Roger Ebert: Goodbye and Thank You.

Yesterday, the movie world lost a revealing light in its vista and I lost an inspiration.  Roger Ebert finally lost his battle with cancer that claimed his voice and later his life, but never his spirit.

I first really began to follow him in the mid-1980s.  Before him, movies were predominately those boring long TV shows that ran constantly on the syndication TV stations I watched like WKBD in Detroit that too often seemed to have nothing to do with me except for newer films like Star Wars and Superman. The fact that I lived for years in the country and small communities like Strathroy and Comber, miles from any cinema, made the whole concept terribly remote to me.

However, after getting a preliminary taste with PBS' post-Siskel and Ebert Sneak Previews with  Jeffrey Lyons and Michael Medved, I discovered the real thing when Detroit's WXYZ ran Siskel and Ebert's commercial show on early Sunday evenings at 6:30 pm.  It was like the clouds of muddled perceptions about film had parted from my eyes and the pair showed me what I should have enjoyed from the beginning.

Roger Ebert espoused his love of cinema in ways I could understand as a teenager and broadened my horizons to introduce me to a world of art that was far beyond anything I could have dreamed.  I especially loved his special topic shows like his attack on film colorization as explained in the attached video here. With clips selection as the truest of cineophiles could do, Ebert showed a whole new perspective about film that transcended my superficial kid notions into a deeper appreciation I never thought I could have. Just understanding the silvery beauty of Casablanca's black and white cinematography, and the larger art of it, is a gift I will always treasure from Roger.

I dare say that he raised my tastes and allowed me to stretch out and enjoy film in ways I never dreamed possible without his influence. I still remember a Saturday night in 1988 in Goderich when I was home alone, bored with nothing on TV, but knowing that the drama film, The Accused, was at the Park Theatre. Roger's opinion was not directly on my mind at that time, but surely he was the reason why I ran all the way to the box office and see it and deeply enjoy the deeper philosophical issues behind it.  However, I do know that Roger's review, at least indirectly, did finally push me to see The Nasty Girl, my first subtitled foreign language film in 1990 at The Bookshelf Cinema in Guelph and a wider cinematic world opened up for me.

Since then, I came to love cinema and Roger Ebert's writing played a lot in building that passion. His insights, his knowledge and his long rich career inspired me to review performing art myself, whether it's on the stage or on the screen in London.  Although I have drifted more to consulting Rotten Tomatoes' general scoring for my moviegoing choices and reading the reviews themselves later, the film experience I love is became so much more with Ebert's help. The fact that he even took the time to answer the occasion question I wrote to him was a magical thing in of himself.

While I didn't agree with all Roger's reviews such as with Pixar's Cars 2 which he liked and I loathed as Pixar's betrayal of its artistic integrity or his relatively lukewarm review of How to Train Your Dragon, which I regard as one of the greatest animated features of all time, his opinions were something always to consult and value.

Now, I restart this blog to express my own thoughts about film and I just wanted to have this one last thought for my journalistic hero:

Thank you Roger, you guided me into seeing a powerful art in all its glory and embarrassments.  I go to my art house cinema, The Hyland whenever I can as well as the multiplexs and enjoy the movies, an art you helped me understand and love a little like you did. There will never be a writer and a critic like you and I hope I can achieve one tenth of the insights you had.  See you at the movies in spirit while I sit in that darkened room, and hope I can be something of what you became for us all.