Ode to Roger Ebert

I know, I'm a broken record. On this blog, I write about 5, maybe 6 topics. Economics, sex, drugs, movies, and Roger Ebert. But I have so few heroes anymore - I've moved through them viciously, using them up when I'm desperate and spitting them out when I realize they can't fix me. But Father Roger is a different man unto himself. First, let's just be very clear about this - no one has done more to educate Americans about what makes good film than Roger Ebert. You might say that MFK Fisher is the Roger Ebert of the food essay. He's a giant. Some loved Pauline Kael, some love Anthony Lane or AO Scott. They're fine - they have their moments, and I too love to read them at times. But Ebert is different - he is a force, a power. He is like the ghost of Christmas past. He transforms the most banal person's dead heart into something living again, because he has this unusual combination of gifts. Even to have one of these is a blessing, but to have them all is just plain strange.

He is, first of all, incredibly sympathetic to people. You get the sense that were he not famous, he could be your friend (as it is, though, his opportunity costs are always very high, so don't expect him to be your friend anymore) because he'd be the one person who really understood you, and saw that you weren't crazy, weird or ugly. Or rather, that you were, but that those things weren't actually bad things, and that you were more than just the sum of those characteristics. He does this towards movies and their directors, as well as to those stories' characters. He gives every movie, every director, and maybe the most important of all, every genre, a fair shake, the benefit of the doubt, which in my mind is a necessary, and maybe even a sufficient condition for being a decent person in this world. To withhold judgement on people, to be patient with them, to even go so far as to let people tell you their story and the way they see the world. It's almost Christian, I daresay. I love Ebert for this. And it's why I am so pleased that when I say he is the world's greatest ambassador of film, I say it knowing he is spreading this kind of good will in the process.

Secondly, he is ridiculous with a pen and paper. It's just stupid, really. These little essays he writes, each week - sometimes as many as 5 essays about a movie per freaking week - are incredibly well-written. They are full of original insights into film, film genre, acting, directing, story-telling, story structure, and film history. He understoods all of it, but more than that, he communicates it very clearly, efficiently and well. His essays are well-written - they are at times funny, infuriating, but always reasoned with the force of a penetrating logic and the appropriate amount of evidence.

When a person is sympathetic and communicates as well as this person does, that person is automatically great, no matter what they do. So, to Roger Ebert, continue in your vigiliance, fighting your cancer, getting healthy, as we and the saints pray for you daily.