A couple of brief "Thumbs Up!" memories of Roger Ebert

 It was with great sadness that I heard about the death of Roger Ebert last Thursday, just one day after he announced he was scaling back his writing work in order to face a third battle with cancer. He was the dean of contemporary American film critics, and thanks to his TV shows "Sneak Previews", "Siskel & Ebert" and "At the Movies", he made film critics and film criticism intelligent, accessible and entertaining. 

I was an avid viewer of "Sneak Previews" on PBS during the late 70s and early 80s. When I was in grade 11, I was involved in a student TV production project with a Montreal public access channel (Channel 9), called "Those Terrible Teens", in which we got to write, produce and act in our own sketches. Me and my friend Pat Hamou (who was also a regular "Sneak Previews" viewer) decided to do a spoof of the show (we called it "Sneaky Previews"), in which Pat portrayed "Gene Sissy" and I portrayed "Roger Eggbeater". We had a blast putting together and acting in that sketch. I remembered we "reviewed" two popular flicks of that time -- "Apocalypse Now" and "10" -- in which one of us would hate the movie and the other would like the movie (and vice versa), and got to the point when we would come close to fisticuffs over our differing opinions (hopefully, Gene and Roger never came to that point when they did their TV shows). In fact, exactly 33 years ago, we managed to tape the sketch and showed it personally to Gene Siskel, who was in Montreal for a PBS meet & greet event at Place Bonaventure. He gave our sketch a "thumbs up", but had two criticisms: he said Pat had to be taller, and I had to be heavier (pound-wise, that is).

* * *

Ebert's passion for movies was so well expressed with his written reviews he did for the Chicago Sun-Times, his website and for a whole slew of books that he published on a regular basis. I had the chance to meet Ebert in person. It happened in June of 1996 at the American Booksellers Association (ABA) convention, which took place that year in Chicago. Ebert was signing copies of the latest edition of his movie yearbook. Although I only got to say "Hi", "Thank you" and shook his hand, I still have that autographed copy of his 1996 movie yearbook, which is in my library. And I highly recommend his 2011 memoir "Life Itself", which is a fascinating story of the making of a well-respected film critic. 

Roger, film buffs and film critics everywhere will miss you, and unfortunately, as you used to say at the end of each "At the Movies" broadcast, "the balcony is closed".