( light jazz music playing )
Roger Ebert: We all are born
with a certain package.
We are who we are.
Where we were born, who we were born as,
how we were raised.
We're kind of stuck inside that person,
and the purpose of civilization and growth,
is to be able to reach out
and empathize a little bit with other people.
And for me, the movies are like a machine
that generates empathy.
It lets you understand a little bit more
about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears.
It helps us to identify with the people
who are sharing this journey with us.
( slow jazz theme playing )
Steve James: Exactly five months before his death,
Roger and Chaz and I met to plan
the beginning of an ambitious schedule of filming,
including interviews and critic screenings.
Roger mentioned in passing that his hip was sore.
The very next day he entered the hospital.
Computerized male voice: So now I got a hairline
fracture to the femur bone.
I didn't fall and have no idea how it happened.
It's bloody painful.
This is my seventh time at rehab.
This table is weird.
I type much, much better at home in my usual chair.
Show Steve the new chair.
It reclines.
He will see more of it.
( laughter )
James: So Roger, did you not pay your insurance premiums,
and so you didn't get the chair till now?
( light laughter )
Computerized voice: Steve, I'll do the jokes here.
( laughs )
This is Flora.
Also, this is Sonya Evans, my stepdaughter.
I do what they tell me to do.
Sonya: You wanna rest a little bit, or work a little bit?
Steve is the director.
I'm just gonna to sit down.
( laughter )
James: Although Roger has supported my films over the years,
this film was the first chance to really get to know him.
Computerized voice: Steve, shoot yourself in the mirror.
- ( laughter ) - Sonya: There he is.
Sonya: Hi, Carol.
I'm Carol, I'm Roger's assistant
for over 20 years, Roger and Chaz.
Carol: And Zero Dark something
is winning all the awards, Roger.
It won another big award.
And the Bears lost.
"My daily..."
what... "briefing."
( laughs )
Carol: Okay, Roger.
And then Mayor Daley's, you know, nephew
went to court today.
Remember, for the Koschman thing
that the Sun-Times really uncovered...
Roger Ebert: I always worked on newspapers.
There was a persistent need,
not only to write, but to publish.
In grade school, I wrote and published
the Washington Street News,
which I solemnly delivered to neighbors,
in Urbana, Illinois, as if it existed independently of me.
At the News Gazette, a line-o-type operator
set my by-line in lead: "By Roger Ebert."
I was electrified.
When I went home with it, you could take a stamp pad,
you could put your by-line on everything.
My parents finally had to take it away from me.
Everything was by Roger Ebert.
And I went to work full-time
for the local newspaper when I was 15,
first as a sports writer,
general assignment, working late,
being there with the newspapermen back in the '50s.
It was unspeakably romantic.
I can write, I just always could.
On the other hand, I flunked French five times.
In the spring of 1960,
I announced I wanted to go to Harvard,
like Jack Kennedy and Thomas Wolfe.
"Boy, there's no money to send you to Harvard," Daddy said.
Male announcer: The Urbana Champaign campus of the University of Illinois:
to provide knowledge for a better tomorrow.
Roger: I would go to my hometown university.
I wouldn't be an electrician like my father.
Bill Nack: He told me one day his father said to him,
"Roger, there's professors over there,
that's what you wanna do some day.
You wanna sit there with a pipe,
and a cardigan sweater with your feet up on the desk."
I think his father recognized early on that Roger had a gift.
I joined "The Daily Illini," and I ran into him then.
Roger: During my years at Illinois,
I spent more time working
on "The Daily Illini" than studying.
It was in every sense a real newspaper,
published five days a week,
on a an ancient Goss rotary press
that made the building tremble.
As editor, I was a case study:
tactless, egotistical, merciless, and a showboat.
Nack: And he was.
But it worked because he could back it up.
It was intimidating to the members of the staff
because he was like, uh, a mature writer at that time.
Now here, when those four children were killed
in the church bombing in Birmingham,
there was a huge protest around the country.
Male news reporter: Four hundred students gathered on the university quadrangle
to protest the bombing of an Alabama Sunday School.
Nack: And Roger was the voice of outrage on this campus.
He started off his column by quoting
Dr. Martin Luther King, who said, to George Wallace,
"The blood of these innocent children is on your hands."
That ended the quote.
Then Roger began his column by saying,
"That is not entirely the truth.
The blood is on so many hands
that history will weep in the telling.
And it is not new blood.
It is old, very old.
And as Lady Macbeth discovered,
it will not ever wash away."
That began a column written by a 21-year-old guy,
and he said it better than anybody said it all week.
Roger was editor on November 22nd, 1963,
when John F. Kennedy was shot.
At around two o'clock in the morning,
the presses rolled,
gigantic presses, two stories high,
chug and chug,
and Ebert was doing what editors do
at the end of the day: check out the pages.
And he opens it up and there's a picture of John F. Kennedy,
and an ad of a pilgrim with a musket
pointed at Kennedy's head.
Ebert said, "We gotta switch this."
The pressman said like, "Hear that sound, Roger?
That's the sound of newspapers being printed."
Unlike in movies, you didn't stop the presses.
And Ebert said, "We-we-we're not gonna print that tomorrow.
We gotta stop the presses."
Ebert became famous to us for that,
because, you know, here was a kid
taking control of an adult situation
and making a news judgment, an important one.
Roger: Chicago was the great city over the horizon.
We read Chicago's newspapers
and listened to its powerful AM radio stations.
Jack Egan: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,
it's midnight here in Chicago.
Roger: Long after midnight,
I listened to Jack Egan broadcasting live.
Egan: ...Chez Lounge and the world famous Chez Paree.
Roger: Chatting with Martin and Lewis, or Rosemary Clooney.
I'd been accepted as a PhD candidate in English
by the University of Chicago, but I needed a job.
I got a part time job at the Sun-Times,
and then five months later,
the film critic retired and they gave me the job.
I did not apply for it.
Newspaper film critics had been interchangeable.
Uh, some papers had by-lines
that different people wrote under.
For example, the Tribune had Mae Tinee,
and that could be who ever went to the movies that day.
Because Mae Tinee really spelled out "matinee."
I was at that time the youngest daily film critic in America.
And it was a real good time to be a movie critic.
Armed robbery.
( Roger speaking )
Bet you wouldn't have the gumption to use it.
( Roger speaking )
Now, come here.
It is also with pitilessly cruel,
filled with sympathy,
nauseating, funny, heartbreaking.
- Hey! What's your name, anyhow? - Clyde Barrow.
- And astonishingly beautiful. - Hi, I'm Bonnie Parker.
Pleased to meet you.
Roger: The fact that the story
is set 35 years ago doesn't mean a thing.
It had to be set sometime, but it was made now.
And it's about us.
Roger was the most facile writer I ever came across.
Anybody that has ever seen him work.
He could, he could knock out
a full thought out movie review in 30 minutes.
Fast and furious.
Rick Kogan: There were so many reporters that formed
easy quick friendships because they were smart,
they were good writers, they were literate,
and they could tell a good story in a saloon.
Roger: O'Rourke's was our stage,
and we displayed our personas there nightly.
It was a shabby street corner tavern
on a dicey stretch of North Avenue,
a block after Chicago's Old Town
stopped being a tourist haven.
When a roomer who lived upstairs died,
his body was discovered when maggots
started to drop through the ceiling.
For many years, I drank there
more or less every night when I was in town.
So did a lot of people.
McHugh: We all sat at the same place.
The newspaper guys here,
the druggies in the middle,
the surly staff at the very end of the bar.
Roger has always been attracted to weird types.
I mean, you should see some of the women
that he's hauled in to O'Rourke's over the years.
Bruce Elliot: Back in the old days,
Roger had, probably the worst taste in women
of any man I've ever known.
They were either gold diggers,
opportunists, or psychos.
Yeah, I met Roger one time with a woman
that looked like a young Linda Ronstadt,
and when she was gone from the table briefly,
I said, "Who is that?"
And he said, "She's a hired lady."
And I said, "A hooker?"
( laughs )
And he said, "Now you take care of her when I leave."
And he left town. And anyway...
McHugh: Roger, he used to hang
from the lamppost at the end of the bar.
When he got going,
Roger was one of the finest storytellers
that I have ever come across.
He would hold court,
and it's not like everyone was invited to join in
and have a colloquy with him.
Since he bought drinks for everybody
when he had the money, who's not to listen?
Simon: His great friend was John McHugh.
And I remember a famous argument
over who was the more cosmopolitan of the two.
And Ebert was saying, "John, I travel the world.
I go to every country in Europe.
I go to Cannes.
I'm a cosmopolitan person."
John said, "Ebert, you don't even speak a foreign language,"
And Ebert said, "I speak enough to be able
to order two Johnny Walker Blacks anywhere in the world."
Any sober human being looking at the two of them
would've decided neither was actually a cosmopolitan figure.
Roger: I discovered there was nothing like drinking
with a crowd to make you a member.
I copied the idealism and cynicism of the reporters.
I spoke like they did.
Laughed at the same things.
Felt that I belonged.
Elliot: Studs wasn't a Chicagoan.
Nelson Algren wasn't born here.
Saul Bellow wasn't born here.
But there's a certain kind of Chicago character
that Roger really came to believe that he was.
♪ Whoa, stayin' out all night long... ♪
Roger was not just the chief character
and star of the movie that was his life.
He was also the director, and he brought in the cast,
and the scenario, and he orchestrated it.
Elliot: He loved it!
Those characters, what they did.
John the garbage man. Hank the communist.
Remember the night that Jim Touley
punched J. Robert Nash,
knocked him down to the bar room floor,
and Nash looked up and he said, "Nice punch, Jimmy!"
♪ You don't have to work... ♪
Simon: When O'Rourke's closed he would get around to the Ale House,
'cause that was a four o'clock bar.
♪ Treatin' me right...♪
The mood got rougher and rougher
as people got drunker and drunker.
