The beloved critic is more vocal than ever
For decades, Roger Ebert has been a pop-culture fixture as a film critic, television host and late-night talk show couch-warmer. In recent years, however, he’s been more prominent than ever: His struggles with thyroid cancer may have silenced him in the literal sense, but they’ve made him more vocal as a writer, especially in new media.
In Life Itself, Ebert traces a full life with proud roots in Urbana, Illinois. Like many memoirs, Ebert’s has a sepia-tinged “good ol’ days” quality at the start, but his life story quickly evolves as he travels the world, works with Russ Meyer to write Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, struggles with a drinking problem and learns to balance a desire for social justice with his Catholic roots. In the middle, film buffs can feast on Ebert’s meditations on his favorite directors, including Werner Herzog, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. The book, narrated beautifully by Edward Hermann, never becomes gloomy or full of self-pity, although the last chapter is heavier than all those that precede it.