Two Thumbs Up: The Story of Siskel & Ebert

Before there was Rotten Tomatoes, before YouTube critics dominated our screens, two rival Chicago newspaper men forever changed how we talk about movies. What began as a local PBS show featuring a pair of bickering film critics evolved into a cultural phenomenon that would span decades and influence generations of film lovers.

The magic of Siskel and Ebert wasn't just in their famous thumbs up/thumbs down verdicts; it was in their genuine passion for cinema and their willingness to make thoughtful criticism accessible to everyday viewers. They weren't interested in impressing audiences with academic jargon or pandering to Hollywood studios. They brought an authenticity to television that felt revolutionary—two real newspaper rivals who genuinely disagreed about films and weren't afraid to challenge each other on screen.

Their impact extended far beyond reviews. They battled for proper presentation formats like letterboxing when pan-and-scan was standard practice. They championed forgotten films like "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" and "My Dinner with Andre," giving them second lives. They highlighted important cultural conversations, from the disappearance of Black-led films in the 1980s to the rise of slasher movies they found morally objectionable. Whether you agreed with their takes or not, their integrity was never in question.

The tragedy of their stories adds poignant dimension to their legacy. Both men would eventually lose their ability to speak—the very gift that had made them famous. Gene Siskel kept his brain cancer diagnosis largely private before passing away in 1999 at just 53. Roger Ebert's battle with thyroid cancer was more public, robbing him of his voice but never silencing his passion for film criticism, which continued through his writing until his death in 2013.

Want to experience the magic of these pioneering critics firsthand? Seek out their clips on YouTube, where their chemistry and passion still feel as vibrant and engaging today as when they first sat in those theater seats. The balcony may be closed, but their influence on how we discuss, debate, and celebrate cinema continues to thrive.

Transcript

Introduction and At the Movies Theme

Speaker 1 0:10

Brian, how you doing.

Speaker 2 0:12

I'm doing very well. How are you?

Speaker 1 0:14

Good, I like your vest. Man, I should have put mine on.

Speaker 2 0:16

And why do you think I did that? This is the In the style of sneak previews, more the sneak previews era of at the movies. They would wear like a basically a button-down shirt and they'd wear a sweater vest over it a cozy sweater.

Speaker 1 0:31

Yeah, I like that. I like the sneak previews era probably the best it's very cozy. It's very cozy the theater is cozy, the intro is cozy. Um, I do like the intro from at the movies, though, when they went big time, when they went to buena vista.

Speaker 2 0:47

Yes, it's, it is the epitome of everything. Even a syndicated talk show about the movies. We're gonna have a dedicated jazzy theme song. We're gonna pull out all the stops. It's, it's just. This is this, is the big leagues.

Speaker 1 1:03

It's terrific. It's a really great intro and I think, to kick it off, I'm just going to play it and then we can kind of talk about why we decided to do this show and our own perspectives on Ebert and Siskel, and then kind of talk about the history of the show Before moving into some clips. Let's do it.

Speaker 2 2:00

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Doesn't get any better than that, dude, that's pretty awesome, it's, it's become iconic. At this point I'd say, um, everything about it is so ridiculous and over the top, but you can't help but smile and just bask in the glory of, of everything that did, of that, of what it is right, I mean yeah everybody's giving the thumbs up, you know? Uh, they're um competing with each other little friendly competition.

Speaker 2 2:20

Yes, exactly, exactly, it's just, it's great. And then, of course, the best part is at the end, the bump, bump, bump, bump. You know, as we lead into the movie.

Speaker 1 2:29

I like them in their own little separate enclaves, you know, and how they're different, you know, in Rogers, big like messy, manic studio, to like the sort of iconography of the, the movie newspaper men, because truly these guys were really newspaper guys, like they were writers, you know which is cool and which was part of the shtick of the movie.

Speaker 1 2:51

And I guess we decided to do this show a while back because we were having a in-depth discussion about ebert and siskel, uh, when they were in uh pbs they they did a lot of specials. They still did when they were in the buena vista era when they went PBS. They did a lot of specials. They still did when they were in the Buena Vista era when they went big. But they did a lot of specials and one of them which I think gets revisited a lot amongst horror fans is the Women in Danger special which we'll show some clips from later. But we were having a spirited conversation about how relevant and smart Roger Ebert and Cisco were and how it might be interesting to relook at some of their old videos. And we also happened to read this new book by Matt Singer. Did you read this whole thing?

Speaker 2 3:36

I did.

The Revolutionary Impact of Film Critics on TV

Speaker 1 3:37

Yeah, I listened to the audio book. I found it to be very enjoyable. It sort of talks about the guy he was on. He was being interviewed on Good Morning America and he said I wrote the book that I wanted to read about roger ebert and gene siskel and I felt like it was very, you know, informative I suppose, but also just like a nice uh nice journey down a sort of memory lane that I never experienced. I never watched the show when it was on television, did you?

Speaker 2 4:01

no, not actually on terrestrial television. No, I do recall seeing it in passing a few times here and there. Certainly I remember the end of Ebert and Roper, for instance, watching that online. They had their. Their website was a was a big presence in the mid to late two thousands. They were posting the reviews concurrently online with the show Cause. Honestly, I don't even remember when it was on on my local whatever ABC station so you could watch it online. They would provide it for the company themselves. And then I remember the transition into the, the, the two Ben era, the two Ben's era, which was a disaster, and then the kind of retrial afterwards with AO Scott and Michael Phillips, which was quite good, but it was just. It was in this period of transition of television where this entire genre and this entire idea is essentially obsolete on terrestrial television and it just could not compete and it's it's became went away of the dinosaur.

Speaker 1 5:17

Yeah Well, but it had a great run while it was happening and I guess one thing that the that the book drove home for me was just how revolutionary a show like this was for movie fans. I mean, I have only existed as a movie fan in an internet era, so it's always very much interested me how movie fans would engage with what they liked and get information about things that they were interested in. That's why I make videos about Starlog magazine. You know these kind of analog ways that fans engage with one another, and this was a huge thing. I mean, something we take for granted is people would tune into at the movies because they could see clips and in their specials, like the science fiction special, which you highlighted as something to talk about you could see clips from old 1950s, science fiction films in the early to mid 80s that you could see nowhere else unless somehow you owned a film print of the movie.

Speaker 1 6:10

Right, I mean it was a very special show, and a cool part of the book too is the process by which they got those clips. They weren't provided to them by the studios. They went down to an amenable theater, cut the film strips, converted them to video and showed them on the show. Siskel and Ebert didn't get the press package of what clips they were supposed to show. They picked them and it was up to the interns on the show to go and get them to illustrate their points, which is very interesting and also very sort of like YouTube era kind of Go ahead.

Speaker 2 6:40

There were no press kits.

Speaker 2 6:41

That's also an important part of what the book illustrates is that this was not a thing before.

Speaker 2 6:47

Shows like this, the movie studio did not want to provide anything, so they kind of did this on the down low infringement by borrowing borrowing those reels, making the copies to VHS and then using them on television, which they're, you know, profiting from too. So it's kind of an interesting dynamic there that the book lays out. The other thing is just, you know, obviously, the democratization of film criticism, which we've sort of talked about as well, how this made discussion about film, film criticism, film analysis, more accessible to the general public, to the general audiences. And the more snooty critics would say you're dumbing it down for the masses, but what's the point if you're not going to have more people interested in this medium? How are you going to continue it further down the line? You need to bring in more people and have it that you can talk about it in a substantive, intellectual way, but not to be so high and mighty off your high horse that it's totally irrelevant so high and mighty off your high horse that it's totally irrelevant.

Speaker 1 8:11

Yeah, I'm with you, and I think that the other great thing obviously about why Cisco and Ebert were so revolutionary too and why they were such a great pairing, is because they had this interesting dynamic of they were described by their contemporaries as almost like a Laurel and Hardy style figure, where you have the skinny bald guy and the fat guy with a lot of hair and big glasses. Right, they looked great together, and I have a clip here of Siskel and Ebert on Conan, but I'm trying to download furiously right now a clip of their first appearance on Letterman, because Letterman was the guy that brought them on as sort of a curiosity item. Right, because they were a PBSbs show. Apologies, guys, I still have a little bit of a cold and, um, I'm not sure, did they?

Speaker 2 8:51

they didn't have nationwide syndication on that television show when they first started ppm chicago right and that that's what's quite fascinating is, um I I sort of understood the general history about how things had started, but I didn't realize how intricate things became and how many times they switched, you know, distribution, deals and titles along the way.

Speaker 2 9:15

And then more interestingly how those every show that they started and then left before they made it to the Disney Buena Vista you know big leagues People those shows continued with other hosts along the way. So sneak previews continued after their departure and then At the Movies continued after their departure as well, and then obviously Siskel and Ebert, as it then became At the Movies again later on, continued at least for two years after uh ebert and siskel had. Uh ebert and roper excuse me, had um, fully departed as well what do you like best about ebert and siskel, in that order well, you know it's.

Speaker 2 10:00

I think the authenticity is is definitely one of the the easiest things to to right. They are, they are authentic, they are telling the truth, they are giving their stated opinions. They are not trying to hide their opinion. They're not trying to tell you audience what they think they should hear or what they want to hear. They are giving their honest opinion as film critics, and so sometimes it's going to line up with your opinion and sometimes it's not. There's that, obviously, the drama, the tension between the two is another huge factor about their success To me personally. I think it's interesting, it's funny, but I don't know that I necessarily get much more out of that than I think the book plays it off of. The book plays that the constant bickering and fighting between them made their success and while that might be true, to me personally that's probably on the lower end of what makes them fascinating. And three is just a true passion for films, and that's what I really also enjoyed is that this?

Speaker 2 11:02

book basically takes every piece of information about them, every media appearance, every ancillary appearance, and it just congeals all that information together and puts it in one you know easily to read. Source. And they are true film lovers, film fans. They're not looking at this from a pure academic standpoint. They're not looking at this from a purely strictly cultural standpoint about oh, how do we analyze this and analyze that they really enjoy it, they love it and, just like I would say, we enjoy it and we love the film industry, we love movies, we love to talk about it.

Speaker 1 11:40

On that basis, yeah, I'm with you and I really take umbrage to the idea that somehow the two thumbs up, you know, thumbs down which, by the way, that was my first, probably encounter with the idea of Cisco and Ebert was walking through a blockbuster and seeing on a VHS tape two thumbs up, and that was always kind of an indelible idea to me. It like struck me I didn't really exactly know what it meant, you what I'm saying, but it was like um, remember right, but like it stuck with me as something.

From Local PBS to National Syndication

Speaker 1 12:08

And, um, you know, roger ebert and cisco, they're both incredible writers. If you read some of their written uh critical work it's very, very good. And also I think that they had the kind of of rapport with one another that obviously in other iterations could not be recreated. So this idea that it was some sort of cheap I know they got a lot of hate towards the mid nineties about how they were dumbing down the medium, but I think, like you said, they were sort of democratizing it and making film criticism something that the public could also be involved with and engage with. I'm going to play like I talked about sort of Ebert and Siskel's first flirtation with Prime Time, which was their inclusion on the Letterman Show. And Letterman was quite the edgy guy back in the late 70s and early 80s. He wasn't like the stalwart late night host like he's thought of today. He was kind of like the show for the young people. He was on late. So I'm going to play their first appearance.

