I wasn’t planning on writing about this today but a photograph totally shocked me and reminded me of our own mortality.  There is a link on the Chicago Sun-Times Columnists page to Roger Ebert’s site.  The link says “Despite setbacks, I am feeling better”.  Knowing that he’s been out of commission for a while during his recovery from cancer, I figured I’d click on the link to see what he has to say.  As the browser opened to his site I was very saddened, as the photo is not the Roger Ebert that you or I are familiar with seeing.

I don’t care about most celebrities.  People Magazine or US Weekly or any of those tabloids never held my concentration since, to quote Axl Rose in the song ‘Don’t Damn Me’ (from 'Use Your Illusion 1'), “Vicarious existence is a fucking waste of time”.  I find it amusing and pathetic when strangers weep in public for people they never knew personally.  Yeah, it’s OK to cry with a group of people when a space shuttle explodes but to weep the same when an unfaithful princess dies with her lover in a tragic car crash, well, that’s just lame.  Don’t get me wrong, I was enthralled with Princess Diana as much as the next person, but in terms of actually crying about her death, it makes no sense unless I was a family member or close friend.

Ebert is one of those rare examples of a public figure whom I’ve come to admire.  Being a lover of movies, the name “Ebert” is synonymous with movie reviews (along with his just-as-famous former partner Gene Siskel).  Whether you agreed with his reviews or not, he was always well spoken of and a fair reviewer.  He had that clichéd “Midwestern sensibility” where he never got caught up in the maelstrom of sycophantic Hollywood hyperrealism; rather he stayed in Chicago and never lost perspective of what truly matters in life.

One of my highlights in Chicago involved him.  My wife and I were going to an early screening of a movie at the theatres at 900 N. Michigan Avenue.  We had a friend who worked for Universal at the time and for any Universal movie that came out, we got to see a free sneak preview of it the Tuesday before it was released.  As we were heading down the escalator to the theatre, who winds up passing us on the up escalator but Roger Ebert!  We make eye contact, I nod my head and smile at him and he did the same.  Yeah, stupid story, but it was neat to simply make eye contact and get acknowledgement from someone who I read and watched all the time.

The article he wrote in the link I provided above was quite inspiring yet very sad knowing that he's in the twilight of his life.  The last time where I gasped over a sudden change in someone was with my adoptive father (who was my great uncle).  We had just moved to Atlanta and he had a stroke.  While his motor functions were fine, his speech became garbled.  He pronounced words perfectly but there was no syntax to his sentences.  It was all random gibberish.  When he first spoke to me on the phone after that happened, it took every ounce of me internally to not burst out in tears.  For a full year he was trapped inside his head, understanding what you said but unable to string together a sentence with proper syntax.  To be a prisoner inside your own brain has to be one of life’s crueler fates.

I give Ebert credit for addressing the issue of how he looks and how that isn’t going to stop him from attending his own film festival.  Instead of being mired in self pity (a trap I can’t say I won’t fall into if that befell me), he’s basically saying “Hey, I’m still alive!! I might not be able to speak but I’m not bedridden and I can still write.”  For that, I tip my cap to him.