"We must try to
contribute joy to the world."
For a
generation of moviegoers, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert was famous
for talking about movies. Then cancer took away his ability to speak (and to
eat and drink through his mouth). His courage to continue working inspired his
fans just as though he were one of the film heroes he wrote about.
He was arguably the nation's best
known and most respected film critic. For 24 years, Ebert and Gene Siskel, the reviewer for the competing Chicago
Tribune, playfully argued about new films on their half-hour TV show
"Siskel and Ebert at the Movies." They became famous for their
"thumbs up" or "thumbs down" way of voting, so much so that
they had the expression "Two Thumbs Up" copyrighted.
Ebert lived and breathed movies. He
wrote 15 books, most of which were film criticism, and in 1975 he became the
first movie reviewer to win a Pulitzer Prize.
From 1967 to 2013, he saw about 500 films a year and reviewed about half
of them. Out of those more than 20,000 or so movies, his top 10 favorites were 2001: A Space Odyssey; Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Apocalypse
Now; Citizen Kane; La Dolce Vita; The General; Raging Bull; Tokyo Story; The Tree of Life; and Vertigo.
In 1999, Siskel died suddenly of a
brain tumor. Ebert soldiered on with other TV partners. Then in 2002 he
had surgery to remove his cancerous thyroid gland. The next year he lost part
of his salivary glands to cancer.
Then in
2006 cancer attacked his jaw, and part of it was removed. Two weeks later as he
was packing to leave the hospital, his carotid artery, weakened by cancer and
surgery, burst. He was rushed back into the operating room. Most of the rest of
his jaw had to be removed.
Having lost
the ability to eat or drink, he was fed a special paste through a tube in his
stomach. Ebert constantly fantasized about the taste of food—everything from
orange soda and Good & Plenty to an entire meal at Steak & Shake.
"Problems become invisible"
"What
I miss [most about not being able to eat] is the society," he wrote.
"Meals are when we most easily meet with friends and family. They're the
first way we experience places far from home. Where we sit to regard the
passing parade. How we learn indirectly of other cultures. When we feel good
together."
Through all
of his trials, Ebert did everything he could to continue to write. He lost
himself in his work. "When I am writing," he said, "My problems
become invisible, and I am the same person I always was."
Surgeons
conducted three additional surgeries to try to reconstruct his jaw. None
succeeded. The cancer was too powerful. It was one thing after another. It began
eating away at his right shoulder. He broke his hip. He passed away in 2013.
His last words to the public were, "I'll see you at the movies."
Near the
end of his life Ebert said, "What I am grateful for is the gift of
intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter….I believe that if, at
the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make
others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that
is about the best we can do….We must try to contribute joy to the world. This
is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must
try."
One of
Ebert's heroes was fellow Chicago write Studs Terkel who penned best-selling
oral histories of Harry Truman and everyday working people. "The lesson
Studs taught me is that your life is over when you stop living it."
Ebert never
stopped living his life.
MORAL: Real heroes are in real life.
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