018 Darling’s Critic Transcript (Roger Ebert)

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Michael: This person died in 2013 at age 70, he did graduate study at the university of Cape town under a rotary international fellowship. He then became a doctoral candidate in English at the university of Chicago, but left because of a job opportunity.

Friend: I just keep wanting to say Elon Musk I don't think he's died. Or his 70,

Michael: he went on two dates with Oprah. Winf.

Friend: What no, I mean, I don't know anybody who's dated Oprah besides her current bow.

Michael: He wrote the screenplay for the 1970 movie, beyond the . Valley of the dolls,

Friend: John Carpenter,

Michael: not John Carpenter, but I like that guess he was the first in his profession to win a Pulitzer prize.

Friend: I don't even know what his profession is. um, Roy Orison,

Michael: not Roy Orison, the force and grace of his opinions propelled him into the mainstream of American culture.

Friend: Walter Cronkite,

Michael: not Walter Cronkite, but boy, you have honed in all right. His thumbs up or down approach, drew SCO from some critics who said it, trivialized film criticism.

Friend: Roger Ebert. Roger Ebert. Roger Ebert.

Michael: Today's dead. Celebrity is Roger Ebert, please. Welcome. It's uh, fun to have these gentlemen with us. Roger Ebert and Jean Cisco.

I think we're film, uh, lovers we're fans. We like films. We like to see good films. We're disappointed when we see bad ones and we talk about them to each other. I think the way a lot of people. Talk about movies to each other. It's something that I enjoy. I love it at nine o'clock in the morning when everybody else is going into their offices with their briefcase.

And I'm sneaking into a theater with my bucket of popcorn at nine in the morning. Sure. Nine, nine o'clock last Christmas morning. I was at the Chicago theater. Oh, that's a sad, ugly story. Uh, I've got more just like it too.

Welcome to famous and great. I'm Michael Osborne.

Amit: My name is Amit Kapoor.

Michael: And on this show, we go through a series of categories about multiple aspects of a famous person's life. We wanna figure out the things in life that we would actually desire and ultimately answer the big question. Would I want that life today?

Roger Eber died 2013 age 70 category one grading the first line of their obituary. Roger Ebert, the popular film critic and television co-host who, along with his fellow reviewer and sometimes sparring partner, gene, Cisco could lift or sink the fortunes of a movie with their trademark thumbs up or thumbs down, died on Thursday in Chicago.

Amit, what do you think? Not a lot

of colorful words. It's a disservice to somebody who was so articulate and was so artful with his words. I would think an obituary writer at the New York times would pay some homage to that rather than go to what the popular world knows him as, which is the binary thumbs up and thumbs down.

Maybe

let's back this out. First of all, do you say thumbs up or thumbs down? You have to, because that's such an important part. Yes. However, there are two thumbs. So you also have to mention gene Cisco. Yes. Who's been gone a while now. He died in 1999. This 14 years. Yeah. Yeah. 14 years gone. So as soon as you commit to doing the thumbs up, thumbs down thing, you're also committed to mentioning somebody else, which I think is right.

But they did have two distinct careers. And the fact that Roger Eberts lasted another 14 years is not well captured. And then I guess this is the way to do it, but lift or sink the fortunes of a movie, which is very true. It's very trues, not to culture making, which is a term I've heard you use, but he's a, he's a

Amit: fortune maker.

Michael: He's a fortune maker, a fortune killer. The documentary I saw about his life, which is excellent. Said something like the studios came to fear, Cisco and eBird. If they gave two thumbs down, then they knew a movie was done. You know, and if it got two thumbs up, then that was all over the advertising marketing campaigns,

Amit: right?

Yeah. It's like what Google thinks now about your website's searchability. Yeah. On certain words, like it really can make or break an entire company the same way Ebert could make or break an entire film, no matter how much that film cost and what the cast was. So I guess I

Michael: am pleased that the obituary line does get at their power, but to your point, there's not 15 pieces of flare in here.

Amit: No, there's not even more than two.

Michael: Yeah. It really doesn't say anything about the quality of his writing. There's no like, you know, creative or, or distinctive style or anything

Amit: like that. Is that a difference maybe saying that, um, Ebert could probably write his own obituary a hundred times better than this, so I'm just gonna make it simple.

Michael: If, so it's a cop out. I'm a little disappointed. I'm ready to give it my score. Where are you at? I

Amit: am also a little disappointed. I'm ready to give it my score. But before I do that, I wanna get into a related point. Okay. So you always say, I am not generous with my points, right? Yeah.

Michael: You, you were like, if it's a 70, that's a C yes.

You know, it's a seven out of 10. That's a C. And I think it, if it's average, it ought

Amit: to be five. It ought to be five. Yeah. So that is correct. So I think I have a Eber inequality. So what I learned in the research is that some of the critics, critics, they said he was often too generous and they applied numbers to it to say, what is the average that he gave?

Yeah. And the average review once quantified was 71% favorable. Interesting. For all

Michael: the movies that he reviewed. I we'll get into this more. I have more EAN qualities that I see in you. Oh really? Yeah. But in flattering once ones. Yeah. So do I go first on the score? No, I'm gonna go first. I give it a six. My six is based on, I don't care as much about his power as I do his talent.

Now I realize those two things are related, but I would've liked to seen some attempt to say, this is what he was really good at. Not just that he was powerful at it. You know what I mean? There's no, there's no description of the quality. Yes.

Amit: We've brought this up before. We're always tempted to be contrarian to each other.

Yeah. However, six was the number in my head. I thought it might be that's. That's why I wanted to go first. So I'm also gonna give it a six and what I miss more is just the lack of colorful language, like I said. Yeah. Uh, cause I think that's a disservice to a man who was incredibly articulate and had a great choice

Michael: of words.

Absolutely. All right. So we're both sixes category, two, five things. I love about you here. Amit and I work together to come up with five reasons why we love this person or why we want to be talking about them.

Amit: I had a lot to hear, but I think you do too. So you go.

Michael: Okay. I do have a lot, and I, there's no way that this first one won't be something that we both need to talk about.

So I'll just come in at the gate with a, how do I wanna say this? That he is a great critic in as much as I understand what it means to be a great critic. And I really try to think about what that means in the lead up to this conversation. Okay. And I don't think I recognize great film criticism, literary criticism, art criticism in general.

However, I did try to get smarter on why he was described specifically as a great critic. I read a lot of the tributes that were written after his death. And I got one quote here that I really liked. It's from Jeff McMann. Who's this was in Forbes. And he said, why was Roger Ebert the greatest movie reviewer?

Not because he cared about movies, not because he told us what to think about movies, but because he told us just enough to care and to think for ourselves. This is the journalism of empathy. I love that, cuz I do think that that is what a great critic does is sort of like tries to shine light on what they're seeing in a way that hands, that decision over to you.

