Ebert with his longtime personal assistant Carol Iwata
LIFE ITSELF A-
USA (115 mi) 2014
d: Steve James Official
site
Gatsby’s house was still
empty when I left — the grass on his lawn had grown as long as mine. One of the
taxi drivers in the village never took a fare past the entrance gate without
stopping for a minute and pointing inside; perhaps it was he who drove Daisy
and Gatsby over to East Egg the night of the accident, and perhaps he had made
a story about it all his own. I didn’t want to hear it and I avoided him when I
got off the train.
I spent my Saturday nights
in New York because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so
vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter, faint and
incessant, from his garden, and the cars going up and down his drive. One night
I did hear a material car there, and saw its lights stop at his front steps.
But I didn’t investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been away at
the ends of the earth and didn’t know that the party was over.
On the last night, with my
trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge
incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an obscene word,
scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight,
and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered
down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand.
Most of the big shore
places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy,
moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the
inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old
island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast
of the new world. Its 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; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the
presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he
neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with
something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
And as I sat there brooding
on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked
out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this
blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to
grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in
that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic
rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the
green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded
us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow 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.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The
Great Gatsby finale, 1925, Ebert’s favorite literary passage
Arguably the most powerful documentary seen so far this year,
as it’s like witnessing the passing of a close personal friend, adapted from
Ebert’s 2011 autobiographical memoirs, written five years after thyroid cancer
left him unable to speak, eat, or drink, but he “began to replace what I lost
with what I remembered,” making a resurgence on the Internet with his
interactive Ebert blog where he only became more prolific and influential as a
writer, where his legacy is contained on his revamped website (www.rogerebert.com) that currently receives
110 million visits per year, where there are some 70 writers offering diverse
opinions and views carrying on his name. The only film critic with a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame, and for almost 30 years he was the only film critic to
ever win the Pulitzer Prize back in 1975 for outstanding criticism. Ebert was also an honorary member of the
Director’s Guild of America, working as the film critic for The Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until
his death in 2013, his reviews were syndicated to more than 200 newspapers in
the United States
and Canada. Ebert also appeared on television for four
decades, including twenty-three years as cohost of Siskel
& Ebert & the Movies (1986–99), becoming the most popular and best
known film critic of our time, eventually accepted as a familiar household
name. While the sadness of his death was
a tragic loss, much of it expressed in an outpouring of affirmation at his public
funeral service (Roger
Ebert), much of this film captures behind-the-scenes glimpses of Roger and
his wife Chaz while he was undergoing extensive rehabilitation treatment in the
hospital, which includes the dramatic mood swings that come with the territory
of reaching the end stage of one’s life, where this film doesn’t sugar coat it,
showing the depths of exasperation and depression, where despite his overall
positive attitude, there were times when he preferred to end it. This is no movie version of death, but brings
the viewer into the wrenching personal moments when he was simply overcome by
the devastation of his illness. As he is unable to speak, Chaz acts as the
narrator of his thoughts, reading personal notes that he writes or recounting
his innermost feelings that he shared.
His death serves as the backdrop to what is otherwise an exposé of his
life.
Born as a middle class kid from Urbana,
a small Midwestern town in central Illinois,
his father was an electrician and his mother a housewife, where they subscribed
to three newspapers to accommodate Roger’s voracious interest. While he hoped he could follow in the
Kennedy’s footsteps to Harvard, his working class family could only afford the nearby
University of Illinois where he became the editor of the school newspaper, spending
late evening hours setting the type press, a notable experience to others who
remember Roger as he already knew how to write in a distinctively mature style,
as evidenced by an article he wrote after a Birmingham church bombing (16th Street Baptist Church bombing)
killed four young black girls on September 15, 1963, beginning with a quote
from Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. who told then white separatist Alabama
Governor George Wallace “The blood of four little children…is on your
hands.” At only 21, Ebert took issue
with King’s comments, suggesting in The
Daily Illini that the blood was on the hands of not just one man, but many,
as legislated white separatism must pass through the minds and thoughts of
hundreds, then voted upon by hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions more voters
before it is enacted into law, enforced by still more police, sheriffs,
district attorneys, juries, and ultimately judges who sit upon the wisdom of
such racially divisive practices. While
he moved to Chicago as a doctoral
student in graduate school at the University
of Chicago, the economic reality
meant he also needed money, so while he intended to be a freelance reporter
with the Chicago Sun-Times while
still attending classes, he was actually hired as a reporter and feature
writer. In less than a year, without asking
for the position and without so much as an interview he was offered the job as
full-time movie critic when Eleanor Keane left the paper in April 1967, becoming
the youngest film critic in the nation at age 24, a job he never relinquished
until his death. Enriched by old black
and white archival photographs, narrated by a few old clips of Ebert himself,
but mostly voice actor Stephen Stanton as Ebert, there are plenty of
recollections from friends, colleagues, and drinking buddies, recounting tales
from Ebert’s drinking days at O’Rourke’s Pub near Old Town where a bartender
recalls, “Back in the old days, Roger had the worst taste in women of probably
any man I’ve ever known. They were
either gold diggers, opportunists, or psychos.”
