July 1, 2014 – 2am, edit

Death is lurking in my life lately.

In 4 days, it will be the 17th anniversary of my father’s death. It’s been a little over a year since Roger Ebert passed… and we are celebrating his life with Life Itself, which premiered in Chicago tonight. And a couple of hours ago, I lost a friend, who also happens to be one of the great filmmakers of the last 40 years.

This emotional journey really started for me when I saw Life Itself for the second time last week. It was the kind of experience I often hear about from actors when we discuss what their feelings are about watching themselves on screen. Because of my real-life relationship with Roger and the period of his life in which I was a participant, Steve James’ film was like watching a friend’s home movies.

There were few, if any, surprises of fact in the film for me. I am pretty sure that I had met all of the characters from Roger’s long life who were in the film, having spent 13 springs or so traveling to Urbana-Champaign (as he preferred to call it), to spend an annual long weekend in Roger’s company. There may be one or two whom I missed. But EbertFest (née’ Overlooked Film Festival) drew his oldest, dearest friends. And his newest.

I must admit, I have always put a lot of weight on those who took the time and care to show up at the Virginia Theater… and those who did not. It was a glimpse into who Roger really was, not who he had become on TV (though that part was there too). Filmmaking guests who came to town, honored to be honored by Mr. Ebert, were, I think, surprised to find an excited, energized 14-year-old boy who was having a really big party in his hometown. It was his happening and it freaked him in.

But in the film, there is an the empty space between Gene Siskel’s death and Roger’s death… that 14-year period was, pretty much, the whole of my relationship with Roger, the show that was, Chaz, and all the characters and circumstances connected. This included, mostly, Ebertfest.

I got a request, at one point, for photos from Steak-n-Shake outings. The photos all kinda sucked. But the memories were as vivid as when they happened. When Roger sang the Illini fight song for a bunch of college kids who recognized him one night at 2am, there were no iPhones out, capturing the moment. In part, that was because iPhones didn’t exist back when Roger still had his aural voice. But I think the greater truth is that we all expected to hear Roger sing every year. The idea of a silent Roger, while watching his eyes twinkle and his pleasures flow was incomprehensible.

Not only was “my” chunk of Roger’s life missing, but for me, the greatest Roger story… that of his evolution from being a strict creature of habit to one of stunning fearlessness and all the colors in between… was waiting to be unearthed in those years. It still is.

I was too close and too opinionated to see what Steve James saw when I watched the film the first time. I had chosen not to be at Sundance this year… for the first time, aside from the time it coincided with the birth of my son, in 18 years. So I watched it in the Chicago Hilton, on the iPad on which I am writing this, as my wife and son slept (much as they are sleeping now), after celebrating my nephew’s marriage.

This second time around, I had already had a chance to chat with Steve and Chaz on the record, socially with Chaz during a week at the Hotel Splendid in Cannes, and once again with Steve off-the-record. Both the on-and-off-record chats were, for me, enlightening about the choices Steve made for the film. So I took that perspective into the second viewing… my first screening in a theater.

Roger tells his story. It is his memoir from which Steve takes his cues. And even that memoir could not fully be told on screen, much less the history that I lived, which would not have served what this film is very well. It’s not that the history which I lived is so very different from what is in this film. It’s just not there.

And for the record, I am not requesting a Steve James investigation into Rich Roeper and how he got the job. Such small stories are footnotes now, even in my sense of the history.

What haunts me about Roger is the ways he coped with a really difficult time of failure in his remarkably successful life… how he dealt with legacy… how he was shackled by his success and how he was freed (though not always) by his mortality grabbing him by the throat.

Life Itself is To Kill A Mockingbird while my perception of this era in his life is more In Cold Blood. There’s not a dammed thing wrong with To Kill A Mockingbird. It’s just something else.

On a personal level, experiencing Life Itself again made me sad that I was not ready for Roger Ebert when he came into my life (through Yahoo! Life). I didn’t have the career perspective. I didn’t understand what he was, although I had observed he and Gene for many years… even chatted with both men. But he was about the age I am now when he showed his first kindnesses to me. The world looks very different closing in on 50 than it did at 33.

I was not ready to be “good TV” back then. Obviously, Roger wasn’t ready when TV called on him either… but when he and Gene became what they were, it was something magical… beyond television skills or obvious presentation. The burden on me was not just to be skilled at something I was not trained for, but to draw out a television icon to play with me on camera. And I was not up to that task.

As it turned out, no one was. I always thought Jeff Greenfield, who was a friend and peer of Roger, was the best fit. But he had too much on his professional plate with too much money chasing him as a TV personality. I always believed that Manohla Dargis would have brought out the twinkle and the fighter in Roger… but she doesn’t like cameras (for reasons of her own that don’t reflect her charisma and earthy beauty).

