Julio Enrique Correa, M.D. jecorrea@retina.ar P. de Melo 2949 2nd. "D" (1425) Buenos Aires
In the last
Blog edition in of September 2015 it was studied the film The Salt of the Earth directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado telling about photographer
Sebastiao Salgado and his family’s commitment with the collective human sufferings
and earth natural environments’ damages. Such visual narratives centered on human
and nature destruction as well as on giving impressive esthetic testimony about
their survival signs resisting definitive loss. This film ended a series of
seven 2014 films released during 2015 that were studied in a monthly frequency
initiating in March. All the first six films shared a same issue of death
anxiety that remained masked or else it was expressed overtly against the
social constraints, by the various protagonists while the latter documentary
film showed death and threat of death full expressions installing in crowds and
land that triggered unredeemed guilt and concrete survival reactions in the
narrator/s.
The present new entry returns back to February 2015 when it was released
in Buenos Aires a 2014 film about the outstanding involvement of a renowned
cinema critic in a painstaking survival spirit praising life and cinema
learning on matters about human life, evolving during both his professional
career and terminal metastatic disease. As in the photographer movie the visual
narrative –here expressed by means of cinema- serves as a communication media of
the film critic Roger Ebert with other narrators including the film maker Steve James, together with Ebert’s peers and family relatives that shared the
former’s struggles and joys triggered by journalism and cinema work in the main
contexts of his professional career, disease, death and survival
reactions. Although such entry does not
consider environment as a key issue, it surely ends these 2014 film series
analysis made since March 2015, as the alpha and omega of relevant art
communication concerning the cultural environment. This documentary
about Roger Ebert’s life and death takes the title of a book from him that is called
Life Itself. The
film depicts many aspects of Roger Ebert’s life that become highly
emotive and shocking to be shown in the unmasked way both Ebert and the
filmmaker James did. If for the latter –who was supported by Roger over the
years, “this film was the first chance to
really get to know him”-, the public with little knowledge about who the
film critic was, remained startled and moved when the film ended as if getting
to know somebody familiar and close: at the Buenos Aires theater attending
around ten people, half of us stayed weeping when hiding in the corridor before
getting out of the dark.
The film and
Ebert correspond in developing a kind of humane sensor in the film narrative
that surpasses biographical or film criticism accounts by backing a committed
style of personal involvement in the appraisal of cinema as a form of art,
different from the more ideological so called new types of movie criticism, as perhaps Andrew Sarris’ promotion of the notion of the director as the maker of
the film –“auteur cinema”- or Pauline
Kael’s appraisal of film writing and film criticism as an art [Richard
Corliss, Film Critic, TIME magazine]. If art has to do anything about injecting
compromise with the environment, human emotion and thought would certainly have
to be called together.
[Film Data obtained from Wikipedia] Life
Itself is a 2014
American documentary film about film critic Roger Ebert that was based on his 2011
memoir of the same name. It was directed by Steve
James and produced by Zak Piper,
Steve James and Garrett Basch, released in US by Magnolia Pictures. This film did not win film festival awards although it was
nominated for several [67th Cannes
Film Festival; Documentary Feature category
for the 87th Academy Awards]
and premiered on 19 January 2014 for
honoring Ebert at the 2014 Sundance
Film Festival that took place from
January 16, 2014 until January 26, 2014 in Park City, Utah, United States. The film is constructed with interspersed footage
and interviews with Roger Ebert during the last four months of his life at the terminal stage of his disease along
interviews of his friends, colleagues, relatives and notes on the important
association with film critic Gene Siskel, including clips from Ebert's popular
television show with him.
From all the sections that are included in
this film [see Narrative Structure] it seems not possible to assess any of the
professional and life accounts without becoming biased by partial aspects that
are highlighted in accordance with its homage feature. Conversely, the sections
which were filmed during the terminal stage of Roger Ebert’s disease are
life-printed testimonies of Roger Ebert as person brought by himself, his
relatives and friends. Both sections provide huge amounts of information that
need to be exposed and analyzed separately in accordance to the different
outlooks they deserve: I) Biographical Notes on Roger Ebert’s professional
life, II) Biographical Accounts on illness and death. In this October Blog it
will be analyzed and discussed the first section in the contexts of journalism
and literature/ cinema communication; in the next November blog it will be
studied the committed testimonies of a most challenging human being facing
decisive situations on life, serious illness and death accompanied by his wife,
friends, learners and colleagues that finally will be discussed in the context
of philosophical concepts of the Self.
The analysis of the film’s narrative
structure is done in the context of an educational setting for applying it to
the relationship of Art (cinema in this case) to the cultural environment.
NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
The narrative structure of the film is
build up as a dialogue amongst Roger Ebert and the ones interviewing him. For
the purpose of analysis they were copied text paragraphs centered in those
interactions that concerned exclusively on considerations on his person,
concepts and dialogue with others. The other paragraphs that tell about more
complex interactions of his professional life, as the Siskel-Ebert critic
association and the TV development of the film criticism task, were therefore
not included, except for those aspects related to the emotional lives that both
associates shared as persons among themselves and with films and their makers. Following
such procedure practically all the texts and interviews were copied in full
length and further were classified into different subject categories:
Biographical Notes on Journalism and Writing, Cinema Lecturer, The Gene Siskel
& Roger Ebert Association/ Support to Film Makers, the Human Contact
features, Marrying Chaz. Moreover, due to Roger Ebert’s very sensitive and
sincere emphasis in communication each subject category was tentatively classified
into communication skills capabilities, humane conditions in the relationships
and family characteristics. Other analyzed categories examined the relation
with the environment (Nature walks, stroller-voyager habits) and with the arts
(in this case with literature and mythic imagination).