Improbably, or perhaps not, Roger developed a close
association with schlock sexploitation maestro Russ Meyer, writing the
screenplay for the cult film BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1970), which
captured the thoughts of young director Martin Scorsese, who started amusingly
with the title, claiming they meant it when they say it goes “Beyond…Far
Beyond,” always remembering the editing sequence when the girl has sex in a
luxury Bentley car, which edits the grill of the Bentley into the middle of the
sex act. Scorsese recalls the interest a
young Ebert took in one of his earliest efforts, WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR
(1967), seen when it was entitled I CALL FIRST, already recognizing the talent
behind the camera, which he recalls in his book here, Scorsese
by Ebert by Roger Ebert, an excerpt.
In one of the lowest periods of Scorsese’s life in the early 80’s, after
several failed marriages, he acknowledges he was actually contemplating
suicide, but before he had the chance to act, he received an invite from Siskel
& Ebert to join them in a retrospective panel discussion about his works at
the Toronto Film Festival, something he never forgot, as it literally saved his
life. Scorsese’s comments were
particularly heartfelt, even as Ebert lambasted his film THE COLOR OF MONEY
(1986), which struck a nerve, but he insisted that even when writing a negative
review, Ebert never lost his professionalism or went for the juggler, a trait
that describes his innate humaneness.
Similarly, Errol Morris attributes much of his success to Ebert’s
enthralling endorsement of his first documentary film GATES OF HEAVEN (1978), a
small film about pet cemeteries that Roger championed throughout his life. The same could be said about Werner Herzog,
who calls Ebert a “soldier of cinema, a wounded comrade,” but it is Morris who acknowledges,
“Here I had someone writing about my work who was a true enthusiast. His enthusiasm has kept me going over the
years, and the memory of his enthusiasm will keep me going for as long as I
make movies.” The director’s own
association with Ebert dates back to 1994 when Siskel & Ebert used their
television show as a platform to endorse his unheralded urban basketball documentary
HOOP DREAMS (1994) as one of the best films of the year, where both listed it
as their #1 Best Film. All of this
attests not only to his influence, but his personal generosity, reflected by
countless others who recall how Ebert took the time to acknowledge their work
when nobody else was, like Charles Burnett’s KILLER OF SHEEP (1979) or Gregory
Nava’s EL NORTE (1983), where kindness is a recognizable human attribute one
never forgets.
After winning the Pulitzer Prize, The Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee tried to lure him away with
a big-money offer, but Ebert continually refused, replying, “I’m not gonna
learn new streets.” Much is made of
Ebert’s professional legacy, specifically the thumbs up/thumbs down shorthand
of film criticism, a technique that film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum dismisses,
claiming it is not film criticism, which Ebert is not ashamed to acknowledge,
as television time restraints demand a simplistic rating system, a short cut
style of divulging sufficient information for viewers to make an intelligent
choice. But other serious cinephiles
were equally appalled by the system, including this erudite March/April 1990 Film Comment attack by Richard Corliss, All Thumbs: Or, Is There a Future for Film
Criticism? that attacks the dumbing down, sound bite mentality of movie
reviews as little more than television marketing. In the next edition of the magazine, Ebert's reply may be as meticulously detailed, lengthy, and
well-argued as the original piece, delivering a strong defense for the
show. This perfectly illustrates Ebert’s
clear-headedness, as according to newspaper colleagues and friends, Ebert never
spent more than a half hour writing a review, that he comes from a newspaper
background where the secret is outlining the ideas in your head before you
start to write. Ebert had the ability to
write, and speak, in whole paragraphs while retaining the ability to remain
clear and concise, displaying old-fashioned Midwestern logic and common sense. Even when writing about complex artists like
Bergman, Dreyer, or Bresson, Ebert never wrote above the heads of the audience
by describing often incomprehensible film theory (which he was known to do in
classrooms, spending hours dissecting movies shot by shot), always aware that he
was writing for the widest possible readership.
