A Murder of Cows

I spend much of my childhood living in a small, rural town. Because my parents didn’t even have the good sense to live in town, where you could get cable, we got exactly three TV stations: the local PBS, ABC, and CBS affiliates. And bringing in the CBS affiliate involved using a control knob in the living room to activate a servomotor on the roof which spun our antenna southward.

At a young age, I discovered the PBS show Sneak Previews, with Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert. That was the original PBS show, running from 1977 to 1982 before the hosts made the leap to commercial television. As with much classic television, a lot of the Sneak Previews shows no longer exist on tape because somebody foolishly taped over them. Who’d ever want to see an out-of-date movie review show? So I’ve probably seen many hours of Siskel & Ebert that will never be seen again. When Siskel & Ebert left PBS, Sneak Previews limped along with Jeffrey Lyons and Neal Gabler, and later Lyons and Michael Medved, but no one cared.

Through that show, I became keenly interested in seeing grownup movies. On a visit to San Francisco, my dad wanted to see Apocalypse Now at the legendary Northpoint Theater. Mom wasn’t up for a film with lots of gunfire and no smooching, so the plan was that she’d look after me while Dad saw his manly war movie. But I begged to go along because I’d heard Siskel & Ebert talk about it, and I was a precocious kid who wanted something new and interesting from a movie. Mom was reluctant, but finally relented and allowed me to tag along with Dad.

It was great. The Northpoint was a huge theater with continental seating, a big screen, and a sound system so good that many films had their sound mixed there. I was blown away by the movie, and an interest in cinema off the beaten path was ignited.

Siskel & Ebert reviewed not only the week’s Hollywood fare, but foreign and independent film. I’m sure the first time I heard the name John Sayles, it was out of Siskel’s mouth or Ebert’s. There was nowhere near me to see that stuff, but the advent of home video made it possible to catch a few offbeat things; even our small town’s video store carried some unusual stuff. Early video stores were long tail businesses before anyone knew that that meant. Each week, as I watched Siskel & Ebert, the list of films I wanted to see someday grew in my mind. And occasionally I’d be in or near a big city where I could find a few. When I left home and moved to The Big City, I made up for lost time.

I honestly don’t remember if I agreed with Siskel or Ebert more. What was important was that each review provided just enough information about a film that I could figure out whether it was for me or not. I got to know their tastes well enough that I could calibrate them to mine. I knew their blind spots (Ebert’s weakness for films which reflected his own left-wing politics, etc.) After Gene Siskel died in 1999, it became fashionable to trash his replacement, Richard Roeper, and while Roeper wasn’t the refined cineaste Siskel was, the Ebert & Roeper review still told me everything I needed to know about a movie, and still served the function of bringing things to my attention which otherwise would have escaped it. Yeah, it wasn’t the same, but it was probably the highest-profile forum in which small independent and foreign films, including documentaries, were discussed.

Two years ago, Ebert’s failing health took him off the air, and his return seems to be far in the future at best. The show went through a series of guest co-hosts, much as it had after Siskel’s death, and the producers seemed to have settled on Michael Phillips, whose chemistry with Roeper was good: Phillips the Urban Sophisticate, Roeper the Regular Guy. I expected the inevitable announcement that Ebert would step aside and allow the show to become, logically enough, Roeper & Phillips.

But instead, Disney-ABC wanted to take it in a more Hollywood-focused direction, and Ebert and Roeper almost simultaneously announced their resignations. Roeper said a show in the spirit of the original Siskel & Ebert would be forthcoming soon, details to follow, presumably when his contract with Disney expires next month. The sooner, the better, as far as I’m concerned. And I hope even the folks who’ve never warmed to Roeper give the guy props for quitting and going elsewhere because he believed in the vision of the original show. Maybe he’ll get a little more respect now.

Amusingly, one of the hosts of the new, Hollywood-ized At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper is Ben Lyons, son of Jeffrey Lyons, one of the critics who replaced Siskel & Ebert on PBS’s Sneak Previews. The other is Ben Mankiewicz from TMZ, which tells you everything you need to know about where they’re going with the show.

Wherever Roeper & Phillips are going, I’ll be there. No, you can’t recapture the chemistry Siskel & Ebert had, but you can still do a very useful film review show that calls people’s attention to stuff off the beaten track while reviewing the latest action film with Roman numerals in the title.

Ebert wrote a fine eulogy to the show this week. While his voice is silenced for now, and maybe forever, his writing is as sharp as ever. He spoke of how he and Siskel both hated each other and loved each other, and no better insight could be gained on their relationship than by watching these two videos of Siskel & Ebert, circa 1987, joking with each other and being downright mean to each other as they shoot (or attempt to shoot) show promos. Be warned that the language they use is NSFW: