which in its elegance and blinding obviousness became one of the pillars of my reasoning, explaining so many things in so many ways. It was an introduction not only to logic but to symbolism, thus opening a window into poetry, literature and the arts in general. All my life I have deplored those who interpret something only on its most simplistic level."^[262]

Ebert described himself as an agnostic on at least one occasion,^[11] but at other times explicitly rejected that designation; biographer Matt Singer wrote that Ebert opposed any categorization of his beliefs.^[281] In 2009, Ebert wrote that he did not "want [his] convictions reduced to a word," and stated, "I have never said, although readers have freely informed me I am an atheist, an agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist – which I am."^[282] He wrote: "I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am still awake at night, asking how?^[a] I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer."^[282] He writes: "I was asked at lunch today who or what I worshiped. The question was asked sincerely, and in the same spirit I responded that I worshiped whatever there might be outside knowledge. I worship the void. The mystery. And the ability of our human minds to perceive an unanswerable mystery. To reduce such a thing to simplistic names is an insult to it, and to our intelligence."^[283]

He wrote of his Catholic upbringing: "I believed in the basic Church teachings because I thought they were correct, not because God wanted me to. In my mind, in the way I interpret them, I still live by them today. Not by the rules and regulations, but by the principles. For example, in the matter of abortion, I am pro-choice, but my personal choice would be to have nothing to do with an abortion, certainly not of a child of my own. I believe in free will, and believe I have no right to tell anyone else what to do. Above all, the state does not." He later wrote: "My choice is to not support abortion, except in cases of a clear-cut choice between the lives of the mother and child. A child conceived through incest or rape is innocent and deserves the right to be born."^[284]

He wrote: "I drank for many years in a tavern that had a photograph of Brendan Behan on the wall, and under it is this quotation, which I memorized: 'I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything concerned with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and the old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.' For 57 words, that does a pretty good job of summing it up."^[285] Summarizing his beliefs, Ebert wrote:

I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.^[285]

He wrote: "I correspond with a dear friend, the wise and gentle Australian director Paul Cox. Our subject sometimes turns to death. In 2010 he came very close to dying before receiving a liver transplant. In 1988 he made a documentary named Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh. Paul wrote that in his Arles days, van Gogh called himself 'a simple worshiper of the external Buddha.' Paul told me that in those days, Vincent wrote:

Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map.

Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?

Just as we take a train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. We cannot get to a star any more when we are alive than we can take the train when we are dead. So to me it seems possible that cholera, tuberculosis and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion. Just as steamboats, buses and railways are the terrestrial means.

To die simply of old age would be to go there on foot.

That is a lovely thing to read, and a relief to find I will probably take the celestial locomotive. Or, as the little dog, Milou, says whenever Tintin proposes a journey, 'Not by foot, I hope!'"^[286]

On April 4, 2013, Ebert died at age 70 at a hospital in Chicago, shortly before he was set to return to his home and enter hospice care.^{[3][287][288][289]}

President Barack Obama wrote, "For a generation of Americans — and especially Chicagoans — Roger was the movies... [he could capture] the unique power of the movies to take us somewhere magical. ... The movies won't be the same without Roger."^[290] Martin Scorsese released a statement saying, "The death of Roger Ebert is an incalculable loss for movie culture and for film criticism. And it's a loss for me personally... there was a professional distance between us, but then I could talk to him much more freely than I could to other critics. Really, Roger was my friend. It's that simple."^[291]

Steven Spielberg stated that Ebert's "reviews went far deeper than simply thumbs up or thumbs down. He wrote with passion through a real knowledge of film and film history, and in doing so, helped many movies find their audiences... [He] put television criticism on the map."^[292] Numerous celebrities paid tribute including Christopher Nolan, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Jason Reitman, Ron Howard, Darren Aronofsky, Larry King, Cameron Crowe, Werner Herzog, Howard Stern, Steve Carell, Stephen Fry, Diablo Cody, Anna Kendrick, Jimmy Kimmel, and Patton Oswalt.^[293]

Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune recalled that "I came late to film criticism in Chicago, after writing about the theater. Roger loved the theater. His was a theatrical personality: a raconteur, a spinner of dinner-table stories, a man who was not shy about his accomplishments. But he made room in that theatrical, improbable, outsized life for others."^[294] Andrew O'Hehir of Salon wrote that "He's up there with Will Rogers, H. L. Mencken, A. J. Liebling and not too far short of Mark Twain as one of the great plainspoken commentators on American life."^[295]

Peter Debruge wrote "Ebert's negative reviews were invariably his most entertaining, and yet, he never insulted those who found something to admire in lesser films. Instead, he hoped to enlighten readers, challenging them to think, while whetting their appetite for stronger work ... It's a testament to Ebert's gift that, after a life spent writing about film, he made us love the movies all the more. ...I’ve always suspected the reason he settled into this profession is that film reviews, as he wrote them, served as a Trojan horse for the delivery of bigger philosophical ideas, of which he had an inexhaustible supply to share."^[73]