When paired with philosophy major and Yale graduate Gene Siskel, a man
who never met one of his own opinions he didn’t prefer, Ebert was often stunned
by his inability to convince his partner of the error of his thinking, where
both stubbornly refused to acquiesce to the other, which provided the fireworks
for the show. As someone ingeniously
acknowledged, “Gene was a rogue planet in Roger’s solar system.” Of course there are film clips from the show,
including inflammatory shouting matches objecting about the incredibly poor
taste of their partner, over BENJI THE HUNTED (1987), of all films, where Ebert
strains to yell over another Siskel snide remark, “I disagree particularly
about the part you like!” But the worst
behavior occurs during a series of outtakes where both are seen continually
trading personal insults, captured on camera as they dutifully flub line after
line of promo shots, eventually walking off the set in a huff. Eventually, perhaps because of the amount of
time they spent in such close quarters together, they grew a special affection
for one another.
Among the many surprises of the film is not about Roger, but
Gene Siskel, former playboy, who was part of Hugh Hefner’s inner circle of the
early 70’s before he became a movie critic, seen jet setting around the country
with a bevy of beautiful models on the Playboy private jet. And who would have guessed that among Roger’s
favorite literary works was a special affection for The Great Gatsby, often asking his lifelong friend Bill Nack to
recite the final lines in the book from memory, which he proudly does onscreen,
as he has done hundreds of times, where the overriding hope and optimism of a
new and better world ahead seems to have been Roger’s guiding light. At the beginning of the film he offers his
description of cinema as “a machine that generates empathy,” which has an
almost science-fiction feel to it, suggesting there is a healing power in
cinema, which may have transformed his life.
He wasn’t particularly proud of his reckless behavior on display during the
70’s while working for The Chicago
Sun-Times, describing himself as “tactless, egotistical, merciless, and a
showboat,” where he was also a preeminent storyteller that could hold a room, a
womanizer, and an alcoholic, eventually joining Alcoholics Anonymous, where he
remained sober since 1979. In his book,
Ebert claims Ann Landers introduced him to his eventual wife Chaz at a
restaurant in Chicago, but the film tells another story, that he met the love
of his life at age 50 in an A.A. meeting.
A former chair of the Black Student Union at her college, and perhaps
the least likely person to choose a white man for a husband, Chaz steadfastly
remains at Roger’s side throughout his most difficult ordeals, often
understanding the underlying anguish and despair even as Roger tends to remain
optimistic. Despite the graphically
uncomfortable moments where Roger has to continually return to the rehab
hospital five times, each time thinking it would be his last, that it would
lead him on the road to recovery, where he was initially informed, “They got it
all. Every last speck,” only to realize
the cancer had continued to spread elsewhere.
This stream of medical news is exhausting and demoralizing, none of
which is hidden from view, where among Roger’s more acute observations was his
wife’s inextinguishable support, “To visit a hospital is not pleasant. To do it hundreds of times is heroic.” In a startling revelation, Chaz describes the
final moment when they finally decide to let go, easily the most heartbreaking
moment in the entire film, where death has rarely felt more genuine. Yet it is this heartfelt intimacy that
carries us through this film that helps us understand the power of love, where
it nearly has the capacity to raise the dead, perhaps best expressed by Kenneth Turan from The
Los Angeles Times:
If you had asked me ahead of time
what I would have found most interesting about Life Itself, I would have guessed that it would be the parts I knew
least about, specifically Roger’s harum-scarum days as a young film critic
about town in high-spirited Chicago. Paradoxically, the opposite was true, (where
perhaps most surprising are) the sections that enlarged my understanding of
Roger’s relationship with his remarkable wife, Chaz, particularly as their
vibrant marriage took on the cataclysmic series of illnesses that marked the
final decade of Roger’s life. The
cascading surgeries that Roger went through would have toppled a less
indomitable man, and it was difficult for me to watch the scenes that show Roger
in obvious discomfort and pain. But
having a behind-the-scenes look at the truth of Roger’s remark that Chaz’s love
was ‘like a wind pushing me back from the grave’ genuinely brought tears to my
eyes.
Roger loves Chaz
| Roger Ebert's Journal | Roger Ebert
July 17, 2012, a
selection from Life Itself: A Memoir:
The greatest pleasure came from annual
trips we made with our grandchildren Raven, Emil and Taylor, and their parents
Sonia and Mark. Josibiah and his son Joseph
came on one of those trips, where we made our way from Budapest
to Prague, Vienna
and Venice. We went with the Evans family to Hawaii,
Los Angeles, London,
Paris, Venice,
and Stockholm. We walked the ancient pathway from Cambridge
to Grantchester. Emil announced that for
him there was no such thing as getting up too early, and every morning the two
of us would meet in a hotel lobby and go out for long walks together. I took my camera. 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.”