Elliot: Roger was good at dishing,
but he also could take it.
"I'm a fat guy, I'm gonna have to learn
how to take fat stuff."
Roger could hold his own with all of them.
James: Everybody kind of says that
deep down he's a nice guy.
He is a nice guy, but he's not that nice.
He's not that nice.
Elliot: The last week he was drinking,
I even realized that there was a serious problem going on.
Watching him when he pulled out that night
in front of O'Rourke's, and almost, you know,
ran into the North Avenue bus.
I remember being in the drug store
that was on the corner there one morning,
and Roger came in, and he looked like absolute hell.
And I'm like, "Are you okay?
What's the matter? what's the matter?"
"I'm on a bender.
Can you come have a drink with me?"
He said to me one time,
and I don't think he'll regard this as a betrayal,
that he would walk home late at night,
after O'Rourke's had closed,
and he would wish he was dead.
Roger: I found it almost impossible,
once I started, to stop after one or two.
I'd paid a price in hangovers.
Without hangovers, it's possible
that I would still be drinking.
I would also be unemployed, unmarried, and probably dead.
In August 1979, I took my last drink.
It was about four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon.
The hot sun streaming through the windows.
I put a glass of scotch and soda
down on the living room table,
went to bed, and pulled the blankets over my head.
I couldn't take it anymore.
McHugh: He says, "I quit."
And then I realized it's time for me to quit too.
The next time I saw Roger Ebert, he was in AA.
I was drinking very heavily.
Roger: When I decided to out myself
as a recovering alcoholic,
I hadn't taken a drink for 31 years.
And since my first AA meeting I attended,
I've never wanted to.
Since surgery in July of 2006,
I haven't been able to drink at all, or eat or speak.
Unless I go insane
and start pouring booze into my g-tube,
I believe I'm reasonably safe.
( air whirring )
Nurse: That's it.
James: By the time I got home from this shoot,
there was an email waiting for me.
Did we get it?
I hope so, too.
Roger: When I mentioned in my blog
that I could no longer eat, drink, or speak,
a reader wrote, "Do you miss it?"
Not so much, really.
I lived in a world of words long before I was aware of it.
The new reality took shape slowly.
My blog became my voice, my outlet.
It let loose the flood of memories.
They came pouring forth in a flood of relief.
One day in the spring of 1967,
I noticed "Faster, Pussycat Kill Kill!"
playing at the Biograph on Lincoln Avenue.
♪ Pussycat, she's livin' reckless ♪
♪ Pussycat, she's riding high ♪
♪ If you think that you can tame her ♪
♪ Well, just you try... ♪
Roger: The posters displayed improbably buxom women,
and I was inside in a flash.
That was when it first registered
that there was a filmmaker named Russ Meyer.
( orchestral flourish )
In 1969, the 20th Century Fox studio invited Meyer
to the lot for an interview.
They owned the rights to the title
"Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"
and offered him the title unattached to any story.
Meyer offered me the screenwriting job,
and I fell into a delirious adventure.
Donna LaPietra: The most impossible question for me to answer is,
"How on earth did Roger Ebert write
'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls'"?
( ominous theme music playing )
Or be interested in writing such a script?
Or be involved with Russ Meyer?
( screaming )
I have no answer.
James: What did he love about Russ' films do you think?
Boobs.
The fact that there were large breasted women involved
probably was a plus.
You know, we can talk a lot about the art of cinema,
and what we find in it,
and the sort of the magic
and the dreams and the glory of it,
but there are also other kind of earthlier appeals.
You wanna make love?
Then let's make love.
Here?
- Woman: No, in L.A. - Man: L.A.?
- Woman: Where is that? - Man: We'd get crushed.
Roger: Meyer wanted everything in the screenplay
except the kitchen sink. The movie, he explained,
would simultaneously be a satire,
a serious melodrama,
a rock musical, a comedy,
a violent exploitation picture,
a skin flick and a moralistic expose
of the oft-times nightmarish world of show business.
- Man: It's a no talent town. - Woman: Don't put it down.
I had to review for the Chicago Sun-Times,
and I think I gave it three stars,
'cause Roger was my friend.
And somewhere deep in the piece said,
"This is a new rating system... ten stars,
so this gets three out of ten."
This is my happening and it freaks me out!
Richard Corliss: I reviewed the film in National Review.
And listed it as one of the 10 great films of the 1960s.
It was funny, it had a pulse that raced past
Howard Hawk's film from the '40s.
But with the wild who-gives-a-shit air,
it was perfect for the late '60s.
You're a groovy boy.
I'd like to strap you on sometime.
Beyond the valley.
It's beyond it.
You know, this is a title,
because you're gonna go beyond it.
It went over my head.
That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it.
I did like her having sex in the Bentley.
( tires screech )
- It's my first time in a Rolls. - ( woman shrieks in pleasure )
Because the way he cut to the grill.
There's nothing like a Rolls.
Not even a Bentley.
Bentley! Rolls!
A Rolls.
A Rolls!
Um, but I did like that editing in the Bentley.
I don't really have any new confessions.
It is true that the first 10 years
I came to the conference,
I came primarily hoping to get laid.
( audience laughs )
That didn't work out.
Roger: I lived more than nine months of my life
in Boulder, Colorado one week at a time.
It all happened at the sleep-inducingly named,
"Conference on World Affairs."
Nack: It's a conference that comes together
once a year at Boulder.
Astrophysicists, sociologists, experts of the Middle East.
Free wheeling
and engaging.
Roger was an absolute star.
He was the longest running panelist in history of the CWA.
Roger: I was in my 20s when I first came to the conference.
There, I was on a panel about the establishment
with Henry Fairly, who coined the term.
I discussed masturbation
with the Greek Ambassador to the United Nations.
There I asked Ted Turner
how he got so much right and colorization wrong.
He would hold what was called Cinema Interruptus.
On Monday of World Affairs week, Roger would show a film.
Tuesday through Friday he would conduct
a shot by shot discussion of the film.
Corliss: To listen to Roger talk for upwards of five hours
about "In Cold Blood," or "The Third Man,"
or "Vertigo," or "Citizen Kane,"
he was enlightening with every new frame.
It was a theatrical experience of the highest order.
( film projector starts whirring )
Movshovitz: And anybody who wanted to, at any moment,
could yell out, "Stop,"
to ask a question or make a statement.
Stop!
Look at that.
Every year we find something absolutely amazing,
totally amazing in the films.
It's not there, but we find it.
( audience laughs )
There was a limit to Roger's democratizing of film criticism.
A student asked, "Who do you think you are
that you get to have all of these opinions?
I saw 'Porky's' and I think 'Porky's' is great,
so why don't I get to talk about it?"
And Roger said, "I have two things to say.
First, Marshall Field, who owns the Chicago Sun-Times,
appointed me film critic... that's who I am."
And he said, "My other thing is a question.
Would you wanna listen to you?"
After the year that Roger came
and worked with a voice synthesizer,
he decided not to come again.
He said it was too hard.
Roger: I won't return to the conference.
It is fueled by speech, and I am out of gas.
But I went there for my adult lifetime,
and had a hell of a good time.
Chaz: The move is taking place,
and they are loading up the medical car
to take us over to RIC.
Will you send an email for me, please?
Come in.
Is there a special back elevator that we go down here or...?
Uh, well, actually, yeah.
Because the last time we took him from this hospital,
we had to push the chair past the morgue.
- Uh-huh. - Everything.
And we got lost down there.
He's excited because he gets to see a movie he wants to see.
It should be coming over later today.
So he's happy about that.
I'm glad we don't have to go under that...
the underground anymore.
Past the morgue.
( laughs )
We're not ready for it!
You've been working away, huh?
You have a lot of writing to do. Mmm.
I was hoping you could see
at least one of them on a big screen.
When he was in the hospital before,
we took a semi-not sanctioned trip out of the hospital.
Bundled him up and took him to the movies.
But I don't know if,
I don't think the doctor will let you out.
Oops.
Roger: Chaz is a strong woman.
I'd never met anyone like her.
I think it'll be easier. You can...
She is the love of my life.
Just wanna make sure that you don't get cold.
She saved me from the fate of living out my life alone,
which is where I seemed to be heading.
Chaz: The first time he actually saw me was at an AA meeting.
And it's the first time I've ever said it publicly.
Roger became very public about his...
but I felt that it was, you know, more private for me.
If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.
Roger weighed 300 pounds when we first started dating.
He didn't care that he was fat.
He thought he was great.
And that was so sexy.
I take it, this is not yours.
Roger: If my cancer had come,
and Chaz had not been there with me,
I can imagine a descent into lonely decrepitude.
That I am still active, going places,
moving, is directly because of her.
My instinct was to guard myself.
I could never again be on television as I once was.
She said, "Yes, but people are interested
in what you have to say,
not in how you say it."
James: With Roger now headed
for at least a couple of weeks of rehab,
he suggested I email him questions in advance
of our major interview when he gets back home.
I sent him the first third of nine pages of questions.
He emailed me back.
- Chaz: Hello. - Nurse: Hi, how are you?
- Hi. - Welcome to RIC.
My name is Jacqueline.
We're gonna be going right in this room, okay?
- Chaz: Okay. - Man: How are you?
Roger: "Question 1: In my life,
I inherited certain things from each of my parents.
What did you inherit from yours?"
Computerized voice: From my father I inherited
my pro-labor, Democratic Party beliefs.
I am politically my father's child,
and emotionally more my mother's.
My mother supported me as if
I was the local sports team.
But she was fatalistic.
She was permanently scarred by the Depression,
and constantly predicted she would end up
in the county poor home.
My parents so strongly encouraged my schoolwork.
We even took a third paper at home,
the "Chicago Daily News," for me to read.
When I stood in the kitchen door,
and used a sentence with a new word in it,
they would look up from their coffee
and cigarettes and actually applaud me.
( light applause )
This is the memorable occasion
that Roger was given the Pulitzer Prize.
