Few people loved life and the movies like Roger Ebert. The new documentary Life Itself is a reminder of the many things we can learn from the late critic.
Roger Ebert in Life Itself.
Kevin Horan, Courtesy of Sundance Institute/Magnolia Pictures
Roger Ebert died on April 4, 2013, after a long battle with cancer. At the time of his passing, he was a few months into working with Hoop Dreams director Steve James on a documentary about his life and work as an influential film critic who, alongside the late Gene Siskel, discussed and argued over movies every week on television before giving them a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. The doc, entitled Life Itself, based on Ebert's memoir of the same name, opens in select theaters on July 4.
Life Itself is sad, of course — it's a biography and an elegy that follows the decline in Ebert's health, but skips back through Ebert's early newspaperman days into his pairing with Siskel on what was then called Sneak Previews, while also covering his marriage to Chaz Hammelsmith Ebert. And its heartbreaking timing means the film can't help but be radiantly affectionate about its subject, which sidelines some forays into discussions of how some of their colleagues felt Siskel and Ebert oversimplified criticism to a simple yes or no vote. But it's also uplifting and fiercely inspiring, a portrait of someone who loved passionately and well. Here are some of the ways it will make you want to do the same.
1. It's an encouragement to be unafraid to write.
Magnolia Pictures
Ebert worked as a high school sports reporter for the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette at 15. In his twenties, he became the youngest film critic in the country in 1967 at the Chicago Sun-Times, the paper he'd write for until his death. The movie and media industries were then, as now, concentrated in New York and L.A., but being based in another part of the country didn't stop Ebert from becoming a nationally recognized voice.
Ebert's clear, straightforward approach to writing would eventually make him the first film critic to win a Pulitzer. And he wasn't just devoted and opinionated, he was impressively prolific — as one of his newspaper colleagues points out in Life Itself, "He could knock out a movie review in 30 minutes," which should be motivation in itself to get some words on a page.
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