You're never gonna agree with everything Roger Ebert or any critic has to say about any piece of art, but you do want them to. Give you the tools to discern it for yourself. Correct. And so I, I get that about him. And so that's my favorite thing I love about him. That's

Amit: great. And what I would probably add to that is that just the way that he viewed film it was entertainment.

Right. But yeah. Uh, the words that I extracted were vision, imagination, truth, and social change that that's the magic of movies in his eye. And so as he wrote criticisms or gave them on his show, it was with that lens, right. It's saying, I see this as symbolic of this, or I see this bringing out this emotion so dynamically or so poorly, and I'm gonna lead you halfway there.

And then you sort of decide

Michael: there's a lot of other things that I'm tempted to like throw in the great critic bucket here. You know, I realize that my thing one I love about Roger Ebert is. There's a lot that could go into that. One of the things I'm tempted to throw, and I don't know if this is a separate thing or not, but his timing as a film critic that he comes up in the late sixties, that's when he really gets the job in the Chicago newspaper.

And one of his early reviews is Bonnie and Clyde, which is a movie that kind of marks the beginning of new Hollywood. And that he, you know, is there for the great cinema of the 1970s and eighties. And is there for the sort of independent revival of the nineties and is working all the way through the two thousands.

Um, what a great time to be a great film critic. I don't know if that's a thing I love about him, but I do think that like, if you just look at the arc of movies during that, uh, five decades, it's pretty great. Yeah.

Amit: It's pretty great. And it's also so interesting how his death and even just his backing off from the show seemed.

Parallel the rise of consumer reviews of us, just depending, entirely on Yelps and Google reviews and rotten tomatoes and so

Michael: forth. Okay. You're thing too.

Amit: 46 years at the Chicago sometimes. So longevity is that longevity and commitment? Yeah. To a single periodical. Yeah. I mean 46 years. I mean, the guy did many things beyond in his career, right.

There was obviously the TV show and there was the film festival and there was all these other. That he did. Right. You could scale to any height you could go to the New York times at some point, it seems like there was many chances to move around. Oh sure. But 46 years at the Chicago sometimes. So

Michael: it's not just the longevity.

It's also Chicago and that newspaper and everything. Yes.

Amit: I mean, he was very Chicago all the way. Yeah. Uh, it, I guess it is that it is a sense of place. I mean, the man had a robust life. He was traveled very frequently for his job for interviews for festivals sound like he was sitting in Chicago 300 days a year.

That's right. But he had that sense of place and that commitment to that organization and that city while not being a hermit either. Okay. And that's what I like about it. That's

Michael: good. Oh, all right. Thing. Number three, thing. Number three, I'm gonna say this one and if it makes you really uncomfortable, then we don't have to go with it.

He's a boob guy.

Amit: He's a boob guy. He's a boob guy.

Michael: He's into boobs. And he's like pretty clear

Amit: about

Michael: that. And then he has this Tod sex team with Rosero Dawson that lasts for about 25 minutes. Yeah. Every one of which I enjoyed. Yeah. I,

Amit: I had no complaints about

Michael: that scene. Rose, no Rosero, Dawson looked incredible.

I thought, what did you notice about her? Well, I think we all noticed that.

Amit: What, what was that? Well, come on. Well, come on. Her breasts are she? They're big. They're big. They're big. And they're perfect.

Michael: She is perfect. She is a beautiful woman. I saw the movie

Amit: in 3d. I broke my neck.

Michael: here's why I like it. I like that. He's. Yeah, that's who I am. That's who a lot of heterosexual men are and it matters. And I need to be able to say that so that I can write freely about, you know, the sexual overtones and undertones of everything I'm reviewing. And I think it's important. I, and I love that.

He's a boob guy. I'm a boob guy, too. Yeah.

Amit: Oh yeah. So, okay, so I'm getting that, but are you saying the, um, admission, the admission that he's a boob guy? Yeah, I

Michael: think so. And it's also just like, like the, he doesn't look like a sexual Bing. Right. We'll get to some of the self-perception later. Yeah. But there is a, you know, that, that he's able to sort of like.

Point to sexual instincts of men in, in himself, I think gives him the credibility to do it in others. And cuz it's such an important driver of story. I mean, it, it, if you watch the, you know, documentary, if you read his memoir, this comes up this comes up quite a bit. And I, yeah, I, I, I love

Amit: that about it. I think this is the perfect segue to what my next thing was.

And I'll let you be the, the judge as to whether this is thing number four, or this is just part of thing. Number three. Interesting. Mine was gonna be his view of adulthood. Right? So there was a couple of examples of this and one is his view of movie stars. Yeah. Right? Is that he said that movie stars are just what you see when you are a child, but once you become a certain age, anybody that is your age or younger is just a person.

Whether they're a star or not. He had a big problem though, with the way that pop culture and movies romanticize youth. And he said something to the point of, you never see anybody over 25 make love on screen anymore. And you just see people over 25 telling younger people to not do it. Yeah. And he said, it just completely diluted the idea of romance as we age and idolization of youth.

But his view was, you know, sex, boobs, whatever should be glamorized all the way up through

Michael: old age. Yeah. What I also hear in that is an ability to see inner humanity. There's an incisiveness there, it's not necessarily that he gets to the point really fast, but he sees the truth faster than others. He's quick on what's going on beneath the surface in a way that I think actually does really relate to this question of, of adulthood.

And how did you phrase it? Exactly. I just said views on adulthood, views on adulthood. I, I love that. Number four, actually. It's not maturity. Exactly. It sort of is that, but it's more expansive than that. And it's more appreciating like whole lifeness as well as inner humanity. Right. It's a little bit beyond age and it's a little bit beyond, I don't know, superficial characteristics.

Amit: Yeah. To me, it's part of the life view of it being an upward slope and it's a good upward slope.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Al, that's a really good one. Why don't you take number five this time? Should we go there? Yeah. Uh, interracial marriage. I had the same thing did you? I did. Okay. And I'm glad you brought it up.

Let's talk about this. Yep. So his wife and his marriage are

Amit: awesome. Yeah, I, I sense. And we've got a whole category for

Michael: this, so we've gotta save some. We get we that. Yeah.

Amit: Um, so tell me, so let's just focus on the, the

Michael: interracial part of it then. Yeah, it was surprising, first of all, cuz he seems like a very white guy, you

Amit: know what I mean?

Oh, absolutely. I mean he was working towards his PhD. Where's the thick classes.

Michael: Yeah. I mean he is the frumpy professor type, right? Yes. Um, and so that he has a black wife is surprising, but beyond that, like they are really adorable together. Like the pictures you see at their wedding and in the years after, and like him with her family, cuz she, again, we'll get to this later, but she had children from previous relationships.