I.
Communication skills capabilities
subcategories included: to read, to tell stories, to be creative, to write, to
publish, to reflect, to feel, to empathize, to understand, to identify, to
share, to remember, to converse, to encourage questions and statements, to express
own opinions, to support, to promote, to teach, to explain, to discuss, to make
film critics; the humane conditions in the relationships and family/ social
group characteristics include: Affective support, Commitment, Competitiveness, Opening
to others from egotism, to give, to lose, to confess, to be recognized, to exert
admiration, Memories; Family Bonds (Parents, Adoptive family), Pal behavior, Community
and group appurtenance.
II.
The Biographical Accounts on illness and
death that will be shown in the November Blog had been classified into the
Drinking Period, the relationship and contributions of Chaz Ebert (Roger’s
wife), his Terminal Disease and Epilogue categories. Here they will be analyzed
together with the former paragraph characteristics, the Relation with illness
and medical treatment (i.e. body perception, speaking the truth, cancer onset
and relapse, outbreak, entering terminal stage) and death subcategories (i.e.
death anxiety, death acceptance, social rejection and punishment, family
impact, farewell expression, loss reaction, mourning). Besides the former
categories, there were not considered other characteristics for the aim of this
study.
[*]Pronunciation and spelling of words
difficult to understand were placed in brackets.
I. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON ROGER EBERT’S
PROFESSIONAL LIFE
________________________________________________________________________________
ROGER EBERT: A CELEBRATION OF LIFE WITH LOVE FROM CHAZ 1942-2013 (scene that starts filming the CHICAGO Theater marquee and continues with Ebert’s lecture while walking along the public rows in the auditory)
ROGER EBERT: A CELEBRATION OF LIFE WITH LOVE FROM CHAZ 1942-2013 (scene that starts filming the CHICAGO Theater marquee and continues with Ebert’s lecture while walking along the public rows in the auditory)
________________________________________________________________________________
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON JOURNALISM AND WRITING
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON JOURNALISM AND WRITING
[To write and publish] I’ve always worked on newspapers. There is
a persistent need not only to write but to publish. In Grade school I wrote and
published The Washington Street News which I solemnly delivered to neighbors in
Urbana, Illinois, as if it existed independently on me. RE, memoir, LIFE ITSELF
[After
graduating from Urbana High School in 1960, Ebert then attended and received
his undergraduate degree in 1964. While at the University of Illinois, Ebert
worked as a reporter for the Daily Illini and then served as its editor during his senior year while also
continuing to work as a reporter for the News-Gazette of
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. One of the first movie reviews he ever wrote
was a review of La Dolce Vita, published in The Daily Illini in October 1961. Wikipedia]
[To
publish] During my years in Illinois I spent more
time working in the Daily Illinois than studying (…). As editor I was a case study: tactless,
egotistical, merciless, and a show (mow). RE, memoir
[To write and publish] And he was. But it worked because he could
back it up. He was intimidating to the (…) staff because he was like a mature
writer in that time. Now here (showing The Daily Illini titles “PROTEST VIGILS
CATCH ON”): When those four children were killed in the church bombing in
Birmingham (Alabama), there was a huge protestor in the country. And Roger was
the voice of outrage on this campus. He started up his column by quoting Dr
Martin Luther King who said to George Wallace: “The blood of these innocent
children is on your hands”. Then ended the quote and Roger began his column by
saying: That is not entirely the truth. The blood is on so many hands that
history will weep in the telling. And it is not new blood: it is old, very old.
And as Lady Macbeth discovered: It will not ever wash away. That began a column by a twenty one years-old
guy. And he said it better than anybody said it all week”.
William Nack, writer and friend
[To publish] Roger was editor on November 22nd, 1963, when John F. Kennedy
was shot. (…) Ebert was doing what editors do at the end of the day: check out
the pages. He opens it up and there’s a picture of John F. Kennedy [“Kennedy
spoke here in 1960”) and an [Thanksgiving dinner] ad of a pilgrim with a musket
pointing at Kennedy’s head. He would say: We have to switch this. (…) We are
not going to print that tomorrow. We have to stop the presses. Ebert became
famous to us (…) …He was a kid taking control of an adult situation and making
a News’ judgment, an important one.
Roger Simon, Daily Illini columnist, 1968-1969
[Film
Critics] I got a part time job in CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
(1967), and then six months later the film critic retired and they give me the
job (starting as Film Critic). I was at that time the youngest daily film critic
in America. RE, memoir
[To write / Film
Critics] Roger was the most (fast and
furious) writer that came across (…) He could knock out a whole thought out movie
review in 30min.
John McHugh, Friend and retired newspaperman
[Film Critics] Roger wrote his movie reviews as if he
was sitting in the fifteenth row, taking notes with one hand while taking pop
corn with the other, but he didn’t simplify things.
Martin Scorsese, Film maker
[Film Critics/ to
feel/ to reflect] “Cries and whispers” is
like no movie I’ve seen before and like no movie Ingmar Bergman has made
before. He envelopes us in a red membrane of passion and fear, and in some way
that I did not fully understand, it employs taboos and ancient superstitions to
make its effect. We slip lower in our seats feeling claustrophobia and sexual
disquiet. RE
[To write/ Film Critics] “I think the way that he writes, that sort
of clear plane mid-western newspaper style, conveys enormous intelligence,
encyclopedic learning, but doesn’t condescend, doesn’t ponder. Roger would
become the definitive mainstream film critic in American letters”.
