My Love of Movies and Gene Siskel--Thursday Journal

Last weekend I was reminded of an early influence on my appreciation of movies, the late film critic Gene Siskel.


There was a time during the 1970's and 1980's when you could not hear Roger Ebert's name mentioned without also hearing, in the same breath, the name of Gene Siskel.  In fact, it was "Siskel and Ebert", the name of their milestone television program, that became part of the national lexicon.  Theirs was the first show to feature two critics discussing, and gloriously debating, the latest movies in release.

Each review was capped with their signature judgment: "Thumbs Up" or "Thumbs Down".  (Once in a while after a decidedly mixed review, they might give a humorous "Thumb Sideways".)  Nationwide, newspaper movie ads used "Two Thumbs Up" as a cinematic seal of approval.  While Ebert was the daily film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, Siskel reviewed films for the rival Chicago Tribune.  Since our household had Tribune delivery, I began my love affair with movies by following Siskel's reviews.


My father would occasionally bring home a Sun-Times from the train station, giving me a chance to read Ebert.  But I remained loyal to Siskel, hung on his every word, memorized the star-ratings he awarded each movie (* to ****), and imitated his style (along with that of Pauline Kael) when I began writing reviews of my own in a junior-high-school journal.

Many of Siskel's favorites eventually became my own favorites too.  "Annie Hall", "Nashville" and "Z" all made the #1 spot on his annual Top-10 lists.  He reviewed "Cabaret" twice in two weeks, the second time to urge people to see it.  He enthused that "The Last Emperor" was one of the greatest films he had seen in all his years of reviewing to that time, in a career that started in 1969. 


Siskel instilled in me an appreciation of the artistry and creative possibility of movies, giving special praise to international cinema, particularly French and Italian imports.  And he made me feel like I was "in" on the conversation about the most exciting movies of the day, many of which I yearned to see in spite of being too young, according to the then-stricter enforcement of the MPAA rating system.


I entered his "Beat Siskel" Oscar contest faithfully during my entire teen and college years.  I never won, but had a blast handicapping and second-guessing him and the Academy. 


Gene Siskel died in 1999 of a brain tumor at age 53,  It felt as though I had been cast adrift, without an anchor. 


This past weekend I attended a film at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Downtown Chicago, part of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  It is a terrific little movie house with two comfortable screening rooms showing a great variety of classic, independent and experimantal films, as well as the occasional Hollywood revival, and interesting documentaries.

It is a showplace reminiscent of a time when college students stayed up all night to discuss and debate the latest new wave or foreign film, or to gather after class for coffee and a matinee, maybe sitting for a double feature.  I am sure that if I lived any closer to the city, I would spend as much time at the Gene Siskel Center as I did in the University screening rooms of my youth.

Mark and I saw Vittorio DeSica's 1948 neo-realist masterpiece "The Bicycle Thieves".  The print was in mint condition and I understood some of the Italian dialog without the subtitles.  This film was simple and profound: a man in post-WW2 Italy needs a bicycle for his new job.  When his is stolen on his first day, he and his son spend the day to try to find it.  Along the way they make some hard discoveries about justice and ethics and the struggle of life.  It is not romanticized at all, but its stratightforward tone and open-endedness made it extremely emotional and moving.  I think Gene would have been ecstatic to have this film showcased in the theater that bears his name. 

 

Roger Ebert, And My Lost Film Journal---A Story of Reinvention

Today on our Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ, Eight Forty-Eight featured an interview with Canadian journalist Chris Jones, who just published a profile of Chicago's own film critic Roger Ebert.  Ebert has written reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1968, and pioneered the Television Movie-Critic format with crosstown colleague and rival Gene Siskel in "At The Movies"/"Siskel and Ebert".


This is a brief but essential interview, and the Esquire article is required reading for any film-lover, especially if you have followed Ebert's career in Chicago or on the National stage through his TV appearances and numerous books.


