Many people who actually knew Roger Ebert will do a better job of memorializing him, but I think it’s worth noting that you didn’t need to know him well to know what a good egg he was.
The Chicago Sun Times movie critic, whose cancer recurred and ended his life this week, was the dean of the profession and he was widely beloved. My two, brief encounters with him showed me why. The first encounter was at the Oscars in 1995. I was new to this job and intimidated by the hugeness and unfamiliarity of the event, as well as by the then-new technology of filing a story remotely on a laptop. But I lucked out: In the backstage tent where Oscar reporters are stashed, I was sitting across a big table from Ebert, who kindly helped me with the connections and explained how the q/a’s worked when winners zipped into our tent for a few minutes. Without his help, I’d probably still be searching for an electrical outlet and would certainly never have figured out how to get noticed so I could ask winner Jessica Lange a question about her best actress trophy.
The second encounter was at the Walker Art Center in, I think, 1999. He was there with his pal, director, Werner Herzog, for a tribute to Herzog’s work. That time, what came through more than anything was Ebert’s passion for his work and for movies. He had already been doing his job for more than two decades but it was inspiring to hear him rave about the movies he was jazzed about and to see the teasing relationship between him and Herzog. Both of those things come through in this lovely little note Ebert later wrote Herzog, after seeing his latest documentary:
Dear Werner, You have done me the astonishing honor of dedicating your new film, “Encounters at the End of the World,” to me. Since I have admired your work beyond measure for the almost 40 years since we first met, I do not need to explain how much this kindness means to me. When I saw the film at the Toronto Film Festival and wrote to thank you, I said I wondered if it would be a conflict of interest for me to review the film, even though of course you have made a film I could not possibly dislike. I said I thought perhaps the solution was to simply write you a letter. But I will review the film, my friend, when it arrives in theaters on its way to airing on the Discovery Channel. I will review it, and I will challenge anyone to describe my praise as inaccurate. I will review it because I love great films and must share my enthusiasm.
That was written in the midst of Ebert’s many battles with cancer but he kept coming back to work, even when cancer took his jaw and forced him to “speak” via a computer that constructed sentences from his many TV appearances on “At the Movies.” So it’s no surprise that, when his latest illness was announced just two days ago on his Twitter feed (@ChicagoEbert), he closed with, “I’ll see you at the movies.” We got to know him through his reviews and, even though I would love to have known him, I feel like I kinda did.