A.O.Scott, Film Critic, The New
York Times
[To read/
Parents] From my
father I inherited my Pro-labor Democratic Party beliefs. I’m politically my
father’s child, and emotionally more my mother’s. My mother supported me as if I was our local
sports team. But she was fatalistic, she was permanently scared by the
Depression and constantly predicted she would end up in a poor home. My parents
so strongly encouraged my School work, we took a third paper ride home, The
Chicago Daily News, for me to read. When I stood in the kitchen door and used a
sentence with a new word in it, they would look out from their coffee and
cigarettes and actually applaud me. RE
[Film Critic/To be
recognized/ Pal] Usually when
somebody won the Pulitzer Prize there was different feed of rapports as “Yeah,
I’ll getting him to congratulate…” but for Roger there was real joy. He was our
Roger, one of us.
Roger Simon, Former columnist, Sun-Times
[Film Critic/To be
recognized] The only Pulitzer Prize for years and
years ever given to a Movie Critic.
Thea Flaum, Executive Producer
[Pal/ To be recognized] After he won the Pulitzer (…) Ben
Bradley, editor of the Washington Post of Watergate fame, went after Roger
hard, offered him the sun and the moon; Ebert just continued saying “No!” He
said: -I’m not going to learn new streets-, it’s very Ebert like. The Sun-Times went through rough times. So
many regimes… The Murdoch era would have crushed the paper. So many people
left…
Roger
Simon
[Pal]…And Roger
remained steadfast. I remember Roger saying -I’m not going to run away. These
are my colleagues and nobody can get another job. If someone crossed the street
for a job [Tribune Newspaper], they were selling out…
Tom McNamee
[Community
appurtenance] It was a huge clash of political difference between the Sun-Times
and the Tribune. We were a working class paper. And we reached the black
community. The Tribune was a very wealthy looking paper: …the Tribune tower,
this huge gothic structure standing at its base with all the great art works of
the world, there is a part of the pyramid of Giza. Did a guy go up with a
chisel and steeled this thing? Roger
Simon
[To write/Story
Teller/ Group appurtenance]
They were so many reporters that formed easy equip friendships because they
were smart, they were good writers, they were literate and they could tell a
good story in a saloon.
Rick
Kogan, Chicago newspaperman
[To write/ Story
Teller/ Stroller-Voyager] (He has) a
tremendous body of work. He’s been writing for half the big history, the
feature films. And that’s just once slice of the cake: a novel in weekly
installments –just like Dickens, not quite of that level- (“After the last
mass” in Amazing science fiction stories magazine), he wrote a book about how
to keep your computer bug free, strolls through London (The perfect London
walk), a book about the Cannes Film Festival (“Two weeks in the Midday Sun”).
Richard
Corliss, Film Critic
[Film Critic/
Stroller-Voyager] The Cannes Film
Festival is one of those events like the Super Bowl, Wimbledom or the Kentucky Derby.
It comes clogged on its own legend. I always wake up very early in the morning
after I arrive, I walk down the Rou Félix Fauré passing the flower sellers, the
fisher-market unloading iced oysters and in a particular café and a particular
table I order in shameful French, a café au lait, a Perrier and a croissant.
Such returns are important ritual to me. RE
[Pal] I told him seeing him at the Splendid and
he said: “Tomorrow be here at ten”. An so we go over the Swedish Film Institute
Hotel suite and there is Erland Josephson the actor laying in bed and he and I
talked about Ingmar Bergman for an hour, no interview, no formality, just yakking.
Howie Movshovits, Film critic
[Film Critics/ To
feel/ To reflect] If I am lucky something extraordinary will happen to me
during this Festival. I will see a film that will make my spine tingle with it
greatness. And I will leave the theater speechless. It was in Cannes thatI saw
Bresson’s precise, unforgiving “L’Argent”; a film that was so suspicious of
passion and emotion, so cold on its surface that I finally realized that no man
could make such distant and austere films without being, in fact, filled with
unlimited passion. There are (Dante) levels to this Festival. At the top level
is the official selection, films chosen from all over the world. But down,
down, down, down here at the basement of the Palais, this is the movie
supermarket, this is where they sell porno and exploitation and horror and
action and violence. In the dreams of a starlet there is always that scene with
a cigar charming producer spots a lovely young woman in the Carlton’s terrace
and shouts “Who is that girl? I must have her for my next picture”.
RE [From
“Two weeks in the Midday Sun”]
[To write/Story
Teller] Most of us were writing our stories after the Festival was over. Roger,
anticipating the internet or recalling daily journalism was filing stories all
through the Festival.
Richard
Corliss, Film Critic
[Creative] So much of
what we did, was -not me as the producer saying “do this”, “do that”-; it was
Roger, he had wonderful ideas. The
Cannes Festival was only Roger. He loved that he didn’t need to convince
someone else.
Nancy
De Los Santos – Show producer
[To publish] My attention
is focused on my new web site which will provide a home for my life’s work and
has an enduring life of its own. RE
[To publish] Roger has
800.000 followers in Twitter and 100.000 followers in Facebook// This is
allowing your fans to access your data base of your reviews going back to 1967
that has never been available in this form before.
Josh Golden Ebert Digital Founder, Digital strategist and Designer
[To publish/ Film
critics] Right now there is an argument about the internet. Some people say
film criticism is at the end, the art of cinema is at the end… Roger sees it in
a much more positive way. It’s a renaissance of film appreciation and film criticism.
The moving reporters that he uses, as his blog for example is giving a (cortical)…
from different points of view.
Jonathan Rosembaum Critic & Film scholar
[To publish/To
converse] A passionate fan culture and a movie e-culture that exists in the
internet where people are really worked up is something that the Siskel and
Ebert show helped to seed. It follows from Roger’s understanding of criticism which is a mode of conversation. It’s the public square.
