Older Than Jesus

The balcony is closed - Roger Ebert’s Journal

I was surprised how depressed I felt all day on July 21, when Richard and I announced we were leaving the “Ebert and Roeper” program. To be sure, our departures were voluntary. We hadn’t been fired. And because of my health troubles, I hadn’t appeared on the show for two years. But I advised on co-hosts, suggested movies, stayed in close communication with Don DuPree, our beloved producer-director. The show remained in my life. Now, after 33 years, it was gone—taken in a “new direction.” And I was fully realizing what a large empty space it left behind.

Yes, we’re planning to continue the traditional format in a new venue, and taking the thumbs along with us. I’m involved in that, and it will be a great consolation. But somehow I thought the show Gene Siskel and I began would roll on forever. How many other TV formats had survived so long?

Um…Roger?

Thirty-three years ago, you and Gene Siskel started doing Sneak Previews. When you left that show seven years later, it resumed with other hosts (the odious Michael Medved among them) and ran for fourteen more—twice as long without you as with you.

Your next show was At the Movies, which you hosted for four years before leaving. Again, other hosts replaced you, and again, it lasted four more years, as long without you as with you.

(You refer to both of these shows as “clones”; you in fact were intimately involved in the development of both, and can have little objection to their existence other than that the producers of both decided that they could survive without your continued association. Which, clearly, they could.)

Deciding to burnish your personal brand, you moved to Siskel & Ebert & the Movies, which changed its name at the sad death of your partner (Roger Ebert & the Movies), again when Richard Roeper joined you (Ebert & Roeber & the Movies), and twice again for no particular reason (Ebert & Roeper, then At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper). Twenty-two years all told.

And you’re continuing the format with your current partner in a different venue.

Neither the precise show, nor the title, nor your partner has lasted thirty-three years. The format has…but the format is not going away.

So may I ask: what’s the big fuckin’ deal, bitch?