From Chicago to the World: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Siskel & Ebert | Roger Ebert

Before being a friend and colleague, I was a fan.

In my early and mid-teens in the 1970s, I was a solitary jock and pop culture nerd obsessed with these activities:

Playing and watching baseball and football and, to a lesser extent, basketball, and consuming questions of Sports Illustrated And Sport And Baseball Summaryand read books like Roger Kahn’s The boys of summerthat of Jim Bouton Ball fourthat of David Wolf Mistake! The Connie Hawkins Story and that of George Plimpton paper lion.

Watching late-night and weekend television, especially talk shows such as “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” “The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder,” ABC’s “Good Night America,” wherever Dick Cavett had landed in a given season, and the Chicago-based “Kup’s Show,” with legendary Chicago Sun-Times columnist Irv Kupcinet presiding over an eclectic group of guests engaged in “the lively art of conversation.”

Movies. Movies movies movies.

Then came a program that merged two of these three passions: cinema and talk shows. Sometime in late 1975 or early 1976, I became aware of “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You,” a monthly review program on WTTW-Channel 11. The show featured Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert and Chicago Tribune Film critic Gene Siskel talks about the new releases in an understated but instantly captivating style that makes you feel like you’re listening to your two favorite professors as they verbally argue between classes. (Roger was 33 when the series began; Gene was only 29.)

It was great. I watched every week. I took notes. (I had stacks of spiral notebooks at the time, filled with scribbles on everything from statistics comparing the 1927 Yankees to the Big Red Machine of the mid-1970s, to my evaluations of various episodes of “The Tonight Show.” Like I said: nerdy.) Conventional wisdom has it that Roger and Gene were awkward, crude and slightly geeky in those early years — and while there is some truth In it, they were also quite comfortable in their respective characters from the start, clearly knowledgeable and passionate about the films, and respectful of each other’s opinions, even when they fiercely disagreed.

When I had the money to see a movie at the Dolton Theater or the River Oaks in Calumet City, I based my choices largely on Roger’s reviews in the Sun times (we were never one Tribune family, no offense) – and what Roger and Gene had to say about “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You.” It was a well-produced show from the start, but it also had an offbeat, almost no-budget, local public television vibe that was extremely charming. The guys delivered insightful and thought-provoking commentary on major films such as “Taxi Driver,” but they never took themselves too seriously, as evidenced by segments titled “Dog of the Week” (with Spot the Wonder Dog) and later “Stinker of the Week” (with Aroma the Educated Skunk), which shed a harsh but playful light on terrible films. If memory serves, in both cases the real animals were supplanted by stuffed animals. It’s easier to fix, I guess.

Fast forward to the 1980s and 1990s, when Roger and Gene were union members across the country. The review show was always a staple of television for me, but as a talk show geek, I was also a big fan of the Siskel & Ebert talk show appearances, including the granddaddy of them all, “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” (Years later, Roger told me that when he and Gene were backstage on “The Tonight Show,” a producer told them that Johnny was going to ask about the best movies currently showing in theaters — and they both drew a blank. From that point on, whenever they taped a talk show appearance, a producer would be ready in the Chicago offices in case they needed to make a call.)

They were great with Regis and Kathie Lee, with Oprah and Johnny and Jay and Arsenio, but best of all were the appearances with David Letterman, who recognized the comedy gold in these fellow Midwesterners. Roger and Gene would arrive and talk mostly about movies (the running joke was that even though Letterman only had one guest at a time, he always kept two chairs on set “for Siskel & Ebert”) – but they also appeared in comedy bits. They made quick appearances, gave recommendations at their concession stand at a makeshift snack counter and, perhaps most famously, filmed a segment in which Dave, Roger and Gene went door to door in New Jersey, cleaning the gutters of a woman’s house, playing basketball in a driveway and even stopping to pay their respects at a funeral home in West Orange. They had become such household names that when Michael J. Fox was with Letterman to promote his film “The Hard Way,” almost an entire segment was devoted to Fox’s feelings about Gene and Roger and their respective styles of criticism.

It’s almost impossible to overstate the impact Siskel & Ebert had on the filmmakers’ careers and popular culture. When they championed films like “Hoop Dreams,” or did an entire show in black and white to denounce the horrific practice of colorizing films, when they extolled the works of Spike Lee, Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and the Coen brothers, millions of people watched and paid attention. Sometimes Hollywood actors took not-so-thinly-veiled photos of the guys. Roland Emmerich’s “Godzilla” had the incompetent “Mayor Ebert” (Michael Lerner) and his advisor, Gene (Lorry Goldman). In “The Ref,” where Richard LaGravenese asked JK Simmons to play a deviant character named “Siskel” because Gene said LaGravenese’s script for “The Fisher King” was the least deserving of the Oscar nominees in that category in 1991. Gene and Roger were on “Saturday Night Live,” ridiculed in Crazy Magazineon the Howard Stern Show, and were depicted in animated form on “The Critic.” They were as famous as the movie stars and directors they talked about.

Still, the Roger and Gene we saw on the balcony every week were the same ones who appeared on Channel 11 in 1975. They never moved production from Chicago to Hollywood. They never added any unnecessary bells, whistles or gimmicks. They were two smart guys who loved movies, sitting across from each other, talking with passion, knowledge and expertise about the films coming out this weekend at a theater near you. It was magical.