by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent
When film critic turned TV personality Roger Ebert (1942-2013) penned “Life Itself,” a memoir published in 2011, the title struck a chord as a line lifted from The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Dr. Frank N. Furter, or actor Tim Curry in full-corset drag on heels, shrieks with delight “I hold the key to life… ITSELF!”
Our Roger Ebert was a bit naughty, and clearly liked Rocky Horror. This much we know based on an excerpt from Ebert’s Jan. 1, 1975 review. “The ‘Rocky Horror’ midnight cult still survives, in a muted form (how long into middle age, after all, can one really continue to dress up like a Transylvanian transsexual?).
Having seen the July release of the Steve James’ documentary based on the book, also titled Life Itself, that odd origin makes even more sense. Herringbone jacket-wearing Roger Ebert had a wild side. A strange side. And finally, an AA-side. He partied, he railed, he liked ‘women for hire.’ In other words, this “blue-collar” family-bred, hardworking Illinois-native burned the projector at both ends.
Ebert also worked with (read: endorsed) ‘the grandfather of dirty movies,’ Russ Meyer. Meyer is most cult-famous for Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). He could even be said to be the Cinematic Godfather of Quentin Tarantino. (Russ Meyer was no Kenneth Anger, (see: “Hollywood Babylon”); but let’s say that had a few kinks in common.)
The big give in the movie is that Ebert wrote the screenplay to his Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1969), which director Martin Scorsese (as Himself) riffs on brilliantly in this picture. Meyers like to cast, from a term he invented, “cantilevered ladies.”
In fact, and this isn’t in the documentary, Meyer’s last movie was to be called “The Bra of God,” and guess who wrote the screenplay? Roger Ebert. Maybe some things are better off shelved.
Which brings up the main problem with Life Itself - although Ebert, his wife Chaz and her kids, as well as Scorsese and his partner Gene Siskel’s wife, all consented to be part of this film - something terribly wrong happens in the editing room. This is followed by the unsettling fact that Roger Ebert’s real-life slow death and actual April 4, 2013 death are front and center in the movie. Life Itself kind of implies that the last 18 months of his life were the most important.
And this is where Hitchcock would say is the Maguffin. Roger Ebert’s protracted horrific death was actually just a blip in life.
Hailing from the Chicago Sun-Times, portly Ebert was famously paired with suave Chicago Tribune critic Eugene Kal “Gene” Siskel (1946-1999). The show “Siskel & Ebert At the Movies” ran on ABC roughly from 1986-1999, and after Gene’s death in 1999, Roeper came in until 2010. That was the ABC Network deal with the fat contract, but Siskel and Ebert actually had been paired since 1969, slugging away, with Top Ten lists before Letterman and other inventive local market antics.
On these proto “At the Movies” lists, Ebert dug Medium Cool (1969); Fellini’s Satyricon (1970); The Last Picture Show (1971); Woody Allen’s favorite film from 1972, The Sorrow and The Pity; Last Tango in Paris (1973). In 1974, he rated Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage at #1, with American darling Chinatown at #2. In 1975, he loved Nashville. And he practically made newcomer Martin Scorsese (although initially misspelling his name in print as ’Scorcese’) by praising Taxi Driver to anyone who would listen in 1976. These are just some of the highlights that show Ebert had risky, eclectic taste.
Siskel was a Yale-educated former Hugh Hefner-following playboy who settled his taste down with his lifestyle. Whereas Roger picked indie director John Cassavetes’ roiling Woman Under the Influence in 1975, Siskel liked The Homecoming. And his affinity for ‘think-y’ movies was a counterpoint to Ebert’s grand buffet-style of anything goes, if it is well-done.
Even when he was dying of a brain tumor, and had to leave the show, Siskel told the media, “I’m in a hurry to get well because I don’t want Roger to get more screen time than I.” In the documentary, profanity-tipped outtakes reveal their rivalry was real. Siskel was dead at age 53, leaving his wife and children.
Equally grim, Life Itself opens with a slack-jawed Ebert, literally missing his mandible, to focus our attention laser-like on this later-life Roger. Gone is the speech, the ability to feed himself, even the voice modulated jokes from his MAC seem somehow terribly inappropriate. If the MPAA Rating System included Death, Dying, Terminally Ill categories, this would get an NC17. Do we really need to see him being intubated?
Ebert says it himself, “the movies are big empathy machines” whereby we learn to feel what it is like for other people. Yes, but Life Itself breaks the cardinal rule of moviemaking itself - where there can be no suspension of disbelief, you can not engage the audience. And then there’s the deathbed comment Roger Ebert makes with his self-titled “Phantom of the Opera” look… and a big smile… “Everybody dies.”
Everybody dies, but not in the movies. You don’t kill the dog. Nor do you show the critic critically ill on a death march without a hope in hell of making it out alive. There is something unfair about Life Itself, pun intended.
The good part about Life Itself is that the audiobook where Ebert narrates it costs $85 USD. The film version, which incorporates much of Roger's recorded audiobook, will only set you back $11 USD.
So whichever of the Three P’s you believe in: Plant-Food, Purgatory, or Paradise, Life Itself takes some getting used to. There are the Cry Moments, the Cringe Moments, but mostly the Critical Moments when you wish hale and hardy Roger Ebert was his old self again so he could have said “Cut” and re-written the script on this film… and his own demise.
Roger Ebert’s writing and movie-worthy real-life story can be found on http://rogerebert.com - in closing, as the legend himself would say, “See You At The Movie” (reviews).
(Life Itself? Thumb-sideways. Don’t take young children, or people who are disturbed by cancer or clean rooms.)
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