John Y. Brown, III: Thumbs Up

I never met Roger Ebert. But I felt like I knew him. How many critics can you say that about?

Roger Ebert was the most human of critics in my lifetime. My first years as an avid fan of Siskel & Ebert, I favored the more academic and cerebral Siskel.

But as I matured, I found myself leaning toward Roger Ebert. And the last two decades I looked to Roger Ebert if I ever wanted to understand the meaning of a film. Or decide if I should go to a film based on the quality of that film. Or, and this is most important, if I wanted to know what a film had to teach about life.

I don’t think there will ever be a film critic who will teach us more about life through the medium of film. That is because there will never be another critic who loved film as much as Roger Ebert. And who loved life equally as much as the art he critiqued.

Most critics love their art but too often hide behind it instead of embracing life. Roger Ebert was one critic who rose above his peers and helped to create an art form of covering an art form—and managed to marry a love of the art he covered with a gift for communicating the mechanics and mystery and magic of film. As one human to another.

We lost a great friend today that most of us never met. The one who also happened to be our greatest film critic.

Roger Ebert, is somewhere today, I suspect, critiquing the production choices of Heaven.