The Onion paid tribute to Ebert: "Calling the overall human existence 'poignant,' 'thought-provoking,' and 'a complete tour de force,' film critic Roger Ebert praised existence as 'an audacious and thrilling triumph.'...'At times brutally sad, yet surprisingly funny, and always completely honest, I wholeheartedly recommend existence. If you haven't experienced it yet, what are you waiting for? It is not to be missed.' Ebert later said that while human existence's running time was 'a little on the long side' it could have gone on much, much longer and he would have been perfectly happy."^[296]

Hundreds of people attended the funeral Mass held at Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral on April 8, 2013, where Ebert was celebrated as a film critic, newspaperman, advocate for social justice, and husband. Father Michael Pfleger concluded the service with "the balconies of heaven are filled with angels singing 'Thumbs Up' ".^[297] Reverend John F. Costello of Loyola University delivered a homily for Ebert.^[298] After the funeral service, he was buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois^[299]

A documentary adaptation of Life Itself (2014), directed by Steve James, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.^[300][301] The film was executive produced by Martin Scorsese and includes interviews with Scorsese, Ava DuVernay, Werner Herzog, Errol Morris and numerous critics. The film received critical acclaim and received numerous accolades including a Emmy Award, Producers Guild of America Award and Critics' Choice Movie Award.

A nearly-three-hour public tribute, entitled Roger Ebert: A Celebration of Life, was held on April 11, 2013, at the Chicago Theatre. It featured in-person remembrances, video testimonials, video and film clips, and gospel choirs, and was, according to the Chicago Tribune's Mark Caro, "a laughter- and sorrow-filled send-off from the entertainment and media worlds."^[302]

In September 2013, organizers in Champaign, Illinois, announced plans to raise $125,000 to build a life-size bronze statue of Roger Ebert in the town, which was unveiled in front of the Virginia Theatre at Ebertfest on April 24, 2014.^[303] The composition was selected by his widow, Chaz Ebert, and depicts Ebert sitting in the middle of three theater seats giving a "thumbs up."^[304][305]

The 2013 Toronto International Film Festival opened with a video tribute of Ebert at Roy Thomson Hall during the world premiere of the WikiLeaks-based film The Fifth Estate. Ebert had been an avid supporter of the festival since its inception in the 1970s.^[306] Chaz was in attendance to accept a plaque on Roger's behalf.^[307] At the same festival, Errol Morris dedicated his film The Unknown Known to Ebert, saying "He was a really fabulous part of my life, a good friend, a champion, an inspiring writer. I loved Roger."^[308]

In August 2013, the Plaza Classic Film Festival in El Paso, Texas, paid homage to Ebert by screening seven films that played a role in his life: Citizen Kane, The Third Man, Tokyo Story, La Dolce Vita, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Fitzcarraldo and Goodfellas.^[309]

At the 86th Academy Awards ceremony, Ebert was included in the in memoriam montage, a rare honor for a film critic.^[310][311]

In 2014, the documentary Life Itself was released. Director Steve James, whose films had been widely advocated by Ebert, started making the documentary while Ebert was still alive. Martin Scorsese served as an executive producer. The film studies Ebert's life and career, while also filming Ebert during his final months, and includes interviews with his family and friends. It was universally praised by critics. It has a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[312]

Werner Herzog told Entertainment Weekly that Ebert was "a soldier of the cinema": "I always loved Roger for being the good soldier, not only the good soldier of cinema, but he was a wounded soldier who for years in his affliction held out and plowed on and soldiered on and held the outpost that was given up by almost everyone: The monumental shift now is that intelligent, deep discourse about cinema has been something that has been vanishing over the last maybe two decades...I've always tried to be a good soldier of cinema myself, so of course since he's gone, I will plow on, as I have plowed on all my life, but I will do what I have to do as if Roger was looking over my shoulder. And I am not gonna disappoint him."^[313]

Ebert was inducted as a laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois. In 2001, the governor of Illinois awarded him the state's highest honor, the Order of Lincoln, in the area of performing arts.^[314] In 2016, Ebert was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.^[315]

The website RogerEbert.com contains an archive of every review Ebert wrote, as well as many essays and opinion pieces. The site, operated by Ebert Digital (a partnership between Chaz and friend Josh Golden), continues to publish new material written by a group of critics who were selected by Ebert before his death.^[316]

In November of 2025, the Chicago Cultural Center scheduled a series of events to mark the 50th anniversary of the "Siskel & Ebert" show.^[317]

Ebert received many awards during his long and distinguished career as a film critic and television host. He was the first film critic to ever win a Pulitzer Prize, receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1975 while working for the Chicago Sun-Times, "for his film criticism during 1974".^[318][319]