Like it's surprising to see Roger Ebert in some of those pictures. And I recognize, I say that like that's my bias talking. Yeah. Why is that surprising? It's just cuz I guess you don't see it that much. Yeah. And I think it's a

Amit: combination of what our number three and our number four were, so you say number three, you know that he's a boob guy.

Yeah. What I see in his relationship in marriage by no means does it seem like. It's because he likes black women. Right. Right. And when we go to number four of his view on humanity, I think it's a soulmate type of thing. It has nothing to do with the fetish or a preference. Right. Or anything, but that's really, really hard, especially in America when you get

Michael: into white, black, it's unusual.

Yes. And especially when you get to white men, black

Amit: woman, that's true. I, I think there is science out on that. There's a really good book called data CISM.

Michael: Did you ever read that? I did. Yeah. Which was, that was about the, the data science at CU. OK. OK. Cupid.

Amit: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they, they post some theories on that.

Specifically that that matching is one of the rarest. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do remember that. And there's theories about it. I just don't think we have the knowledge to talk about it, but we know that it's not common, but it goes to this point of love and attraction as souls combining, rather than being fetishized,

Michael: you can see that that love is genuine and it is soulmate.

Like, yeah,

Amit: I've been thinking about that, uh, over the last, like 24 hours, cuz I ran to a friend yesterday who was Indian, like me mm-hmm and I know his wife and his wife is also Indian and we were just talking about it and he was just saying, you know, in college I had mostly dated white girls and really until I met my wife, there's really no other Indian.

Girls that I dated. And what he said was he just found it so different in how he could relate to her. Yeah. And that's where the love was born. So there's a lot to be said for interracial marriage and relationships. I, I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is that it's individual. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Intro or inter it should be about what actually you do relate to and what your way of giving love and receiving love is one way to do that is common backgrounds.

Another way to do that is disregarding

Michael: the background. Yeah. I'm glad we had that conversation and I'm glad you brought it up. Let's recap. The five things we love about Roger Ebert are. I said, what makes him a great film critic? You said

Amit: two. I said 46 years. Well, let's just say sense of place. Sense of

Michael: place.

I like that more three. I said boob guy. uh, four, you said , I'm really glad we were able to talk about that too. Uh, four, what did you say? Views on adulthood views on adulthood and then five interracial marriage. Okay, let's move on. Category three, Malkovich, Malkovich,

Amit: Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich being John Malkovich.

Roger's 1999 movie of the

Michael: year. My choice for the best film of 1999 is being John Malkovich directed by spike Jones. He finds an opening behind a filing cabinet. That is a secret portal into the mind of the actor, John Malkovich, who plays himself. I have a hunch. This film will still be delighting audiences at the end of the next century.

The point is to imagine a moment in this person's life, what do you got?

Amit: I got 107 of them, but they're really all one. Okay. So I just loved this story and I kind of want to see it behind his eyes. You're familiar with the caption contest in the new Yorker. Remind me they put a cartoon at the end and then people can write in to caption it.

One person has crowned a winner. Okay. So Roger Ebert like was semi obsessed with this. He finally won it in 2011 and so, and he, so he submitted, he had submitted 107 times. And this is, you know, the world's most celebrated film critic. Yeah. But this was a lifelong goal of his and you know, he is by no means has any leg up over anybody riding in.

Yeah. But I see that he got such joy from writing it and submitting it and he really, really wanted to win it. and he kept submitting over and over again. Oh, this is. And so just to see his almost childlike gidiness persistence, uh, behind his eyes in the persistence. Yeah, yeah. Of doing it because he really, really wanted it.

So in the new Yorker, when he won, they did make a point in saying like this week's winner is Roger Ebert and yes, it's actually the Roger Ebert, you know? Yeah. And they said, in fact of our 220 entries, he has submitted 107 of them and then they shared some of his other ones that he has submitted. And some of them were

Michael: really, really funny.

Oh man, that sounds like click bait. All right. I gotta go dig that up. That's great. So when he submitted them, the folks at the new Yorker knew it was him submitting it, it wasn't anonymized. I mean,

Amit: Roger Ebert is not an impossible name to think. I, I don't think it's, I guess I'm

Michael: just wondering if they're like fucking Roger Ebert

Amit: submitting, you kinda wanna be behind the cartoon editor totally

Michael: as well.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, actually, I should ask that question. What makes this a Maich moment?

Amit: I think it's a repetition of doing it and still being a lifelong dream of his, the exact words that he used a lifelong dream yeah. Of his, despite everything else that he has is that he really wants to win that caption cons test.

And I just see like an inner grin that I'm kind of hoping to see from behind the eyes as he sits with like his morning coffee and tries to come up with the caption

Michael: to that one. That's really good. My Malcolm bitch moment. Yep. This isn't particularly creative, but so he kind of called Boulder, Colorado a second home.

And one thing he would do is host a screening for a movie. And then over the next four days, He would watch it with a crowd and do a, you know, somebody would yell, stop at any given moment and he'd freeze frame and he'd deconstruct what's going on in, in this movie at any given moment. I love that kind of deconstruction where you, you know, pause on this moment.

Okay. Look at the frame and look at how the story is unfolding and what the characters are doing and why this is important and what kind of, what the music's going on. I think this is true in audio. I think this is true in film and in video, the information's kind of washing over us real fast, right. And our brain's trying to keep up with whatever's going on.

And this is a, a gathering of people who are slowing down that thought process to deconstruct, you know, story and to, to deepen en enrich your love for the medium. I guess I don't have a whole lot of curiosity about what's going on in his mind, because I think what's going on in his mind in those moments is authority and is like, I, I want people to understand film the way I understand it, and I wanna be able to talk about it, but I I'd love to be that kind of professor.

I love that kind of deconstruction. That's my Malcolm bitch moment. Nice

Amit: on this Boulder thing, it's not from his eyes, but I just, I like the accessibility of it. I

Michael: think he was like trying to reach the, every man. I mean, that's that sort of relates to the thing one I love about him is that he does, I mean, he's a smart son of a bitch.

He was gonna get a PhD at the university of Chicago in literary criticism and, you know, goes to work for the newspaper and he's translating, you know, film for the masses. Yeah. Um, and in between was a rotary scholar. Right, right, right, right. In South Africa. So I like anybody who can translate, you know, higher level thought and put it in language that anybody can read.

It's a mark of a great teacher, which is, I think that why this is my Markovich moment is like, this is like his classroom, essentially, you know? And I think to be a teacher is to have the wisdom of your, you know, academic field or the wisdom of your higher thought, like sort of saturate in sink in a little deeper, like to teach is like the highest level of expertise that you can achieve in a subject.

Shall we move on? Yes. All right. Category four, love and marriage. How many marriages also, how many kids and is there anything public about these relationships? We already kind of brought this up earlier. There is one marriage to Chaz Hamel Smith, and this was in 1993. Roger was 50 years old. She was 40. She had two children from previous relationships, Joseph bio Smith and Sonya Evans.

