Gene Siskel

CHICAGO – When I first walked into the Chicago film critic’s screening room in January of 2008, Roger Ebert was sitting there, in the seat where he always held court. I had met him only a couple times earlier, as just a film buff and his admirer. It was the first time I was to join him as a fellow film critic, and it didn’t seem possible.

CHICAGO – Roger Ebert may have left this world today, but he did not die. He is alive in every moviegoer he guided toward a cinematic epiphany and in every writer who believes that big ideas can be conveyed to and embraced by the masses. The following is a column I wrote five years ago for my college paper, The Columbia Chronicle.

CHICAGO – The Chicago Sun-Times has reported that Roger Ebert, beloved and influential film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, has died today at age 70, of complications due to cancer.

CHICAGO – On Thursday, April 4, 2013, the film industry lost a titan as Roger Ebert succumbed to his long battle with cancer. Far more than just an icon in the film industry, the first film critic to ever win a Pulitzer Prize became so much more than a writer to those who knew him, worked with him, and felt inspired by his unimaginable courage and incredible way with words. Everyone who was inspired by him (which is pretty much everyone who’s ever written a movie review) is shaken to the core today but encouraged by the lasting lessons he taught us all. The movie theater is a little darker tonight.

CHICAGO – The balcony is officially open and back in business at WTTW Chicago, the same network where Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel hosted “Sneak Previews” roughly 35 years ago.

CHICAGO – “Roger Ebert Presents at the Movies,” which is a weekly, 30-minute film review program, was announced on Friday by producers Chaz Ebert and Roger Ebert. The program continues its 35-year run of a show first co-hosted by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert and later by Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper and others at Buena Vista Television/Disney.