Speaker 7 13:12

Thank you for the helpful caption YouTube guy, roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, are resident adversaries on the weekly PBS program Sneak Previews. They're both very well respected film critics, based in Chicago, and both have extensive backgrounds in print and broadcast reporting. Together they've added a new twist to film criticism and the audiences seem to love it. Please welcome, it's fun to have these gentlemen with us. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel Thank you, Gene?

Speaker 5 13:51

how are you? I would give that film four stars. You like that? Huh, I like the film.

Speaker 8 13:55

It imitates a film we just saw, venom, which had a snake's point of view. Here's a dog's point of view. These films, in all seriousness, these films, are more interesting than some of the junk that we have to sit through.

Speaker 7 14:03

Disney live-action pictures, neil Simon's comedies little thing whoa we've taken care of brando and neil simon tonight it needs a klaus kinski to be bitten by the dog uh, I think your show is terrific, by the way, I saw it saturday night and uh, I guess for for most people, when a motion picture critic image comes to mind, most people think of somebody who is kind of goofy, too esoteric, too intellectual or, on the other hand, kind of bitchy and goofy.

Speaker 5 14:34

That's kind of the ambiance we try to recreate.

Speaker 7 14:38

You guys are just nice, reasonable fellows reviewing films.

Speaker 5 14:42

I think we're film lovers, we're fans, we like films, we like to see good films. We're disappointed when we see bad ones and we talk about them to each other. I think the way a lot of people talk about movies to each other.

Speaker 8 14:52

This is the thing I heard. I mean, I was in New York over the weekend and people said you're fans, that's what we like. You sound the way we sound when we talk about films. That doesn't mean that we can't talk about a serious concept or serious films. It's just that we do it from a point of view of loving the work, appreciating it and not taking cheap shots. When I said the Neil Simon remark, that may have sounded like a cheap shot, but it is based on having sat through a lot of his films and they're not particularly good of late, ever since he moved to California, I don't think coincidentally, uh, he uh has not done very good work, and I I would just say it honestly yeah, his films are usually better than movies like master of the flying guillotine, though, which you've seen theaters where your feet stick to the floor, and people open up cans of tap all over your head, that's right, but the problem real.

Speaker 8 15:44

He's adapting these things from plays and the seams show. The goodbye girl was written originally for the screen and I think that's the best film.

Speaker 7 15:50

Yeah, uh, what? What is the origin of this show? How did you guys get together?

Speaker 5 15:54

and, uh, we started about six years ago in chicago with a program called opening soon into theater near you, which was over by the time we got the title on the screen and we did it once a a month. We sat in director's chairs, we hid behind clipboards. We were both very paranoid, I think I was afraid I would say something very stupid and Gene would say something like that wasn't Fellini, that was Bergman, and I would leave in dismay. Eventually, I think we developed a rapport because we became confident we were working with each other and talking about films.

Speaker 7 16:25

In the introduction we used the word adversaries, but in watching the program I get the feeling that it's not necessarily adversarial positions. But you do disagree, don't you?

Speaker 8 16:30

We are film critics for the competing newspapers in Chicago, sometimes for Roger the Tribune, for myself. We are in competition. We try to get stories in first. We try to write a better review, better Sunday articles, think pieces and we play that very seriously. But most journalists when they finish their work they go to bars and they bitch about the other person. We, after we finish our work on Thursdays, go to the studio and talk together.

Speaker 5 16:57

I can address Gene directly. I can explain his errors and try to correct him.

Speaker 8 17:01

We talk directly. Then we can go to a bar if you want afterwards, but we do one day a week. We do talk together and out of the talking together we've created something very positive and I think we have changed. I think the contribution of the show is we have changed the image of film critics we would rather talk about. Most people think critics hate films, are jealous of stars like Christopher Reed, jealous of his looks and all that, and that we are frustrated. We want to make films, we want to be directors. And no, I like writing. I like writing about movies. I'd rather see a good movie than a bad movie. We love this stuff more.

Speaker 1 17:36

Why would we see it all if we didn't love it so much? So I think you can see here kind of their dynamic that they had with each other, which is, I think, why they were so good, is because they were able to find the breaks in where each other were talking, but also they couldn't wait to say what they wanted to say. So it was like never dull. Yes, but I think they sum up exactly what you were just talking about Go ahead.

Speaker 2 17:55

Look at the body language too, especially when they do the, the, the wide shot where they're not not exactly that one, but the other one where you could see roger's face as gene is talking and he kind of has a look of contempt on his on in his look there, and before he was talking, though, he had this look like he can't wait to um, come back at him with something else. You know like, oh, you said that I got, I got a quick retort for you. You know to to come back, but they're not, they're not also against um, self-effacement and self-defecate, uh, so you know, they, they. There is some humility behind all the hubris there too, which is nice.

Speaker 1 18:32

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they were just. They were just fun to watch and they were great together and from what the book talks about. Again, I'll plug Matt Singer's book. He did a really nice job on opposable thumbs, which we both read. Um, it talks about how they did start out as very much like best of enemies. Yes, they did not like each other, they didn't get along, and I'm going to play this clip of uh, their behind the scenes outtakes to kind of give you an example of when the cameras weren't rolling, the sort of this is like one of the most infamous clips out there.

Speaker 1 19:07

It's a very genuine sort of tit-for-tat that they had with one another. You can see, oh, hold on, I need to rewind. Sorry, there we go.

Speaker 8 19:19

You're proud of your pro. Actually yours is better. Roger here we go.

Speaker 5 19:24

The science fiction thriller Robocop.

Speaker 8 19:26

This week on Siskel and Ebert in the Movies. Here we go this week on Siskel and Ebert in the Movies, the science fiction adventure, robocop.

Speaker 4 19:39

Do that again.

Speaker 8 19:40

Very funny. Donna and you're my friend. That's the last time you'll ever enter my home.

Speaker 4 19:45

You know that for Gene speech is the second language.

Speaker 8 19:49

Roger's first language is yes, I'll have apple pie with my order.

Speaker 4 19:54

He asks the McDonald's girls if he can have apple pie with their order before they ask him, and you know what Gene says when he goes into McDonald's. Can I have apple with their order?

Speaker 8 20:08

Roger is the only guy in the history to ever answer yes to every question he's asked at McDonald's. Want some salad with your apple pie? Want some french fries with your salad? Want some hamburger with your french fries? Want some shake with your?

Speaker 4 20:23

Want some shake. Want some shake. I knew Gene couldn't sustain that string for long without a grammatic error.

Speaker 8 20:29

I don't know how many items there are, but they've worked him through the whole fucking menu.

Speaker 4 20:33

He set a record. He set a record.

Speaker 8 20:35

He ordered every fucking thing they have.

Speaker 4 20:38

He ordered a cone and a sundae.

Speaker 7 20:42

You're on mute, george, so I'll play the little girl. You're on mute, george.

Speaker 1 20:44

Would you like some French fries with your order? So I'll play that little clip, but in place of the sort of pact they had between the Irish Catholics and Jews that they talked about in one of their more spicy outtakes. Yeah, have you seen that one?

Speaker 2 20:59

Yeah, that one's a little bit more on the controversial side.

Speaker 2 21:02

But what I think was interesting also is the amount of media appearances they did is part of the charm too, seeing them on.

Speaker 2 21:12

I do recall, you know, years later having especially him and Roper going on like the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and, you know, talking about movies and all that which was fun.

Speaker 2 21:24

You know, talking about movies and all that which is which was which was fun. Um, but it's really interesting in the book because I didn't realize this dynamic when in the johnny carson letterman era that guests were not allowed to overlap between the two shows, there was like a strict divide between who was a carson guest and who was a letterman guest and so letterman, you know, picked these guys up because he thought they were kind of goofy, kind of strange, kind of quirky. And as they became more and more famous and more interesting on a national scale, they were allowed to cross that divide and go on the tonight show. And it's a it's a great passage in the book talking about how they're waiting for their first appearance, to go on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. And they are they're generally not nervous people at all, but they are scared out of their minds to go and meet Johnny Carson and to be on the Tonight Show. This is something that Gene even says Roger, we don't belong here.

Speaker 2 22:22

This is not for us Like we are not at this level and that's like one of the moments that I thought Was most interesting in the book To show kind of their psyche and I think a lot of people that guessed it on the Tonight Show that were not big, big stars initially. A lot of people felt that way Just because of how powerful that show was.

Speaker 1 22:42

Which is kind of hard to believe Today. And that's also why they were such great guests too, because even back then you came on the tonight show because you were there to promote your movie and you said nice things about it and johnny said nice things about it, whereas there's obviously another famous clip I'm sure a lot of people have seen where chevy chase is the guest. He's promoting three amigos and Ebert and Siskel just trash it to his face. Yeah, like not your best movie. Pretty bad.

Speaker 2 23:09

And that's the authenticity there about not. You know, you're in front of this guy, you're in front of this celebrity, this actor who made this movie. The polite thing to do is to say, oh yeah, it was okay. Or you know it was okay, good. Oh yeah, it was okay. Or you know it was okay, good. But no, they, they had an integrity to them that they were like no, you can do better than this. This is not one of your good movies, like sorry and, and they talk about in the book also. Afterwards, behind the scenes, at a backstage, chevy came up to them and said yeah, three amigos was terrible. Sorry, you're right, but I can't say that.

Speaker 1 23:42

Do you like Three Amigos?

Speaker 2 23:44

No, not particularly. Neither do I.

Speaker 1 23:48

Yeah, but we were talking about sort of what made them popular and I noticed that there's no real backlog archive of all of the At the Movies episodes. The only way it survives is in vhs transfers on the internet and for the most part you'll find that if you're looking for their take on a horror film, you'll find it. For whatever reason, um ebert and siskel's reaction to horror films of the time are of particular interest to modern horror fans today. So those are the reviews that end up getting bumped and pushed a lot and I feel like it's because a lot of people like to talk down to Gene and Roger because they generally were not huge fans of a lot of contemporary horror movies at the time and mostly it came from a place of their feeling that these films were sort of socially negative. And I think that's part and parcel with the fact that, if you find a lot of other interviews, cisco and Ebert were very much advocates for the audience. They talked extensively about the theatrical experience. Gene made a point of paying for every movie he went to see because he wanted to have the experience of an audience member shelling out your what $3 back then to see a movie because he wanted to make sure that he was being an advocate for the audience and they were always very um, precious sort of about bad portrayals of children or violence aimed at kids. So they become like a punching bag as sort of like, maybe even kind of a proto-culture warrior. Um, people like to make fun of them. But I think it all came from a very good place and they also had a lot to say just sort of, about the social changes in America.

Advocating for Letterboxing and Video Quality

Speaker 1 25:33

I pulled out this clip from one of their specials during the PBS days where they talk about the sort of like rapid disappearance of black movies in the 80s, which is something I'd never thought about. I mean, we all know about 1970s blaxploitation movies, shaft, foxy Brown, sweet, sweetback's, badass Song but they discuss how that all started to go away in the late 70s and early 80s and black actors were sort of relegated to. They use the example of Billy Dee Williams in the movie Nighthawk with Sy sylvester stallone, where he's just sort of the backup guy to sylvester stallone and just kind of goes yeah, you're doing the right thing, you're the man. And I've got this clip where they react to the crash of the whiz, which was the michael jackson all black remake, uh musical of wizard of oz and I'd like to hear your go ahead before you, you do that.