So Roger was the stepfather. and they were together until his death. Well, they were grandchildren eventually. So everybody in this family, Chaz Chaz's, sister, aunts, uncles, everybody, and Roger describes like, I could not have been more embraced by this family. And I think that applies to the children too.

Yeah. Although I'm not sure what his stepfather role really looked like other than, you know, his stepchildren, big sobs of tears under his passing. So, I mean, I think, I think by all accounts, it looked like an incredibly healthy and close marriage and a successful one. And you used the word soulmate earlier.

I think that everybody who saw this described it the same

Amit: way, it's kind of funny for me to use this word, but it really did look like cinematic. Yeah. The depth of their love when you saw them together giving an interview. Yeah. My question is why 50. Uh, why did he go

Michael: that long? So one thing he did say, uh, this came up later in regrets, but I'll just do it now.

Um, he was worried that his mother might judge any spouse, so hard to say what the relationship between Roger and his mother was, but he didn't marry Chaz until after she had

Amit: passed. Do you believe that's the reason though, or? I

Michael: don't know. I well, so here's what else is known and they've both been public about it.

They met in AA. Yes. So, uh, Roger Abert gets sober in 1979. I didn't write down what age. That was 93

Amit: at 50, that would make him 36 going into recovery.

Michael: What to say about this? That to me, relates to the earlier point about his ability to really truly see people. I do think that they met under a, an environment of openness and intimacy.

and I think that was the fertile ground with which their relationship blossomed. But I also think to your point of why 50, I think one, he worked all the fucking time and, uh, he traveled a lot two, and I don't mean to be judgmental, but I just, you know, it wasn't, Chicago's most eligible bachelor. Yeah. This is not Alex Teck.

Yeah. Uh, so I think there's that. And then, then I also do think that, I mean, if he didn't get sober until his late thirties, he might not have been capable of a healthy relationship before that.

Amit: That's I didn't think about that though, but that's what I'm sensing is he had a lot of inner work to

Michael: do. So, yeah, that's I think what we have to say about love and marriage, I did want to bring up the Oprah thing here.

Yeah. Only because they went on two dates and holy shit. And you saw the other bit of trivia about this

Amit: is that essentially she credits him with her

Michael: fortune. Yes. That he grabbed an envelope at I, the first of the second date, second, she was flirting with the idea of going into syndication. And he was saying, well, my show's in syndication.

So let's just take a look at what those numbers are and you know, this is what I do. And if you're doing it every day, then that's times five, and then your show's gonna be more popular. So let's just double that. And then he flipped the napkin over and he's like, that's what you stand to make. And she's like, oh, I'm

Amit: gonna go.

She's like, okay, Roger. You

Michael: know, what I love about this too is not just that they go, went on dates. I just think that's sort of incredible, you know, I wouldn't have picked those two, but that they also remained friends. Like they went on, they went on a date, but like, and they, it ended up not turning into a relationship, but they stayed friends.

So

Amit: one thing I just wanna say about the love and marriage category, right? The whole point of our show is about desirability and you, and I try to figure that out. Sure. What's desirable. So I'm 44 years old. I'm unmarried. I don't don't know exactly what I want. I don't know where the future is going to go, but I just kind of like the fact that he found true love at an age greater than 44.

I'm glad

Michael: you, and it lasted to the, the rest of his life. Yeah.

Amit: I'm so it's just, I don't see a ton of examples, always of people that are my age that have never been married and it's gonna see one that was prosperous. I'm

Michael: glad you used the word. True love. I agree. And that thought crossed my mind as well.

Category five mm-hmm net worth. Did you find what? I found 9 million.

Amit: I saw 10. Oh, that's your winning number? This is like the, the, I think Betty should fall from

Michael: the sky. you know, boy, I love that right about right. Oh, it could have been so much more and it's a lot, but it's not too much. And it's just great.

Yeah, it just sit. Hey, I, I usually like that number quite a bit. Really? Like it.

Amit: It's mean Jean money, wasn't it. yeah, I think it was mean gene Oakland money. It was just about Neil Armstrong money. Yeah.

Michael: It's a it's north of, uh, Yogi beta money. I mean, it's, it's a really nice and it's really good for him. So he's a, he's a bookworm he talks about in his memoir, how he cannot go anywhere near a bookstore, which is a nod to our sponsor half price books.

And he was apparently a big fan of used books. Yes. Um, but like, you look at the pictures of his house and his, it just bookshelves everywhere. I mean, there are books all over the place. I love a house that's fully decorated in books. There's something. Cool about that. I'm proud of my bookshelf. Yeah. I think you should be, your bookshelf is great.

It's color coordinated.

Amit: So it's the degree of celebrity also that goes along with 10 million. Yes. That I, like, I think he's in a really desirable category of celebrity. He does have the bookstore problem. Yeah. Right. That he cannot walk in, but he is also doesn't have the mob problem. And he is also in celebrity known for intellect.

There's a lot

Michael: to be desired about that. There really is. And I like the overall net worth compensation of that. Yes. You know, so Bravo,

Amit: I've got a good one on the, on the bookstore thing that I heard on one of the fresh air interviews from like decades ago. Oh, interesting. So a

Michael: long time ago I interviewed Michael Kane and I said, what does it feel like to be a movie star?

And he said, you can't go into a dirty bookstore anymore. he said, I tried it. He says, in England, we don't have the kind of pornography you have over here, but I'd heard about the stores in times square. . And so I looked through the window of my trained actor's eye. I quickly realized that there was no eye contact in a porno store.

And I realized, I said, this is the way an, an actor would notice this. And I congratulated myself. I said, Michael, you can walk right in there because nobody will look at you. So I walked right in, but he said, unfortunately, there was a GT on an elevated stool with a microphone whose job it was to say, okay, gen, this isn't a library, make your purchases.

And he got on his microphone and said, look, do we have on the rubber wear section, Michael?

Amit: I thought that was a brilliant try. So thank, thank you, Roger. Thank you, Terry Gross for, for giving us that.

Michael: That is fantastic. Just before we move on to the next category, I do wanna. Because it, it sounds to me a little bit, um, like you had a similar experience as I did in that, I didn't really have much of a Roger Ebert opinion before the research.

You know, I, I can just tell by like the way we're talking about him now that we've both come to sort of like, and appreciate him more than we might have. What was your take on him before you did the research? Like, let's say two months ago.

Amit: So when we talked about Neil Armstrong, you know, I struggled with this idea and I asked you to convince me of the life of an academic, because I've got some inner struggle.

Academia as a career, the fact that you go through school, get a PhD, become a professor, work in academia. To me, it seems like there's an absence of doing. Yeah. But that's the exact same thing that I thought about with Roger Ebert or just being a critic in general is it seems like an absence of doing yeah.

