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Life Itself (2011)

by Roger Ebert(Favorite Author)

3.86 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0446584975 (ISBN13: 9780446584975)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Grand Central Publishing

review 1: Let’s just cut to the chase. Out of this fifty-five chapter memoir, Roger Ebert’s essay on “How I Believe in God,” (chapter 54), is the saddest one of all. Here Ebert admits that even after growing up in the Roman Catholic Church, he still has no God to fear because there is no God, (in his mind), and therefore “there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.” Even to his wife, Chaz, Ebert will not admit to being an atheist because “nothing is that simple. Absolutists frighten me,” wrote the author. Apparently Ebert holds no concept of the everlasting soul and therefore could not bring himself to think about the possibility he could be wrong about God and therefore facing an eternity of unspeakable regret. He freely admits to being a secular huma... morenist. Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing else. It doesn’t get any sadder than that. In these pages, Ebert reveals a great deal of his rather unique personality. Really, he holds nothing back. For example, in chapter 19 we learn that he is ritualistic. “Chaz says it is impossible to get me to do anything the first time, and then impossible to stop me from doing it over and over again. . . . I may appear to suffer from some sort of compulsive repetition syndrome, but these rituals are important to me.” Perhaps tied to his repetitious tendency, Ebert admits in chapter 27 to being a pack rat. (“I can’t throw out anything.”) He’s even repetitious as a writer. Many of the same little stories he tells about his friends and celebrities he’s known, are retold more than once throughout this biography. (For example, his interview with Lee Marvin.) I’m not a psychologist, but, I’m wondering if the mental health experts might attribute those traits as a product of being the only child of alcoholic parents.In chapter 21, Ebert outlines his technique for viewing and critiquing movies. He sees films in terms of individual shots, (not being swept along by the narrative), and then asks himself what happened to himself as a viewer. In the course of reviewing Hollywood’s output, Ebert has interviewed many of its stars. We get to meet several of them in these pages. That includes, as I mentioned, Lee Marvin as well as Russ Meyer, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Ingmar Bergman and Martin Scorsese. I came away from this nostalgic look back at Ebert’s life missing Gene Siskel. (Ebert devotes three chapters to their long career together.) A former producer described the pair as “Individually, you’re nothing. Together, you’re stars.” Sadly, (there’s that word again), the late Siskel’s sidekick sums up his life, “which has been devoted in such large part to films of worthlessness.” With that, the balcony is closed.
review 2: Like Stephen King and Harlan Ellison, Roger Ebert entered my life at an early age and forever altered the way I looked at the world. Even though I was too young to appreciate it, I still remember the opening credits to Sneak Previews – the ticket, the popcorn, the candy, the broken soda machine – which also means I must have seen at least a couple early episodes of Ebert’s review show with Gene Siskel. I have stronger memories of At the Movies, the show that ran until Siskel’s death in 1999 (I don’t really consider his pairing with Richard Roeper – which ran until 2006 – as part of the canon). Since I was still a nascent film buff, the big appeal for me was the fighting. Ebert and Siskel’s friendly – and occasionally not-so-friendly – rivalry was legendary, and I think many people tuned in to the show for the same reason I did, to watch this two passionate men argue about the medium they loved most. Of course I came to value the show for the duo’s informed criticism, but for a while I just remember feeling a delicious discomfort when I saw Ebert getting hot under the collar.Roger Ebert, Gene SiskelI know the common perception is that the two hated each other, but I think anyone who’s shared a passion with another person recognizes their own arguments in Ebert and Siskel’s squabbling. My own friends and I argued constantly over such crucial topics as Star Wars or Star Trek? Conan or the Beastmaster? Spider-Man or Batman? (Incidentally, Star Wars, Conan, and Batman are the correct answers.) The arguments were usually heated and often personal, but our friendship was never in doubt. And of course that’s exactly what I came to see in Ebert and Siskel: you don’t argue like that unless there’s a core of love – for the medium and each other – at the heart of the dispute.Siskel indeed gets a couple loving chapters in Life Itself, Ebert’s memoir, along with accounts of his life growing up in Illinois, stories of his newspaper days with the Sun-Times, anecdotes about some of his favorite celebrities, and meditations on all his loves: cars, breasts, Steak ‘n Shake, the movies, and, most crucially, his wife Chaz. It’s a memoir with an air of the autumnal; at the time of its writing, Ebert had survived his cancer recurrence and three failed surgeries to repair his face and restore his voice, but there’s an inescapable melancholy to it, and the sense that Ebert was, in some ways, starting to close the curtain.I think the thing that struck me most about the book is how much of myself I saw in it. It’s likely I’m just projecting because I admire the man so much, but I noted several times his observation – which I’ve also had with increasing frequency – that none of us ever really change as we age. It’s conventional wisdom that at some point we figure it all out, and we enter the later stages of our life secure in the knowledge that we can just ride things out with confidence and aplomb. But I still – for better or worse – feel like the same dweeb I was at 16: thin-skinned, socially awkward, passive-aggressive, a romantic who doesn’t know how to talk to other people, teeming with an ambition that was generally nullified by laziness and procrastination, and given to fits of self-righteous indignation while still retaining a general hopefulness and optimism. I was that guy then; I’m that guy now.Ebert acknowledges this stasis in different ways, not least in the acknowledgement that many of his passions – especially breasts and the movies, in that order – remained constants throughout his life. But we also see it in some of his offhand comments.On being punished by his Catholic school teachers: “I felt humiliated and outraged. It seemed to me I had been mistreated by people with no imagination or sympathy. I suppose in another sense I was being a little jerk. That pattern has persisted.”On attending his 50th high school reunion: “Looking at my classmates, I wondered if perhaps the person we are in school is the person we will always be, despite everything else that comes our way. All that changes is that slowly we become more aware of what matters in life.”Maybe that’s not an entirely accurate characterization of Ebert’s point. It’s not that we don’t change; it’s that when we do, our core remains the same. For everything else the book does – and it does a lot – it’s this lesson that stuck with me, and, seeing my own experience reflected in Ebert’s, I find it oddly comforting. This is the way life is; why fight it?As good as the book is, there are parts that worked less well. This is likely just a matter of taste, as Ebert’s candor and humor is a constant. Still, I found myself drifting during some of his lengthy tales of workplace personalities at the Sun-Times, and I will never be particularly interested in tales of John Wayne or Robert Mitchum. But there were more places that set my little movie-loving heart aflutter – entire chapters on his experiences with Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Werner Herzog – and the closing chapters, where he details his illness and recovery in heartbreaking detail, are worth the read by themselves.The biggest influence Ebert has had on my life isn’t one from the book. In one of his reviews – and I’d do unspeakable things now to remember which one it was – he said, and I’m paraphrasing: A movie isn’t what it’s about; it’s how it’s about it. This is true of movies, but of books, too, and it’s a lesson I try to impart to my students. The content of a movie – or book – is less important than how the director – or author – frames that content. It’s not that a character is killed; it’s how that death is treated by the film. Is it trivialized, or does it have gravity and import? Context is everything, and it’s the respect, or lack of it, that a director brings to his characters and their struggles that dictates how much corresponding respect we should pay it.With that in mind, there’s just no way to look at Ebert’s memoir as anything but an unqualified success. With life itself as the subject, Ebert is funny and unflinchingly honest in equal measure. It’s a beautiful – but never regretful – elegy for a life well-lived, from a man who sees the end coming and knows that that’s the perfect opportunity to celebrate it.More reviews at goldstarforrobotboy.net less

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