A.O.Scott, Film Critic, The New
York Times
[To write] When I am writing
I am the same person I always was. In April 2008 I wrote my first Blog entry
and began this current and probably final stage of my life. My blog became my
voice, my outlet; my social media, in a way I couldn’t have dream of. Into it I
poured my regrets, desires and memories. Most people chose to write a Blog, I
needed it. Racism was engraved in daily life, it wasn’t the overt racism of the
south, but more like the prevailing background against which we lived or heard;
I never held a handgun in my life. The theory is that gun ownership makes safer
as it seems that doesn’t seem to be working out for us. The body count rises. RE [The Ebert Company, Ltd. Film Criticism
since 1967)
[To write] It took all
the energy he put in the television and he transferred it to his blog in the
internet and to his movie reviews and wrote better than he ever had in his
life.
William Nack
[Film Critics/ To
reflect] The tree of life is a film
of vast ambition and deep humility. I don’t know when the film has connected more
immediately with my own personal experience; that’s how you grow up. And it all
this happens in this twinkle of lifetime, surrounded by the rounds of unimaginable
time and space. RE
[To converse] We are now seeing the polymathic
genius that those of us who knew Roger, always saw. This voice was stilled, but
of course he’s talking more than ever. Richard
Corliss
[Film critics/ To
remember/ Community and group appurtenance] In the past twenty
five years I have probably seen 10.000 movies and reviewed 6.000 of them. I
have forgotten most of them I hope. But I remember those worth remembering.
They are on the same shelf in my mind. Look at a movie that a lot of people
love and you’ll find something profound. No matter how silly the film may seem.
What I miss though is the wonder. People of my age can remember walking into a
movie palace when the ceiling was far over head and the balconies reached way
to the shadows remember the sound of a thousand people laughing all at once,
the screens of the size of the billboards, so every seat in the house was a
good seat. I lost it at the movies, Pauline Kael said, and we all knew just what
she meant. RE
[Film critics/To feel/
To reflect] David Lynch asked Isabella Rosellini in “The blue velvet” to
undress and humiliate on the screen (RE commentary on TV). It seems to me that
I have an inherited moral code and that when it is violated I ask myself if the
violation is justified. Rosellini’s discomfort seems so obvious and palpable
that I cringed. Drama holds a mirror up to life but needless to reproduce it. RE
[To read] My favorite
places in the city are the used bookstores; you can’t get me out of one. I love
(…) those standard places with standard menus and breakfasts 24hs a day…
CINEMA LECTURER
[To reflect/ To
empathize/ To understand/ To identify/ To share] “We all are born with a
certain package. We are who we are. Where we were born, how we were born, as
how we were raised. We're kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of
civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit
with other people. And for me the movies are like a machine that generates
empathy. That’s to understand a little bit more about different hopes,
aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people that are
sharing this journey with us”. CHICAGO
THEATER July 15, 2005. [Floor sign: ROGER EBERT, Chicago, July 18, 2005/ Richard
M. Daley, Mayor/ FILM CRITIC]
[To reflect] I was born inside the movie of my life… I
don’t remember how I got into the movie, but it continues to entertain me. Roger Ebert [RE] footage, a memoir
[To
remember/ Story Teller] I’ve lived in a
world of words long before I was aware of it. The new reality took shape
slowly. My blog became my voice, my outlet. It let loose a flood of memories.
They came pouring forth in a flood of relief. One day in the spring of 1967 I
noticed “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” playing at the BIOGRAPH on Lincoln
Avenue. Posters displaying improbable boobs in
women and I was inside in a flash. That was my first register there was a film
maker named Russ Meyer. In 1969 20th Century Fox studio invited
Meyer (…) for an interview. They owned the rights to the title BEYOND THE
VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, and offered him the title unattached to any story. Meyer offered me the screen writing job and I
fell into a delirious adventure [Sign naming film authors: Screenplay by
Roger Ebert, story by Roger Ebert and Russ Meyer, produced and directed by Russ
Meyer]. RE, iii
[To discuss] On Monday
of “World Affairs” Roger would show a film. Tuesday to Friday he would conduct
a shot by shot discussion on the film.
Howie Movshovits, Film critic
[To teach] To listen to Roger talk for almost five hours about In “Cold blood” or
“The third Man” or “Vertigo” or “Citizen Kane”, he was an enlightening with
every new frame. It was a theatrical experience of a highest (store). Richard Corliss, Film Critic
[To encourage questions and statements] And anybody who wanted to at any
moment could be allowed to stop to ask a question or make a statement.
“Stop! Look at that!
Every year we find something absolutely amazing, totally amazing in the films.
Is not there but we find it”. RE [Video]
[To encourage
questions and statements] There was a limit to Roger’s democratizing a film criticism. A student
asked: Who do you think you are that you can have all these opinions? I saw
Porky’s and I think Porky’s is great, so why I wont like to talk about it? And Roger said “I have two
things to say: First, Marshall Field that owns the Chicago Sun-Times, appointed
me film critic, that’s who I am; listen, the other thing is a question: Would
you like to listen to you?
