Life Itself’: A Fitting, Heartrending Tribute to Cinema’s Great Appreciator Roger Ebert

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Life Itself’: A Fitting, Heartrending Tribute to Cinema’s Great Appreciator Roger Ebert

by Marlow Stern at the Daily Beast

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/02/life-itself-a-fitting-heartrending-tribute-to-cinema-s-great-appreciator-roger-ebert.html

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He digested the memoir in a single day. Told with Ebert’s trademark introspection, it traced the affable curmudgeon’s life story from his early newspaper days as a randy boozehound to his rise up the film critics’ ranks to the thyroid cancer that claimed his lower jaw and stripped the wordsmith of the ability to speak. It was a cinematic tale, to say the least. But first, James had to gain his would-be subject’s approval.

“From my first email exchange with him, he wasn’t convinced that he warranted a documentary,” says James. “He thought, Really? A documentary on a film critic?”

James wasn’t alone. There were, by his guess, “several other people circling Roger” with the idea of adapting his memoir into a documentary film. Thus began a flurry of back-and-forth emails between director and subject.

“The gist of my pitch was: I loved your memoir, and I love the way you look back on your life through this prism of your life now,” says James. “You’re looking back on your life from the perspective of someone who can’t eat, can’t speak, and has been compromised in some ways—though not intellectually, or creatively. I want to follow you around in the present, to get a window into your present life and how you go about it, despite all that you’ve been through, and then use that at a springboard to the past.”




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