In 2003, Ebert was honored by the American Society of Cinematographers, winning a Special Achievement Award. In 2005, Ebert became the first film critic to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for his work on television. His star is located at 6834 Hollywood Boulevard.^[320][43] That same year, he was honored with a sidewalk plaque at the Chicago Theatre on the city-decreed "Roger Ebert Day".^[321] In 2009, Ebert received the Directors Guild of America Award's for Honorary Life Member Award.^[322] In 2010, Ebert received the Webby Award for Person of the Year.^[323]

In 2007, Ebert was honored by the Gotham Awards receiving a tribute and award for his lifetime contributions to independent film.^[324]

On January 31, 2009, Ebert was made an honorary life member of the Directors Guild of America.^[325],On May 15, 2009, Ebert was honored by the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival by the renaming of its conference room, "The Roger Ebert Conference Center." Martin Scorsese joined Ebert and his wife Chaz at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.^[326] On May 4, 2010, Ebert was announced by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences as the Webby Person of the Year, having found a voice on the Internet following his battle with cancer.^[327]

Honors

• 1975 – Pulitzer Prize for Criticism
• 1995 – Publicists Guild of America Press Award
• 2003 – American Society of Cinematographers's Special Achievement Award
• 2004 – Savannah Film Festival's Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2007 – Gotham Award's Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2009 – Directors Guild of America Award' Honorary Life Member Award
• 2010 – Webby Award for Person of the Year

Each year from 1986 to 1998, Ebert published Roger Ebert's Movie Home Companion (retitled Roger Ebert's Video Companion for its last five installments), which collected all of his movie reviews to that point. From 1999 to 2013 (except in 2008), Ebert instead published Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook, a collection of all of his movie reviews from the previous two and a half years (for example, the 2011 edition, ISBN 978-0-7407-9769-9, covers January 2008 – July 2010.) Both series also included yearly essays, interviews, and other writings. He also wrote the following books:

• An Illini Century: One Hundred Years of Campus Life (1967) – a history of the first 100 years of the University of Illinois. (no ISBN)
• A Kiss Is Still a Kiss (1984) (ISBN 0-8362-7957-3)
• The Perfect London Walk (1986), with Daniel Curley – a tour of London, Ebert's favorite foreign city. (ISBN 0-8362-7929-8)
• Two Weeks In Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook (1987) – coverage of the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, which was also the 40th anniversary of the festival, plus comments about the previous 12 festivals Ebert had attended. Interviews with John Malkovich, Barbara Hershey, and Isabella Rossellini. (ISBN 0-8362-7942-5)
• The Future of The Movies (1991), with Gene Siskel – collected interviews with Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas about the future of motion pictures and film preservation. It is the only book co-authored by Siskel and Ebert. (ISBN 978-0-8362-6216-2)
• Behind the Phantom's Mask (1993) – Ebert's only work of fiction, which is about an on-stage murder and the resulting attention put on a previously unknown actor. (ISBN 0-8362-8021-0)
• Ebert's Little Movie Glossary (1994) – a book of movie clichés. (ISBN 0-8362-8071-7)
• Roger Ebert's Book of Film (1996) – a Norton Anthology of a century of writing about the movies. (ISBN 0-393-04000-3)
• Questions for the Movie Answer Man (1997) – his responses to questions sent from his readers. (ISBN 0-8362-2894-4)
• Ebert's Bigger Little Movie Glossary (1999) – a "greatly expanded" book of movie clichés. (ISBN 0-8362-8289-2)
• I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie (2000) – a collection of reviews of films that received two stars or fewer, dating to the beginning of his Sun-Times career. (The title comes from his zero-star review of the 1994 film North.) (ISBN 0-7407-0672-1)
• The Great Movies (2002), The Great Movies II (2005), The Great Movies III (2010) and The Great Movies IV (2016) – four books of essays about great films. (ISBN 0-7679-1038-9, ISBN 0-7679-1950-5, ISBN 978-0-226-18208-7), and ISBN 978-0-226-40398-4
• Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert (2006) – a collection of essays from his 40 years as a film critic, featuring interviews, profiles, essays, his initial reviews upon a film's release, as well as critical exchanges between the film critics Richard Corliss and Andrew Sarris.
• Your Movie Sucks (2007) – a collection of fewer-than-two-star reviews, for movies released between 2000 and 2006. (The title comes from his zero-star review of the 2005 film Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.) (ISBN 0-7407-6366-0)
• Roger Ebert's Four-Star Reviews 1967–2007 (2007) (ISBN 0-7407-7179-5)
• Scorsese by Ebert (2008) – covers works by director Martin Scorsese from 1967 to 2008, plus 11 interviews with the director over that period. (ISBN 978-0-226-18202-5)
• The Pot and How to Use It: The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker (2010) (ISBN 0-7407-9142-7)^[328]
• Life Itself: A Memoir. (2011) New York: Grand Central Publishing. (ISBN 0-446-58497-5)
• A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length (2012) – a third book of fewer-than-two-star reviews, for movies released in 2006 and onward. (The title comes from his one-star review of the 2009 film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.) (ISBN 1-4494-1025-1)

• Ebert test