Speaker 2 26:22

I think a trembling colors makes it makes a great point and I was actually going to say something similar to that before. He says as much as I like slasher movies and stuff, I can't disagree with these guys that they were a negative thing for society. I mean, there is a, there is a certain validation to what they're saying about movies like Friday the 13th, the final chapter. I mean I like that movie a lot, I've watched that movie multiple, multiple times and I enjoy it, but is there any real great merit to that as a, as a film? You know you know what I mean. Like on, on a certain level, I understand where they're coming from with that. Does it?

Speaker 2 26:58

Is it pure just junk food that appeals to your, your most base level inside of you, um, and doesn't really provide anything actually worthwhile like there's. There's an argument to be made about that. It's still an enjoyable, you know, slasher movie that gives you a quick, cheap thrill and I certainly enjoy the movie. But like I see what they and they're, they're certainly of an older generation, a different, different mindset, and they maybe take it a little bit more seriously than someone in our age group where this has been the norm since as long as we can remember. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 27:32

I'm totally with you and I'm not like a big culture warrior against violence in movies or anything like that, though there are some modern pictures that I find sort of edge on the pornographic in terms of their violence that I feel in a creepy way appeal to a small subset of people who are sexually aroused by this kind of thing, which gives me pause. But I have to imagine the rampant onset of violence in American movies from the late 60s to the early 80s would have been incredibly shocking, I think, to any sort of like modern, older person. We can look back on these and you and me have a little detached irony. Um, like when I was what we were watching those giallo films from the 70s, torso, um, was I particularly shocked? Did I have to close my eyes? No, but from the perspective of viewer at that time I was like this is pretty nasty, wild stuff.

Speaker 1 28:25

And even the slasher films, especially in like the front of the 13th films, I can exactly see where they're coming from. And the other thing that gives me a lot of pause about slasher films that we've talked about this before is why did they occur? Why were they popular? And I can't root them in any kind of like social movement. Root them in any kind of like social movement like. For what reason were regonite teenagers interested in seeing killers hack?

Speaker 1 28:54

teenagers to death why, I don't know there's, I mean there's not a societal explanation behind it.

Speaker 2 29:01

Um, siskel and eber would have a heart attack at the terrifier movies. Yes, they, they would. They would judge those as morally objectionable.

Speaker 1 29:09

I think that's fair to say yeah, I, I remember reading ebert's review of the human centipede poor guy. They made him go see that and he was just like what the fuck you know? He was, he was yeah it's interesting.

Speaker 2 29:23

I think people in the comments are thinking that we're advocating that point of view and it's like we're not. We're just we're explaining their mindset in that era about why they felt that way, like yeah, full third endorsement of friday, the 13th final chapter. Yeah, thumbs up.

Speaker 1 29:36

No one has to feel bad. No, exactly, but like. Well, my thing is like you can usually find a pop psychology rationale for why. Why was bonnie and clyde popular? Oh, because hippies, and there were times they were a change in brother, you know that kind of thing. But with like 80s slasher films I can't find any sort of like tether to any kind of social movement or or thinking at the time as to why this became so big, other than halloween was just a good movie and popular and people just sought to recreate that success.

Speaker 2 30:07

And, to be fair, they, they did like Halloween for sure. They thought it was a great movie and they thought it very clever, very, you know, innovative. So so they're not, they're not above seeing where a movie actually has something to say, some kind of artistic merit to it. It just, I think when you then get an endless stream of copycats that are of inferior quality and derivative nature, you know that that's. That's where they, they were kind of like drawing the lines and we've seen this, we've been there, we've done this, what else? What else you got besides? You know, Ebert called them the dead teenager movies. Was his, his way of, you know, denigrating them.

Speaker 1 31:00

So you know he has a very impassioned plea when he talks about I believe it was Friday the 13th the final chapter where he says this is an incredibly nihilistic film. It tells young people that it doesn't matter if you have dreams or a new girlfriend or something going on in your life. Life will chew you up and kill you and murder you and you know, throw your body away and you're just trash right and it's like maybe, yeah, I mean you know, yeah, I I.

Speaker 1 31:19

The only thing I could think of is that there's some sort of animal brain that knows that, like drinking and teenage fornicating is not the most positive thing you could be doing with your time and that, like any slasher killer, is sort of a um nancy reagan style conservative avenger on the youth, do you know? I mean perhaps perhaps?

Speaker 2 31:42

um, I think the other big famous one was I Spit on your Grave, where apparently, famously, they protested outside of theaters showing the movie, warning people not to go in and see it Because of how. I think, you'll find on the violence against women in the movie.

Speaker 1 31:59

I think you'll find too and this ties in with my next clip that they, I think for the most part really you had to divide it up into percentages were probably against the slasher films because they were anti women, and I mean cisco and ebert were liberal, I mean right, and I think that was one of their big concerns. Uh, let me play this clip real quick. I think it's a good transition to talk more about modern state of hollywood, but this is from their special, but it costs a lot of money.

Speaker 5 32:22

It cost $30 million to make the Wiz, if you also include the ad campaign, and it was a disastrously expensive flop. And it failed just at the time when the major Hollywood trend was toward making big-budget blockbuster movies, just like that one. The failure of the Wiz seemed to prove that multimillion-dollar productions starring blacks couldn't make money, and Hollywood didn't need more than one movie to prove that to itself. So since Hollywood was mainly interested in aiming at the big profits in big movies, with turning away from smaller budget films, the production of small black movies came all of a sudden to a screeching halt. And that's where we stand right now, I guess.

Speaker 8 32:57

I think I know another reason why the Wiz and some other good films like it may not have worked with white audiences never drew drew them. I think white audiences got an impression that if it had a black cast the movie had to be anti-white. That was a little bit true in the early 70s, but then some artists decided to change things around. The black films grew and changed. We named a whole bunch of films that were encompassing the entire audience everybody had a good time at those films.

Speaker 5 33:20

Yes, the white audience didn't pick up on it. They felt. They felt either I'm going to have to go and be told what a terrible white person I am or I'm going to have to go and get some kind of dreary, serious social message.

Speaker 8 33:32

In the meantime, the blacks move right beyond that into hollywood entertainment movies, but nobody followed them, nobody got the message so a case began to build up in the hollywood executive's mind that it was economically unfeasible, and I heard such explanations like this black films, american black films, do no business overseas. Where you know movies can make 40% of their money, that Europeans don't want to see films about blacks.

Speaker 5 33:56

Cable rights, which, that that kind of market no interest in that and also, I guess in the last couple of years there's been a whole lot of interest in Hollywood, in subsidiary second rights, not only cable but also video disc, video cassette, all those markets where they try to sell the movie before it's even made and make their money back.

Speaker 8 34:13

Right Blacks weren't buying that kind of stuff. Another one this is a reality. A number of inner city theaters were shut down in the 70s, closed up, boarded up. All the building of new theaters took place in the suburbs, the mostly white suburbs, and a lot of theater owners didn't want to play black films in suburban theaters.

Speaker 5 34:30

I've heard from theater owners that if they were to play a movie like Car Wash, for example, the other people who own shops in the same shopping mall are afraid that all the inner city blacks would descend upon the JCPenney store and wreck the Dairy Queen. This is paranoia, but it's reality too. So this is the situation.

Speaker 1 34:48

I brought this clip up because I feel like it illustrates something that's also very, very interesting about watching at the movies is because you get a great document in real time of the rapid change to home video and cable that was happening in films and the transition from like theatrical only distribution. And also I thought that clip was interesting because I had never thought about what happened to blaxploitation films in the 70s. But the idea that all the theaters moved out of the inner city and to suburbs is like a very like salient explanation. I never thought of it that way, yeah.

Speaker 2 35:22

Have you seen the Wiz? I have not seen it. I'm not either watch it.

Speaker 1 35:26

Yeah, I am too. Yeah, michael jackson is in it, which you think it would like have some cachet, because it was like he was so hot and diana ross correct yeah, I think so yeah.

Speaker 2 35:35

So I mean it definitely sounds appealing. So I just it's been on my on my radar for a while but something to watch, but I have not seen it. So be interested to watch it now after this. But yeah, it's a very candid conversation, very interesting they're always. They're always trying to, you know, talk about trends, not in terms of chasing them or, um, you know, pandering to them, but but explaining about how things are changing in the industry.

Speaker 2 35:58

And, like you mentioned, uh, home video was a huge part of of that conversation, especially especially as we got into the VHS revolution, you know, into the 80s and especially in the 90s. I'm sure you have it lined up later, but but the colorization, controversy and discussion that was a huge part of they helped put the kibosh on that a lot by by kind of shaming people like Ted Turner into saying like, hey, you're ruining these films. You may have had good intentions by attempting to colorize them to appeal to younger, modern audiences, but that's not the way, that's not the way forward. And then, of course, letterboxing and widescreen presentation was also something that they advocated for very, very strongly, and then in the end they were right.

Speaker 1 36:47

So I have a clip here of their explanation to the audience of letterboxing and home video. I think I'll play that right now.

Speaker 5 36:55

If they don't just chop down the middle. They use a process Gene mentioned called panning and scanning, where they pan back and forth across a widescreen picture in an attempt to always be showing the most interesting thing, and after a while you do get seasick, you need a barf bag and you miss the good stuff. This program was the first time on television that the letterboxing approach was explained and defended.

Speaker 8 37:18

We were in favor of showing the entire widescreen image by centering it on a tv screen let's focus on the part that people are still going to resist long after this show is played, which is I don't want to see that black at the top and black at the bottom. Well, if the image is mesmerizing, as it is in the case of blade runner, you're not looking at the black, and that's. You're looking right through the center of your screen.

Speaker 5 37:40

Letterboxd seems to have caught on, since that program and a lot of serious movie fans will no longer accept the old panned and scanned, chopped and sliced and diced home video images. They want to see the entire widescreen image, and the video companies are doing good business by respecting the way widescreen movies were originally photographed. On this segment we want to talk about how to arrive at the best possible picture on your home television set, and let's start out with a basic definition of terms.

Speaker 1 38:06

Kind of interesting.

The Star Wars Debate with John Simon

Speaker 5 38:07

This you've seen it before is a VHS video cassette Thanks Roger which has become the international standard for home video viewing, and this is a LaserDisc, which represents the next generation for home video fans. You can think of a LaserDisc as sort of a great big compact disc that plays pictures as well as sound. The difference between this and this is that a LaserDisc delivers a much better video picture 60% better and sound that can be as good or better as many movie theaters.

Speaker 1 38:35

Do you want to explain to the audience about Go ahead?

Speaker 2 38:38

No, I was going to say they were also huge advocates for Laserdisc, which I remember having. My family had a Laserdisc player for, at least for a little bit, but the trend did not catch on or last very long at all, so we did not have it for very long. They were too expensive.

Speaker 2 38:55

Right, it was very expensive and it was very cumbersome too about flipping the disc over or changing the disc. But they were correct in terms of the quality component and they were advocating for watching a movie in the best presentation that is available to the consumer, which for most consumers, they that is not their priority at all, and that is still the case in the era of blu-ray and 4k. People are still willing to watch stuff at sub. You know, sub quality, uh, levels of quality, and it's kind of sad that we're still having this fight.

Speaker 1 39:35

But um, what was the thought of motion smoothing, oh yeah, but um what's?

Speaker 2 39:41

also interesting is in one of the holiday gift guide things and we'll maybe be able to get it later. Um, they talk about the advent of high definition television like a full, maybe 15, 20 years before. It's like it's an actual realization, like they're talking. They mention it on one of their shows. When they're talking about home video presentation, they're talking about high-definition television. Do you have it?

