Roger Ebert died yesterday. Across the internet, critics and writers have eulogized him and recalled their experiences with him. Most critics felt his influence even if they never met him personally. Some of my favorite critics including Nathan Rabin, Stephen Hyden, Jim DeRogatis, and Wesley Morris have made excellent contributions to the conversation. For them, his nationally syndicated reviews, his weekly television show At the Movies with colleague/rival Gene Siskel, or interactions with him at film festivals, at the Lake Street screening room in Chicago, or at the Chicago Sun-Times offices were formative experiences for them as burgeoning critics.
I can’t say that I share those experiences. I’ve never been
to the Lake Street screening room. I grew up in a Chicago Tribune household so I never read his reviews growing up. I
have some vague memories of At the Movies
from when I was a kid, but it wasn’t something I consciously watched. Honestly,
I can probably trace most of my initial awareness of Ebert to his appearance on
an episode of The Critic that my
friend Jeff had taped. Until he was featured in an incredible Esquire profile in 2010 that detailed the
loss of his ability to eat and speak due to a battle with cancer, I didn’t
think about him much growing up, although I was very aware of his importance
and his stature as both a critic and a local icon. His presence loomed over
Chicago in a way that few of the city’s residents have.
During the 1970s, my uncle Tom Fitzpatrick wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times, and he developed
alongside Ebert at the paper. They were friends and colleagues, and they
influenced each other as they established their respective voices as writers.
Both won Pulitzer Prizes for their work at the paper. By the time I was born,
Tom had moved to Phoenix, but I saw him a few times growing up, and I was in
awe of his life. He was a great writer and an effortlessly interesting and
assured person. When I was in late elementary school, my family visited him and
my aunt in Phoenix, and he took me on a tour of the offices at the Arizona Republic. I was over a decade
away from realizing that I wanted to be a writer, but that day is still one of
my favorite memories from a child. Even though I had no inkling of my future,
it was a formative experience for me nonetheless.
When Tom passed away during the summer of 2002, I had just
turned 14 and was about to start high school. His memorial service was held at
the Tribune Building in Chicago (he also wrote for the Chicago Tribune for a few years), and Ebert was one of the many
speakers who showed up to laud my uncle’s life and work. I don’t really
remember anything he said when he was up at the microphone, but I remember him
being warm and funny and grateful for the experiences he had with Tom in his
earliest days as a film critic. Even after decades of establishing himself as
the greatest film critic in history, he hadn’t lost the joy that he got from
movies or from the people he worked with and counted among his friends. I was
extremely shy at the time, but he was so inviting that I managed to build up
the courage to go talk to him. Rush Hour
2 had just come out on VHS and I had been watching it at home frequently,
and even though I was an awkward, inarticulate, and vaguely surly kid he seemed
happy to take a few minutes to listen to my opinion of the film and share his
own (he was not a fan of either the movie or Chris Tucker, although he had a
lot of nice things to say about Jackie Chan; I liked everything about it, and
even though I know now that it isn’t a great movie I still find it immensely
entertaining and it’s one of the few VHS tapes sitting on my shelf next to all
of my DVDs).
I barely qualify as a critic, and I’m not that good of a
writer yet. The one thing I have going for me is a passion for music and
culture that has sustained me through my frustration with my too slowly-developing
abilities and my difficulty finding paid writing jobs. A small but important
part of that came from my chance to talk to a man who cared so deeply for
movies and for the people who watched them that he would listen to me as if I
was a peer rather than just some kid. Without the respect this titan of a
writer and critic afforded me and my ideas even when they differed from his own
it is unlikely that I ever would have built up the confidence to begin
committing my own opinions on the art that most moves me to paper and putting
them out into the ether.
Roger will be missed.
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