Roger Ebert (1942-2013): The Balcony Is Closed

Roger Ebert, american film critic. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As long as there have been movies, there's been movie criticism.  Depending on what publication or website you read, these men and women gave us their views on whether a film was worth seeing or not, which performers impressed them and which did not, all while avoiding what we now call "spoiler alerts".  The reader's job was to decide whether to plunk down his/her hard-earned money for a night at the local Bijou, based on that review.  Many a Hollywood career soared or tanked because of it.  (Of course, some would choose to ignore the negative review and go anyway.)

Roger Ebert, who died at the age of 70 Thursday, wasn't the first film critic to gain wide attention for his work.  He was just the best-known and (according to his peers) the most powerful movie critic in America.  He also happened to be the first movie critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, as well as having a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Over a 46-year career at the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, Ebert had written thousands of reviews on the movies he saw.  His year-end list of what he thought were the best movies ran the gamut from Oscar winners to art-house specialties.  Most recently, according to Wikipedia, those films that topped his list included "The Hurt Locker", "The Social Network", "A Separation" and "Argo".

Ebert tried his hand at screenwriting early in his career, working for director Russ Meyer in co-writing the notorious cult classic "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls".

But Ebert's real rise to prominence came through his association with Gene Siskel.  Both were film critics, plying their trade at competing Chicago newspapers and local TV stations, having a nice little rivalry.  That's when a producer at public TV station WTTW got the idea of bringing the two of them together.  The result was the program that eventually became "Sneak Previews" on PBS.

For nearly a quarter century (and through three different shows), America got to watch two movie critics from Chicago mixing it up over the film they just saw, then delivering their verdicts with a thumbs up or a thumbs down.  Most of us got our movie education through Siskel and Ebert, who championed some films we never would have heard about in the days before Netflix because they weren't appearing at the local multiplex.

The partnership ended with Siskel's death in 1999.  Since then, Ebert tried other shows in which he was paired up with other reviewers.  But it just wasn't the same.

Today, thanks to Siskel and Ebert, everybody's a critic.  Though reviewers who did this for a living are now few and far between because of downsizing by newspapers and other print media, and by the Hollywood studios' increasing practice of not offering certain movies for preview, the art has been thriving on the Internet through film buffs with blog posts and social media accounts.

As Ebert's health deteriorated following his cancer diagnosis, he was able to continue his career through the Internet.  When surgery took away his voice, he used the new technology to help get it back, sort of.

It's easy to say that there will never be another critic like Roger Ebert.  Instead we now have millions of Eberts delivering verdicts on the movies we watch through words, word of mouth, and our wallets.

And that, as Roger Ebert might say, deserves two thumbs up.