Speaker 5 40:07

I got it.

Speaker 2 40:08

Okay.

Speaker 5 40:09

Better television pictures look just beyond the horizon. Television may come in many sizes, but one thing remains the same we still watch television on a system invented 50 years ago. But that's about to change. A revolution is underway in how our television pictures are created. Every image we see on a TV screen is made up of lines of electronic information. You can see it up close. You notice lines of black in between the colors. With a new system called Improved Definition Television or IDTV, which is now on sale, those lines of black are filled in with picture information to make the picture sharper and more realistic. An even bigger change will take place in five to ten years with the advent of High Definition Television. High def will be a completely new system for broadcasting television pictures. It will mean screens change their shape to become more like a movie theater screen and they will contain twice or three times as much information. Their images might look like this yeah, pretty amazing.

Speaker 1 41:10

I think this was from like 1994.

Speaker 2 41:12

Yeah, so we're talking about. I could be wrong in the day, but from what I recall, hvtv starts taking off late 2000s. Like I believe, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno was one of the first TV shows to be broadcast in high def on a consistent basis, and that was like 2009.

Speaker 4 41:30

So you're talking close to.

Speaker 2 41:31

You know, maybe let's say 15 years give or take, I mean most, most. Then other broadcast network shows were not then fully you know broadcasting HD until a couple years after that. But oh, no, excuse me, 1999. My bad, my bad, 1999, I believe was was the time show. And then, you know, in the mid in, throughout the 2000s, you know, shows gradually changed over. I was off by 10 years there.

Speaker 1 41:58

I remember like speaking of like letterboxing First of all. There, I remember speaking of letterboxing first of all, a little trivia. The first letterboxed VHS home release was Woody Allen's Manhattan. He refused to let them have it on home video without it. There was a big disclaimer about the black bars which was so controversial. I remember having I knew a guy in high school who he loved lord of the rings and he had them all on full frame dvd.

Speaker 1 42:23

So it was still kind of it still existed in the dvd era, which was shocking because apparently some people preferred that, I guess well, we still were.

Speaker 2 42:31

We still had people, a lot of people still had four by three. You know, crt tvs at that time they're talking lord of the rings, what 2001, 2002, 2003 around there. So you know, crt tvs at that time they're talking lord of the rings, what 2001, 2002, 2003 around there. So you know, a lot of people had not made the, the switch yet and people still had a thing about I want my tvs. And, and you know, actually now we're dealing with the opposite of that in terms of four by three content that is now being cropped on the top and the bottom so that people can have their screens full and watching. You know, no, that's a thing. If you watch the simpsons on disney plus, those are cropped. Seinfeld for syndication purposes, and I'm not sure I'm streaming. 100 friends is another one, I believe those have been cropped to fit our 16 by 9 aspect ratio TVs. Now, Really.

Speaker 2 43:22

So we're seeing the reverse of that.

Speaker 1 43:26

Wow, I didn't realize that.

Speaker 2 43:27

Yeah, that's interesting, yeah, no it's a thing I mean I don't necessarily mind it for like casual stuff, but like if you're going to watch a movie or if you're a serious fan of the show, if you're buying it on a disc, for instance, it needs to be the proper aspect ratio For watching it on a syndicated basis for TV. I don't know how much it really impacts the average viewer. I think it's still wrong, but whatever.

Speaker 1 43:58

Who watches television, so you can watch Seinfeld on TBS and see like a bunch of pop-up shit like don't forget to watch the baseball game, you know? It's like it's terrible.

Speaker 2 44:09

Seinfeld was actually on Nick at Night for like a hot minute there a year or so ago, I believe too, which was kind of strange. Really yeah.

Speaker 1 44:17

I don't think it lasted very long.

Speaker 2 44:19

That's kind of weird.

Speaker 1 44:21

I'm a big Seinfeld fan. I was going to play the clip where they debate the stodgy old guy about Star Wars.

Speaker 2 44:28

Oh, yes, please. Oh, let's set this up, though. This is on Nightline with Ted Koppel. They are debating the film critic for the national review of all places. His name is John Simon.

Speaker 6 44:42

And Mr.

Speaker 2 44:43

Simon did not like return of the Jedi and if you listen to his argument again like that's not going to say he has something to say. He's not completely wrong, but in retrospect he looks like a complete idiot.

Speaker 1 44:59

He looks like a total curmudgeon. I'm going to play this. It's kind of fun, tell me when to stop.

Speaker 3 45:03

But most of at the movies and film critic for the chicago sun times. Mr simon, you described the empire strikes back, the second in this trilogy, as malodorous, awful, and I understand you're also well able to keep your enthusiasm in check for the third in the trilogy. Why so unkind?

Speaker 6 45:22

Well, I think the raves for the early Star Wars have been so violent and so extravagant that I feel one cannot afford to mince one's words if one dislikes these things.

Speaker 3 45:37

You certainly did not do that, but why do you feel they are so bad?

Speaker 6 45:42

I feel they're so bad because they're completely dehumanizing. Obviously, let's face it, they are for children or for childish adults. They're not for adult mentalities, which unfortunately means that they're not for a lot of my fellow critics who also lack adult mentalities. But anyway, they are for children and they're brutalizing children, they're stultifying children, they're making children dumber than they need to be. A great work for children, like Huck Finn, for example, tells a child something about reality, about people, about life, about growing up. These films try to keep children, stupid children, forever, and that, I think, is wrong.

Speaker 3 46:28

Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert, if you would like to remove the dagger from between your ribs and strike back, have at it.

Speaker 5 46:34

I totally disagree with Mr Simon. I don't know what he did as a child, but I spent a lot of my Saturday matinees watching science fiction movies and serials and having a great time of being stimulated and having my imagination stimulated and having all sorts of visions take place in my mind that helped me to become an adult and to still stay young at heart, and I would say not that I'm childlike, but that he is old at heart. Say not that.

Speaker 8 46:56

I'm childlike, but that he is old at heart. Yeah, I think that Mr Simon ought to do what I did over the weekend. I went to a regular movie theater and a shopping center in Michigan City, indiana, and I sat amid all the kids. There was one tall head and a lot of small heads, were they dumber?

Speaker 5 47:09

than they needed to be.

Speaker 8 47:10

No, they weren't dumber to quote that interesting phrase.

Speaker 2 47:13

I think, Roger creates a much better argument here. In debating the guy, rather than teaching, he's kind of like saying the kids were into it and they understood what was going on, and the other guy was saying like, oh yeah, this is dumb. Roger is basically saying like there's room for all these things in movies. There's room for for you as an adult to to enjoy something that is made for a child. But you, as long as you understand that and realize like, hey, this is not like the epitome of you know, modern filmmaking, literature, ideas. It is something that is rooted in, you know, fantasy for children, I think you can still enjoy it and appreciate it as something, as one of the finer things in life. The guy is on the completely like opposite end of the spectrum, being intransigent and saying like this has no merit to society whatsoever, and I think that that's also wrong. It's, it's.

Speaker 1 48:08

I think roger has the right idea here well, the thing that was striking to me too about this guy's critique and when he talks is he talks about how everyone becomes a cartoon character because the special effects are so unmooring and so unreal, which is not something that I would never a criticism I would level at the original Star Wars or any special effects heavy movie from the 80s, because I feel like it's exactly the opposite. But I would say that about basically any modern blockbuster goofball bullshit today.

Speaker 2 48:33

Right, oh yeah, imagine if this guy watched something that came out this year, for instance or in the last 10 years. Yeah, yeah, if he watched Transformers.

Speaker 1 48:44

I think Ebert and Siskel are on the right track here with this clip, which I remember watching seven years ago and being like, yeah, fuck that guy, what an old curmudgeon. You know what I mean. But I can't help but admit that Star Wars has had this kind of stultifying effect on people into their adulthood. Right, I love Star Wars, I really enjoy it, but obviously I'm kind of done with it at this point. Some merit to the idea that children should be confronted with stories that are maybe more rooted in reality, like a Treasure Island or a Huckleberry fan or something that does give them some kind of. I don't feel like children draw a necessary lesson out of Star Wars because it's so opaque, sort of politically, I think, in what it was trying to do. I think people just get drawn into the expanded universe or world of it and it kind of becomes universe or world of it and it kind of like it becomes all encompassing and I think that it would be go ahead.

Speaker 2 49:44

I think what. What Raj, what Ebert is, is trying to imply, is that there is room for all of in your diet. For instance, you need to eat your vegetables and your meat and vegetables, but you can have dessert as well. You can have cotton candy, okay, star Wars is that. Star Wars is your dessert, but you can.

Speaker 2 50:03

And they, and they advocate all these films that Mr Simon is advocating for that are that, he says, are good for children. They're like yeah, those are wonderful movies too, and children should see those, but it's you can't be so out of touch and be one of these people. It's like oh, you, you know kids, you can't watch that. That's no good, that has no merit. That has no value. You can still enjoy that. You shouldn't let it consume everything, though, and be that. You're, you know, like um. Have you ever seen those interviews with, uh, alec guinness where he talks about the people that that um met him after the fans that came up to him after Star Wars came out? And they're like yeah, I saw the movie like 100 times and he's like you need to stop. You need to stop watching it. You need to move on with your life.

Speaker 1 50:50

And he's deeply affected by this.

Speaker 1 50:54

Well, it's like Alec Guinness. I feel like if you were to show the bridge over River Kwai to a kid, I feel like a kid would enjoy that movie, maybe a particular kind of young boy. I mean. That's an exciting adventure movie. And yeah, I feel like Star Wars has sort of occupied this massive space in our culture where everything tries to be like it. And I mean I just think about myself for the longest time as a young kid being creative, how I was just trying to like make the next star Wars over and over again. You know what I mean and I don't know. I mean I think that Cisco never did an admirable job there arguing on behalf of star Wars, especially at the end when Ebert says was your heart not somewhat touched by Yoda? And he has to kind of admit that, yeah, it was. You know, which is nice.

Speaker 2 51:42

But there's something also about being so out of touch with the huge majority of people on planet Earth at this point. You know it's like yeah who didn't like the original Star Wars trilogy. I mean, you can count them on, you know, a very small minority of people, right, and they're widely considered to be great works of cinema at this point.

Speaker 2 52:05

Yeah, they're, you know it's not Citizen Kane it's not Casablanca, but it exists in its different, in a different, you know area, I think you know. Certainly we're reliving this argument again today and it may be, it should be on display more with Marvel with the current state of Marvel films, where I think I would never have argued for that.

Speaker 2 52:30

When we were getting the initial run of films, you know, pre-marvel studios, for instance, and then even into the initial wave of Iron man, captain America, thor and stuff, I'd say, hey, those are good movies, they're fun, they have something to offer. But now, as we've gotten into phase 25, is it pure just a sugar rush, dopamine rush? Are we just guzzling pixie dust here at this point? What is there to gain from this? So I see his point Absolutely pixie dust here at this point you know, like what, what is?

Speaker 2 52:59

there to gain from this, you know.

Speaker 1 53:01

So, yeah, I see his point Absolutely and I think that maybe criticizing star Wars as films is maybe not the best thing, but to criticize perhaps in its wake, what will be wrought is potentially has more merit, because I think everything he says could be applied perfectly to the these sequel trilogy films. I, I don't think, um, I don't find many young children who are that enamored with the sequel films.