That you're just looking at other people's work and remarking on it. Right. But I think through the course of this research and I see the way that he views his position, I see how much he brings life views and life perspectives into not only the reviews he was best known for, but really any of his speaking engagements, I came into a whole new appreciation for the guy.

So

Michael: is that to say two months ago, you would've, might've been a little bit more dismissive of who he was in his sort of function in society. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, how much am I gonna say about the guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Same. I mean, growing up, he was the fact guy who was sitting next to the skinny bald guy, you know, talking about movies on TV, but it's not like I've.

Grew up reading, you know, shit to of Roger Ebert reviews. All you knew was the thumbs.

Amit: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. I think as children and this goes right back into what I said about his views on adulthood. So as children, we just saw, you know, these caricatures giving thumbs up and thumbs stay on. And that's what we see in the movie advertisements.

But really he was a writer, a journalist, a philosopher. He was an adult. He had intellectual points and people took different meaning from them. Right. But I think that's exactly what I like. He can be the thumbs up, thumbs down person for a kid or somebody that doesn't wanna go deep. But somebody that wants to go deep as well.

Michael: He is that too. I think that's exactly right. Uh, okay. Category six Simpsons, Saturday night live or hall of fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL or the Simpsons as well as impersonations. I think we have to go walk of

Amit: fame first because that's the most trivial, one of them

Michael: first film critic to get a Hollywood walk of fame.

Yeah, he's actually there. Yeah. I love that. I heard Warner Herzog talking about how, when he approaches Roger Ebert star Warner Herzog never dedicates his movies and dedicated the movie that he did in Antarctica to Roger Ebert. and they were close in a way. He just could not say enough things about him, Scorsese and, uh, Roger Ebert were also very, very good

Amit: friends.

Scorsese filled in for Cisco a little while after

Michael: Cisco's death. Oh, I didn't see that. Yeah. Wow. That's incredible. So Roger Ebert is credited with recognizing smart and Scorsese before his film career like really gets underway. It, it's actually really interesting. There's a review of something that, uh, Martin Scorsese put out in 1967 and Roger Ebert says, it'll be really fun to see where this guy goes in 10 years.

And Scorsese says, what are you talking about? I'm there already and 10 years later or so he makes raging bull, which Roger Ebert considers to be Martin Scorsese's greatest. Anyway. Yes. But the other thing is he was also critical of some of his movies and he is like, I absolutely hated color of money. I think Herzog and Scorsese among many others appreciated that about Roger Ebert, not he had integrity.

I never really saw him as a critic. Uh, there was much more about him, someone who was after illumination, something about truth in cinema mind, there was something much deeper than just movies that we should

Amit: talk about. Okay. So Hollywood rock fame, that's resolved. Yeah. Simpson's SNL

Michael: C night live. There are two references in the 1980s, there was a stupid skit where he and gene Cisco as themselves did a live review of Sarah night live as it's happening.

Yes. Welcome back to Saturday night live. And this is history's first live review of a television show still in progress. And then there, I did see one where Damon Ws was the gay host. And do you remember two men on film? Mm-hmm doesn't hold out very well. Um, cuz he's, you know, sort of very flamboyance.

Yeah, exactly. Uh, but it's Damon Ws playing that character, which was on in living color with Roger Ebert who was played by Chris far. That would be funny. Yeah. It's kind of funny. I mean, it's it, isn't it isn't, although he's playing it, you know, down the middle, he's not really doing that much of a parody.

Yeah. And then finally, Simpsons, I did find one Simpsons episode where the whole family is watching TV. It's at the beginning of an episode and there's a parody of Cisco and Ebert. I don't think it's actually called that, but they're reviewing one of the McBain movies it's voiced by Harry sheer. I never saw Roger Ebert voice himself on the census.

Yeah. I couldn't find that either. Yeah. Um, but

Amit: pretty famous also we're saying the cartoon, the critic, which was very Simpson's desk. Yes. Both Cisco and Ebert did appear on the show as, as themselves. That's beautiful.

Michael: Our movie in first class today is the sequel to Rainman entitled snowman. Well, I thought that film was very poignant, particularly the scene where Tom cruise walks around Las Vegas with a bucket full of his brother.

Oh, come on gene. That was just another pointless sequel that didn't have to be made this from the man who liked Benji the hunt. Hey, you like carnosso well, I'll bet. You'll like this. Okay. Our last of the easily knowable categories, category seven, over, under, in this category, we look at the generalized life expectancy for the year.

This person was born to see if they beat the house odds. And as a measure of grace, Roger Ebert was born in 1942. He died at age 70. I want you to guess, do you think he went over or under

Amit: born in 42? I think he was just under,

Michael: well done. The life expectancy for men in 1942 was 71.4 years. This is the closest we've ever had.

It is. That's why I wanted to see if you could ballpark it. It's right there. I mean, it's in the, you know, less than one standard deviation. It was tragic, right? Yeah.

Amit: But I think we have to talk about the grace. This is the time to talk

Michael: about the grace. I think. So. Is this also the time to talk about the disfigurement that happens after his thyroid cancer here?

That's that's all part of the grace. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of people are familiar with what happened. He, he gets a thyroid cancer and it's in a salivary glands and they have to operate and they try several times for some reconstructive surgery, but eventually he loses essentially his entire jaw bone, his lower jaw bone, um, as

Amit: well as the ability to eat and speak,

Michael: correct that cancer journey for one of a better word begins in 2006, eventually kills him in 2013.

He did appear on the cover of vanity fair after his surgery, when his, you know, face looks very, very different because he no longer has a lower jaw, he can't cover up his teeth. So his teeth are always showing it also sort of looks in a. I don't know if you see this too, but it almost looks like he's kind of smiling in a way just cuz the way it is kind, almost like a,

Amit: like the Jack

Michael: Nicholson joker permanent, right?

It's the way his skin hangs off his face. Yes. Um, well what to say about it? You wanna talk about grace and this is the question I had. He is praised by a lot of people for being courageous and facing his cancer and maybe even courageous for showing up on the cover of vanity fair, being willing to be photographed, even though he has, you know, experienced this disfigurement.

I couldn't tell if that's sort of virtue signaling or if that's real, if that's something like Bravo, you know, Roger you're actually going through the cancer cuz anybody battling cancer, like what's the option.

Amit: Is he doing it gracefully? Has he not lost the will to be himself. Yeah. You know, to continue doing

Michael: what he does.

And the answer to that is pretty clear through his actions. It does. And

Amit: it doesn't look like he lost a step, you know, despite having the voice. I mean, I think just the eyes still look bright and wide. Yes. Um, he continued to do what he was doing despite his ability to not speak. He just, it became all written reviews and blogging.

I saw a lot of it. I think

Michael: if anything, he became a little bit, you know, warmer and generous. I mean, as a younger man, he's kind of described various times as total asshole, especially, you know, you look at some of the clips with him and gene Cisco, like there was a real like sibling rivalry there in a way.

