Roger Ebert: 'I'm an optimistic person' [View All]

[n2doc]

Rachel Cooke
The Observer, Saturday 5 November 2011

Roger Ebert, who has been reviewing movies for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer prize. He is one of the few critics to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His reviews – he still writes up to six a week both for the newspaper and his website (which receives 110 million visits a year) – are syndicated around the world. He runs his own film festival, Eberfest, and co-wrote the screenplay of Russ Meyer's 1970 camp classic, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

In 2006, following post-surgical complications connected to his treatment for thyroid cancer, Ebert lost a large section of his right jaw; he has not been able to speak, eat or drink since. This encounter was therefore conducted by email. "Your questions are provocative!" he wrote, when I sent him my queries. "I like them." A typically Ebertian response. For he is nothing if not cheery. He has written that he knows that death is coming "and I do not fear it because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear… I was perfectly content before I was born and I think of death as the same state". On the other hand, "I don't expect to die any time soon… I have plans".

interview at link

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/nov/06/roger-ebert-cancer-life-cinema