Howie
Movshovits, Film critic
[To teach]
“He made it possible for a bigger audience or one audience to appreciate cinema
as an art form, because he really loved it, really, really loved films and he
did not get caught up in certain ideologies, about what cinema should be” Martin Scorsese
[To confess/ To
discuss] I don’t really have any new confessions. It is true the first ten
years I came to the conference I came primarily for whom I can (lay) (…) I
lived more than nine months of my life in Boulder, Colorado, one week at a
time. It all happened in the sleepy inducing name: “Conference on World
Affairs”. (…) I was in my twenties when I first came to the conference. There I
was on a panel about the establishment with Henry Fairly who coined the term. I
discussed masturbation with the Greek ambassador to the United Nations. There I
asked Ted Turner how he got so much right in colorization wrong. RE, iv
ASSOCIATION TO GENE SISKEL AND SUPPORT TO FILM MAKERS
[Film
Critic/ competitiveness]
From the day the CHICAGO TRIBUNE made Gene Siskel its film critic we were
professional enemies. For the first five years we knew one another Siskel and I
hardly spoke. When Gene and I were asked to work together on a TV show we both
said we rather do it with someone else. Anyone else! RE
[Film Critic] Two
thumbs up became everything for a big Hollywood movie. That made moviemakers to
still find critic enthusiasm could sell a movie.
Richard Corliss, Film Comment, 1991
[Film Critic/ To express own opinions] I am the first to agree with Corliss that the Siskel and Ebert program
is not in depth film criticism; as indeed how could it be given our time
constraints? It would be fun to do an open-ended show with a bunch of people
sitting around talking about movies. But we would have to do it for our own
amusement because nobody would play it on television. The program’s purpose is to provide exactly
what Corliss says it provides, information on what’s new on the movies, who is
in it and whether the critic thinks it’s any good or not. (…) When we have an opinion about a movie,
that opinion may light a bulb over the head of an ambitious youth that then
understands that people can make their own minds about the movies [R.E.
rebuttal in Film Comment].
[Film Critic/ To reflect/ To support/ To
promote] As a film critic he
was somebody who gave life to new voices, he gave life to new visions that
reflected all the diversity of this nation. Different classes, points of view,
he wanted all out there. In my first film “Gates of Heaven”
(1978) there was a newspaper strike so the movie wasn’t reviewed by any of the
New York newspapers, which was a disaster. I thought that’s it, the movie is going to vanish. [Gates of Heaven Director]
Let’s move on to a
movie now that I think is one of the most brilliant, weird and unusual American
documentary films I’ve seen in a lot of time. [R.E. comment on TV]
And then, really out of nowhere those guys
started reviewing “Gates of Heaven”.
I agree with you
completely, I think it’s a superb film [G.S comment on TV]
Then they found an excuse to review it again
There are films that
we call “buried treasures” [G.S comment on TV]
And a third time.
…Anyone who has seen
this film can never forget… [R.E.]
I believe that I would
not really have a career if not for those guys [Gates of Heaven Director]
[To support] I made my first film, I made it alone, I didn’t know anyone in the
industry. I don’t even know how to find Roger’s e-mail, but I e-mailed assuming
that no one would answer. And he answered and he said “Your film is in Sundance tell me and I’ going to watch it there”.
So then, later he did go to Sundance and I e-mailed again and he said: Yes,
I’ll come to see it. And here are the three times. He didn’t come to the first screening;
he didn’t come to the second screening. The last screening was on Sunday morning
at 8:00 AM, the last day of the Festival! I feel it’s funny even to hear. In
fact he was one of the first people, I was there with my actor, and he said Do you mind if I take some pictures with you
and your actor? Just in case I like
the film… If I don’t like it I’ll never use them.
Ramin Bahrani, FILM MAKER
[To support/ To lose/ To share/to
understand/ Pal/ family bonds] I think I was eight or nine, or
something and my aunt Denise who was a film (addict) who passed her film
(obsession) on to me found out about these rehearsals for the Oscars …and one
day he walked through! I remember saying Thumbs Up! Thumbs Up! Screaming!,
screaming, and he came over… I grew up. I made this film when I was thirty four
years old, the first film I ever made. The film was about my aunt. My auntie
took me to the Oscars that day. …And about losing someone that you love and was
Ebert’s review that really got to the heart of what I was trying to articulate.
And just touched me so much that I sent him the picture from the Oscars: I was a little whose aunt took her to stand
outside the Shrine Auditorium to watch the stars… You gave me a few minutes.
Thanks for that… His reply was: “We
were both younger then…” The next day a Blog poster (…) where he wrote in a
very heartfelt way about his own aunt who had gave him the gift of art and film
as well. I brought down crying because it was a mess. It’s dangerous as a black
woman to give something that you’ve made from your point of view, very steeped
in your identity and your person, to a white man whose gaze that its usually the
exact opposite, and to say You are the
carrier about this film to the public. You
are the one that’s go to dictate whether it has value. And there were much
less fears around with Roger. Because you knew someone was going to take it
seriously (with) some historical context, some cultural nuance. Everyone knows
that Roger has a black woman. It’s like an honorary brother. Means live with a
sister it’s a whole understanding of the black women. So maybe you watch my
film differently.
Ava Du Vernay, FILM MAKER
[To support]
In the autumn of 1967 I saw a movie called “I saw it first”, later to be
re-titled “Who’s that knocking at my door? The energy of the cutting grabbed
me. It was the work of a natural director. I wrote a review suggesting in ten
years he would become the American Fellini.// So refreshing to find director
and an actor working in the top of their forms// I think Raging Bull is one of
the great American pictures of the year (1980). His greatest film is an act of
self-redemption. The period before it he become addicted to cocaine and told me
that after an overdose he was pronounced dead in an Emergency Room and
resuscitated. RE
[To support] It was
the first real charming encouragement. Yes, there are defects in the movie but
he saw something special that had to be nourished. // During the eighties I was
extremely gone, basically broken, I got some bad periods, my third marriage had
broken up, I was basically alone. The only thing that saved me or made me want
to continue just like living …my agent called me and said to me -You know there
is a Festival in Toronto? Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel, they want to give you this
tribute. I was a kind of scared …Could I walk down this theatre ail and go up
the stage knowing who I am? But I knew that they believed in me, and I have it
in my house now in a special place where I can see it, and I passed may be
every five to six minutes and see it. But
that night changed it, I started my life again. I didn’t feel inhibited with
Roger. He was that close.