Simon: Usually, when somebody won a Pulitzer Prize,
it was, "Who is he to win a Pulitzer," you know.
"Ah yeah, I'll go congratulate him, yeah."
But for Roger, there was real joy.
You know, it was our Roger.
One of us.
Flaum: The only Pulitzer Prize, for years and years,
ever given to a movie critic.
Simon: Roger wrote his movie reviews as if
he were sitting in the 15th row,
taking notes with one hand
and eating popcorn with the other.
But he didn't simplify things.
Roger: "Cries and Whispers" is like no movie I've seen before,
and like no movie Ingmar Bergman has made before.
It envelops us in a red membrane
of passion and fear.
And in some way that I do not fully understand,
it employs taboos and ancient superstitions
to make its effect.
We slip lower in our seats,
feeling claustrophobia and sexual disquiet.
Scott: I think the way that he writes,
that sort of clear, plain, Midwestern newspaper style,
conveys enormous intelligence,
encyclopedic learning,
but doesn't condescend, doesn't pander.
Roger would become
the definitive mainstream film critic
in American letters.
He made it possible for a bigger audience,
a wider audience to appreciate cinema as an art form.
'Cause he really loved it.
Really, really loved films,
and he did not get caught up
in certain ideologies about what cinema should be.
Nack: After he won the Pulitzer,
if he had a mind to go to the New York Times,
he could've done that, the Boston Globe,
the LA Times, no problem.
Simon: Ben Bradley, editor of the Washington Post,
of Watergate fame, went after Roger hard.
Offered him the sun and the moon.
Ebert just kept saying no.
He said, "I'm not gonna learn new streets..."
( laughs )
...which is very Ebert-like.
Simon: The Sun-Times went through rough times.
So many regimes.
The Murdock era which had crashed the paper.
So many people left.
Tom McNamee: And Roger remained steadfast.
I remember Roger saying, "I'm not gonna run away."
- Right. - These are my colleagues
and not everybody can get another job.
If someone went across the street
for a job they were selling out.
You didn't even say the Tribune.
You'd say they went across the street.
Simon: It was a huge clash in political difference
between the Sun-Times and the Tribune.
We were a working class paper.
And we reached the black community.
The Tribune was a very wealthy paper.
I mean, look at the Tribune tower.
This huge gothic structure studded at its base
with all the great art works of the world.
You know, here is part of the pyramid of Giza.
And you're thinking, what?
Did the Tribune guy go out with a chisel
and steal this thing?
Roger: From the day the Chicago Tribune
made Gene Siskel its film critic,
we were professional enemies.
For the first five years we knew one another,
Siskel and I hardly spoke.
When Gene and I were asked
to work together on a TV show,
we both said we'd rather do it with someone else.
Anyone else.
The name of our show is "Opening Soon at a Theatre Near You,"
two film critics talking about the movies.
And this is Roger Ebert from the Chicago Sun-Times.
And right over here is Gene Siskel
from the Chicago Tribune and Chanel 2 news.
Flaum: Gene and Roger were sitting kind of pinioned,
in director's chairs
looking into the camera very seriously.
Talking about the movie.
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" just had the audience
tearing up the seats with joy.
Yeah, and also, tearing up a little my enjoyment of the film.
They were applauding even during the credits...
Flaum: It was stiff, and wooden.
But when Foreman backs up and tries to make his big points
about the establishment and authority...
Flaum: But there was something there.
It was interesting to hear two people
who knew what they were talking about,
talk about a movie.
"Bride of Freedom" by Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
one of the new generation of West German directors.
Flaum: Roger loved the idea of being on public television.
He had been on it before
on a show where he introduced films by Ingmar Berman.
It was awful.
And this movie, his name is Spiegel,
which is Swedish for mirror.
Flaum: It was a deer caught in the headlights.
What is real and what is illusion,
and who's being fooled by the art?
Is it the artist, or his audience, or both?
( inspirational theme playing )
And the movie's ending, a confrontation
with the heavyweight champion of the world...
Flaum: Roger needed to learn how to write for television.
...emotionally fulfilling scenes I've seen in a long time.
Flaum: To keep sentences short.
He would get irritated, and he would say,
"Thea, I have a Pulitzer Prize."
And I would say to him, "Roger, I know that,
but that doesn't mean you know to write for television."
And right through that last scene
I was really loving "Taxi Driver,"
because up until that point, the relationship between
De Niro and Sibyl Shepherd has been electric...
Flaum: Gene was a natural.
He was one of these people. He could talk to the camera.
Marlene Siskel: He had a huge
handle bar mustache.
And so I just said,
"That is a funny looking thing
on your face, get rid of it."
Kogan: I thought, these two guys
would never be on television.
These are unusual, odd-looking characters
for the medium, TV, that's all beautifully quaffed,
and beautiful teeth, and everything's fine.
And they dressed like a couple of clowns
if they wore these outfits today.
You couldn't make Siskel and Ebert
if you were Dr. Frankenstein.
Marlene: I think in the beginning it was very difficult.
Gene sat in the back row. Roger had his favorite seat.
They left without saying a word to one another.
Roger: We both thought of ourselves
as full service one-stop film critics.
We didn't see why the other one was necessary.
Alone together in an elevator,
we would study the numbers changing above the door.
Their lifestyles couldn't have been more different.
Roger was single.
He was an only child.
Gene, in childhood, lost both his parents,
one after the other.
He was a philosophy major at Yale.
While Roger was, you know,
one of the good old boy news reporters.
Gene was just was more of a,
for lack of a better word, elegant character.
He caught the eye of Hugh Hefner,
and he was adopted by the clan at the mansion.
And he traveled with Hefner in the bunny jet.
Even though Roger wrote
"Beyond the Valley of the Dolls",
I think Gene lived the life for a while.
Corliss: The perfect matching of opposites, Siskel and Ebert,
Laurel and Hardy, Oscar and Felix,
really made "Sneak Previews"
a sitcom about two guys who lived in a movie theater.
And how Roger and I go to the movies as critics is the subject
of this special take two program on "Sneak Previews."
- Hi, Gene. - Hi, Roger.
In every theater I have a favorite seat I like to sit in.
In the last row, sort of off to the side.
Not just kind of reading or speaking criticism,
but acting out these roles.
I always choose a seat that's twice as far back
from the screen as the screen is wide.
Then you must make a friend of horror.
Horror and moral terror.
I think we can save ourselves a lot of time
if I admit to you right now
that although I think the last half hour works,
I doubt if I could ever convince you of that.
And that the first two hours of the film
consist of some of the most beautiful,
heartbreaking, tragic,
memorable footage of war that I've ever seen.
I think that you can show
almost anything to do with Vietnam,
and people feel, "Oh, my God, the human waste."
That may be true, but this movie is made
on such an epic scale.
And because they could get agitated,
that raised the temperature
of the movies they were discussing.
Tremendously boring,
boring from the beginning of the movie.
I just wanna compare this film to the "Godfather."
Oh no, no, no. Wait a minute.
Now he's not boring at all.
Oh, yes. Fabulously boring.
- He is fabulously boring? - I would pass...
Scott: There was something almost transgressive
and exciting about seeing
on TV somebody say, about a movie,
you know what you might always want to say to your friend,
or your girlfriend or your mother or your sister,
"No, you're wrong. It's not a good movie."
That's the way people do relate to films,
is in that argumentative sort of way,
in which if you're right nobody can tell you that you're wrong.
I sit at the desk next to our music critic at the Sun-Times,
people are very worshipful of him,
"Oh, what did you think about Shulty's conducting last night?"
And then he will say, and they will nod like this and go away.
And then they'll turn around and come up to me and say,
"I totally disagree with your review in this morning's paper."
Flaum: The success of the show was undeniable,
except we were not on in two major markets...
New York and Los Angeles.
Here I am at the little popcorn shop
a half a block from the screening room
where I see all the movies.
This is the Chicago Theater on State Street.
Flaum: Their position was,
if there's gonna be a movie shown,
it's not gonna be two guys from Chicago.
We're gonna have New York critics, or we're Hollywood.
Who are these guys, right?
This is not Andrew Sarris, and Pauline Kael.
And it's also not, the kind of the wised up players
who might be in Los Angeles.
What do these people have to tell us about movies?
Computerized voice: The arrival of Pauline Kael
on the scene shook everything up.
The New Yorker recognized that
maybe this is the time for a new kind of movie criticism.
Computerized voice: Suddenly movie critics become new players in the game.
You weren't crazy about "Prince of the City."
( laughing ) No. "Prince of the City."
I thought, it really, as piece of narrative,
it's almost a case study in confusion.
Computerized voice: Kael's influence shaped how critics
looked at movies and how people read them.
Corliss: Film was taken seriously and so were film critics.
Andrew Sarris was promoting
the idea of director as the maker of the film,
and Pauline Kael, elevating film writing,
film criticism as an art.
But these were towering figures, clashing.
Rather like Siskel and Ebert,
but with more intellectual heft.
- ( barks ) - Uh-oh, Gene.
This bowser in the balcony means it's time for Dog Of The Week.
A regular feature where each of us
picks the week's worst movie.
Well, Roger, you and Spot may not believe this,
but I have just seen my first nudie Karate film.
- You're kidding. - No.
Roger once said, "Do you think Pauline Kael
would be working with a dog?"
I don't know Pauline Kael, I never knew Pauline Kael.
But fuck Pauline Kael.
Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel
were the most powerful critics of all time.
In any realm.
Finally, they had to cave in
and run the show in New York and L.A.
It was a victory we relished, I have to tell you.
Here to help us sort the blockbusters
from the bombs are the team of "At the Movies."
Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.
You guys live in Chicago still, down there in Oprah-land?
- Yes. - Absolutely.
What I'd like to do is come to Chicago
one night and we'll just go nuts.
We'll just get stinking drunk.
We'll go out and eat steaks all night.
My next two guests are regarded as the most popular,
and most important film critics in the country.