Speaker 1 53:29

it's all people our age, right with you mean the disney ones or the the disney sequel films, yeah I don't know anyone who actually enjoys kids that are super interested in those like kids would have been interested in the original trilogy back in the 80s.

At the Movies Holiday Gift Guide 1989

Speaker 2 53:45

Are kids still actually into Star Wars, though? That's also an interesting point of view.

Speaker 1 53:50

I don't think so People of our age that people, our age, you know, that's it.

Speaker 2 53:55

Yeah, you know, I've always considered myself to be a casual Star Wars. I've always considered myself to be a casual Star Wars. I don't know if I would even describe myself as a fan, for instance. I'm just a casual admirer. I like the original trilogy a lot. I think they're wonderful. I've watched them from time to time every maybe seven, eight years or so and I enjoyed the prequels when they came out as I was coming of age. But I saw the new ones. I had no interest in them whatsoever, you know.

Speaker 1 54:23

Yeah, yeah, I feel you Do you want to switch gears and watch and kind of talk through the holiday gift guide. I haven't watched this yet. Actually I just downloaded that site unseen and I was kind of interested to see. It's from 1989, the holiday gift guide from Cisco and Ebert.

Speaker 2 54:38

I don't think I've seen this one yet.

Speaker 7 54:42

Roger's annual survey of the newest trends in home video, with the latest in electronics video games, home entertainment systems and their picks for the movies and videos you'll want on your list this holiday season.

Speaker 1 54:52

How cool would this have been if you had no access to the internet? Oh, super cool all-American den.

Speaker 8 54:59

Yes, it's the third annual edition of Cisco Niebert's Holiday Video Gift Guide, an hour-long special where we preview and test drive some of the hardware and the software that might make good gifts this holiday season. And this year the most popular electronic video gift under the Christmas tree will probably be the same as last year's favorite the Nintendo Video Game System.

Speaker 5 55:19

This year Nintendo is reaching out to an adult market with new products for home finances, but Gene and I are still catching up with the basic Nintendo system. The popularity of Nintendo systems has made its business so big that toy and department stores apparently aren't big enough to handle the demand. A new franchise system called Captron World of Nintendo is breaking out in shabby malls across the country, and in one of those nintendo outposts gene and I met young experts who were willing to teach us the games, or at least to try. Of course I'll do anything to win as we prepare to play tecmo bowl, a full-fledged football contest.

Speaker 4 55:56

When it goes full like that, you hit A to kick, right Now Now.

Speaker 2 56:01

See, this is what. I love stuff like this it's also about what we were talking about before remaining young at heart.

Speaker 4 56:08

It's like they're willing to give this a try.

Speaker 2 56:10

Yes, they're doing it as part of their show and they're incentivized to do it, but like they look like they're having fun, even though they're probably terrible at it, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 56:18

It wasn't the first time they competed. They played basketball on Letterman's show and Cisco was quite pleased with the fact that he absolutely trounced Roger in athleticism and scoring baskets.

Speaker 2 56:29

What's also great about these holiday video gift guides is that they are a window into the past of capturing all the hype and the height of Nintendo mania and all this the the hype and the height of, you know, nintendo mania and all this stuff like this um. What's also great is the if you've ever seen it is the john stossel report, I think from 2020 um of nintendo mania with um super mario brothers 2 and uh zelda 2 and uh how every, every parent in amer America is trying to get those games for Christmas and you can't get them. Parents are going to every store in the area and then are video games bad for kids and all this stuff. So it's an interesting time capsule to go back.

Speaker 1 57:15

The answer for that is yes, video games are bad for kids. I will go down, for that is yes, video games are bad for kids. I'll go down for that opinion. Come at me.

Speaker 2 57:27

I think things have changed. Yeah, so I would have been hesitant to say that about video games like what we're watching now, which was popular when we were kids at least when I was I played Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo and all that now, and which was popular when when we were kids, at least when I was I played nintendo entertainment system and super nintendo and all that. So, uh, but I can see how modern video games would be much more addictive and absorbing, that you can't get away and it might be detrimental to your mental health or whatever.

Speaker 1 57:52

that's my problem with them is not any sort of like violence. I don't have any, you know, that's not my problem. My problem is that I witnessed firsthand my younger brother who was allowed to have a ps4 or whatever back when, you know, we were kids we my mom would not let me and my younger brother have one, but the youngest brother they kind of skate by the youngest and he got to have one. And I remember like saying, hey, turn that shit off, it's time for dinner. And it's like smego with the fucking ring dude, these kids get so goddamn addicted to this shit. It's unbelievable. I mean, look Twitter, I should stay off that. I'm on that way too much YouTube, you know. But look at Roger, yeah, if it's not one thing.

Speaker 2 58:28

It's something else, though, you know it's just, it's always going to they're always going to be something that is being marketed to kids as the next uh, you know bad influence, but, um, you know this, this is. This shows a softer side to them. They're playing with the kids, they're having a good time. They're asking the kids for the tips you know, and gene's obviously thrilled to have won there.

Speaker 2 58:48

Um, what's also good, in another one they play duck hunt together and gene has the upper hand. Um, and explains to roger how to properly hold the light gun so that he can shoot the ducks. And he's like I went to military school. I have proper training in how to look through the you know the site yes, the site and to shoot the duck, et cetera. It's like it has no bearing on anything, duck hunt, it's like just where you point it.

Speaker 1 59:15

It's like totally fake, yeah, exactly. Exactly no they were so fun to see together. I you miss them, you know.

Speaker 2 59:23

I mean, they were such a fun duo and that's why, when you talk about people that came after them or even ran concurrently with them, it's not about the fighting and the bickering and the you know tit, tit for tat and all that it. There's something to be said about chemistry in terms of you know, for as much as people they never even in the book, they never really want to say they liked each other. They clearly did, they clearly loved each other like as a brotherly love, right, I mean, how can you deny it? There's something, yeah, yeah, and at the same, time.

Speaker 1 59:57

They were never. They were never personally close, I mean, they were never involved in each other's family lives, really.

Speaker 2 1:00:04

No, which is surprising.

Speaker 1 1:00:07

You mentioned the Johnny Carson show. That was the one time they ever hugged. It was right before they went on for Johnny Carson. And then Siskel obviously kept his illness a secret from Ebert and from many other people professionally. What the hell is this? What are they doing here?

Speaker 2 1:00:23

I don't know, because I did not watch this one. I remember seeing this the NES one years ago, but I don't know what we're watching here.

Speaker 1 1:00:32

Okay, this is why we're doing a live stream. This is what people want to see.

Speaker 2 1:00:37

By a gorilla holiday gift card.

Speaker 1 1:00:41

Oh, I thought that gal was Ebert that's holding the gorilla it's not.

Speaker 2 1:00:44

But um, it's interesting yet that they did not mingle. They did not mingle with their family lives. They kept.

Speaker 1 1:00:50

They kept things pretty professional, but you can't work with someone for over close to close to 30 years they, they're not essentially part of your family at that point, right, I mean exactly, and the interesting thing too was to reading the book about their transition from being literary critics to having to become basically a cinematic kind of duo that, had they played their parts well with each other, they understood what they had. I think that becomes more apparent when Ebert is able to finesse his replacements and know what they needed to do and what dynamics needed to play on the show. I remember he mentioned that a lot of the cavalcade of critics that came through as potential replacements for Siskel were far too sycophantic. He made the quote that they felt like they were on the roger ebert show and that that couldn't be how it had to work.

Speaker 2 1:01:46

it had to be that they were adversarial right yeah, and not that richard roper became necessarily adversarial in that regard, but he felt comfortable enough to speak his mind and challenge, challenge back and, unless you know, have his own opinion. He didn't feel beholden to Roger, you know.

Speaker 1 1:02:08

So this is a camera they're promoting here, or something.

Speaker 2 1:02:11

I guess these holiday video gift cards in case people don't know they would showcase not just video games, but they would showcase whatever latest home video technology cameras you know, home theater equipment, what VHS you should buy, et cetera. So they're great in watching them in retrospect, but they're just goofing around taking pictures of your ass and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 1:02:37

Chat's going off. This is that time that ebert got balled by an ape.

Speaker 2 1:02:41

Oh my god okay sad though, um, they're, you know well, I don't want to jump the gun to the end, but they're yeah live sort of tragic turns um truly relatively early. He passed away in his early fifties, early 53. Roger was, was he in his early seventies? Early sixties I think it was? Yeah, it's just, I think it's interesting to go back and look where they're.

Speaker 2 1:03:05

Circle back to the beginning how long they had been working in this industry. I mean, roger Ebert became the film critic for the Chicago Chicago sometimes in 1967. Right, think about that. That's crazy to think about. Roger Ebert became the film critic for the Chicago sometimes in 1967, right, think about that. That's crazy to think. How long ago they started and Siskel came soon after, in 1969 for the Tribune. And then in 1976, they begin their journey to television and they start with that pilot for the WTTV TTW station in Chicago and it's become and it was a total flop. It was a total disaster. The pilot that they shot. They had no skills in front of the camera and you'd never know this by watching them on shows like that. But they were super awkward, they were super weird, like they had no charisma, no charm, no nothing. And a talented producer came in and said I can make you or I can teach you how to be better. And you talk about these people who are, you know, the. The level of hubris of both gene and roger is pretty high.

Speaker 2 1:04:15

Right to be able to yeah truly and say to this producer this producer tells them I can teach you how to be better. And they actually were willing to listen. It was pretty remarkable. And then we go through multiple iterations of the show before we go into the Disney era, which is probably the most well-known.

Speaker 1 1:04:32

Would you like to watch an example of a review? That's one thing we really haven't done on the show is show an example of a review.

Speaker 2 1:04:43

That's one thing we really haven't done on the show is show an example of a review. You want to watch the review for, uh, batman mask of the phantasm? Yes, this I have not seen, so I'm excited to hear what you think. The reason I picked this one I'll tell you why is is they? Well, actually, it speaks for itself. It speaks for itself and then we'll talk about after.

Speaker 8 1:04:57

Freeze. That's the scene from Batman Mask of the Phantasm, a Batman animated feature that was made in 1993, and Roger and I never reviewed it, and as far as I'm concerned, we made a big mistake, because it's terrific. I enjoyed it more than the current Batman adventure that's in theaters and I kind of like that picture. This film, however, is really smart and beautifully drawn and intricately plotted. Obviously, batman lends himself to animation, and just take a look at the Art Deco-influenced drawing style, the classic cartoon drawing style, as we find Batman caught up in a web of love and violence and guilt. Somebody dressed in a bat cape is killing mobsters. It's not Batman, but his name is now being sullied as a killer. I'm telling you, friends, it's vigilantism at its deadliest. How many times are we going to let Batman cross the line.

Speaker 4 1:05:53

I'm sorry, Councilman, but you can't blame Batman for what happened to Chucky Shaw. Why not?

Speaker 8 1:05:58

He's a loose cannon, commissioner. There's more, including the Joker, who frankly was better when Jack Nicholson played him in the first movie, or Cesar Romero in the cartoon show on TV.

Speaker 4 1:06:10

I don't like this Joker's voice. You're too late, batman. There are 20 miles of tunnels under this place and they're all filled with high explosives. In five minutes, everything goes up.

