Thursday, April 11, 2013

In Memory of Roger Ebert

I must say that I would be remiss if I did not at least mention Roger Ebert's death on my blog.  I read him quite regularly my entire adult life, and I remember my mom and dad watching "Gene and Roger" back when I was a child when Siskel and Ebert had a show on PBS.  I disagreed and agreed with his writings, as is the case with any writer's opinion.  At the same time, much of his writings and many of his ideas about movies have stuck with me though the years.  I remember how much I respected his thoughts on Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ, even though I was not a big fan of that film.  He understood the point the film was trying to make, and respected it as a work of art, even though he seems to have left behind his Catholic faith (or so it seemed to me in his writings).  I always felt that even though I was just reading his reviews, I was sort of having a conversation with him, and much of his writing ended up sharpening my own ability to observe movies.

He wrote many things that stuck with me, but nothing he ever wrote stuck with me more than this quote, and it has become my philosophy of movie watching as well:

"It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it."

No comments:

Post a Comment