This is a really intriguing article from this month’s Esquire about Roger Ebert’s life, 4 years after cancer took his jaw and his ability to speak. Read the whole article here.
Roger Ebert can’t remember the last thing he ate. He can’t remember the last thing he drank, either, or the last thing he said. Of course, those things existed; those lasts happened. They just didn’t happen with enough warning for him to have bothered committing them to memory — it wasn’t as though he sat down, knowingly, to his last supper or last cup of coffee or to whisper a last word into Chaz’s ear. The doctors told him they were going to give him back his ability to eat, drink, and talk. But the doctors were wrong, weren’t they? On some morning or afternoon or evening, sometime in 2006, Ebert took his last bite and sip, and he spoke his last word.
I know what they mean in that excerpt, but I just can’t stop going “he doesn’t eat or drink? IS HE A CYBORG??? :DDDDDDDDD”
I just read that article, too, and subscribe to his online journal where he’s posting his reminiscences. The Esquire piece is really good, and had a lot of info I hadn’t read before. The memories Ebert writes about feel like the equivalent of a Norman Rockwell painting; whatever the subject – they are lovingly remembered and written. His continuing positive outlook is pretty inspiring.
Wow…I love Roger Ebert. I always respected him for how he compared apples to apples when reviewing movies (not comparing the quality of a mainstream horror film relative to an indendent drama, but acknowledging a movie as good within its genre), and for his lack of elitism. But now I love him, for being public about his illness, and for not letting cancer stop him from being the fabulous thinker, writer and reviewer he is.
I also love him for his Tweet in response to John Mayer’s stupidity, something along the lines of “black women, what’s not to love?”
That picture makes me sad :(
…and, ngl, kinda freaked me out in a “WHAT THE CHRIST IS THAT, oh it’s Roger Ebert” kind of way :\