Speaker 8 1:06:25

But it's the drawing style that really distinguishes Batman Mask of the Phantasm. You can really lose yourself in all of these great images as Batman fights against the Phantasm, his deadly imitator. If I were forced to rank all of the Batman movies made in the last few years, I'd rank this one, this animated one, just under the first live-action Batman from Tim Burton. I wish Warner Brothers would produce more animated features from this same production team. Sorry we caught up with this picture a couple years late, but it's available on tape and disc. I watch it at home on Laserdisc and with a booming surround sound system. Batman Mask of the Phantasm was big-time entertainment. I really liked it.

Speaker 5 1:07:19

You know, I think that the day is coming and it's also happening with the Disney pictures when adults are realizing that animation is not limited to an entertainment form for children and that animation can do some things live-action can't do. For example, the sets of the city in this movie are seen more clearly than they are in the live-action movies where they get kind of murky.

Speaker 5 1:07:39

The exaggeration of the effects and of the camera angles can be stretched and perspective can be played with in a way that isn't available in the real world. And then also here it's interesting that they really did have a story more of a story than the movies and the characters and they pause and they think and and they have feelings and motivations and you get involved in it I got completely involved in it and also it's tight.

Speaker 8 1:08:01

It's 77 minutes long. Every image counts. Remember they're spending more money in animation maybe per minute than they are in some live action pictures, and they're very economically done so you saw batman forever and you still want to see some batman?

Speaker 2 1:08:16

try renting this right coming up next that was great um what I really liked is that he starts off right in the beginning.

Speaker 2 1:08:25

Hey, we missed this one. We made a big, big mistake because we probably thought this was some stupid kids movie, that who cares? Batman, you know. And um, now, now Batman Forever has come out and movies like OK, but hey, there's this other movie that we totally overlooked and you should actually go out and look, look this one up, and what else would you do? He advocates for the Laserdisc to watch it in the best possible quality at home. He's telling you hey, warner Brothers, can you make more content from this production team? I totally agree with that. Um, and you know, obviously his opinion on the joker's voice is controversial because mark hamill was.

Speaker 1 1:09:07

You know, everyone loves mark hamill's the joker yeah, poor mark hamill that he hears that they did a great review on cisco and ebert and he's the one part that got slagged and Siskel and Ebert, and he's the one part that got slagged.

Speaker 2 1:09:20

Yeah, but, um, you know, to each his own and they have a, they have a nice. They treat this as a real movie. They don't treat this as a, you know, stupid movie for kids. I'm sure Mr Simon, who we watched in the previous clip, would have, you know, not like this movie. He would still find fault with it, even though it's a very mature, um, you know, thought provoking movie for children that can be enjoyed by adults. I mean, I'm no, no shame in saying I went and saw the theatrical re-release of batman mask the phantasm last month. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I've seen it many, many times. It's one of my favorite movies and, uh, you know, whatever you know, so be it guy watched it within the past six months.

Speaker 1 1:09:58

Actually, I thought it was very engaging. I liked it. Wellness check for Mark Hamill. Check his Twitter. I'm sure he's still. He's still thriving, but no, that's a great example of like their reviews and also how they could be advocates for films that were forgotten. I mean, I know Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory say that without them, my Dinner with Andre would not have taken off like it did. They saw it later in the run and promoted it and it blew up.

Speaker 2 1:10:29

And then, of course, Poop Dreams being the one that gets talked about the most. Have you seen that? I have not seen that.

Speaker 1 1:10:36

No, I haven't either, but I really want to. I've seen my Dinner with Andre and I would actually highly recommend my Dinner with Andre. It's the first podcast ever made. It's the first video podcast. Okay, If anyone's seen it, they know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 1:10:53

Interesting. You bring up podcast because imagine if they were still around today. The entire medium that they created, the entire ecosystem that they created, is now obsolete. But how much more would they have been able to do and continue to innovate had they lived into the online era and done, you know, youtube podcasting. Imagine what great work would have come out of them from from that era.

Reviewing the Reviewers: Their Legacy and Endings

Speaker 1 1:11:23

It's really when you think about it because you know I brought up earlier how cool it was to be able to see clips on television in an era before the internet. But now in our time, when I watch the old reviews, I go cut the clips. I want to hear what you guys have to say. It's kind of frustrating if you watch it.

Speaker 2 1:11:39

Yeah, I fast forward through the clips most of the time when I watch the reviews. And you had mentioned about the archive not being available and that's really sad because when I was talking about how I got into it years ago when I was probably in high school-ish was on their official website. They did have an extensive back catalog online going back to the beginning of the at the movies era and you could just search whatever movie you wanted and it would pop up and of course, that got taken down after their syndication deal ended after the uh, phillips and scott era. But it's just sad that and a lot of the ones on YouTube have an interesting framing device where someone put them in a you know, a fake TV set. You have to watch it like microscopically.

Speaker 1 1:12:26

Yeah, I don't understand what that's about.

Speaker 2 1:12:28

I don't know.

Speaker 1 1:12:30

Yeah, that's. I didn't understand what that was about. Maybe the guy thought that the aspect that the quality was so bad he wanted to shrink it down. I guess um, also another thing I'd like to you know, sort of mark cisco and ebert as as far as innovations go, is that we all know how popular like they hate trashing, like um giving something a terrible review. Sort of um industry is on youtube and was with, like I think, the advent of something like the nostalgia critic or like red letter media. But I would say that, like cisco and ebert were the first guys to pioneer the idea of, like the memeable trashing of a movie. Right, I mean they're. If you look up like roger e and Siskel, a lot of the clips are like the movies they hated the most, or like they trashed these movies Right, and they could be very enjoyable to watch. I'm trying to download right now their review of the film yes, giorgio, which is very entertaining. I mean they were great. Just they were. They were excellent. It's just at scorching things sometimes.

Speaker 2 1:13:38

Oh, they were great, they were excellent. It's just scorching things sometimes. Oh yeah, absolutely. Another good one is, I think, the worst of 1995. And they talk about the remake of the Scarlet Letter and how they tried to make it into a heartwarming movie. And then Siskel comes in at the end and he's like and you forgot the worst sin of all.

Speaker 1 1:13:57

It's like they changed the ending.

Speaker 2 1:13:58

And it's like oh, my God.

Speaker 1 1:14:01

Yeah, they were good man. I'm sorry I don't think I'm going to be able to get the clip for S Giorgio downloaded. But, boy, I'm out of clips. Ryan, you got anything else you want to cover on Siskel and Ebert.

Speaker 2 1:14:14

Let me see. Was there anything else that? Oh well, I think we should just talk about you know, uh, how things ended up. I mean Gene Siskel. It was very sad that, uh, he was basically diagnosed with brain cancer. Um, in the in the late 1990s he was having you know bouts of, he was having you know, a severe headache, and I found it quite moving reading about it in the book.

Speaker 2 1:14:39

Where they're on backstage at the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Jay would always come back and hang out with them before the show, which was a big departure from the way Carson and Letterman treated their guests. Letterman was apparently very aloof, he did not like to mingle with the guests. He liked to keep the relationship professional so that when it was on screen it was like real. And then Carson was a, you know, totally different animal altogether. But Lena would come back and chit chat with them and Gene was just a mess. He was completely in severe pain, he, but he was a professional. He plowed through the appearance on the show and apparently even went to a basketball game afterwards.

Speaker 2 1:15:22

The next day he was apparently diagnosed with brain cancer, underwent, you know, multiple underwent brain surgery, still continued to try and 98, I think into 99, perhaps early 99. I mean, he looks worn out, he does not look like he's a well man and ultimately passes away, but kept his illness very secret, even from Roger. And it's sad because, you know, as close as they were, he did not feel comfortable disclosing this. And there's a moment where they someone from Gene's family calls up Roger and says you know, if you want to see him, you need to see him now because he's not coming back to work in the future and he ultimately, I don't think. I don't think Roger and his wife made it to see him based on that, they said.

Speaker 2 1:16:19

But the time that they were going to go visit him he was, he was gone. Um, which is quite sad. And then Roger's uh, ending is is even more tragic because he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer which then metastasized to his salivary gland and underwent multiple, multiple surgeries and procedures to, to you know, remove it, correct it. And then I did not. I knew about all that from the time that it was happening.

Speaker 2 1:16:47

I remember reading about it oh, ebert's going in for another surgery, he's going to be absent from the show, etc. Etc. I did not know about the event where his carotid artery ruptured after one of these surgeries and it was a complete disaster. I mean, that was, that was incredible. I did not know about that. And then ultimately he loses his ability to speak. And think about how tragic that is for someone who built their career off being on television speaking for a living.

Speaker 1 1:17:17

It's the same for Siskel too, because he was losing his ability to articulate based on the brain tumor pressing on his brain. So it's like both these poor guys, in this tragic twist of ironic fate, their best gifts were taken away from them. It's very sad. I mean, ebert had the opportunity, I think, to catalog and narrativize his decline, uh, in a very sort of inspiring way. Right, I mean, like guy didn't give up, you know, and I remember at the time it was happening the innovation of his sort of for lack of a better phraseology his stephen hawking kind of like communication device, how the company that made it for him took all of the video clips from at the movies and sneak previews and was able to make a catalog of him saying particular words that he could string together on a video device that would make it sound like his voice. I mean it was very interesting.

Speaker 2 1:18:13

And imagine nowadays, with AI technology, that they would be able to fully replicate his voice and he could be able to speak. I mean it's sad, but also just the disfigurement of his face too. Yeah, it's tragic. I mean, the poor guy had met to the jaw, had to have part of his jawbone removed. I mean this is just it's like worst case scenario there. This is just it's like worst case scenario there. Um, and then you know not to obviously less, less, uh, impactful on a comparative level. But I mean richard roper's left holding the bag for this legacy in this show, this, this guy who was, you know, I'm here, I'm taking over, I'm the, I'm the protege, I'm, you know, taking over for gene, and now suddenly he has to fill the shoes of, of everyone and he's now having a rotating cast of critics. And how long can he keep the show on his back, on his shoulders? You know, it's kind of like, you know hey, and Roper I've always liked.

Speaker 1 1:19:08

I always thought he was good with Roger. I like him. I think he worked as sort of like a because he was younger, you know, I feel like he had better, uh, beat on the pulse of like what was going on and what was hip maybe, than roger did at the time. Um for sure, you know, I didn't have a clip. I was gonna play a clip, maybe earlier on, but I don't, I don't have one. Have you seen beyond the valley of the dolls, the one film that roger ebert wrote the screenplay for?

Speaker 2 1:19:31

not yet I, I I just watched valley of the dolls and I have beyond next to watch. Oh dude, it's Valley of the Dolls and I have Beyond next to watch.

Speaker 1 1:19:38

Oh, dude, it's one of the most entertaining films ever made and people gave Roger a hard time for that because every time he wrote a bad review they'd say, oh, you wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. But it's a tremendously entertaining, fascinating movie. And I actually have the clip here of yes Giorgio, one of their more famous takedowns, which I've never seen the film yes Giorgio. Yes Giorgio, one of their more famous takedowns which I've never seen the film yes Giorgio. But I think they put the nail in the coffin here on that movie for me. But this will give you a good example of how fun and off-the-cuff and entertaining these guys could be when they were reviewing films.

Speaker 8 1:20:11

It's a pleasure to present, if not the worst movie of the year, at least this the worst movie dialogue of the year, and it comes in the film called yes Giorgio, with opera star Luciano Pavarotti making his film debut and maybe his film farewell, playing an Italian tenor on tour in America.

Speaker 4 1:20:27

Brutal.