Ramin Setoodeh 5 of the Film’s Most Surprising Moments,
from Variety at Sundance, January 19,
2014
Roger Ebert knew
that he wouldn’t live to see “Life Itself,” the documentary based on his 2011
memoir. In one of the most touching scenes of the riveting film by director
Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”), Ebert learns that his cancer has metastasized to
his spine. The doctors estimate he only has six to 16 months to live, although
he doesn’t make it that long. Ebert died in April 2013 at 70.
“It is likely I will have passed when the film is ready,” Ebert
calmly predicts on-camera.
At the Sunday premiere of “Life Itself,” James broke into tears
as he introduced his film, which will air on CNN. The next two hours were a
sobfest, as most of the audience cried — and often laughed, too. When the
credits rolled, Ebert’s wife Chaz took the stage joined by Marlene Iglitzen,
the wife of Ebert’s longtime movie sparring partner Gene Siskel.
Chaz talked about how people called her a saint for taking care
of Roger as his health failed after a thyroid cancer diagnosis in 2002. “What
they didn’t know is how much my heart grew from having been with him for all
those years, for loving him, for taking care of him, for having him take care
of me,” Chaz said. During the Q&A, an audience member asked what Ebert
would have thought of “Life Itself.” Chaz knew that “he would say two thumbs
up.”
The stirring documentary, which was shot during what would be the
last five months of Ebert’s life, includes interviews with Ebert’s director
friends Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, as well as critics
A.O. Scott and Richard Corliss. Here are five of the film’s most surprising moments.
1. Ebert never got to say
good-bye to Gene Siskel. In the documentary, Marlene talks about how Gene
hid his brain cancer diagnosis in 1998, out of fear that Disney would replace
him on ABC’s “Siskel & Ebert.” Ebert had planned to visit Gene at the hospital,
but he passed two days before the visit. Chaz said that Ebert was so
heartbroken, he was determined to share the details of his own health after he
got sick.
2. Ebert signed “a do not
resuscitate.” In the final days of his life, he sent James emails like
“i’m fading” and “i can’t.” He said his hands were so swollen, he wasn’t able
to use a computer. He secretly signed a DNR at the hospital without telling
Chaz, which she learned about on the day of his death. In the film, she
described the moment of his passing as “a wind of peace” and “I knew it was
time to accept it.”
3. Ebert met Chaz at
Alcoholics Anonymous. In his memoir, Ebert claims to have first talked to
her at a Chicago restaurant, after an introduction by Ann Landers. In the film,
Chaz says she met Roger at AA, a fact that she had never publicly revealed. And
until he started dating her, Ebert had a wild bachelor streak–according to one
pal, he used to court “gold diggers, opportunists and psychos.” Another buddy
recalls that Roger introduced him to a prostitute he was seeing.
4. Laura Dern once gave
Ebert a present that belonged to Marilyn Monroe. After Ebert presented Dern
with a Sundance tribute, Dern sent
him a heartfelt letter with a special memento. It was a puzzle that Lee
Strasberg had given her, a gift from Alfred Hitchcock to Marilyn Monroe. Ebert
later gave the puzzle to director Ramin Bahrani, with the instructions that one
day, “You have to give it to someone else who deserves it.”
5. Ebert loved “The Great
Gatsby.”It was his favorite book. He had his journalist friend Bill Nack
recite the final lines back to him hundreds of times. Here it is, Roger: “So we
beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Ebert compiled "best of the year" movie lists
beginning in 1967, thereby helping provide an overview of his critical
preferences. His top choices were:
|
1967: Bonnie and Clyde
1968: The Battle of Algiers
1969: Z
1970: Five
Easy Pieces
1971: The Last Picture Show
1972: The Godfather
1973: Cries and Whispers
1974: Scenes from a Marriage
1975: Nashville
1976: Small Change
1977: 3 Women
1978: An Unmarried Woman
1979: Apocalypse Now
1980: The Black Stallion
1981: My Dinner with Andre
1982: Sophie's Choice
|
1983: The Right Stuff
1984: Amadeus
1985: The Color Purple
1986: Platoon
1987: House of Games
1988: Mississippi Burning
1989: Do the Right Thing
1990: Goodfellas
1991: JFK
1992: Malcolm X
1993: Schindler's List
1994: Hoop Dreams
1995: Leaving Las Vegas
1996: Fargo
1997: Eve's Bayou
1998: Dark City
|
1999: Being John Malkovich
2000: Almost Famous
2001: Monster's
Ball
2002: Minority Report
2003: Monster
2004: Million Dollar Baby
2005: Crash
2006: Pan's
Labyrinth
2007: Juno
2008: Synecdoche, New York
2009: The
Hurt Locker
2010: The Social Network
2011: A Separation
2012: Argo
|