( upbeat orchestral flourish )
They are the two most influential movie critics in the country.
( upbeat orchestral flourish )
Is there anybody more popular? We'll find out and ask them.
( upbeat orchestral flourish )
Flaum: And ultimately,
I think they were on the Johnny Carson Show
more than just about anybody.
Is there something out there that is really so bad?
( audience laughter )
Roger?
I can't really recommend "Three Amigos."
( audience groans )
It's the Christmas picture I like the least.
( audience groans )
- This is the happy hour. - Yes.
I don't think I'd asked you if I knew you were gonna say that.
Chevy Chase has made a lot of good movies,
and God willing, he will make
a lot more good movies in the future.
- With your help. - Yes, well, I...
- ( audience laughs ) - Yes, with your help.
There is a tendency for somebody...
( audience laughter )
...who is naturally funny,
as Chevy is, to try to get laughs
by standing there and ad-libbing
when somebody else is trying to talk.
Johnny: That's right.
Flaum: The movie studios went from helping us,
to hating us, to fearing us.
The circulations of all of the newspaper critics,
and all of the magazines, could not match
the reach of the show at its height.
It became quite clear very often
that the film companies cared a lot
about Roger and Gene seeing it,
but not so much about the rest of us.
Corliss: Two thumbs up became everything for a big Hollywood movie.
Back when moviemakers still thought
critics' enthusiasm could sell a movie.
In 1991, Richard Corliss published
a piece in "Film Comment" about how the show
was ruining and vulgarizing film criticism.
Corliss: "Will anyone read this story?
It has too many words and not enough pictures.
Does anyone read this magazine?
Every article in it wants to be a meal, not a McNugget.
Is anyone reading film criticism?
It lacks punch, the clips, the thumbs.
I simply don't want people to think
that what they have to do on TV
is what I am supposed to do in print.
I don't want junk food
to be the only cuisine at the banquet."
Etcetera.
Ahh...
I really did sound angry there,
but it seemed to me that the Siskel-Ebert effect
was that a film was either good or bad
and the rest didn't matter so much.
Roger: I am the first to agree with Corliss
that the Siskel and Ebert program
is not in depth film criticism.
As indeed, how could it be, given our time constraints.
( Roger speaking )
But we would have to do it for our own amusement
because nobody would play it on television.
The program's purpose is to provide
exactly what Corliss says it provides...
information on what's new at the movies, who's in it,
and whether the critic thinks it's any good or not.
Rosenbaum: If you're talking about film criticism the serious way,
consumer advice is not the same thing as criticism.
To assume that something is good for everybody,
or bad for everybody is insulting to everybody.
( tires screeching )
Siskel: The subject of "Crash" left me feeling empty.
"Crash" has some beautiful bodies on view,
but also some ugly ideas.
The car crash is a fertilizing rather than a destructive event.
Roger: When we have an opinion about a movie,
that opinion may light a bulb over the head
of an ambitious youth who then understands
that people can make up their own minds about the movies.
I think I liked the movie a lot more than you did.
I'd like to make it clear that most people are probably
going to hate it, be repelled by it or walk out of it,
- just as they did at the Cannes Film Festival. - Why is that?
Because it's too tough for them to take.
Flaum: The reason Roger loved
being on television
is that at his heart,
he really is a populist.
Roger believes that everybody ought to be able to get a movie.
I think they were conscientious about trying to do
what they were doing as well as they could.
And as seriously as they could.
But invariably, a show like Gene and Roger's show
becomes part of that mainstream system.
Announcer: This week, Siskel and Ebert review
Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Last Action Hero."
Rosenbaum: And by and large, the purpose of mainstream reviewing
is not just to valorize films
that get million dollar ad campaigns.
Announcer: Spielberg's "Jurassic Park."
But to eliminate everything else.
I think that what Gene and Roger did,
was the opposite of that.
Roger went out and he looked for people like Michael Moore.
He looked for people like me.
( speaking Spanish )
Scott: As a film critic, he was somebody
who gave life to new voices, gave life to new visions,
that reflected all the diversity of this nation.
Different classes, points of view,
he wanted it all out there.
My assurance to the pet owner
that they will be reunited with their pet.
Errol Morris: My first film, "Gates of Heaven."
There was a newspaper strike.
And so the movie wasn't reviewed
by any of the New York newspapers, which is a disaster.
I miss that little black kitten so much.
Morris: I just thought, that's it,
the movie's just going to vanish.
Both of them wanted to review it.
I was troubled because the number of theaters
in which it was playing was extremely small,
and here you have a show that's being shown
on 300 some odd public television stations
around the country. How are people gonna get to see it?
Let's move on to a movie now
that I think is one of the most brilliant, weird, and unusual
American documentary films I've seen in a long time.
Morris: And then really out of nowhere,
those guys started reviewing "Gates of Heaven."
Well, I agree with you completely. I think it's a superb film.
Morris: Then they found an excuse to review it again.
There are films that we call "Buried Treasures."
Morris: And a third time.
I don't think anyone who's seen this film can ever forget it.
I believe that I would not
really have a career if not for those guys.
Ramin Bahrani: I made my first film. I kind of made it alone.
I didn't know anyone in the industry.
I don't even know how I got Roger's email,
but I emailed it assuming no one would answer.
And he answered.
And he said, "If your film gets into Sundance,"
tell me and I will watch it there."
So then later the film did go to Sundance,
and I emailed him again, and he said,
"Yes, I'll come to see it." Here are the three times.
He didn't come the first screening,
he didn't come to the 2nd screening.
And the last screening was Sunday morning, I think,
8:00 a.m., on the last day of the festival.
I said he's probably not even here.
In fact, he was one of the first people there.
And I was there with my actor, and he said,
"Do you mind if I take some pictures
with you and your actor, just in case I like the film?
If I don't like it, don't worry, I'll never use them."
( Bahrani laughs )
I was, I think, I was maybe eight or nine or something,
and my aunt Denise, who was a massive film geek,
who passed her film geekdom onto me,
found out about these rehearsals for the Oscars
and one day he walked through.
And I remember saying, "Thumbs up! Thumbs up!"
screaming, screaming, and he came over.
I grew up.
I made this film when I was 34 years old.
It's the first film I ever made.
You're second generation.
Joshua Tree generation.
DuVernay: The film was about my aunt,
my aunt who took me to the Oscar's that day.
Nothing wrong with that.
And about losing someone that you love.
And it was Ebert's review that really got to the heart
of what I was trying to articulate.
And just touched me so much,
that I sent him the picture from the Oscar's.
His reply was, "We were both younger then."
The next day, a blog post turned up
where he wrote,
in a very heartfelt way, about his own aunt
who kind of gave him the gift of art and film as well.
You know, I broke down crying.
And it was a mess.
It's dangerous as a black woman
to give something that you've made
from your point of view,
very steeped in your identity and your personhood
to a white man whose gaze is usually the exact opposite,
and to say, you are the carrier of this film to the public.
You're the one that's gonna dictate whether it has value.
And you had a lot less fears around that with Roger.
'Cause you knew it was someone
who was gonna take it seriously,
gonna come with some historical context,
some cultural nuance.
I mean, everybody knows Roger had a black wife.
You know what I mean? You know.
It's like an honorary brother.
I mean, you live with a sister.
That's a whole different understanding
of black women, right?
So maybe you watch my film differently.
Every time I see him,
I'll walk away with something new, you know.
And every time I sit down at the table to do the work,
I think about him,
because what if something happened
that I don't get to see him again.
It was just a few days before Christmas.
I said, "Well, Chaz, can I come there?"
- Chaz: So... - Woman: Merry Christmas.
( chuckles )
Chaz: Come over and say hi.
How are you? Good to see you.
What are you doing in here?
( laughter )
Chaz is missing you at home, you gotta get out.
Oh, I like the glasses. Get off the road...
Bahrani: It was nice to see him interacting with his grandkids.
Chaz: Grandpa Roger, do you think...
Bahrani: I know that he must be in pain physically,
but he ends up being the happiest guy around.
- From the Christmas stocking. - Chaz: From Santa.
- Raven Evans: From Santa. - Chaz: A Lady Gaga toothbrush.
( laughter )
Raven: I just remember being so young,
and watching for the first time so many movies
and him sort of explaining to me, you know,
what's important about this one, or this is a really great movie.
Computerized voice: Ever heard of this film?
This movie begins with seven children
who are seven, and check in on them
every seven years of their lives.
Are they 56 now? Really?
Oh, my gosh, wow.
All the great conversations and things that he taught me
about movies and life and family and books,
and you know, all this stuff, I just...
Those experiences mean a lot to me.
Chaz: There's another chocolate bar, chocolate bars.
So I spoke to Werner, I said I was coming to see you,
and he sends his regards
and he says you have to keep writing
because he's very worried about cinema.
Chaz: Can you say it the way Werner would say it?
- ( laughter ) - Bahrani: Oh, gosh. No.
- Roger... - ( with bad German accent) Roger, you must get better.
You must soldier on, Roger.
Really bad shape.
Werner Herzog: He's the soldier of cinema.
He's a wounded comrade
who cannot even speak anymore, and he plows on.
And that touches my heart very deeply.
Herzog: I never dedicate films to anyone.
I dedicated a film to him where I ventured out
to the last corner of this planet,
to Antarctica,
to the ice.
And from there I bow my head in his direction.
He reinforces my courage.
Bahrani: One time, I went to see Roger.
He was kind of eager and bouncing to give me something.
He gave me this letter, actually from Laura Dern.
"Dear Roger, I want you to know
that your generosity and expertise
at the Sundance Tribute meant the world to me.
I've tried to come up
with an appropriate way to thank you.
This box and its contents, a jigsaw puzzle,
I have treasured for some time.
It was given to me by the Strasberg family
when Lee Strasberg passed away.
It was Marilyn Monroe's, who collected puzzles,
and it had been given to her by Alfred Hitchcock.
