Roger Ebert, R.I.P.

Had a driveway moment yesterday listening to Jian Ghomeshi's rebroadcast 2011 interview with the great film critic and humanitarian Roger Ebert, who just left us. How'd he persevere and even flourish, after losing his ability to speak or eat to cancer? Optimism, and a strong and supportive wife.

We pay tribute today to film critic Roger Ebert, who died yesterday at the age of 70. For 46 years, he served as movie critic at the Chicago Sun-Times. He also appeared on the long-running show, At The Movies and wrote a highly influential blog. Ebert was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2002, and was left without the ability to speak or eat. But he didn't allow illness to stop him continuing to pursue his passion for writing about the movies. During the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, Roger Ebert stopped by Studio Q for a feature interview with Jian, using text-to-speech software. It was an inspiring and wide-ranging conversation, which we've re-posted here... Home | Q with Jian Ghomeshi | CBC Radio... "I do not fear death"... Simon on Ebert

In his memoir Life Itself, Roger wrote:

We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out. 

And,

I am comforted by Richard Dawkins’ theory of memes. Those are mental units: thoughts, ideas, gestures, notions, songs, beliefs, rhymes, ideals, teachings, sayings, phrases, clichés that move from mind to mind as genes move from body to body. After a lifetime of writing, teaching, broadcasting and telling too many jokes, I will leave behind more memes than many. They will all also eventually die, but so it goes.

So it goes.

Roger Ebert, philosopher

“I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.” 

“We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds.” 

“Socrates told us, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I think he's calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the leading edge.” 

“What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: Curious and teachable.” 

“An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.”  I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie

“Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”  Life Itself

“All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it.” 

“Because we are human, because we are bound by gravity and the limitations of our bodies, because we live in a world where the news is often bad and the prospects disturbing, there is a need for another world somewhere, a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers live.”  The Great Movies III

“Life always has an unhappy ending, but you can have a lot of fun along the way, and everything doesn't have to be dripping in deep significance.” 

“There are no guarantees. But there is also nothing to fear. We come from oblivion when we are born. We return to oblivion when we die. The astonishing thing is this period of in-between.” 

Goodreads

My xmas list

Older Daughter, the film major, came up with an inspired Christmas present request this year: she asks each family member for their favorite movie, on DVD, along with an explanation. It's a challenging assignment. I've narrowed my candidate list to five (Groundhog Day just missed the cut):

5. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (Stanley Kramer, 1967). "Yes," wrote Roger Ebert, "there are serious faults... but they are overcome by the virtues of this delightfully old-fashioned film." I saw it when I was ten, at a matinee, with my mother. I think we both cried, tears of sadness and of joy. It opened my young eyes to the stupidity of racism, warned me of the hypocrisy of untested liberalism, and perhaps saddled me with the unsustainably romantic notion that love conquers all - "as long as there's the two of us" etc. etc. I love the hilarious scene at the ice-cream stand, though the cool kid's disrespectful "stupid old man"  now has an unwelcome resonance for me that it lacked back when I couldn't imagine ever possibly being one. Tracy and Hepburn are magnificent, and the theme's romantic message remains sound (or at least unshakable): "you've got to give a little, take a little, let your poor heart break a little... that's the glory of love."

4. Sophie's Choice (Alan J. Pakula, 1982). Great novel by William Styron, great early performance by Meryl Streep. “Someday I will understand Auschwitz. This was a brave statement but innocently absurd. No one will ever understand Auschwitz. What I might have set down with more accuracy would have been: Someday I will write about Sophie's life and death, and thereby help demonstrate how absolute evil is never extinguished from the world. Auschwitz itself remains inexplicable. The most profound statement yet made about Auschwitz was not a statement at all, but a response.

The query: "At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?"

And the answer: "Where was man?” 

3. Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979). I don't know much about cinematography but I know what I like, and I really like the old-timey look of this picture, and the Gershwin soundtrack, and I love the List scene:

"Why is life worth living? It's a very good question. Um... Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. uh... Like what... okay... um... For me, uh... ooh... I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... uh... um... and Wilie Mays... and um... the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony... and um... Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues... um... Swedish movies, naturally... Sentimental Education by Flaubert... uh... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... um... those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne... uh... the crabs at Sam Wo's... uh... Tracy's face..."

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968). Arthur C. Clarke's story famously infuriated premier attendees including Rock Hudson ("Can anybody tell me what the hell this is about?!") and mystified me too, near the end. But this was the year before Neil Armstrong's "one small step," and I really thought there'd be Martians (from Earth) by now. This movie captured and amplified my generation's dreams of cosmic exploration. The recently-released Interstellar has been called this generation's 2001, but that's silly. Oh, the echoes are there alright. But in 1968 the idea of space as our beckoning "final frontier" had real credibility. Or so we thought. “Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.” More groping, please. Open the pod bay door, Hal.

1. Life of Brian (Monty Python, 1979). It's not the most profound picture ever, nor possibly the funniest, but I saw it in Columbia MO with some of my fellow philosophy major pals. We were the right audience. It taught us the importance of philosophizing with a proper portion of serious nonsense. We're all individuals, we're all different. Except for those who are not. Blessed are the cheesemakers (but don't take that literally, silly fundamentalists). Above all, "always look on the bright side." Darned good life wisdom, if you ask me.

If life seems jolly rotten

There's something you've forgotten

And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing

When you're feeling in the dumps

Don't be silly chumps

Just purse your lips and whistle

- that's the thing.

And...always look on the bright

side of life...

According to The New Yorker, it is the most requested song at British funerals, edging out “My Way.”

Nashville

This'll be fun: heading to the Nashville Belcourt with film major Older Daughter to see the Altman classic Nashville. I've never seen it on the big screen, in the company of fellow Nashvillians. “This is a film about America. It deals with our myths, our hungers, our ambitions, and our sense of self. It knows how we talk and how we behave, and it doesn't flatter us but it does love us.” Roger Ebert

This morning's walking question was: Are ambitious, accomplished determinists and fatalists disingenuous in denying that ambition presupposes belief in free will, or that satisfaction in accomplishment depends on it?

This afternoon's answer: not disingenuous, necessarily. Deluded, possibly, from my point of view. (It's important to add that emphasis and claim it as mine.) That is to say, I have a hard enough time motivating myself to concentrated and sustained action in service of my goals, without the additional burden of believing that what I do or don't do is separate from my will. And if I came to believe that my greatest victories were in some significant sense fore-ordained, I'd be deflated and dispirited.

But I also acknowledge that not everyone feels or would express those beliefs in that way. I always ask students about that, and they always split: some consider belief in free will indispensable, others can take it or leave it.

So, this time I'll be watching Altman's film through the free will/determinism lens. Does Nashville the movie make more or less sense than Nashville the city, on the supposition that at least some of us here are acting willfully? And does that make us more or less absurd, more or less lovable, more or less "American"?

The closing number may hold a clue: "You may say that I ain't free, but it don't worry me."



thumbs up!

Everybody should follow Roger Ebert. He has a new voice [Sunday Morning], almost a match for his amazing attitude. We should all be on such a mission. [The embed is out of kilter but the man is straight & solid. The woman, too, his incredible partner. An inspiration.]