What I remember best about Gene Siskel — the man, even more than the media figure and movie critic — are two things: how fiercely he argued, yet how gentle and considerate he was with old people, especially my own mother.
Those two traits — pugnacity and tenderness — might seem contradictory at first. But you regularly saw them in Gene whenever you debated or chatted with him. And you also found them in his discussions on movies, whether in print or on TV: a ferocious desire to get his points across and an underlying vein of compassion and sympathy, especially for the disadvantaged.
Some examples of movie underdogs that caught Siskel’s eye and fancy? How about the young, pushed-around African-American basketballers of “Hoop Dreams”? The World War II Holocaust victims of “Shoah” and “Schindler’s List”? The illegal Polish emigre workers in “Moonlighting”? The neglected Connecticut rich kids of “The Ice Storm”? Gene even put poor, beleaguered “Babe: Pig in the City,” that visually stunning but unpopular children’s movie, at the top of his very last 10 best list, in December.
That unlikely sounding gallery testifies to his broad-ranging tastes–and to his heart.
The same blend of ambition and idealism that made Gene run is also probably what attracted audiences to his TV shows with friendly rival Roger Ebert of the Sun-Times. That 24-year dual stint made Gene famous and influential: one of the two American movie critics whom most moviegoers knew by sight or name, and whose opinions they often followed.
The success of “Siskel & Ebert” made them targets as well as icons, but believe me: A lot of the movie critics who castigate them most harshly envy them that power and celebrity. Those critics may carp privately. They may call them “Thumb and Thumber,” as does The National Review’s bilious John Simon. They may complain about “excessive” upward thumbs, grouse that the show is too middlebrow or commercially oriented. But you can always detect a sour-grape taste in the bile.
Gene’s legacy is that show. Much more than in his print criticism of recent years — which, since his 1986 switch from Tribune movie critic to movie columnist, has been briefer and pithier — it’s where he developed and promulgated his views of movies and society. Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris may have been the critics who most influenced their fellow film reviewers in the post-war era. But it was Gene and Roger — with their droll bickering, rapid-fire cross-talk and ubiquitous thumbs — who spoke most loudly and clearly to the average (and even not-so-average) movie audience.
Anyway, the middlebrow indictment is partly a crock. (I hate to give away trade secrets, but many of the film critics who scornfully damn most of the movies they see tend to see relatively few and to cover their beat very spottily.) Nobody could accuse Gene of slighting Hollywood movies or ignoring popular film fare, but he often supported the little film: the foreign import, the American independent, the documentary.
Gene’s critical tenure covered several eras of American filmmaking over three decades. He cut his eye-teeth as a critic during a time when both American and foreign movies were at a surprising, and unfortunately ephemeral, peak of quality and ambition: the years, from 1967 to 1975, of “The Godfather” and its sequel, “Nashville,” “Taxi Driver,” “Chinatown,” “A Clockwork Orange” and “Cries and Whispers.” So when he and Roger championed unusual or daring films in the early ’70s (as they’ve continued to do), it was at a time when many more such films got regular theatrical release. When they praised more popular, straight-ahead movies in the post-1977 era, it was at a time when experimentation in studio pictures was at a minimum and teenage blockbuster wannabes were all the rage.
The Siskel and Ebert show, ultimately, was a popular show about, mostly, popular movies. And yet, at the same time, the show did bring higher-level film discussion to a mass audience. It did point that audience toward more challenging movies. And, as proved by the relative failure of all of the knockoff, two-guys-talk-about-the-movies shows that followed, the two really did have something special to offer: not just the crackling chemistry and snappish interchanges that survived the rivalry of their early newspaper years, but a sheer love of movies — all kinds of movies.
Whenever Gene and Roger moved on to greener TV pastures, the producers of their abandoned programs (“Sneak Previews” or “At the Movies”) sought to recapture their old magic by trying to hire critics not for their credentials but for their special looks or TV charisma. But as Gene once told me, the secret of their success was partly their mutual newspaper backgrounds: the fact that they were journalists who viewed movies as a beat to cover rather than an industry to either exploit or castigate.
For five years, I had a unique vantage on these things. Gene and I occupied the same newspaper space since September, 1993, as fellow film judges in the pages of the Tribune’s Friday section. We often occupied the same theaters as well, as most of the movies we both reviewed were seen with the same audiences at the same local movie theaters and rooms — especially the Cineplex screening room at 70 E. Lake.
At what is now the Loews’ Cineplex, Gene and Roger had favorite seats — which other critics would appropriate only out of ignorance (sometimes at their peril). Roger would sit in the back row on the left aisle. Gene would sit in the back row in the middle, to the left of the telephone — which he frequently used. If one of them was late for a screening, the other might shoot a few acid barbs. Otherwise, they tended to josh with other critics, keeping most of their mutual badinage for the TV show.
I liked Gene. But it was not always a comfortable relationship — mostly because I had his old job. It was hard at times to adjust to the fact that a majority of people outside Chicago — maybe even a majority inside Chicago — would continue to regard Gene as the Tribune’s movie critic, no matter what my byline read.
But we erased some of those bumps in our first post-screening conversation. It ended with Gene musing: “You know, wouldn’t it surprise them all if we became friends?”
Because we moved in different circles, that didn’t really happen — though up until his illness, when he tended to retreat from conversations outside his family, we usually had good talks, interspersed with a few debates. I enjoyed all of them — as much as his audience enjoyed his shows. In retrospect, I am tremendously struck by the quiet stoicism with which he faced that last year, working right up until the last possible minute.
After that first conversation, I had a standing offer from Gene to go to a Bulls game with him, an offer I regret not taking up. I regret something else too. Gene was so unfailingly kind throughout the years toward my 83-year-old mother, when he met her at screenings, that she genuinely cherished and worried about him. I wish he could have known how much she appreciated his attention and treasured his company.
