Movie freak that I am, I lived for Siskel & Ebert each week. Didn’t like Gene Shalit or Peter Travers in Rolling Stone much, but I seemed to be mostly aligned with what S&E liked. I stopped following years ago around the time Siskel passed away; more coincidence than anything. A recent Esquire article on Roger Ebert reveals what’s gone on with his life and a few things I didn’t know. That he was a Pulitzer prize-winning author for example. Or that cancer left him without a lower jaw, and that he now communicates mostly through writing. A Scottish company is even trying to match his previously recorded voice to their text to speech technology. He also spends a fair amount of time online at Twitter and his blog. But for some reason, what jumped out the most was something parent company Disney did after his run on Siskel & Ebert/At the Movies was over. Instead of donating the show’s set to the Smithsonian as many classic TV shows have done, he discovered it broken it up and left it in an alley dumpster. So much for collectors on Ebay. (Read the entire interview.)
2 comments:
For an interesting follow-up, you might want to read Ebert's own comments on the profile.
Saw it, yep.
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