So many gems in Roger Ebert’s remembrance of his relationship with Gene Siskel. Here’s one:
He got his second job, as the movie critic of the CBS Chicago news, because the newscast was bring reformatted to resemble a newspaper city room. Van Gordon Sauter, the executive producer, recruited Gene on the theory, “Don’t hire someone because they look good on TV; hire them because they cover a beat and are the masters of it.” Gene speculated that was the reason for the success of our show: We didn’t look great on TV, but we sounded as if we might know what we were talking about.
The rest you should find for yourself.
2 comments
“Tim Wiegel, his roommate there, later a sportscaster, told me Gene was famous for wearing a Batman costume and dropping out of trees.”
I also love this description of a room that hums:
“Once we were invited to speak to the Harvard Law School Film Society. We walked into their Mock Trial courtroom armed with all sorts of notes, but somehow got started on a funny note, and the whole appearance became stand-up comedy. Separately or together, we were never funnier. Even the audience questions were funny. Roars of laughter for 90 minutes. I’m not making this up. I don’t know what happened. Afterwards Gene said, ‘We could do this in Vegas. No, I’m serious.’ He was always serious about things like that.”
Ebert describes he and Siskel as tuning forks — and the overall theme of the essay seems to be how people can resonate with one another, silent but still sounding.