Half a century ago, a low budget Chicago public television station invited the film critics from the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune to talk about the movies opening each week. Producer Thea Flaum invited Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel to host what was originally called “Opening Soon at a Theatre Near You.” When Siskel asked why he should do the show, Flaum told StartTV, “I said to him that if we did this right, before it was finished, our series would become the most popular half-hour series with the highest ratings on public television. And it did.”
People loved the show because of the movie clips and the advice about what they should see and what they should skip, and because Siskel and Ebert often took the time to cover small films they might not have known about. An episode that meant a lot to me featured a documentary called “Gates of Heaven,” about a pet cemetery. My only idea of documentaries was the ones we saw in school about science or history. Their review opened up a world to me of documentaries made with singular visions about ordinary people.
Audiences loved “Siskel & Ebert” because it taught them what to look for in movies, what made them work, and how they told stories. For many, it was their first exposure to serious conversations about movies.
And most of all, they loved the arguments. Ebert and Siskel worked for rival newspapers and they were often combative. It was a lot of fun to hear sharp-witted sparring from people who were opinionated, vastly knowledgeable and even more vastly competitive. When movies were good, Ebert and Siskel were very, very good, but quite often when movies were bad, or when they disagreed, they were better. Someone even made a compilation of their most lively arguments. The series inspired Matt Singer’s wonderful book, Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever.
Siskel and Ebert became stars in their own right, appearing on “Saturday Night Live,” late night talk shows, and being parodied in MAD Magazine by artist Sam Viviano. I was there when they spoke together at the National Press Club in Washington DC, and the entire video is well worth watching.
Filmmakers could not resist some punching back. Siskel and Ebert did not like the cliche of fruit carts getting knocked over in chase scenes. So in “Police Academy 6: City Under Siege,” a character in a chase scenes calls out, “Look out for Gene and Roger’s fruit stand!” And in the 1998 version of “Godzilla,” the mayor is named Ebert and his aide is named Gene.
Here are some of our favorite moments from the show that later became “Sneak Previews,” and then “Siskel & Ebert At the Movies.”
It’s a lot of fun to go back and take a look at the very modest first episode, where they talk about a movie that would go on to sweep the top five Oscars.
Here’s a clip from behind the scenes, with some barbed ribbing.
Roger Ebert’s reaction to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia,” with guest co-host Joyce Kulhawik
The movie that inspired the title of Ebert’s I Hated Hated Hated This Movie book.
Siskel and Ebert were equally engaged in every kind of movie, even a Daffy Duck short.
Their run-down and take-down of the worst movies of the 2000s.
Another Oscar-winner, the “just about perfect movie,” according to Roger Ebert, “Fargo”