Ebert has suffered the effects of cancer, and the near-fatal operations he endured to remove his thyroid, salivary glands, and jaw.  He can no longer speak, eat or drink, but his "voice" has not been silenced.  Roger still writes, and watches and reviews movies. He has developed various methods of sign language and technology-aided communication.


I agonized when I saw a current photo of Ebert used in the Esquire article.  The ravages of his illness and "treatments" have rendered him so strange to my image of him as a witty, often contentious, always enthusiastic proponent of the movies, that I actually denied that it was him, as though I were in the first angry stages of mourning. 


I grew up in Chicago and followed both Siskel and Ebert in the Tribune and Sun-Times since childhood (until Siskel's untimely death on February 20, 1999).  Since we subscribed to Tribune delivery, I soon became a proponent of Siskel, and thought of Ebert as the "other" home team, the way a Cub fan regards a Sox fan.  I was less familiar with Ebert at first, but soon payed closer attention to him as I read more, and as I watched a local PBS series, hosted by Ebert, on the movies of Ingmar Bergman.

By the time their TV show aired, they were well-known Chicago celebrities on the brink of national stardom.  I still recall Siskel's walrus-mustache (a '70's relic) and Ebert's portly figure, each occupying a seat in the theater balcony, screening clips, and squaring off on the latest releases, often arguing bitterly, but just as often speaking from the same side of the aisle.  If they liked a film it was regarded as a must-see; if they both hated a film (I remember a notoriously venomous review of "I Spit on Your Grave") it was universally reviled.


Ebert's recent story inspired me to remember an anecdote from my early days as a budding film critic.


I was in what used to be called Junior High School, barely twelve years old, and my passion for the movies was all-consuming.  My heroes did not spar on playing fields, but stared in wonder (or skepticism) at lighted screens, and did their battles on typewriters in newspaper offices.  Siskel and Ebert were my immediate role models.


I kept a notebook, spiral, with a blue cover, of reviews of every movie I saw, at a theater, on television, or in English class.  I never missed a review.  I tried to sound like whomever critic I had just finished reading, and emulated words, phrases, sarcasm, and hyperbole. I turned this notebook in to my teacher every Friday for extra writing credit.  I always got helpful feedback on my word choices, or awkward phrases, and loved the praise I might receive for a well-crafted, nicely built review.


I wanted to do this for a living, some day.  I wanted to be, if not a supreme filmmaker, then a renowned critic.


One Monday, after having written almost 100 reviews that year, my teacher approached me quietly and told me he lost my notebook..looked everywhere....and apologized once, and started the day's class.  I never saw my old reviews again, nor did I ever hear any other explanation for the loss, or any attempts to locate the notebook.


While I continued on my soaring love for the movies, I stopped writing as conscientiously, as passionately, as regularly as before.  Call it discouragement,shock, resentment, laziness.....I let it slip by.


Now, as I have begun to publicly offer my reviews on these pages, and receive kind and helpful feedback from my readers, I wonder if I am re-discovering something true, doing what I was meant to do, reinventing something that was half-invented and abandoned. 


My relationship to Ebert as a reader and a fan can be described as one of angry love.  I respected his writing so much that I resented how often I disagreed with him. I  disliked his wrong-headed opinions, his prejudices, and his influence. I might have identified with him more than other critics, as I could see myself living his career.  I also loved him for his wit and style and focus, and his utter joy at doing what I also loved to do...see and write about the movies.. The love  triumphed...I daydreamed that I was his surrogate Siskel. 


Roger accepts that his life is precarious, and is choosing to invent a new universe for himself to overcome his bleak physical prognosis. I am at a crossroads, and am attempting to create a new life while not abandoning a good foundation.  While the scope of our losses cannot be compared, both affected our  lives on some level.  Ebert is taking his losses in stride and continuing to do what he loves.  I have made peace with my never-to-be-found writing of my youth, and am discovering, in earnest, what I love now.


A story of reinvention, inspired by two guys, boyhood heroes of mine, who duked it out At the Movies.