But this was not the task asked on Roeper. He served his role as well as anyone could have expected. Nor was the task that eluded me really asked of others. Finding that magic again was, Roger found out, impossible. All that was possible was to chase the magic while doing the best that earthbound creatures – even the brightest ones, like AO Scott and Michael Phillips – could do.

There were six years of Roeper as Roger’s on-air partner and Roger at EbertFest (where I believe his partner may have made 1 appearance in those six years).

Then there were six festival years with Silent Roger. Each year was its own kind of drama, as Roger’s extended family of over a 1000 people waited to see how a Roger would be that festival week. Filmmakers never stopped coming… or even slowed. But the festival – which had been a Roger marathon, as he intro’ed every film and Q&Aed guests and “experts” after every one, then led our late night Steak-n-Shake outings – could not be the same. Chaz became the hostess with the mostest. But Roger’s presence still dominated the room, whether he was able to be physically present or not.

The first year after he lost his voice, as I recall from memory, Roger was still pretty ambulatory, and came to Steak-n-Shake gamely, though he could not eat. His old pal and co-founder of the Toronto Film Festival, Dusty Cohl, continued to gather festival guests for breakfast in the student union, where we all stayed during the fest (from year 3 on), a gregarious Crown Royal-swigging “co-conspirator.” We all had hope that Roger’s voice would be back.

That winter, Dusty died quickly and unexpectedly. And after breaking his hip, Roger missed the festival – the 10th – for the first time. The party went on. Chaz did a great job hosting. Joan Cohl, Dusty’s then-widow, smiled between the moments of anger and loss. There were Steak-n-Shake trips… but not the same. We tried to gather for breakfast in the Union, but without Dusty cajoling and demanding that everyone show up… not the same.

They had a chair set up for Roger in “his spot” the next year, comfortable enough for him to sit for the length of movies. He used the voice synthesizer to open the festival. And he sat there and watched most of the movies. He was like The Pope, smiling and waving for people, individually and in groups.

Roger would have four more Ebertfests. I don’t think he ever stayed in the Union again. The chair remained, but the man was in and out.

That summer, Disney, forever trying to cut costs on the famous show, attempted to lowball Ebert on the “2 Thumbs” trademark and rather than negotiating, dumped the thumbs and soon after, Roeper.

This may have been a “bottom” for Roger… but it was not the end.

By 2010, he had transformed himself. He had become a hugely popular and edgier-than-print blogger. But there was more. He had created The Far Flung Correspondents, allowing him to actively sponsor voices he liked from around the globe. He was building a Sun-Times-separated RogerEbert.com. In February, he literally exposed himself to the world in Esquire, with tough photos as well as a. Interview more honest about the previous few years than he had yet been outside of his personal circles. And there was also the announcement that he and Chaz would produce a show on PBS stations with two young critics and a presence by Roger.

Phew! That was a lot going on for a young, healthy person, much less a 67-year-old with serious ongoing medical issues.

Roger built more in the years of his illness… in his aural silence… than he really had over decades of a wildly successful career. No one was a harder worker than Roger. And as long as he could do the vast majority if what he wanted, he was a man who was perfectly happy to work for The Man. And then, at a point in his life when others would give up and rest on their laurels (and accrued wealth), he not only became an aggressive, energetic, independent builder of things… he became iconic a second time.

Life Itself is really about Roger becoming iconic the first time and overcoming his drinking and other things to find love and happiness. And being brave and brilliant in the face of severe illness.

And that’s okay.

The film is never going to give me peace with the relationship, I had and didn’t have with Roger. But how could it?

I loved Roger. He was very generous to me. I sought his advice on some things over the years and he was always willing… though he never offered more advice than his experience suggested… and sometimes, a little less. He loved his wife, aka The Best. He loved the family that became his instantly with his wife. He loved movies. He loved England. He loved a dirty story. He loved getting the laugh. He loved being right. He hated being wrong.

He made magic with what he had. And he worked as hard as anyone ever did, making it look effortless to the outside world.

I don’t have many people with honor I can share “my Roger.” Either he’s not the same Roger they experienced or they are too in awe to see the man he was or there is enough mutual dislike to choke on or they are in mourning and deserve to have their space with that or we’ve discussed Roger enough over the last decade so as to make continued sharing feel masturbatory already.

But I miss him. I love Steve James’ movie. But I miss that man who had done things I had not done, would eventually do, would never do, etc, etc, etc. and always just an e-mail away.

Cheers, R. And thanks.

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