Martin Scorsese Film Maker
[Film Critic] “The color of money” was directed by Martin Scorsese, that’s one of the
two or three best movie directors around today; doesn’t have the interior
energy and the drive and the obsession of most of the best Scorsese films. RE
The script isn’t
good!! GS
It’s just a standard sort
of predictable narrative. RE
I know… But… beautiful
camera, Michael Ballhouse, Paul Newman, but…they wouldn’t accept it. That was a
way of condemning and helping. …You’ve done this now, watch me, you’ve done it
twice, but watch yourself. As opposed to toxic, poisonous, unkind, ungenerous,
lack of charity and so many others.
Martin Scorsese
HUMAN CONTACT
[Memories/ to give/ to share] Every time I
see him walk away with something new and every time that I seated down to the
table to do the work I think about him. Because if something happened and I’m
not going to see him again… It was just a few days before Christmas I phoned
Chaz Can I come there? (…) It was
nice to see him interacting with his grandkids… I know that he must be in pain
physically, but he ends being the happiest guy around! // One time I went to see Roger. He was kind of eager and bouncing to
give me something. He gave me (this) letter, actually from Laura Dern: “Dear
Roger I want you to know that your generosity and expertise at the Sundance
tribute meant a world to me. I’ve tried to come up with an appropriate way to
thank you. This box and its content, a jigsaw puzzle I have treasured for some
time it was given to me by the Strasberg family when Lee Strasberg passed away.
It was Marilyn Monroe’s who collected puzzles and it had been given to her by
Alfred Hitchcock. That night in Sundance you inspired me about film and
contribution and I wanted to pass along film and connection in some way. Thank
you again. Love to you and Chaz, Laura. And then Roger gave me this gift which
I refused. I said: You can’t give me this
gift. I cannot accept this gift. And then he said: You’re going to accept the gift because you have to one day give this
to somebody else who deserves it.
Ramin Bahrani, FILM MAKER
[To explain/ to teach/
to converse] I just remember being so young and watching for the first time so
many movies and him sort of explaining to me what’s important of this one and
this is a really good movie… [Ever heard of this film? This movie begins with
seven children who are seven and checked them every seven years of their lives.
R.E.] All the great conversations everything he told me about movies and life
and family and books. Those experiences mean a lot to me…
Raven Evans Step Granddaughter
[To feel/ to exert
admiration] He is a soldier of cinema. He’s a wounded comrade who cannot even
speak any more and keeps (ahead). And that touches my heart very deeply. I
never dedicate films to anyone. I dedicated a film to him where I adventured to
the last corner of this planet, to Antarctica, to the ice [Encounters at the End of the World, 2007]. And from there I bow my head on
his direction. He reinforces my courage.
Werner Herzog, FILM MAKER
[Pal] Roger has unlike
anybody that arrived to this point where he is a peer of the people, of some of
the people he writes about …it’s very complicated, I think, when you have
personal relations and friendship with the people as you cannot but cloud your
judgment.
A.O.Scott,
Film Critic, The New York Times
[Pal] When you look at
the IXXth Century and the great critics and music, they hum together, critics
and artists. They were in the same circles. And that helped the critics and it
helped the composers. Roger brought that concept and he was criticized for it.
Gregory Nava, Film Maker
MARRYING CHAZ
[Affective
support] Chaz was probably more life altered for him than his TV show; she
really really liked him for what he was and not who he was.
Bruce Elliot Friend and Bar owner
[Opening to others
from egotism] She changed his life immeasurably. She changed his personality.
Hey, I was eight months pregnant and Roger grabbed the cab in front of me in
New York… It’s not that kind of guy now. …I think Gene was so happy that Roger
found his mate.
Marlene Iglitzen Gene Siskel’s wife
[Fairy tale structure/
Commitment and affective support] He was fifty years old when we got married.
He used to tell me “I waited just about all my life to find you. And I’m glad I
did and I’ll never let you go. Our wedding was like a fairy tale. Gene Siskel’s
daughters, Kate and Kali, they were our beautiful little flower girls!… and
Roger’s idea of a wedding was like “Father of the bride” where the father says:
“Can’t you just have a wedding in the backyard?! and put some rods on the grill?
People who knew me then would be very surprised that I would marry a white man,
because I thought that African American men had got such a wrong deal in this
society. In college I was the Head of the Black Student Union, I marched with
Martin Luther King. I talked to my mother about it: “Mom what do you think
people would say?” and she said: “Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. What do you
say? What does your heart say?”. And the sophisticated as Roger was, he didn’t
know how his family would take this; he used to say: “You know, may be my uncle
Bill or my aunt Mary because you are not Catholic. I said: “Roger, come on, if
we’re going to have this relationship we have to be serious. Not catholic or
not white? He said: Yeah, probably some
of that too”. After a while though, his family accepted me with open
arms. Chaz
[Affective support] He
was on a life one quest for love. He found romantic love with Chaz. And he
loved that family, her kids and her grandkids, for he fitted right in.