And Roger Ebert could be like fucking controlling, heading. Yeah. I mean, would cut him off. Hold on. Kinda kinda a Dick. I'll say one other thing about the grace. Cause I think this matters. So gene Cisco dies in 1999 from a brain tumor and he didn't tell Roger Ebert. He kept it from him until the very end.

He didn't tell anybody he told his wife, um, don't even think he told his children. Um, I mean he was very, very private about it. And when Roger Ebert learned. That hurt him a lot.

Amit: We know that they were rivals, right. That they were like, yeah, they, they were frenemies

Michael: to use. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a common use.

Were, were they

Amit: actually like buddies? I, it evolved. Yes. They eventually became,

Michael: this was hard to picture cuz I just didn't see it cuz again, the skinny bald guy, but he was something of like a Playboy ladies man. And when I say Playboy, I mean that extremely, literally he hung out with hug Hefner and like traveled around and there's all these pictures of gene Cisco in the seventies with this big ass handlebar mustache hanging out on the yacht with Hef and Playboy bunnies.

Really? Uh, yes. And, and kind of gets back. The boob thing a little bit like Roger Ebra wanted to be that. And gene Cisco was that a little bit more. And as much as they came up together during the same time in Chicago, in the seventies and was, but, but I think it became, I think where they bonded more was be, it was a little bit of us against the system because there was definitely like, these guys are in Chicago.

I mean, when their show starts catching on it's who are these critics in the Midwest, right. They're not in LA, they're not in Hollywood, they're not in New York. Like, and so they're not, you know, in the sort of intelligence community they're Midwestern, it's sort of, you know, a flyover state or whatever the hell you wanna call it.

Right. So I do think that as they became popular and as they came to recognize the power of their thumbs, they bonded up more. There's one quote out there. Gene Cisco said he may be an asshole, but he's my asshole. Did

Amit: Cisco marry before he died? I mean, he died young.

Michael: Oh yes, no. He had a wife and children.

Okay. Okay. Uh, let's pause for a word for me, sponsor.

Amit: Michael. Do you shop for clothing at thrift source? I do not. Do you? No, not

Michael: really. Okay. Why not?

Amit: The fact that somebody else has worn it? I don't, uh,

Michael: it doesn't say, well, yeah, I'm the same way. I don't buy used clothes, but you, you, you like used

Amit: books. I loved used

Michael: books. I used books. That's a different thing.

So what's the difference? I don't know. I mean, there's something about the way, you know, you imagine the hands that a book is passed through and what it means to like give a friend a book. And to like pull it off the shelf or no, just take that

Amit: one. Yeah. There's a history of like, who's read it. Who's

Michael: acquired what from it totally a six degrees of separation aspect.

How did they all get here? It's not like used clothing where it's like, oh, somebody wore that. It's like somebody lit this, you know, somebody sat with this and sat with these ideas or was into this story.

Amit: So is there a certain place, for example, that perhaps you like to get, uh, used

Michael: books? Are you talking about half price books by any chance?

I

Amit: am because you know why? Yeah. Half price books is celebrating 50 years of buying and selling books, movies, and music. There are 125 stores and you can find out more@h.com.

Michael: Hey, I'm Gianna. Deedo from so sorry for your lost podcast. I bet you already know what we talk about with that title. That's right. We talk about grief and much like your friends here at famous and gravy. We weave in how celebrities interact with that too. Highlighting the grief in the news each week and going over topic surrounding grief.

That should be talked about more, but just aren't. If you've experienced a loss and wanna join a community of others who have two, come on over to so sorry for your loss podcast, we are not your average grief group. That's so sorry for your loss podcast, wherever you listen to your podcast and find me on social at so sorry with Gianna.

All right. Most of what we've learned at this point is based on relatively easy to obtain public information in the next series of categories, we're gonna be a little more speculative and trying to get at the inner life of what it would've been like to have actually been this person. Our first of the inner life questions is man, and the mirror did this person like their own reflect.

You want me to take this first? You want to take it?

Amit: I don't want to take it. I wanted to talk it out, but if you've got an answer, yes,

Michael: please start. I went with, yes. He liked it throughout. I see a man who's very comfortable with his physique and, and I think it's particularly tough here in a way, because you know, the disfigurement is severe.

His face looks very, very different after the surgeries to try and, you know, rescue his jaw essentially. But I, I don't know what the quality is. It, it, it is I guess, confidence, but it's sort of like the same way I talk about his sort of nonjudgmental abilities and his ability to see humanity when he points his eyes outward.

I think that's true when he points his eyes inward. Although I will say I strongly suspect that that skill improves as a consequence of his recovery from alcoholism. Because I do think that when it comes to addiction and alcoholism, there tends to be quite a bit of self-loathing and self-judgment, uh, caught up in that.

And, and there does come a point where I think if you're, you know, a serious alcoholic as he was that you can't stand to look at yourself in the mirror anymore overall, I'm giving him a yes, but I, I really had to think through that. Yeah. I.

Amit: Two, I think for the same reason, I think you articulated what I couldn't quite put together and it is that, and I'm gonna take it back to one of the things that I heard from one of the radio interviews he gave.

So he consistently talked about raging bull cuz he liked it a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he made this remark that he really dislikes when people say, oh, I'm not gonna watch that movie. Cause I don't like boxing. Right. But what he said is it has nothing to do with that you should like, or be involved in a movie, whether it is good or bad.

So a good boxing movie you should watch. If what you like is animated movies, you should elevate a good boxing movie way above a bad animated movie. And that's how he wanted to view things. And I think that's sort of what he saw in the mirror is kind of, let's just see the goods, see the things that you like about yourself.

I'm gonna give it a yes. Okay. Also.

Michael: Next category outgoing message. Like man, in the mirror, we want to know how they felt about the sound of their own voice, whether or not when they heard it on an answering machine or an outgoing voicemail and or are they the type

Amit: of

Michael: person that would, and are they the type of person who would actually lend their voice to the outgoing message I wrote?

I think so. Within ellipses, I, I, I, I don't know. I mean, he certainly liked his words and he liked his language and I think he liked to communicate. What do you think?

Amit: I think so. Yes. Overall he loved to talk. Yeah. Right. And then to the point of, is he the type that would lend his own voice to like, let people get it for free?

I think also true. Yeah. You know, that's the populous part, that's the doing these things in Boulder type of accessibility. Yeah. It is a little contrary to the fact that he was quite pompous. And as you said, early on was an asshole. Um, I gotta say he's

Michael: my kind of asshole though. Um, I mean, when gene, Cisco says that he's my asshole.

I get it. Like, he's a man who I actually could envision under different circumstances. Had I been born at a different time being friends with, and he might drive me fucking crazy, but he's the kind of friend who I wanted to drive me crazy. Cuz I kind of think it'd be great to get into an argument with him.