Speaker 8 1:20:28

It falls for a pretty Boston doctor, Catherine Harold. In this memorable scene, Pavarotti, playing a singer known as Giorgio Fini, tries to convince Catherine Harold to accompany him to San Francisco. The great line of dialogue comes at the end of the scene.

Speaker 3 1:20:42

Last night I could not sleep until I know what to do about Pamela. Then, all at once, I know what I must do.

Speaker 1 1:20:54

A ticket to San Francisco. Si Come, carissima, the plane leaves in 45 minutes.

Speaker 5 1:21:01

Oh, no, no, no, no, thank you. That's a very generous offer, in fact the nicest I've had all day. But in case you've forgotten, you're a married man with two children.

Speaker 4 1:21:12

And I love my wife and my family and we have a wonderful life together. But my private life is my own. Do me a favor, Giorgio Go to the airport, get on that plane and fly out of my life forever.

Speaker 6 1:21:25

Do you think I do this for my own pleasure? Believe me, I do this for your own good.

Speaker 2 1:21:31

Believe me is for a fling no.

Speaker 5 1:21:34

These two, but more more. Please just leave me out of your fantasies. Leave is no fantasy this ticket is real.

Speaker 3 1:21:42

I am real, pamela you are a thirsty plant. Phoenix can water you. I don't want to be watered on by phoenix. Who can blame?

Speaker 5 1:21:52

her who would want to be watered on by Feeney.

Speaker 8 1:21:57

Who can blame her? Who would want to be watered on by Feeney? Wouldn't you have loved to have been on the set when they were shooting that scene and maybe would have said you know, try and write this one again.

Speaker 5 1:22:06

I wonder if anybody on the set realized that it was going to get all these bad laughs and then I hope that they thought it was funny, because if they didn't, they're really dumb.

Speaker 1 1:22:16

I also had some more questions when I watched it. Yeah, so these guys were very good. I mean, no one would remember yes, giorgio, if it weren't for them.

Speaker 2 1:22:23

No, Now I want to watch it.

Speaker 1 1:22:26

I kind of do too. I kind of am fascinated about, like what the fuck is this movie about? I'm sure there's a Blu-ray collector's edition probably from Kino Vitiger, probably from vitigar, syndrome. Yeah, yeah, arrow video yeah I'm sure there is key.

Speaker 2 1:22:42

I'm sure, maybe keno lorber has one. I guarantee yeah, probably. Um, but um, let's see what else. Um. The final um attempt by ebert to resurrect the the entire idea came in the early 2010s Are you familiar with this?

Speaker 2 1:23:01

When they brought it back to PBS after the cancellation of the movies, and they brought it with Christy Lemire, who was the film critic for the Associated Press. So I'm a big admirer of her work and her career. She's a pretty fair and interesting critic. And then a relative newcomer at the time, a, uh, a guy named ignati vishnavetsky who was like from some on online website called booby, and it was um, it had a good, it had a good idea behind it, but I don't think there was again. I don't think there's any chemistry between the two of them.

Speaker 2 1:23:37

Um, it's, um, sometimes, in my opinion, he seemed a little too pretentious or a little too, um, you know, high intellectual, for for the purposes of the show, um seemed like a nice guy, but like it, just, it just didn't work. Um, christy lemire, though, I do agree she's, she's a great, she's a great critic. Um her. She has a show online too with another critic, uh, alonzo duralde, I think it's. It just didn't work. Christy Lemire, though, I do agree she's a great critic. She has a show online too with another critic.

Speaker 6 1:24:04

Alonzo Duralde, I think it's.

Speaker 2 1:24:05

Breakfast All Day or something like that Check it out for the audience. But what was fascinating about that about why it did not last though and I'm sure it would have improved over time as the hosts get used to each other and all that is that ebert and his wife were funding the entire show on their own. They were not getting funded by public broadcasting, so it was like unreasonable for them to be able to shell out all the money for this, so it's sad that that kind of ended, and then he unfortunately passed away not long after. And then he unfortunately passed away not long after, and that was the end.

Speaker 1 1:24:38

But I think that they left an indelible mark on the idea of criticism and I don't think that you would have the kind of YouTube criticism galut, I suppose in a negative way, but I mean in a positive way. Would we be around if it wasn't for them, you and me?

Speaker 2 1:24:57

No, I mean, I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think 90% of online YouTubers who are doing movie reviews would be around if not for the legacy of Siskel and Ebert.

Speaker 1 1:25:09

I'll leave it up to the chat here. But who's the Roger and who's the Gene of this duo? Here I'll let people roll in and say who's who. But anybody have any questions? Gene of this duo here I'll let people roll in and say who's who. Anybody have any questions?

Speaker 2 1:25:24

We actually had not a bad turnout for this.

Speaker 1 1:25:27

Yeah, I agree 19 people watching.

Speaker 2 1:25:30

Okay, that's pretty good.

Speaker 2 1:25:34

Any other thoughts, if anyone else is wondering, I highly recommend the book Opposable Thumbs the history of Cisco and Ebert. It's, it's, it's a really, really. It's an easy read, it goes through. I mean, think about it like reading. I don't want to sound denigrating, but like, think about it like reading the Wikipedia article about Cisco and Ebert, but like much more well-researched and well-rounded and encapsulating everything. Encapsulating everything you would want to know from every media appearance they ever did. Especially, I thought also great were the parts in the beginning which was Siskel before Ebert and Ebert before Siskel, to get a sense about what their lives were like. I do agree with Trumbling Colors. I get two votes.

Speaker 2 1:26:18

I'm Jean, I'm, I'm an Uber? Uh, I think so, and you're? You're a Cisco.

Speaker 1 1:26:24

Got it.

Speaker 2 1:26:25

Oh, fair, but um check out the book If if anyone's interested.

Speaker 1 1:26:38

I thought it was the.

Speaker 2 1:26:38

the author Matt Singer does the audio book is nice job, and it's interesting Cause I remember you you mentioned that you saw the author do an interview on on one of the morning shows and I saw that as well and I remember at the time thinking like do we really need this book? Like what are you going to? What are are you going to write about that we don't know? And then when I actually read it, I was very pleasantly surprised and surprised at how informative, and I learned a lot of new stuff too along the way.

Speaker 1 1:27:03

Yeah, he does a nice job. It's like a really good YouTube essay in book form yes.

Speaker 2 1:27:09

Yeah, oh interesting comment here about Godzilla 98.

Speaker 1 1:27:13

Oh right.

Speaker 2 1:27:15

There's, I think, Mayor Ebert and his assistant gene. Is that correct?

Speaker 1 1:27:20

that's right. And you know what, if you watch the review for godzilla that they do, it's a great review because they weren't upset or offended or mad, or at least didn't show that they were. But they made a great point about the movie, which is they were like well, you have us as the villains. How come the godzilla never steps on us? They're like and that fed into their point that they were like well, you have us as the villains.

Speaker 2 1:27:38

How come the Godzilla?

Speaker 1 1:27:39

never steps on us. They're like and that fed into their point that they were like the movie never pays off on all the things that sets up. It's like you have us as the bad guys. Godzilla never kills us.

Speaker 2 1:27:52

I was like you know why they were doing. That is because the producers of the movie probably thought they're going to how stupid they were. They thought they were going to curry favor with them by having them in the movie and saying they'll recommend it. I mean they don't know that at all.

Speaker 1 1:28:03

if that's the case, I thought that was what's his name, roland Emmerich dumping on Ebert and Siskel by making Ebert the sort of like incompetent mayor and Gene was his doting assistant.

Speaker 2 1:28:17

Projection much.

Speaker 1 1:28:19

Exactly.

Speaker 2 1:28:29

Total joke nowadays. Alright, do you want?

Speaker 1 1:28:31

to leave it there, or do you have any other final thoughts? I don't, I'm going to have to get up a little bit early tomorrow. If you don't mind, I'd take some questions from the chat if we have anybody who wants to ask anything. Absolutely You've been doing well. You're good, right. You're doing well, right.

Speaker 2 1:28:48

Yeah, yeah, things are good.

Speaker 1 1:28:49

I like that vest man, that's a nice vest.

Speaker 2 1:28:51

Oh, thank you. Yeah, I mean again trying to emulate the Roger Ebert style here. I don't have the full-on sweater vest like he would wear back in the day.

Speaker 1 1:29:07

Something incredibly cozy about the sneak previews PBS portion of the show with the nice 70s sweater, vests and plaid. I mean it's nice and cozy.

Speaker 2 1:29:11

It's also interesting.

Speaker 1 1:29:13

The choice of fashion for the show was described as what people would wear to the theater, which I remember, I remember hearing that I'm like wow, yeah, now anymore, everyone just looks like absolute dog shit I mean, if only we could go back, you know, I know, I've been on that. Saw for a while people look like shit.

Speaker 2 1:29:29

But like you know, um, yeah, I mean, I'm guilty. I'm guilty of that myself, but you know what? What can you do? I live in Florida.

Speaker 1 1:29:42

There is a site that collects the shows.

Speaker 2 1:29:44

Please share that with us, that would be great to know.

Speaker 1 1:29:48

Thank you, Leo Tolstoy.

Speaker 2 1:29:51

Were there any other good comments? Let's see.

Speaker 1 1:29:54

There were some good comments. This was a very active audience. Good show, you did a nice job. Um, let's see, there were some good comments. This was a very active audience. Good show, you did a nice job as the history guy moving us through the the narrative there. I appreciate, thank you.

Speaker 2 1:30:05

You know, I felt I needed to uh bring um my a game.

Speaker 1 1:30:08

After that, jalo uh a live stream where we were we got stepped on by jay, like I mean in a good way, in a good way, I mean it was.

Speaker 2 1:30:16

It was super impressed by his encyclopedic level of knowledge. I was like, oh, let me at least have something in my arsenal here didn't you felt?

Speaker 1 1:30:25

didn't you feel like you were outgunned, like you were a fraud? I felt like I knew nothing yeah, like, why do I even have a youtube channel? Like I get to talk, like anyone should care and like this guy fucking has seen every goddamn movie on the planet and he's like 22 years old I know it's crazy, but I mean, that was a great conversation, though I agree, the guy.

Speaker 1 1:30:46

Guy really was smart and I was. I was really intrigued that you hear his opinion and his answers because it was kind of like just having a you know wikipedia, just you know he was great, just you know, he was great.

Speaker 2 1:30:57

That's what I really enjoyed about that, too, was being able to ask him questions. What do you, what's your opinion on this? I hey, I've I've read about this and I've heard about this. Do you, do you agree with that? And he had interesting answers to those questions.

Speaker 1 1:31:12

Yeah yeah, People ask me shit and I'm like you know, let me formulate something that sounds smart. This guy had it down. I mean, I asked him anything and he was great. One thing I noticed watching old episodes Gene would often positively point out nudity and eroticism in films, as stuffy as he could come off. He loved some sleeves from time to time. Absolutely, I think that Gene is the guy that went to bat for movies of a more b-level grade than roger and I. Weirdly, roger always went to bat for like shitty kids movies like home alone, three yes you know that's a famous review.