William Nack
[Adoptive family/
Nature walks] There were no strangers in her family. I love and I am loved. And
as a member of another race I have without exception been accepted and
embraced. The greatest pleasure came
from annual trips we made with our grandchildren Raven, Emile and Taylor, and
their parents, Sonia and Mark. When we made our way from Budapest to Prague,
Vienna, Hawaii, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Venice twice and Stockholm, “we
(had) a wonderful time, and right now we are about to take the garden walk
which is a great tradition of all our vacations when we go out nature walks”.
Emile announced that for him was no such thing as getting up too early. And
every morning the two of us, we’d meet at the hotel lobby and go out for long
walks together. One morning in Budapest he asked me to take some photos to two
people walking ahead of us, holding hands. Why? –Because they look happy-.
Those sights seem more precious now that they are in the past. I don’t walk
easily anymore. RE
DISCUSSION: TEACHING FILM CRITICISM AND HUMAN
EMPATHY
The
documentary film “Life Itself”
produced by Steve James fully recognizes Roger Ebert as a polymathic genius
that in fact, as Film Critic Richard Corliss have stated, would be talking by
now more than ever: Film critic, journalist, screenwriter, film
historian, author, Pulitzer Prize for Criticism winner. By reviewing his biography the
professional section describes his distinguished career as Journalist and Film
Critic adjoined by testimonies of journalists and filmmakers with whom he
worked or supported, together with friends and relatives accompanying him
throughout his life and disease. Therefore the first section describes his
professional career through texts, clips and interviews that were classified as
Biographical Notes on Journalism and
Writing, while his relevant work as Film Critic summarizes texts and
interviews were classified under Cinema
Lecturer, The Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert Association, Support to Film Makers
and Human Contact titles. The second parallel story about illness and death
will be described in the next November Blog entitled “Biographical Accounts on
illness and death”.
Roger Ebert’s
very sensitive and sincere emphasis in communication shown in the film oriented
the analysis of his professional life by searching in texts, clips and
interviews the mention of communication skills capabilities. Among them the
communication features were found significantly highlighted in all the
biographical sections, being found in 72.6% (77/106) of the narrative
subcategories, reaching the highest at Cinema Lecturer 93.3% (14/15) and the
lowest at Marrying Chaz 0% (0/7).
If as occurred in the late history of cinema, behind a filmic story appears the mega-narrator that is able to construct and compose the story by articulating
images rather than reproduce a pre-existing reality, it seems that the tasks
akin to the professional life of a film critic would follow a similar trend in
training in the skills that master the art of telling a story.
Storytelling switches on a mechanism of communication skills recursive
practices that include habits of listen to stories, to memorize them, to tell
the stories and recreate them, following the writing of new versions. All these
behaviors can interact among them in a sequential feedback manner. Before language was written
there is prove about oral repetition of stories by singers thal paved the way
for their future writing, Gilgamesh being the epical story to be known after
long existence in Sumer since 2000 BC (Popper & Eccles, 1977). Such oral
narrative development linked to the development of imagination, fantasy and
invention can be settled in the prehistoric times since the evolution of the
Neardenthal man >100.000 BC, paralleling linguistic development with Self-conscience (Popper
& Eccles, 1977). The group storytelling habit rising in the inter-individual affective
relationships would it also be the gradual result of such earlier evolutionary
stages? It has been proposed
that storytelling generates “a common shared and differentiated space for each
member, at the same time that allows metaphoric language to be used constantly,
and thus favoring a display of personal creativity (Correa, Gonzalez &
Weber, 1991). In this same vein, a fertile creative milieu is provided to all
participants in order to encourage everyone’s preferred communicative modes of
expression: reading related material, drawing, bodily, playing music, even
remaining silent. This, therefore, enables each participant to adjust their
contributions using expressive aspects that might otherwise have remained
hidden by a personal shortcoming, in particular those involving narrative or
communication skills. Within this biologic and socio-cultural framework,
individuals and groups will construct unique entities comprised of their own
individual memories; those of their family of origin and social group; and
cultural myths that belong to these latter sources. This amalgam of sources
leads to a wide range of narrative themes that are further boosted in the
several group environments (Correa & Hobbs, 2007, 2009).
From the other analyzed categories that examined
Roger Ebert’s humane conditions in the relationships, the family
characteristics, the relation with the environment and with the arts, the most
significant subcategories corresponded to the humane conditions in the
relationships, reaching the highest scores at the Human Contact and Marrying
Chaz sections, 58.8% (10/ 17) in the overall of both sections. This film that
tells about the development of Ebert’s professional and social life together to
his final steps in life fosters
the person-to-person communication that is necessary to evolve at the own,
wife, friends and colleagues’ bereavement experience. The
individual and shared group story construction and reflection on the meaning of
grief experiences in the personal/ interpersonal, interpersonal/
intercultural, and group/ intercultural levels of narrative leads to widen or sharpen
narratives’ meaning by sharing the own personal reflections with the
interpersonal homo/hetero-cultural groups’ bereavement stories (Correa, 2012).
It may be said that such is the quest of Roger Ebert as shown in the film of
his life and death made by Steve James: Roger and Chaz together with other
relatives, colleagues and scholars build together a narrative that conveys everybody in the creation of
a new group story, counteracting the trend of the studied 2014 films which
would attempt to withdraw the protagonists from their personal scopes up to
make them become outsiders of their wills and roles. The cinema spirit of Roger
Ebert and his group defies then the alien road that would set human beings on a
grim cultural environment at the start of the new millennium -presided by
doomsday events of most ghoulish design as the terrorist attacks against defenceless
people and emblematic architectures of the past and present, or the world´s
destructive irreversible threats to the environment and the living species-.