That night at Sundance you inspired me
about film and contribution and I wanted
to pass along film and connection in some way.
Thank you again.
Love to you and Chaz. Laura."
And then Roger gave me this gift, which I refused.
I said, "You cannot give me this gift.
I cannot accept this gift."
And then he said, "You're going to accept the gift,
because you have to one day give this
to somebody else who deserves it."
James: What's it a jigsaw puzzle of?
I've always been terrified to make it.
I mean, this is the jigsaw puzzle
that Alfred Hitchcock gave Marilyn Monroe.
( upbeat '50s instrumental rock music playing )
Roger: In the Autumn of 1967,
I saw a movie named "I Call First,"
later to be retitled, "Who's That Knocking at My Door."
The energy of the cutting grabbed me.
It was the work of a natural director.
I wrote a review suggesting in 10 years
he would become the American Fellini.
And I said, "You think it's gonna take that long?"
And I was serious. I'm just like, it's over here.
What are you talking about? It's right here.
It was the first real strong encouragement.
Yes, there are defects in the movie.
But he saw something special
and that had to be nourished.
As you know, I carried your review
around with me when I was in Europe in 1968.
Oh.
I kept reading. Is that really about me?
You know, wow.
Roger: So refreshing to find a director and an actor
working right at the top of their form.
I think "Raging Bull" is one of the great American pictures of the year.
Roger: His greatest film is an act of self-redemption.
In the period before it, he'd become addicted to cocaine
and told me that after an overdose,
he was pronounced dead
in an emergency room and resuscitated.
During the '80s was extremely... I was gone, basically.
Broke, and um, I'd gone through some bad, bad periods.
My third marriage had been broken up,
and I was basically alone.
The only thing that saved me
or made me want to uh, huh, continue
just like living, in a way, was my agent called
and said, "You know, there's this festival up in Toronto."
I said, "Yeah."
"Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel,
they wanna give you this tribute."
I was kind of scared.
Could I walk down this theater aisle
and go up on the stage, knowing who I am?
But I knew that they believed in me,
and I have that in my house now,
in a special place where only I can see it,
that I pass by every maybe, five to six minutes, I see it.
But that night, changed it.
And I started my life again, you know.
It was...
I didn't feel inhibited with Roger.
He was that close.
Scott: Roger has, unlike just about any of the rest of us,
arrived at this point where he is
kind of the peer of the people,
of some of the people that he writes about.
It's very complicated, I think, when you have
personal relationships and friendships with these people,
because it cannot but cloud your judgment.
I am infinitely corruptible.
I do not want to get to know these people as people.
I wanna think of them as fictional characters.
I mean, my obligation is to write
what I think about a movie,
and not to worry about someone I know
perching on my shoulder saying, "No, I wouldn't say that."
When you look at the nineteenth century
and the great critics and music,
they hung together, critics and artists.
They were in the same circles.
And that helped the critics and it helped the composers.
Roger brought back that concept and he was criticized for it.
That was real distracting for me there,
the way all those pool balls bounced around like that,
and the scene gets even worse as it goes on.
And it's all the more disappointing
because the "Color of Money" was directed
by Martin Scorsese, who is one of
the two or three best movie directors around today.
Oh.
Devastating.
It doesn't have the interior energy, and the drive,
and the obsession of most of the best Scorsese films.
The script isn't good.
It's just the standard sort of predictable narrative.
I said, I know, but beautiful cam...
Michael Ballhouse, Paul Newman,
but you know, they wouldn't accept it.
That was a way of condemning and helping.
In other words, you've done this now, once,
you may have done it twice, but watch yourself.
As opposed to toxic, poisonous, unkind,
ungenerous, lack of charity, on so many others.
I think he was a tougher critic when he was younger.
He could be really cutting, and relentless,
and ruthless, and sarcastic.
You motherfucker!
Ah! Whoo!
Not a bad movie, but it's not original,
and it's not a masterpiece.
Oh, I think it's very original
and very close to being a masterpiece.
I have never felt a kill in a movie quite like that.
Not in "Apocalypse Now," not in the "Deer Hunter"?
No, not like that. Not like that.
In that case, you're gonna love the late show
because they have kills like that every night
in black and white starring John Wayne.
LaPietra: They would get into their cross talk.
The camera would stop, they would still be at it.
And I disagree particularly about the part that you like.
They truly felt it in their soul.
They could still show them the error of their ways,
the folly of their thinking.
"Benji the Hunted" exhausted me.
This is the first time I wanted to tell a dog
to slow down and stop to smell the flowers.
I don't know, Gene.
Your review is the typical sort of
blasé sophisticated cynical review...
I'll take the word sophisticated.
...I would expect from an adult.
You're wrapping yourself in the flag of children.
You're wrapping yourself in the flag
of the sophisticated film critic.
- No, boredom. - You've seen it all.
Boredom with Benji running.
I don't think that any child is gonna be bored by this movie.
Scott: It was not you know, gentlemanly, it was not,
"Ah, well, I see you have a good point."
It was I'm gonna crush you.
And this is the show when you give
"Benji The Hunter" dog a positive review
and not Kubrick's film?
Now, Gene, that's totally unfair,
because you realize that these reviews are relative.
"Benji the Hunter" is not one-tenth the film...
- Roger... - ...that the Kubrick film is
but you know that you review films within context.
And you know it, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
- No, I'm not. - Now let's take another look...
They almost didn't care
what anyone else thought about anything,
as long as they could try to persuade the other.
And I'm not talking about just, about movie reviews.
I'm talking about anything in life...
the tie you're wearing, what you think of that person,
a book, a restaurant.
When there was,
and when wasn't there disagreement,
the coin of the realm was the quarter.
It's hard to think of anything
that wasn't decided by a coin toss.
Were we going to get tuna fish sandwiches for lunch?
Who would get one movie, who would get another movie.
Who got to sit next to Johnny Carson on the couch.
( jazz theme music playing )
Flaum: They actually wanted us to change
the opening of the show every week
so that Roger would be first one week
and Gene would be first the next week. And we said no.
Lynn Sherr: Why is the show "Siskel and Ebert"?
And by the way will it ever be Ebert and Siskel?
No.
You've signed on to Siskel and...
There's a long story about that.
A long story. You know, I'm older,
I've been a movie critic longer,
E comes before S in the alphabet,
I've got the Pulitzer Prize,
and yet it's called Siskel and Ebert.
And if you wanna know why that is, you can ask Siskel.
A flip of the coin.
Kogan: Gene Siskel was among
the most competitive people
on the face of this planet.
But Roger always could lord it over Gene
that he had a Pulitzer Prize.
Roger was a bit of a braggadocio.
Um, he was a great raconteur.
But frankly, he was full of himself.
Nack: Roger was a bit of a control freak.
He could not direct Gene Siskel.
He was a rogue planet in Roger's solar system.
Gene was a source of madness in Roger's life.
Roger is an only child.
He was used to getting his way.
Absolutely.
And he could be a real big baby
when he didn't get what he wanted.
Gene, on the other hand, would just go in there
and pummel you until you agree with him,
until you just say, f... all right, Gene!
Okay, you're right. Got it.
It wasn't a game with him.
He saw something, he wanted it to happen.
He made it happen.
LaPietra: Gene was very good at reading
Roger's date book upside down.
As soon as he saw L.A.
and the date,
he knew what films were coming out.
He knew what big star
that Roger would be going out to interview.
And that's all it took
for him to make sure
that he got the interview before Roger got it.
Fumes you could almost see
coming out of Roger's head, you know.
Gene had done him in again, that wascally wabbit.
McHugh: Roger, who was the picture
of equanimity for most of his life,
did all of a sudden, produce a petulance
that I hadn't seen before.
I thought this movie was awful.
- Oh, no, Roger. - Dreadful, terrible,
stupid, idiotic...
- No, no. - ...unfunny, labored...
- ...forced, painful, bad. - Oh, Roger, Roger.
What happened to your sense of humor?
I don't think Roger was, by nature a fighter.
But it's like, if you have a brother
who likes to fight all the time so then you learn how to fight.
McHugh: And Gene had his number.
Gene knew the buttons to push and everything else.
Marlene: They're in a first class cabin,
Gene's in one of the front rows.
Roger's behind him, and Gene hears
the same old stories that he's heard over and over again.
And he's just annoyed.
He writes a little note
and he gives it to the flight attendant.
Said, "Would you pass this to Mr. Ebert?"
So Roger gets the note.
And it says, "Dear Mr. Ebert,
we in the cockpit have noticed that you are on our flight.
Frankly, we both agree more
with you than your partner,
and we would be so honored if you would join us
in the cockpit for a bit of the flight."
I mean, Gene knows that Roger was really excited.
He gets into the aisle, and Roger was a big guy then,
he just kind of bounds down the aisle,
and gets ready to knock on the door of the cabin.
And you know, the flight attendants
and people are horrified, and Gene says,
"Dear Mr. Ebert, we in the cockpit."
"Gotcha."
And he finally tells Gene Siskel,
you know, "You just hate me.
You just don't like me," you know.
I mean, that relationship was absolutely radioactive.
Two thrillers this week on Siskel and Ebert.
First, we'll review Michael Kane
and Pierce Brosnan in "The Fourth Protocol."
And then Gene Hackman and Kevin Costner star in "No Way Out,"
and we have third thriller too if you're interested.
What do you mean, two thrillers?
How about something like this: It's thriller week
on "Siskel and Ebert" and we've got three big ones.
Okay. Ready?
I guess you're gonna do it.
We have to rewrite it, don't we?
- Ah, no. Let's... - You can't ad lib, Gene.
Can we for the last week, and next week we'll do it?
No, every week counts.
You read it then, you ad-lib it.
I'll do nothing. Let him do whatever he wants.
It's thriller and week on "Siskel and Ebert And the Movies."
And we've got three new ones.
Gotta have energy up and the movie's out.
Why don't you read both parts?