Like the one you're

Amit: going to dinner with tonight. for

Michael: example, yeah. A hundred percent like this is, this is the kind of guy who I want to have dialogue with. I'm not turned off by any kind of combativeness. And even if he is a little. I don't know, snooty or a little bit like petty at times. I think his overall qualities kind of make up for that in terms of likability.

I'm just talking about likability, separate from desirability. Yeah. And we

Amit: just, I don't think we can have the voice discussion without like how the whole voice thing eventually

Michael: evolved to losing it,

Amit: to losing it, but kind of getting it back. Right? Yeah. So he lost it from the cancer and

Michael: the surgeries yeah.

Ability to speak literally.

Amit: Yes. And so he had the computerized voice, like a Stephen Hawking thing with a computer. Right. And you hear it kind of like it's, it's this sort of. Old robotic voice, but then he did actually work with the company to recreate this computer system that did have his own voice, his literal voice in speaking, and the way he was able to do that was because there was so much captured footage over 40 years of being on the air that he had almost spoken, like every word that can be used in conversation.

It's pretty great. I mean, that's just so cool. Yeah, that is cool. That is cool. And if you watch that, I think he debuted it on Oprah. When he finally had like the voice thing, the new voice, he had the computer that could like talk in his voice. That's interesting. Uh, his wife Chaz, like when she heard his voice, this version of his voice coming out for the first time she like cried instantly.

Oh wow. It was really pretty powerful. I, Oprah could do that. Right. Oprah

Michael: does the power. Oprah always makes you cry. Oprah.

Amit: I can't

Michael: tell you how great it was to be back down to your show. We have been talking for a long time, and now here we are, again, this is the first immersion of my computer voice that still needs improvement, but at least it sounds like me when I heard it the first time it sent chills down my spine.

It makes me feel good. That many of the words you were hearing were first spoken while I was commenting on Casa Blanca and citizen can, but I gotta say in first grade they said that I talked too much and now I still can

Okay. Next category, regrets, public or private. What we really want to know is what, if anything kept this person awake at night? I don't actually have a lot here. I got two things, basically. The first is. And this isn't him, but that he was kept out of the loop. When Gene's Cisco got brain cancer, mm-hmm does speak.

I think something to like, he must have looked back at the history of that relationship and wondered did I do something here where gene wouldn't trust me with this? And maybe that's a regret. The other, not really regrets, but this feels like a nice place for him. There are some movies that he hated so much that his reviews are like hilarious in how scathing there were.

There's a really famous one, a movie called north that was a Rob Reiner film that came out in 1994. I'm just gonna read this. I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every Seing stupid vacant audience, insulting moment of it hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

Fucking love that. I think that's brilliant. Okay. I got one more. Freddy got finger 2001, the Tom green movie, this movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie, isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.

This film is a vomitorium consisting of 93 minutes of Tom green, doing things that a geek and a carnival side show would turn down these are great. So I do think that like, I mean, he watched over 300 movies a year up until his dying day. I'm sure some of these are like, he's pissed off like that. You have wasted my time.

It's not exactly a regret, but maybe kind of sorted a regret. You gotta know how shitty movies can be to talk up the good ones.

Amit: Yeah. So you've seen this as final tap. Yes. Right. So do you remember the part where they released the album shark sandwich and then the manager is reading them the reviews and said, this one just says, shit sandwich.

that was the entire review.

Michael: That was a great moment. That was

Amit: great. I it'd be hard to destroy people, you know, Tom green, that's a career and that's also tens of million dollars that a studio and somebody else put into it. Yeah. I, I don't have that in me. I like being critical at all, but if I get the sense that I've heard somebody's feelings, like I, I fucking wither and

Michael: I do too.

I do too. I, I, I, I, because I'm a people pleaser. I want people to like me. Yeah.

Amit: But there's, I guess there, there is a way to do it and there is a way to do it, to lift people up, but you're gonna miss sometimes. Right? Yeah.

Michael: And I that's actually my private

Amit: and you have to have the long view, like really embedded

Michael: in you.

Yes. And this relates to my private regret, which is that maybe he's a little regretful about how arrogant he was as a young man. Cause I think he gets better at exactly this as his life. I mean, I even think through the

Amit: course of the TV show. Yeah. He gets a little less arrogant as,

Michael: as it goes on a little less skating.

And then I do think you also have to throw in movies that he was wrong about like he gave fight club. A bad review. There's a handful of other movies that like, uh, blue velvet is a famous David Lynch film that he was, you know, notoriously scathing about. I didn't like that one either. I don't either, but I mean, and one thing I think he is great about is reviewing movies in context.

I do wonder if there's some, he doesn't have a second thought on. And in fact, in that obituary, I referenced, he talks about how he, he gave a thumbs up to the remake of what was it with Adam Sandler, the Burt, the longest yard. Yeah. He gives a thumbs up and then goes to cans. And then he is like, I filmed this on the TV show before I went to cans and I gave it a tenuous thumbs up.

And now having seen a whole bunch of great film in cans, I have to justify that thumbs up. maybe like totally trying to walk it back. I'm sure that happened all the time. I think he's very aware that, you know, some of it is the MUO was in that day, you know, and that he does his best to zero everything out, you know, when the curtain lifts and the movie starts.

Yeah. But like, there's a limit to how much you can do. You

Amit: and I had this same conversation the other day. Yeah. Right. Like if we record this exact same episode on a different day, our answer's

Michael: gonna be different. Yeah. And it's probably any famous and gravy episode. I, I could go back and probably have very different answers.

Yeah. The other

Amit: thing you gotta wonder and regret no date three with. What would life have been?

Michael: Like? That's a good one. I'm just gonna leave it there. Okay. I think it wasn't meant to be all right. Next category. Good dreams, bad dreams. This is not about personal perception, but rather, does this person have a haunted look in the eye?

Something that suggests inner turmoil, inner demons, unresolved trauma, man. I have a slight, yes, here. I'm on the fence. I don't see an inner pain. Like something that like, you know,

Amit: so what's pulling you towards the no, if you have a slight, yes. What pulls you towards the, no,

Michael: that I'm not, I, I actually see neutrality here.

You know, nothing's pulling me towards a no, but there's not anything pulling me towards a yes. Either. If I had to make a call, I'm going. Yes. That's all I got.

Amit: Yeah. I think I'm going a little bit of a stronger. Yes, because of just the clarity in his, the way he describes things and everything. I mean, I'm not just talking about the movies that he's describing.

Just some of the other quotes from the interviews. It seems like there's a lot of clarity and if you can go to bed with a clear head and you can sort of resolve the day. Yeah. You're more likely to have

Michael: a better dream. Good with good. Okay. All right. Second to last category, cocktail, coffee or cannabis, which one of these would we most want to do with our dead celebrity?

