Roger Ebert Once Told Me My Life Was 'Behind Schedule' - And I Wish I Had Truly Listened
I started watching Siskel & Ebert in 1995 or '96. It was my insane obsession with the movie "12 Monkeys" that made me first tune in. I thought it so obviously the best movie ever made that I resolved that if I were ever a movie critic, I would rate movies in monkeys, giving out the coveted 12 only to movies that were as good as "12 Monkeys" (which I was skeptical would ever exist). But I didn't have anyone to talk to about it because none of my friends particularly cared about movies.
Siskel & Ebert both liked "12 Monkeys," which made them acceptable, even though they failed to put it on their best-of-the-year lists. But what hooked me was their recommendations of movies I would never have heard of otherwise. I sought out "The Young Poisoner's Handbook" and Noah Baumbach's "Kicking and Screaming," and these films blew me away because I'd never seen anything like an independent film before.
So Siskel and Ebert became my movie buddies, even if the discussion was mainly one-way, and as I started to study and practice screenwriting, what they might say about my movies was often in the back of my mind.
I liked Siskel, but it was Ebert who stood out to me because of his reviews in The Chicago Sun-Times. They weren't just insightful critiques — they were a joy to read. I bought my brother "Roger Ebert's Video Companion 1996" as a Christmas present. I don't know how much of it he got through, but I read it cover to cover. And I made sure to read every single one of his reviews for years after that. The 2000s are more iffy, but if you ask me about any movies Ebert reviewed in the late nineties or earlier, I can probably tell you the number of stars he gave it. (I know I'm still good at this game because I played it with my brother at Christmas last year.)
Toward the end of 1996, I decided to try to email Ebert. Through some pre-Google Googling, I found his email address at Compuserve and sent him what may be the longest email I've ever sent anybody. And that's saying a lot. My social skills weren't exactly polished back then, but I must not have come across as a completely crazed fan, because Ebert wrote back.
I can't remember his exact response, except that it was two lines, and one of the lines was a compliment of the movie cliches I sent him, which he must have meant because he later used some in his expanded glossary of movie cliches. And I remember his signature: "-RE." I went back to look at that -RE more than a few times. I was emailing with -RE!
Around this time, Siskel & Ebert announced on the show that they were debuting a segment called "The Viewer's Thumb," which would feature videos from audience members talking about movies. I started brainstorming my video that night, and a few days later I mailed in a video of myself complaining about the stereotypes of Southerners in movies, who were almost always dumb hicks and racists with thick accents, which I knew wasn't true since I was a Southerner. It was the first (and one of the few) Viewer Thumbs they ran, and I was overjoyed even though Ebert (it still feels weird to call him Roger) defended these depictions of Southerners and it was Siskel who agreed with me. A local news station did a feature on me because of this, which of course inevitably ended with me giving a thumbs up to the camera.
RE was thrilled to hear about it, and gave me his PO box so I could mail him a copy of the video. I was totally in, which made me feel confident enough to have him look at a movie website I helped put together during my last year of high school for a scholarship contest. It was called "The Motion Picture Industries: Behind the Scenes," and was an attempt by inexperienced and uninformed high school students to explain how movies are made. The highlight was a text-based movie making simulation and a video about a computer generated man who comes out of a computer and runs amok in a teenager's bedroom. Ebert disliked the overly dry title, and remarked that the video was "postage-stamp sized," but he nevertheless named it one of the top ten movie sites of 1997 in an article he wrote for Yahoo! Internet Life magazine. He even referred to us as "the next Steven Spielbergs," which, well, was quite something to hear at the time, but became a little more ... bittersweet as the years went by.
