We know Roger Ebert as an excellent source on movies, not just his movie reviews, but his essays and books too. He is also quite funny — when I had the honor of interviewing him about a collection of his most negative reviews compiled in the book Your Movie Sucks I listed out his ten best putdowns contained within reviews. Example: "On Undead: Undead is the kind of movie that would be so bad it’s good, except it’s not bad enough to be good enough."
I preface my interview with Mr. Ebert about his memoir, Life Itself: A Memoir, with that paragraph to explain that if you think this is going to be a memoir just about movies and his relationship with them you will be, as I was, pleasantly surprised. For Mr. Ebert has a lot to say about issues outside of film and while we talk in the interview below about how he's sometimes taken heat for remarks he's made on topics others than movies what's really interesting here is that in his memoir the target of criticism is often himself.
This is not one of those memoirs that glosses over a person's foibles and instead focuses just on his accomplishments. This is a warts-and-all memoir where he talks about everything from how he, his father and his mother all had bouts with alcoholism, to regrets to his own failings.
There are layers and layers to Mr. Ebert — not just a film critic but a journalist first and foremost (some of my favorite parts of the book are when talks about his early years in journalism before he even reviews his first film) — and he describes them all with eloquence in this book.
For example, he talks about deciding whether to cover or be involved in the Civil Rights Movement.
"So much of what happens by chance forms what becomes your life... I lacked the courage to commit myself by going south. Brendan Behan said critics reminded him of eunuchs in a harem: They see it done nightly, but are unable to do it themselves. I could argue with that, but in many ways I used journalism to stay at one remove from my convictions: I wouldn't risk arrest but would bravely report about those who did. My life has followed this pattern. I observe and describe at a prudent reserve. Now that life has deposited me for much of every day in a chair comfortable for my painful back and I communicate largely by computer, I suppose I must be grateful, for I seem to have been headed this way all along."
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