I'd like to.
I know that.
Please get your energy up.
It's thriller and week on "Siskel and Ebert And The Movies,"
and we've got three new ones.
Denis Quaid in "The Big Easy,"
Michael Kane in "The Fourth Protocol,"
and Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman in "No Way Out."
Sound a little excited, Gene.
Sound less excited, Roger.
That's why we're re-doing it because of what you did.
It's thriller week on "Siskel and Ebert At The Movies."
- And we've got three new ones... - It's called "And The Movies," not At The Movies.
And that's why we're re-doing it this time.
It's thriller week on "Siskel and Ebert And The Movies."
And we've got three new ones.
Denis Quaid in "The Big Easy,"
Michael Kane in "The Fourth Protocol,"
and Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman in "No Way Out."
That's this week on "Siskel, and Ebert,
And the Movies," and the asshole.
Man: Great.
They were still,
in their hearts, little boys fighting it out
on the playground
and both of them expecting to win.
Computerized voice: I've been in here
a little more than a month.
Can we stand?
I came in expecting to repair my walking ability
after the hairline fracture, but have discovered
that it wasn't that simple.
...two, three, push up.
Nurse: Bigger step with that right foot.
Bigger step, Roger.
I can no longer take good health for granted.
I hate that.
Nurse: Big step.
- Nurse: Pardon? - He's saying no.
Nurse: Are you okay?
Do you want me to stop?
Okay.
- That was good. - Nurse: That was good.
That was good. That was good.
Relax.
Chaz: I never thought he'd have to be here again.
He's at the best place,
but it's just overwhelming
to think that he's been here five times.
Chaz: If he gave up, then it would be very difficult.
Chaz: Do you want your speakers plugged in?
You know what, let her suction you first.
Please, Roger.
Can you let the nurse do that first?
Roger, can we set this up after?
Roger.
( Steely Dan's "Reeling in the Years" playing over radio )
♪ Are you gathering up the tears? ♪
♪ Have you had enough of mine? ♪
He loves this music.
♪ You've been telling me you were a genius since you were seventeen ♪
- Nurse: Ready? - ♪ In all the time I've known you ♪
♪ I still don't know what you mean ♪
♪ The weekend at the college ♪
♪ Didn't turn out like you planned ♪
♪ The things that pass for knowledge I can't understand ♪
- ( air whirring ) - ♪ Are you reeling in the years ♪
- Nurse: Sounds good. - ♪ Stowing away the time? ♪
♪ Are you gathering up the tears... ♪
Chaz: Sometimes, I just stare at him
and say where did this determination come from?
♪ Stowing away the time... ♪
( turns off music )
Chaz: Roger had an inner core
that was made of steel.
( typing )
James: How have you kept your spirits up?
Computerized voice: I've zeroed in on my work.
When I'm seeing a movie, or writing the review,
that makes me feel good.
You know how they talk about being in the zone?
When you're doing something
you're good at, you get in the zone.
It sort of pushes your troubles to the back of your mind.
Corliss: You have this tremendous body of work.
He's been writing for half
of the history of feature films.
And that's just one slice of the cake.
A novel in weekly installments.
Just like Dickens.
Not quite of that level.
He wrote a book about how to keep your computer bug-free.
Strolls through London.
A book about the Cannes Film Festival.
Roger: The Cannes Film Festival is one of those events
like the Super Bowl, Wimbledon, or the Kentucky Derby
that comes cloaked in its own legend.
Roger ( as host ): This is Cannes on the French Riviera,
a fishing village since Roman times.
And every year in the month of May,
the population grows by forty thousand
for the world's most famous film festival.
( instrumental pop music playing )
It's been called the world's biggest party.
The town of Cannes is bursting to the seams
with directors, producers, and stars.
- Hi. - Roger: It wouldn't be a Cannes Film Festival
without a beautiful blonde here on the terrace
of the Carlton Hotel.
De Los Santos-Reza: Here was this kid
from southern Illinois hobnobbing
with all of the international movie stars.
Roger ( as host ): That's me with Robert De Niro.
Yes, your faithful correspondent
is getting an exclusive interview.
And De Niro was telling me he's just happy to be here.
He loved that. He did, and they loved him.
( French accent ) Roger! Roger Ebert!
Roger: I always wake up very early
in the morning after I arrive.
I walk down the Rou Felix Faure,
passing the flower sellers,
the fishmongers unloading iced oysters,
and at particular cafe, at a particular table,
I order, in shameful French,
a cafe au lait, a Perrier, and a croissant.
Such returns are an important ritual to me.
He stayed at the same fricken
little hotel in Cannes, the Splendid,
which is a dump, but he loved it.
Movshovitz: I'd go over and see him at the Splendid,
and he'd say, "Tomorrow, be here at ten."
And so we go over to the Swedish film institute's hotel suite,
and there's Erland Josephson the actor lying on the bed,
and he and I talk about Ingmar Bergman for an hour.
You know, no interview, no formality.
Just yacking.
Roger: If I am lucky, something extraordinary
will happen to me during this festival.
I will see a film that will make
my spine tingle with its greatness.
And I will leave the theatre speechless.
( dog whimpers )
It was at Cannes that I saw Bresson's
precise, unforgiving "L'Argent."
Man: L'Argent.
A film that was so suspicious of passion
and emotion, so cold on its surface,
that I finally realized that no man could make
such distant and austere films...
There are Dantean levels to this festival.
At the top level is the official selection,
films chosen from all over the world.
Roger ( as host ): But down, down, down, down here
in the basement of the Palais, this is the movie super market.
This is where they sell porno and exploitation
and horror and action and violence.
You take out ads in Variety saying we will buy...
- ...movies sight unseen. - Right.
- Man: Last year, 350 movies. - Roger: How do you sell them?
By the title, by the foot, by the inch?
By the pound.
Most of us were writing our stories
after the festival was over.
Roger, anticipating the internet,
or recalling daily journalism,
was filing stories all through the festival.
For best film, "Kagemusha,"
which is the Akira Kurosawa film.
Roger ( as host ): While photographers are trying
to get pictures of stars at the festival,
would-be stars and hopefuls are trying
to get their pictures taken by photographers.
Roger: In the dreams of the starlet,
there's always that scene where the cigar-chomping producer
spots a lovely young woman on the Carlton terrace
and shouts, "Who is that girl?
I must have her for my next picture."
So much of what we did was not me as the producer
saying do this, do that, do that, was Roger.
He had fabulous ideas.
...topless beaches, starlets, interviews.
De Los Santos-Reza: Now, whenever we were doing something on the show
that required some creativity...
I don't know why you keep... that isn't the issue.
It was Gene who would usually win out that argument,
and Roger would say, "Well, uh, fine."
( French ballad playing )
The Cannes Film Festival was only Roger.
He loved that he didn't have to convince someone else.
Marlene: Roger had everything he needed.
Gene was just afraid that at some point
Roger would go it alone and quit.
LaPietra: And this literally haunted Gene.
When the next contract would come up,
would Roger not be there?
Flaum: Joe Antelo just sat down and did the math.
In syndication, we can put commercials around it.
So he offered Gene and Roger
a tremendous amount of money.
Roger didn't go out and buy a new car or anything.
He moved out of that garage apartment he had.
I know that I would hear them sometimes talk about money,
like "Hey, big boy, did you get that check in the mail?"
These guys were Siamese twins joined at the rear end.
And they were gonna make this thing work.
Marlene: Gene would say, and this is as they became
more and more of a team,
"He's an asshole.
But he's my asshole."
This week on "Siskel and Ebert and the Movies,"
the science fiction adventure, "Robocop."
Man: Why don't we do that again.
Did you know that for Gene, speech is a 2nd language?
( laughter )
Roger's first language is,
"Yes, I'll have apple pie with my order."
He asked the McDonald's girls
if he can have apple pie with her with the order,
before they ask him.
And you know what Gene says when he goes into McDonald's?
Can I have a apple with thei... with their order?
( laughter )
Man: Okay, ready?
You know they don't get enough shit basically raw.
- They don't. - They don't. They're called yuppies now.
They run this goddamn country, and all of us, all of our r...
I'm speaking to everyone who's eavesdropping right now.
Come on, band together people, let's overthrow the country.
Protestants, people who sort of want a religion.
- Let's stick together. - I know...
The Catholics and the fucking Jews,
we go back a few years together.
Come on, we're real.
We're real. We get down and get dirty.
- I'll take it. I'll take it. - We were burning each other
when Martin Luther was only a gleam in his mother's eye.
I'll take a Bap... I'll take a Baptist.
I go back 6,000 years.
I mean Ba... somebody that has some goddamn passion,
some blood coursing through their veins.
- Case closed. - Anything.
Right.
Steve Martin's new comedy, "Roxanne."
This week on "Siskel and Ebert and the Movies."
You said it a little too fast.
The greatest day for Gene
was when Roger came in
to say that he was going to get married.
I remember Gene saying to me,
"Can you believe this is happening?"
He's gonna have a mortgage.
He's gonna have to buy furniture.
He's gonna have all the same things
that we do to have to deal with.
He's gonna need the show.
He'll never leave now.
Elliot: Chaz was probably more life altering
for him than his TV show.
She really, really liked him
for what he was
and not who he was.
Marlene: She changed his life immeasurably.
She changed his personality.
Hey, I was eight months pregnant and Roger
grabbed the cab in front of me in New York.
He's not that kind of guy now.
I think Gene was so happy
that Roger found his mate.
Chaz: He was 50 years old when we got married.
He used to tell me,
"I waited just about all my life to find you.
And I'm glad I did.
And I'm never gonna let you go.
I mean...
( orchestral music playing )
Chaz: Our wedding was like a fairytale.
Gene Siskel's daughters Kate and Kali,
they were our beautiful little flower girls.
And Roger's idea of a wedding was like "Father of the Bride,"
where the father says,
"Can't you just have the wedding
in the backyard and put some brats on the grill?"