So maybe a question of what drug sounds like the most fun to partake with this person or another philosophy is that a particular kind of drug might allow access to a part of them. We're most curious about am.

Amit: You said it before the type of asshole you wanna have a beer with. That's how I see him. you know, he's a good ban.

Yeah. Uh, he can be kind of tell funny a great storyteller. It could be really fun to have beers with him. Yeah. I think I'd learn a lot. I think I'd laugh a little. I think he would get me to look at some things a different way, but I don't need it to go that, that far into the cannabis. Yeah. So yeah.

Getting beers with him.

Michael: I went coffee. This is me being boring. He's really bright. I really want to be in that movie theater in Boulder and have a richer vocabulary for the language of film and how he understands it. And now he understands story and now he understands movies as, you know, little containers of a life within it.

You know, he's brilliant. And I wanna absorb as much of that genius as I can. So I want coffee. Yep. Okay. Shit. I didn't realize we're already here. Our final category. I need to actually look up. How he reviewed varsity blues. All of this sounds as if varsity blues is a good movie and parts of it are, but the parts never quite come together.

VanDerBeek is convincing and likable the movie doesn't quite get over the top, but you sense that Brian Robbins is ready to break blues for a touchdown. This category is the, the Vander beak named after James Vander, beak, who famously said, I don't want your life. Let me say the thing that I kind of don't wanna say.

I don't know that I could handle that level of disfigurement at the end of life. Disfigurement. Yeah. I'd like to think I can remove my bias. And I know that I aspire to get to the place that I think he had natural aptitudes for and worked on, which was to see the humanity in people and in himself. And I think that he did get to a level of self acceptance that I find extremely admirable.

And I think he got challenged by that, by losing his lower jaw and having to look at a face in the mirror every morning that, you know, that might have been hard to look at and know that other people were looking at him that way. I shouldn't be so afraid of that. I'm gonna age. I just wanna say that that level of disfigurement scares me.

And I want to be really honest about that as I weigh out the Vander beak

Amit: here. Yeah. I can understand that. I mean, and, and let's not forget you lost the ability to talk and even eat. There were feeding tubes. That's right. As well. But it's also, this is not a Casey case. Some end of life, you know, you're not being propped up.

You're still out there. You're still walking. You're communicating through a different methodology, but I, I hear you,

Michael: I guess I wanted to lead with that because everything else about this. Is a very, very, very strong. Yes. I like the story. I like the lifestyle. I like the traveling around the world and going to cans.

I like the idea of sitting at home and watching 300 movies every year and giving my unfiltered opinion on behalf of an audience. I love the ability to see the humanity and a spouse and a filmmaker and a stranger. It's not just that I admire it. There, there is so much about his life. That is like, man, I want that.

Like, it's, it's, it's not just admiration on it. It is as decidedly desirable. I just, I've never struggled with, you know, do I wanna keep going or not? But if I'm Roger Ebert and I lose my jaw and I lose the ability to speak and the ability to the thought would cross my mind. Mm-hmm he, as much as said the same thing happened to him, the thought crossed his mind.

I'm going, yes. I'm going hell yes.

Amit: You're going to hell. Yes. Even after all of those. Yeah.

Michael: Caveats. Yeah, because what I see more than anything else is, I mean, he is an AA guy and the serenity prayer, which is so associated with alcoholics anonymous with AA is grant me the serenity to accept the things. I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

I see that. So thoroughly embodied in this man and in a way that like, yeah, it makes me emotional to even think about what he went through, where he got to and what he did and what his life's all about. So yes, I have fear about saying yes to this cuz those actual experiences day to day facing cancer and going to 50 without a wife and you know, having a sibling rivalry with gene says, it's just, it's just, it's there.

There's too much else that I love about it. So I'm a yes.

Amit: How about you I'm with you on the disfigurement? I don't know that I could handle that drastic of a turn, the disfigurement, the loss of voice, the loss of being able to eat. I also just the, the bad hand eventually. Right? So getting married at age 50, like he finally found his love.

I think he he's said so much as he found a whole different level of, of peace and acceptance and saw the world differently. But the cancer diagnosis came like 10 to 12 years later. Yeah.

Michael: Like that is short. That's not a whole lot of time, but your soul made away. I mean, that's, it's not just

Amit: the soulmate.

That's a short time for like, you know, inner peace. Yeah. Yeah. I realize there's not a choice in it, but that we're talking about that. Do you know? Do you want it in totality? That's a tough

Michael: thing. No, the math there, you you're right to call it out. It's a long time alone.

Amit: Yeah. However, I see. And I said this much, kind of like in the research this episode, I may see my soulmate in, in this guy in the way he talked and the way he made points.

There's a lot, I admire the way he talks about, you know, adulthood versus idolization of the past. Yeah. You know, the way he just says the things like you can't say, I don't like boxing. You have to just evaluate things on a good and bad basis. You

Michael: know what actually I was gonna say about this. This is the other thing that I see as you're talking about, how you see aspects of yourself, your attitude towards music reminds me of his attitude towards film.

Oh, interesting. Your, your ability to look at each genre and, and the function of music to different audiences reminds me of, of his ability to look at film.

Amit: The fact that my playlist might be George Michael NWA, and then Willie Nelson.

Michael: Yeah. And I think Roger Ebert could watch, uh, a zombie movie and a SCORs AC film and a stupid Adam Sandler movie and so on and so forth and look at their relative value for that relative audience.

I don't know if that came out as a compliment, but

Amit: it's a compliment. It, it did. And it's meaningful. Thank you. I liked the career that he led in the way he was able to use his brain and still be commercially successful. Yeah. Cause he changed thinking, you know, he was a philosopher actually. Did, you know, change people's minds?

I don't like the destruction part. I think he was unlucky, but I liked how he checked a lot of the boxes with very little evil. Yeah. So I am a yes. I want your life. Roger Ebert.

Michael: So both yeses, both yeses. I learned a lot in this one a lot more than I expected. Definitely. It was cool. I'm glad we did this one.

Omit. I want you to take us out. You are Roger Ebert, you have died. You, uh, have gone to the part of the gates and you have an opportunity to make your pitch. The floor is yours.

Amit: St. Peter. You can see those gates over there. And some people may just see them as an entryway. What I did in my life was to make sure people saw more than just that in cinema.

What I really was trying to do is get them to see more than that in life. There are multiple dimensions to everything that if a picture is worth a thousand words, one minute of life is worth a million words. Movies to me were a way that that can play out. And that was my contribution to this world.

Helping people change their percept.

Michael: Let me in.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of famous and gravy. If you're enjoying our podcast, please tell people, like, tell your friends, tell everybody to listen to our show. We are trying to build as many listeners as we can. You can go to apple podcast to rate and review us that does help people find us.

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