By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Jim Gordon, 1947-2007
This man’s smile I took for granted for years: he was like this almost every time I saw him. Roger Ebert remembers one of the nicest guys in the Chicago screening room, Jim Gordon, who died recently at 60. “I didn’t know Jim Gordon well, but I knew him with great affection. His personality improved the weather in a room, and we shared the same room for years. That would be the Lake Street Screening Room, where as often as five times a week the film critics of the Chicago area gather for previews of new movies. Jim was for 23 years movie critic for the Post-Tribune in Gary, Ind., and more recently for The Times of the northwest Indiana area, published in Munster… I knew about his commute, his grandchildren, how he grew up in Gary, his politics, and his heart problems. The last time we talked, he told me about an approaching heart valve operation. On Friday, preparing for a garage sale at his home in Chesterton, Ind., he died of heart arrest. “It wasn’t a heart attack,” his daughter Rachel Tednes of Hoffman Estates told The Times. “His heart just stopped.” … He was a big guy with a moustache. Quietly sure of himself. Nothing to prove. How many people have you met who worked the steel mills in Gary, drove a cab, and had a Ph.D in film from Northwestern? … All this seems sort of vague to base an obituary on, but sometimes people will do something to give us a glimpse of what they’re made of. Here’s what I noticed Jim doing. We had been talking before the screenings for years, when I was absent from the screening room for 11 months with illness. When I came back, I had a trach tube and I couldn’t talk. I had to write notes. That didn’t seem to bother Jim. A lot of people, they notice the trach tube, they ask you how you’re doing, you nod, they translate “fine,” and then they move along. You can’t blame them. Maybe they’re a little uncertain about how to handle the situation. Jim was never uncertain. He picked up our conversation where we left off. He did the talking for both of us. He was exactly the same. His topic was the wonder and variety of everyday life.” [More at the link.]