( orchestral music continues )
People who knew me then would be very surprised
that I would marry a white man,
because I felt that African-American men had gotten
such a raw deal in this society.
In college, I was the head of the black student union.
I marched with Martin Luther King.
I talked to my mother about it.
"Mom, what do you think people would say,"
and she said, "Doesn't matter, doesn't matter.
What do you say? What does your heart say?"
Chaz and Roger, you have come together
according to God's wonderful plan...
Chaz: And as sophisticated as Roger was,
he didn't know how his family would take this.
He used to say, "You know, maybe my uncle Bill,
or my aunt Mary, uh, you know because you're not Catholic."
I said, "Roger, come on, if we're gonna have
this relationship, we have to be serious.
Not Catholic, or not white?"
He said, "Yeah, probably some of that too."
( organ music playing )
After a while though,
his family accepted me with open arms.
Nack: He was on a lifelong quest for love.
He found romantic love with Chaz.
Hey, I'm just about to beat up...
And he loved that family, her kids and her grandkids.
Hey, you better not drool on me.
Oh, he fit right in perfectly.
Grandpa Roger. Grandpa Roger.
Oh, I forgot what I was gonna say.
Roger: There were no strangers in her family.
Howdy, cowboy!
I love and am loved.
Roger: Okay, try get that pole.
And as a member of another race, I have
without exception, been accepted and embraced.
The greatest pleasure came from annual trips
we made with our grandchildren, Raven, Emile, and Taylor,
and their parents, Sonya and Mark,
where we made our way to Budapest to Prague,
Vienna, Hawai'i, Los Angeles,
London, Paris, Venice twice, and Stockholm.
Chaz: What do you have to say about the trip?
We are having a wonderful time,
and right now we're about to take the garden walk,
which is a great tradition of all of our vacations
when we go on nature walks.
Roger: Emile announced that, for him,
there was no such thing as getting up too early.
And every morning, the two of us would meet
in the hotel lobby and go out for long walks together.
And there are some flowers.
One morning in Budapest, he asked me to take a photo
of two people walking ahead of us and holding hands.
"Why?"
"Because they look happy."
Those times seem more precious
now that they're in the past.
I don't walk easily anymore.
Nurse: Nice job, Roger.
Beautiful.
One more step.
Computerized voice: I walked everyday
in the years before my troubles,
aiming for 10,000 steps with a pedometer.
The Caldwell Lily pond
had a special serenity.
I usually had it to myself.
I chose it as the perfect location
to make a little film
featuring my friend Bill Nack
reciting the last page of "The Great Gatsby,"
which he has recited to me several times annually
since we first met in the 1960s.
"It's vanished trees,
the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house,
had once pandered in whispers
to the last and greatest of all human dreams..."
Roger: Every time I see Bill, I ask him to recite for me,
from memory, the closing words of "Gatsby."
And every time, he does.
"Compelled into an esthetic contemplation...
he neither understood nor desired.
Face to face for the last time in history,
with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder..."
Roger: We're both conscious of the passage of time,
of its flow, slipping through our fingers,
like a long silk scarf.
I think this was Roger's favorite passage
from all of literature.
It was really a passage about the American Dream.
You can be anything you want.
You know, Roger went from this small town kid in Urbana
to this huge national celebrity.
His father was an electrician. His mother was a housewife.
But I think "The Great Gatsby" was also,
for Roger, about death.
Death might have obsessed him a bit.
You know, his father died fairly young.
I knew he adored him.
( James speaking )
Computerized voice: There's an inescapable parallel between us,
both my father and I have cancer.
My disease may have been started
by childhood radiation treatments
for an ear infection.
I got those because they loved me.
In my case, recently discovered tumors
of the spine have metastasized.
James: The doctor said it was these tumors
that caused the hip fracture.
Roger emailed me that sharing the news
of the cancer's return could anger Chaz.
Chaz: We don't know.
We haven't really fully discussed this.
It's so new that we, we really don't know,
and I'm uncomfortable talking about it.
Just sort of taking it a day at a time,
like I do everything else.
James: So, what do the doctors say?
Computerized voice: Six to sixteen months.
It is likely I will have passed
when the film is ready.
Chaz: We'll see.
The radiation could do its job so well
that he's around a lot longer.
So we'll have the radiation, and we'll hope for the best.
Chaz: I mean, here he is in 2013,
and in 2006, there were times when they said
he wouldn't be here the next day, so...
Computerized voice: I have no fear of death.
We all die.
I consider my remaining days to be like money in the bank.
When it is all gone, I will be repossessed.
( Chaz laughs )
When the pain gets to be unbearable,
I may not be so jolly.
My senior English teacher asked me,
"Ebert, why are you always writing about death?"
I think it began in Catholic grade school
where they place so much attention
on mortal sin and dying.
I found it kind of exciting.
I would have been infuriated if I missed this
because of an accident, or sudden death.
This is the third act and it is an experience.
( Chaz laughs )
So you see, little Ebert has always been a macabre sort.
Most people probably don't know that about him.
Maybe that's why he's jolly, maybe it's just like, "Okay!"
( Chaz laughs )
James: It makes for a better story.
( Chaz chuckles )
Nack: "Gatsby believed in the green light
and the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.
It eluded us then, but that's no matter...
tomorrow, tomorrow we will run faster,
stretch out our arms farther,
and one fine morning so we beat on.
Boats against the current,
borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Marlene: On April 30th, 1998,
Gene was asked to throw out
the first ball of the season
at the White Sox game.
And he'd had a headache for some weeks.
May 8th he was diagnosed,
terminal brain cancer.
And um, pretty much,
you don't live more than a year.
But on April 30th, he threw out a damn good pitch.
He didn't really want the folks at Disney
to know how sick he was.
He was afraid that if they heard the words brain tumor,
they would put in a substitute for him,
and that would be the end.
Marlene: Our mothers knew,
and Gene's siblings,
and my two sisters knew.
That's it.
And Roger didn't know.
And that really wounded Roger.
I don't think it's that he didn't trust Roger personally.
Nonetheless, when something like that happens, you take it personally,
how else is there to take it, you know.
Chaz: Even though he may have been a few years older than Gene,
Gene was like the older brother he never had.
And I was so sad for Roger for not,
really for not really being able to tell his brother goodbye.
Gene didn't wanna be seen as a victim.
But more importantly, he didn't want
to watch the effect of his dying on his children.
And my children celebrated many things that year,
and had a happy year,
instead of watching the clock,
which they would've done.
He wanted to do just what he was doing.
He wanted to be with his family,
and go back to work.
Our next film is "Meet the Deedles."
And boy, is this an annoying experience.
To the point that from now on, for the rest of my life,
I may have a negative physical reaction to hearing the word...
well, it's the title word in the film.
- Deedles? - Oh. Roger, don't.
Chaz: Toward the end, I said, "We should go see him."
And we were gonna go and visit him that Monday,
but he passed away that Saturday.
Flaum: It was a friendship that he that he cherished,
and it was a horrible pain for him.
Marlene: This year on Gene's birthday,
Roger tweeted every hour on the hour
with links to memories high and low.
I was really touched,
and I wrote him a thank you,
and he sent me this response.
"Dear Marlene, I'm sick and old
and find myself thinking about Gene more than ever.
My stupid ego and maybe his, complicated the fact
that I have never met a smarter or funnier man.
We fought like cats and dogs.
But there were times often unobserved,
like after a long hotel dinner we had once in Boston,
when I've never felt closer to a man."
I think their relationship evolved.
They grew to respect each other.
And I do believe they did love each other.
Flaum: After Gene's funeral, Roger vowed
that he was never gonna keep any secrets about his health.
He said, "If anything like this ever happens to me,
I don't want to hide it,
especially from the people who mean something to us."
I've been coming to this conference for 35 years,
and this morning I confessed that I am a sick person.
About two and a half or three years ago,
I found a lump under my chin, and I went to the doctor,
and it turned out to be associated with thyroid cancer.
Chaz: He was in the hospital maybe two days at the most,
ready to get out.
Went back to the show, he's such an optimist,
and he thought, this was probably the end of it.
We didn't know that was just the warm up act.
Roger: A few years later,
I went in for a routine scan
to check for any new problems.
The news was not good.
Cancer had been seen in my right lower jawbone.
Chaz: Again he had surgery.
We were going home.
Computerized voice: We were all packed and ready
to go home just like today.
Chaz and I had a Leonard Cohen song
we both really liked called "I'm Your Man."
It's sort of long but I wanted to play it one last time.
Leonard Cohen: ♪ If you want a lover ♪
♪ I'll do anything you ask me to ♪
♪ And if you want another kind of lover ♪
♪ I'll wear a mask for you... ♪
Computerized voice: As it was playing,
I had a sudden hemorrhage of an artery.
The doctors rushed me into the operating room.
The whole thing had burst.
Uh, his neck, it just was gushing blood.
There was about 15 doctors standing there.
They were grabbing towels, squeezing
to get the blood stopped and...
If he hadn't been playing that song,
we would've been out of the hospital already.
Computerized voice: If that song had been shorter
and I had left, I would be dead.
♪ If you want a boxer ♪
♪ I will step into the ring for you ♪
Chaz: Bye bye.
♪ And if you want a doctor ♪
♪ I'll examine every inch of you ♪
Possible. Workable.
♪ If you want a driver ♪
♪ Climb inside ♪
♪ Or if you want to take me for a ride ♪
♪ You know you can ♪
♪ I'm your man ♪
Computerized voice: We are told the next surgery
will not be life threatening.
The perfect ending would be
that I regain the ability to speak well,
eat and drink, but I would settle
for drinking coffee and having milkshakes.
Chaz: There were a series of surgeries,
and his plan was to return to the show,
to return to broadcasting.
James: It is a major surgery.
Yes, it is.
James: Is it worth it?
( weeping )
Excuse me.
( sobbing ) He's very brave about it,
but I'm not.