I finally got to meet Ebert in 2004. I was going to Chicago for the first time in my life, for the wedding of my first college roommate, so I emailed Ebert to ask if we could meet up. He said I should join him for a movie at the 16th Floor Lake Street screening room, and asked if I would rather see "Sleepover" or a movie he called "something full of grace." Something full of grace didn't sound like my sort of thing (even though I now know this was Maria Full of Grace, which I later watched and loved), so I picked Sleepover. I got there about half an hour early, which gave me plenty of time to look nervously at movie posters in the lobby. When Ebert arrived, he was thinner than I was expecting, because he'd already gone through some cancer treatments. He introduced me to two of his producers and started talking about The Motion Picture Industries: Behind the Scenes and its postage-stamp-sized video, even though I'd all but forgotten about that site myself. Richard Roeper and Ebert's wife Chaz joined us in the screening room. They were in the back row, and I sat in front of them, sort of blocking Chaz's view. Ebert suggested I scoot over, so I moved a couple of seats, but was still somehow in Chaz's way. "Poor Rhys," Ebert said as I scooted over yet again.
We watched the movie, which was a horrendous comedy about middle school girls competing in a scavenger hunt to try to win seats at the best lunchroom table in high school. There was only one laugh the entire screening, and it was a derisive one from Roeper. I found it remarkable that they didn't discuss the movie at all afterward — which I knew was necessary to keep it spontaneous for Ebert & Roeper — and instead discussed Ebert's quibbles with the MPAA as we took the elevator down. Ebert believed the MPAA should institute an "A" rating, which he hoped would be a workable adult movie rating that lacked the stigma of NC-17.
After we stepped out of the elevator and Roeper excused himself, the conversation turned to me. Somewhat to my alarm, the man who had called me one of the next Steven Spielbergs years before asked what I was up to. "You studied film at The University of Texas, right?" he asked. I nodded and told him that I'd co-written and co-directed a musical in Austin since then and was, um, currently working at a macrobiotic restaurant. "I thought you'd be a movie producer by now," he said. "Well, yeah, I'm kind of writing stuff," I stammered. "You're behind schedule," Ebert said.
I took it to go, and as soon as we stepped outside of the restaurant, a random pedestrian confronted Ebert. “Con,” the stranger said. “What?” Ebert asked. “It’s pronounced Con,” the stranger said, referring to the Cannes Film Festival. Ebert shook his head and we walked on. “Did you hear that? I used to pronounce it 'Con' and then I was corrected to pronounce it 'Can.' People who think they know what they’re talking about will always try to tell you what to do.” But his annoyance dissipated as we walked around for a little bit and he admired the city he loved. "Chicago has never looked better than it looks now," he said. When we parted, I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Then I just said thank you, he nodded, and turned around. I still had the falafel sandwich and pear lemon broccoli juice, and I was hungry, so I went somewhere to eat it as, "You're behind schedule" nagged at me. To mark the occasion, I took a picture of what remained of my juice and falafel sandwich.
When I got back to Austin, I put the plastic spoon that deli had needlessly given me above my desk to remind myself that even Ebert knew I was behind schedule. After a day, I stopped thinking about the spoon, and after a few weeks, I'd lost it.
I always felt like any movies I made wouldn't mean much if Ebert didn't review them. It would seem to me as if they hadn't really been seen.
When Ebert first got really sick it occurred to me that by the time I finished dithering with the other sorts of writing and odd jobs I was doing and focused enough to sell a script or direct a movie, he might not be here to see it. Who would judge it then? What would make it real? Its freshness score on Rotten Tomatoes?
A few years ago, I emailed Ebert some thoughts I had about "Avatar," updated him on my life, and reminded him of his influential (but perhaps not so effectual) challenge to me when we met in Chicago. "I was foolish to talk about schedules," he wrote back. "*Whose* schedule?" Mine, I guess.
I don't know if I'll ever make any movies. All I know is that if I do, he won't be here to see them, and I'll never quite connect with him in that cinematic way that I always imagined I one day would. But that's not what makes me the most sad. Really, I just miss him.
Rhys Southan is a writer, playwright, documentarian, and the creator of Let Them Eat Meat.