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In a funny way, Roger Ebert was just as iconic and enduring — if not more — than those who starred in the films he reviewed.
Winning a Pulitzer Prize didn't hurt, though.
His death last week at the age of 70 saddened me in that bittersweet way protracted deaths do. It is inevitable for all of us, but he fought such a prolonged and public battle with cancer during his last decade that to know it was over brought sadness as well as a strange comfort.
Though he endured in high spirits, thyroid cancer took so much from him in his final years — his ability to eat, speak and drink.
Through a text-to-speech program, he was able to simulate his voice after a Scottish company, CereProc, mined hours of his show with Gene Siskel and, later, Richard Roeper.
He imagined an afterlife of endless screenings of his favorite film, "Citizen Kane," and vanilla Häagen Dazs ice cream.
Two days before his death, he announced a "leave of presence" on his website, with plans to scale back the frequency of his reviews as well as relaunching his website.
Regrettably, I never met the man, though we traded comments on his Facebook page once about a subject I've already forgotten. (I think he needed help posting something.)
I can only speak of my admiration for him and his pioneering of critique as an art form of its own.
He shaped my perspective as a critic and a writer. He pulled no punches, but he also knew tact. For as many people as posted or retweeted his most famous barbs, Ebert got by in good graces with Tinseltown for more than four decades because he was savvy enough to distinguish the characters from the people playing them. He never suffered fools, but he never played one, either.
Not to talk shop too much, but from Ebert, I learned perhaps the most important lesson about critique — judge a work by the choices it made, not the ones it didn't. He also taught me that reviews are not regurgitation. Anyone can vomit up a shot-by-shot recap of a film, but what's important is the discussion the piece sparks, if any.
One of my proudest moments as a journalist was seeing a list of critics who had placed "Winter's Bone" (left) in their top 10 films of 2010 and seeing my name there with his.
It was flattering because I had such deep respect for how he saw films. He loved them and that was clear from his reviews.
His eye was unnerving. After viewing thousands of films, their flaws were transparent to him. His reviews mentioned things other critics never noticed, but he didn't ignore obvious details.
After seeing many movies and finding our tastes lined up, his writing was the word of god for me. "Did Roger like 'The Last Airbender?' He hated it? He called it 'an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented?' Oh. Then I won't bother."
More than any film critic in history, Ebert had his finger on the cultural zeitgeist. He knew himself, his voice and his audience. He knew what the discussion would be about a particular film.
Heck, he didn't just know what the discussion would be. He dictated its terms to other critics.
That's a legacy all writers hope to leave.
And I hope right now he's out there with a spoon in one hand and vanilla Häagen Dazs in the other as "Citizen Kane" starts to roll.
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