I think it's going to be successful
and everything's gonna turn out fine.
Chaz: And the first day or two he looked in the mirror,
he was very pleased with what he saw.
But just like all the other surgeries,
there was an infection
and they had to undo everything.
That left him more debilitated than ever,
and he just decided no more surgeries.
No more.
Roger's not one to look back and say,
"Oh, coulda, woulda, shoulda."
But there were times when he wrote a note
that said,
"Kill me."
I mean, I have that note.
"Kill me."
And I said, "No. No."
I told him that was not an option.
Female aide: Oh, you want to walk until there, or you wanna...?
Okay.
But you know, getting over there, over that bump...
Okay, who's gonna help him stand to go up to the stairs?
I know he wants to write instructions.
Chaz: Do you want the walker?
Yes or no, do you want the walker?
No. Okay, then let's get...
Yeah, but we have to get up and get going.
Chaz: People would say, "Ah, don't you get tired?"
You have to trust us.
You have to trust that we know what we're doing.
Chaz: Yeah, I get tired sometimes.
"Move this chair so it faces stairs."
You know, no, no, guess what, it's a few steps.
You can get out of the chair and you can walk up the stairs.
That's what you've been practicing every day.
You can do this.
Chaz: But I never got so tired
that I wanted to give up.
Come on, Uncle Roger.
Chaz: No, he's not gonna do that.
Let me handle it, please.
I'm gonna pull the chair out of the way.
Chaz: There's so many people out there
taking care of people who are sick or disabled.
We all go through the whole gamut of emotions.
Two, three, up...
Okay, now hold.
Flaum: You know, it's been a long road.
- I think it's hard. - Aide: All right.
It's always been hard, but it's even harder now.
Flaum: He calls her my angel.
And he means it.
Chaz: Valentine's Day wreath I got for you.
Chaz: Aw.
Roger: This woman never lost her love.
Now do you want to go upstairs?
She was always there believing I could do it.
And her love was like a wind pushing me back from the grave.
Chaz: And I told him that if you promise me
that you will give it your all,
I promise you that I will try to make life
as interesting for you as possible...
( audience applauds )
...so that every day,
you have something to look forward to.
How does it feel to be back in your own chair?
Okay.
Today is a big day,
coming home after two months is very difficult.
It's a joy,
but it's also very stressful.
( laughs )
- "Especially for you." - ( laughing )
Is tha... Are you trying to be a smart alec?
Are you trying to be a smart alec?
Gregory Nava: We have a saying in the Latino community,
"Make your heart your face."
Oh, now. Aw, okay.
Nava: More than anybody I have ever known,
his heart is his face.
That photograph that was on the cover
of Esquire says it all.
This is me. Right?
And I want you to know
who I am and what I'm going through.
Computerized voice: I may have things
to be depressed about,
but I am not depressed.
My life seems full again.
Josh Golden: Here we are full screen,
as we start to bring the screen size down,
eventually getting towards iPhone size,
it's gonna drop, it's gonna break.
And now, look at this...
Computerized voice: My attention is focused on my new website,
which will provide a home for my life's work
and has an enduring life of its own.
"Josh, this is beyond my wildest dreams."
Well, I'm glad. I like to make you happy.
Golden: Roger has been ahead of the curve,
becoming an early and massive adopter of social media.
He has almost 800,000 followers on Twitter
and 100,000 followers on Facebook.
"Nice links to IMDB and Wikipedia."
Golden: If you look at the other people how have
like 850,000 Twitter followers, it's like Kardashians.
Golden ( in room ): Beyond the search widget...
Rosenbaum: Right now, there's an argument about the internet.
Some people say film criticism is at the end,
the art of cinema is at the end.
Roger sees it in a much more positive way.
It's a renaissance.
It's a renaissance of film appreciation and film criticism.
The roving reporters that he uses,
like on his blog, for example,
is giving a cortical birth
to lots of other points of view.
The passionate fan-culture, or movie geek culture,
that exists on the internet, when people are really,
get really, really worked up,
is something that
the Siskel and Ebert show helped to seed.
It follows from Roger's understanding of criticism,
which is it's a mode of conversation.
It's the public square.
Golden: This is allowing your fans to access
this database of your reviews going back 1967
that has never been available in this form before.
Computerized voice: When I am writing,
I am the same person I always was.
Roger: In April 2008, I wrote my first blog entry,
and began this current
and probably final stage of my life.
My blog became my voice, my outlet,
my social media in a way I couldn't have dreamed of.
Into it, I poured my regrets, desires and memories.
Most people choose to write a blog, I needed to.
Computerized voice: Racism was ingrained in daily life.
It wasn't the overt racism of the South,
but more like the pervading background
against which we lived. We were here...
And I've never held a handgun in my life.
The theory is that gun ownership makes us safer,
that doesn't seem to be working out for us.
The body count rises.
Nack: He took all of that energy he put into television,
and he transferred it to his blog,
and the internet, and to his movie reviews,
and wrote better than he ever had in his life.
Man's voice: Bless these boys.
( computerized voice )
I don't know when a film has connected more immediately
with my own personal experience.
That's how you grow up.
...surrounded by the realms
of unimaginable time and space.
Corliss: We are now seeing the polymathic genius
that those of us who knew Roger always saw.
His voice was stilled,
but of course he's talking more than ever.
( jazz music playing )
Computerized voice: In the past 25 years, I have probably seen
ten thousand movies, and reviewed six thousand of them.
- She threw them there. - Man: I understand, but why?
I have forgotten most of them, I hope.
( orchestra flourishing on TV )
Roger: But I remember those worth remembering.
And they are on the same shelf in my mind.
Look at a movie that a lot of people love...
Match me, Sydney.
...and you'll find something profound...
( speaks French )
...no matter how silly the film may seem.
( band playing rock music )
- Sing! - ♪ Oh, worry me! ♪
What I miss though, is the wonder.
Open the pod bay doors, Hal.
People my age can remember walking into a movie palace...
Hal: I'm sorry, Dave.
...when the ceiling was far overhead...
Hal: I'm afraid I can't do that.
...balconies reached way into the shadows.
We remember the sound of a thousand people
laughing all at once,
and screens the size of billboards,
so every seat in the house was a good seat.
"I lost it at the movies," Pauline Kael said,
and we all knew just what she meant.
Man: Charles Foster Kane.
( dramatic theme music playing )
James: Only two days after he'd returned home,
Roger was readmitted to the hospital with pneumonia.
Chaz thought this was a brief if frustrating setback,
and so Roger and I resumed our email interview
with the plan to film him
as soon as he returned home again.
Roger was energetic and answered questions
about a variety of subjects.
Computerized voice: My favorite places in the city are the used bookstores.
You can't get me out of one.
I love what I call Formica Diners.
Those standard places with standard menus
and breakfast 24 hours a day.
Everything about the University Club.
James: I asked about one of his most controversial reviews
for "Blue Velvet", and his moral indignation
of director David Lynch.
But he asked Isabella Rossellini in this movie
to be undressed and humiliated on the screen...
Computerized voice: It seems true that I have an inbred moral code,
and that when it is violated,
I ask myself if the violation is justified.
Rossellini's discomfort seems so obvious
and palpable that I cringed.
Drama holds a mirror up to life,
but needn't reproduce it.
James: Attempts to film Roger in rehab were rebuffed by doctors.
Then suddenly one day his email output slowed to a trickle.
I know your energy is limited,
I'm trying to find out what questions
would engage you most fully.
( James speaking )
( silence )
Fearing the worst, I called Chaz.
She dissolved into tears.
Roger seemed determined to give up.
Chaz: He said he was beginning to feel trapped inside.
And he said, "You know, I don't wanna fight this time.
I don't wanna, I don't, I don't wanna fight cancer."
He said, "I am ready to go.
I've had a beautiful life and death is a part of life.
And I'm ready to go,
and you must let me go, you must let me go."
He had signed a DNR,
a do not resuscitate order.
He signed it
while I wasn't there one day.
And usually we make those kind of decisions together.
But I think he knew,
that that wouldn't have been my choice.
And so,
when we realized that he was leaving
I wanted them to use the defibrillator.
And they said no.
And short of going over
and taking it and doing it myself, you know...
And I could've screamed
and made a fuss and forced them to do it.
But you know what, something came over me.
Roger calls it a wind of peace
just kind of flowed over me,
and I knew it was time to accept it.
And accept that he was leaving.
And so...
I put on Dave Brubeck music in the room.
And I had everyone just settle down.
( Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" playing )
I was sitting next to his bed,
holding his left hand,
and other people held my hand,
and gathered and formed a circle around and held hands.
Until the doctor
said that he was going to call it,
1:40 p.m. as the time of death.
I have never seen anything
so beautiful
and so serene.
It became... it was so peaceful in that room.
And he... everything just...
everything just relaxed.
He looked young, he looked happy,
and those warm hands, and you know...
( slow jazz theme playing )
Computerized voice: What in the world is a Leave of Presence?
It means I am not going away.
Forty-six years ago, I became
the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times.
However you came to know me, I'm glad you did,
and thank you for being the best readers
any film critic could ask for.
Chaz: He had a heart big enough
to accept and love all.
I have to keep... he loved this hat,
- that's why I wore it today. - ( audience laughs )
I felt that as long as Roger was alive,
a little bit of Gene was too.
DuVernay: He was the first person I met
who actually walked out of the television.
Simon: Famous people have died before in Chicago.
Famous writers have died,
but what I thought marked the stories
about Roger was a genuine affection.
I mean, thousands of people came out
and thousands more wrote tributes on the internet,
which are still continuing.
Herzog: I like to walk down on Hollywood Boulevard
because I know it's his star coming.
I set my gaze straight,
and I don't look down at the star.
I know it's coming.
Looking straight at the horizon into the future.
Computerized voice: So on this day of reflection,
I say thank you for going on this journey with me.
I'll see you at the movies.
( slow jazz theme continues playing )