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You wild, beautiful thing. You crazy handful of nothin’

Roger Ebert

That’s the hard-boiled Dragline, speaking of Cool Hand Luke.

After she read my obituary of Paul Newman, my wife Chaz asked me, “Why didn’t you write more about his acting?” She was right. Why didn’t I? I’ve been asking myself that. Maybe I was trying to tell myself something. I think it was this: I never really thought of him as an actor. I regarded him more as an embodiment, an evocation, of something. And I think that something was himself. He seemed above all a deeply good man, who freed himself to live life fully and joyfully, and used his success as a way to follow his own path, and to help others.

I wonder if this will work

Roger Ebert

“Nobody on the web has figured out how to make any money,” I said one day before a screening at the Sundance Film Festival. I was talking to another movie critic whose reviews were also online.

“My wife has,” said a voice behind me. I turned around and saw a robust man in a ski sweater who seemed to be bursting with things to tell me.

“Your wife?” I said.

“She has a Web site that’s making a lot of money.”

“Who is she?”

“Her name on the Web is Danni Ashe.”

Danni Ashe! The name rang more than a bell. Danni Ashe, proprietor of Danni’s Hard Drive One of those few webmasters capable of taking their shirts off without driving down the hit count.

Outguess Ebert on the Oscars

Roger Ebert