Final Thoughts on Their Cultural Impact

Speaker 2 1:31:47

Um yeah, gene was uh, gene had the horny, he had the horny what my my always like my initial impression of them, if you just think about them on a surface level, is you think about Gene as being a stuffy, normie guy who shouldn't be into more weird genres. Roger seems like the weirdo who's into sci-fi horror. I'm not talking about reality, I'm talking about you. Looking at these two guys sitting in the balcony, roger seems like the kind of weirdo guy that would be into sci-fi, horror all the most underground stuff and Gene seems like more of a lofty normie guy. But that's not the impression that you actually get from watching them and seeing their opinions on different stuff. They had very versatile opinions on many different genres and they were willing to keep an open mind about everything, which is which is also part of why they're so successful.

Speaker 1 1:32:45

Yeah, and I think I think we need to mention that that Roger was a very out and proud breast guy.

Speaker 6 1:32:51

Yes.

Speaker 1 1:32:51

He spoke about that multiple times. He also wrote the film beyond the valley of the dolls which I wonder if he had a hand in casting.

Speaker 2 1:33:04

But is a, is a stacked for lack of a better term film. Also, if you want to get a real um sense of behind the curtain of what they're like, you should watch the episodes where they're on howard stern very, yes, very revealing about, like opening up their own sexual proclivities? Yes, not for this purpose of this broadcast, but go look that up on your own that's also a great clip on when Roger was solo on Conan.

Speaker 2 1:33:32

there's a great exchange where Conan's like so, correct me if I'm wrong, In the 70s you used to review porn movies, right? And he's like yes.

Speaker 1 1:33:45

Yeah, I did. That's funny. Russ Meyer, yeah, there was actually for a long time. I remember there was a movie that was going to get made called Russ and Roger and roger go beyond. That never got made, which was supposed to be the behind the scenes story of the making of beyond, the valley of the dolls, and I think that will ferrell was producing it, but it hasn't seen the light of day. Um, but I remember people talking about that happening. Um, we also have tolstoy here making a good point. That gene was a huge kubrick fan but died about two weeks before kub. I think he means to say Eyes Wide Shut, which I actually just watched, the review of Eyes Wide Shut, where Ebert had on four other critics who all have really interesting and succinct things to say about Stanley Kubrick's legacy. Oh, interesting.

Speaker 2 1:34:30

I have not seen that review.

Speaker 1 1:34:33

Yeah, Eyes Wide Shut is a pretty good movie. I love that film.

Speaker 2 1:34:36

Do you have any other major critics that you're, um, you know, admirer of, or fan of, or saw on as substitute critics or anything like that that you follow?

Speaker 1 1:34:45

just curious that's a really good question. So I I I like reading um pauline kale reviews, partly because I don't I can never predict what she's going to like, but I always found her defenses of brian de palma to be very interesting, partly because I don't I can never predict what she's going to like, but I always found her defenses of Brian De Palma to be very interesting. And another critic I like I mean these aren't professional newspaper critics but Jack Mason, a guy called the Perfume Nationalist on Twitter. I think maybe you guys know who I'm talking about. I think he's an excellent critic. Again, I don't line up with him from time to time. Sometimes his reasoning as to why he dislikes or likes things is sort of I don't understand, but I find him an interesting read.

Speaker 1 1:35:25

And then I think maybe one of the best working sort of critics today is probably Brett Easton Ellis. If you guys listen to his podcast, he's an excellent critic and a guy who does terrific work. He's an excellent critic and a guy who does terrific work, you know, on his podcast, the Brady Stenell Show. One thing that really that Ellis really opened me up to was the idea of being able to be a critic and talk about things in the film that you like that don't necessarily. That maybe would seem untoward to say. Or like he's a gay man. So he'll often say like, oh, you can tell at this time that richard gear, he reviews american, american gigolo, a film that you recently watched, right, and he talks about sort of like the social impact of richard gear's sexuality and how he gauges the kind of sexuality he is, and, um, it's really fascinating. I mean, uh, that's a great movie. Um, so I, those are two guys I really admire and like to uh read interesting, so so, so, oh so.

Speaker 1 1:36:24

Not the critical drinker then no no, not the critical trigger I didn't know yeah, this guy's got a great point. Jem jen, this, this woman, uh, is there a printed book of Ebert's entire written film reviews? No, but there are compendiums and also Roger Ebert's books. He has like three volumes of his top 300 favorite movies and all of those are terrific. Those are three great books that everybody should have. If you're a film fan, they're excellent.

Speaker 2 1:36:52

Actually there's four, the great movies, up to four.

Speaker 1 1:36:54

There's also your Movie Sucks by Roger Ebert. Actually there's four, the Great Movies up to four, yeah there's up to four.

Speaker 2 1:36:59

Okay, I only have the first three.

Speaker 1 1:37:00

There's also your Movie.

Speaker 2 1:37:02

Sucks by.

Speaker 1 1:37:03

Roger Ebert Right, yeah, I haven't read that. There are a lot of old critics that I want to get into. I know I'm trying to remember Boy. It seemed like they were sort of very interesting in the in the 70s where you had critics that kind of like were able to make sort of a personality out of themselves. A book, uh ao, scott's book better living through criticism, I thought was interesting.

Speaker 2 1:37:29

oh I didn't know he wrote. Okay, I definitely will check that out because I'm a big fan of his um, not only from his time on at the movies but reading his. His New York Times reviews are quite enlightening and informative. I really enjoy this, more so than the other Times critics I mean Manola Dargis here and there. Sometimes she gets a little annoying about like kind of hating on everything except the most high in the sky. You know artsy, fartsy stuff around, everything except the most high in the sky. You know artsy, fartsy stuff around. And you know Scott can be pretty fair about mainstream stuff and appreciating it for what it is and also going for you know what is, you know what, what is this.

Speaker 1 1:38:09

I bought Ebert's a rice cooker cookbook just to read.

Speaker 2 1:38:13

He did cookbooks.

Speaker 7 1:38:14

Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:38:15

Yeah, um, especially after he lost his speech ability, he was just writing and doing everything. Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:38:22

The pot and how to use it. The mystery and romance of the rice cooker.

Speaker 2 1:38:29

Yeah, oh, his website. By the way, his website now is taking on a new life of its own, rogerebercom. But back in the day, when he was still alive, rogeriebercom was a big inspiration to me as well.

Speaker 2 1:38:41

I used to spend a lot of time on there archives going back all the way to the 60s, his stuff, um. And then he had a blog as well with a lot of his you know personal thoughts and you know he strayed outside of you know um, movies and stuff like that and sometimes it wasn't to my taste but, um, it was still interesting. He had a, he had a very, um, unique perspective and point of view on a lot of different issues, so it was always interesting to read. Uh, did you ever look at any?

Speaker 2 1:39:12

clips did you ever look up any of the clips of the substitute critics from sneak previews and at the movies afterwards? I I this is something that I just started going down the rabbit hole and it's it's like, it's fascinating, like almost like imposter syndrome going on here with they're sitting in the the exact same seats with the same sets and it's like, did we pull a switcheroo here? What's what's going on with Neil Gabler and Jeffrey Lyons?

Speaker 1 1:39:41

Yeah, I've not watched many of those, but I will.

Speaker 2 1:39:45

Yeah, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot archived out there. I think if any of all of them, Neil Gabler is probably the one that I feel the most is probably the best of them all.

Speaker 1 1:39:59

Oh, I read his Walt Disney book.

Speaker 2 1:40:01

I was just going to say his Disney book is fantastic as well, so he definitely has the chops and the film history aspect to it. Jeffrey Lyons doesn't do much for me, to be honest, and Ben Lyons, of course, was a total joke on his version Got it Also, it's sad though that iteration with Ben Mankiewicz, who I'm a pretty big fan of as well. Host on Turner Classic Movies.

Speaker 4 1:40:29

You don't like.

Speaker 2 1:40:30

Ben, you don't like Mankiewicz, he's okay.

Speaker 1 1:40:33

He's cool.

Speaker 4 1:40:33

He's a cool guy.

Speaker 2 1:40:35

He's a cool guy.

Speaker 1 1:40:36

I really like him on TCM. I did a whole video on this on TCM and their aesthetic, and I think he's okay.

Speaker 2 1:40:50

I like him, but I'm just saying on that when he came on to at the movies he felt like totally unprepared or not ready for prime time at that. At that point, um, I think maybe a few years later he would have been ready for it or had the the, you know media training and experience to do it, but also his the, the pairing of him with with lines was just not there's nothing to work with.

Speaker 1 1:41:15

There's nothing to work with okay, well, uh, I'm gonna call it a night. Brother, got anything else to close it up?

Speaker 2 1:41:26

no, I don't think so. I think we we had a good discussion um.

Speaker 1 1:41:30

I agree that was fun.

Speaker 2 1:41:31

Oh, that's a good comment yes, I remember on on the Youngks years ago they used to have what the flick and that was christy with, with mankiewicz and the guy from rotten tomatoes and somebody else. Alonzo alonzo was on there too. That was a good show. That was a really, really good review show and it just I don't know how wide ended, but it did and and but, but I used to watch it all the time.

Speaker 1 1:41:58

Remember that guy who was the film critic for the Onion?

Speaker 2 1:42:02

I did not.

Speaker 1 1:42:03

Oh, ok, never mind.

Speaker 2 1:42:05

Was he real?

Speaker 1 1:42:06

No, he was one.

Speaker 2 1:42:07

We have another comment. It was odd to see Scorsese and Jay Leno on the show. Yes, but it's cool.

Speaker 1 1:42:14

It's cool. Yeah, it's Scorsese. Come on, dude, but it's cool. It's cool, yeah, it's course. Says he come on dude. The guy is awesome. He's a great critic. I mean you guys have watched the uh pbs a journey through american movies with scorsese, right, I mean that's like one of the best things ever.

Speaker 2 1:42:24

I listen to that all the time yes, I do like ben manquist, sorry, you know, um, but anyway, uh, there's also. You should look up the guest spot with, uh, john millen camp on at the movies with Richard Roper. Really pretty, pretty weird, pretty wild.

Speaker 1 1:42:40

Well, I always. I always liked when on TCM they have a celebrity on. I think that's fun. Yeah, do you like the? You know they have somebody on to to like guest host and guest program at that school.

Speaker 2 1:42:51

Coppola was on recently. Was he not for mega? Was recently, was he not for mega. Was he really on tcm? Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1 1:43:01

Oh, I don't have tcm anymore so um, I just got it back because I got youtube tv so okay, I have it, so now I have it okay, everybody some respect for me with with your tone there. Impossible, impossible, no.

Speaker 2 1:43:17

We got to have those heated Siskel and Ebert arguments here, you know.

Speaker 1 1:43:22

No, guys, come on.

Speaker 2 1:43:24

Defending me. You know I'll defend Ben I don't care, he's okay, he's okay.

Speaker 1 1:43:32

No, guys, trust me, our resolve as co-hosts has never been stronger. Thanks, brother, this was fun.

Speaker 2 1:43:43

Okay, what are we up to next? Is Night Gallery next on our list?

Speaker 1 1:43:48

Sorry, I still have a little bit of a head cold here, but let's settle on Night Gallery as the next one.

Speaker 2 1:43:53

I am super excited for this. This is a great show. I hope we need to get it done before Halloween for sure.

Speaker 1 1:44:01

Absolutely. Yeah, we will. We got time. This was a good one to squeeze in here from my undisclosed location on the road, so appreciate it, guys. What the hell is this and how did I get here? Well, sorry bro, don't forget to like and subscribe. Sorry bro, don't forget to like and subscribe.

Speaker 2 1:44:14

Can't help you there. Sorry, you missed a great show. Have a good night everyone.

Speaker 1 1:44:18

See ya.