Ebert’s and James message in the film “Life Itself” reinforce the belief
in the possibility of human encounter just when the end would command the
opposite. “It was in the movies around the beginning of the last’s century
decade year period, where particularly could be seen and heard, the constant
talk of the dyad formed by man in his own effort to communicate and the
universe containing him and beating together with him in the same infinitude.
In an opera
prima film written and directed by Nicole
Garcia (1990) “Every Other Weekend“ (French: Un week-end sur deux, nominated for two César Award (1991), for best debut film and for best
actress to Nathalie Baye), a divorced woman that alternates child custody with
her ex-husband, when taking her children with her during a weekend decides,
after quarreling and returning him the children, to rent a car to Spain and to
attend a meteorite fall, akin to the cosmic restlessness of her son Vincent, an
amateur of astronomy with whom she was willing to become closer; thereafter in
the realm of the extreme lonely scenery of the Spanish plateau, completely
alone, with no accompanying relatives, she turns her back at the final moment
when the meteorites start to fall. In “The Whales of August” (1987) two elderly widowed sisters played by Bette
Davis and Lillian Gish, wait at the cliffs for the return of whales in
the immensity of the ocean when their brotherhood is challenged at the border of
despair and delirium: to keep faithfulness in the encounter with nature at the
same moment that life is calling for the acceptance of death and abandonment.
Would a same story repeat under diverse versions of different film makers
during a determined span of time? In “Grand Canyon”
(1991), Lawrence Kasdan depicts a group of six
people characters belonging to antagonist white and black races that attempt to
survive urban [Los Angeles] violence and degraded human atmosphere poisoning
their lives when unexpectedly they gather together at the canyon overwhelming
view. In the Argentine film “A Place in the World” (Spanish: Un lugar en el mundo, Adolfo Aristarain1992), a pain suffering man that is
wounded to death in his soul contemplates the peaceful mountain soils of his
country that he have dreamt for long to find for living, as a dead ocean image
that later will repeat in his son's memories. In “Europe, Europe” (French-Polish film by Agnieszka Holland,
1992), the film ends with the
real protagonist that in the film is represented by an actor, who saved his
life in Nazi Germany by disguising as an Aryan
Jew, singing a Jewish folk song in
front of a wheat field sea in Israel. Akira Kurosawa’s “Rhapsody in August” (1991) tells the account of an elderly grandmother
telling life stories to her four grandchildren, centering in her nightmare
delusions of horror when she lost her husband in the 1945 Nagasaki atomic bombing. When she starts her run to her
memories as amidst a wind and rain storm, the grandchildren follow her in the
struggle against the strength of nature while in playback it tunes a children´s
choir, as it would mean the recovery of the family and national self lost in
the collective disaster. Being able to tolerate uncertainty when the end of
life cycles arrive -as
the very hard social transitions putting at risk man’s identity, man`s natural
and urban environments, man`s family and social appurtenances, described in the
revised films- later leads fertile creativity to succeed death, dreadful endings
and nature or man-made stormy destructions, emerging unnoticed as a fantastic
marine creature (see “The Colomber”, Correa & Hobbs, 2007) or as an Art
Muse that’s everlasting there at the sea’s blue horizon (Barton Fink, Coen Brothers, 1991; Palm d’Or winner at the 1991
Cannes Film Festival and nominated for the 1992 Oscar), when the hellish truth of Hollywood’s footlights -or perhaps any other’s-
seduces to write for the movies a renowned New York playwright -or surely any
others-. The myth of eternal return [The Myth of the Eternal Return: Or, Cosmos and
History, Mircea Eliade] calls the
ability to return to the mythical age as to live in a
poetic dimension, summoning up story-tellers around the fire or else nowadays
technologic mega-narrators in the screens asking us to listen their messages,
not just for entertainment but for believing even completely alone in the
marvelous ahead, as it largely endured humans when facing their earth and
skies” (Correa, 1992). Such spirit beating strongly in the
last decade century cinema groups' manifestations is called again in Roger
Ebert’s film critic last appeal to cinema “So on this day for reflection I say
thank you for going on this journey with me. I’ll see you at the movies…” (Life Itself final words, Steve James,
2014).
REFERENCES
Correa, J.E., “Una
coincidencia filmográfica”, Uno y Otros, Buenos Aires, 10/12/1992.
Correa, J.E., “Videonarrativa: un nuevo
recurso expresivo en la creación y recreación narrativa”, Sueño Despierto, 10:
47-51, 2000.
Correa, J.E., González, O.B.& Weber, M.S., “Story telling in
families with children: a therapeutic approach to learning problems”,
Contemporary Family Therapy, 13 (1): 33-59, 1991.
Correa, J.E. & Hobbs N., “Storytelling to the group and group
recreation of the story/ Narration du contes au groupe et recréation du conte
pour le groupe”, Interfaces Brasil/ Canadá, 7: 109-135, 2007.
Correa, J.E. &
Hobbs, R.N., “The group narrative of bereavement. Hypothesis about competition
of social narrative and family narrative models” Human Systems: The Journal of Systemic Consultation & Management, Volume No 20, Issue 1, pp. 51-64, 2009.
Correa, J.E., “The role of reflection in the group construction of the
narrative of bereavement: Argentine group workshops held on Argentine and
Canadian stories”, Revista Argentina de Estudios Argentino-Canadienses,
Argentinean Journal of Canadian Studies, Revue Argentine d’Études Canadiennes,
6: 27-52, 2012.
Correa, J.E., QUESTIONS FOR
A NEW FILM DICUSSION: AN HYPOTHESIS (Félix et Meira), New edition published in the Blog ART & ENVIRONMENT,
August 30th, 2015.
Popper, K.R & Eccles, J.C., The self and its brain,, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New
York, 1977.
