Roger Ebert got famous fighting with gene siskel over films on TV. Now ebert finds he's fighting with thousands of Gene Siskels online.
__ Roger Ebert got famous fighting with gene siskel over films on TV. Now ebert finds he's fighting with thousands of Gene Siskels online. Critics, like the rich, are different from you and me. Perched in some higher place, they create or destroy careers with a word. All you or I can do is sit and wonder at all that power - or, if we're really miffed, write a letter to the editor.
Enter Roger Ebert.
What makes this film critic unusual is that anyone with a CompuServe account can take him to task in public any time they want to - in Ebert's own online forum (go: Showbiz).
Ebert is a one-man criticism conglomerate. Along with Gene Siskel, Ebert stars in a sitcom about two guys who live in a theater and argue about movies (Siskel & Ebert).
He also writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, and his reviews are syndicated in more than 200 papers. His articles appear in Microsoft's Cinemania CD-ROM, and his reviews are available on CompuServe (go: Ebert).
But an online forum? Ebert is clearly one thick-skinned critic. In fact, he believes there is more to this interactive experience than flaming - it may be the future of criticism.
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Wired: How did you start appearing online?
Ebert: I've been a subscriber to CompuServe since I got my Tandy model 100 in about 1983. I used the service primarily for reference and for e-mail - although I occasionally visited places like the Showbiz forum, I wasn't a regular there. Around September of 1990, CompuServe contacted me about running my reviews online, and we arrived at an agreement. At that time, I felt that just uploading my reviews and letting people read them would be kind of one-way. So they gave me a section of the Showbiz forum where I could interact with people.
So, how much time do you spend interacting?
You can't really be on a forum less than half an hour a day. For example, last night I sent 19 messages, and this morning I sent 21.
Let's talk about how being online has affected your criticism. In a 1990 essay in Film Comment, critic Richard Corliss wrote about the impact of television on criticism; he accused you of oversimplifying. Does the online medium represent a way of overcoming the traditional broadsides leveled at television and other nonprint criticism?
Corliss was suggesting that television criticism is much more superficial than print criticism and doesn't devote nearly as much verbiage to the films. I was able to demonstrate that the average Siskel & Ebert review of a movie was twice as long as the average Time magazine review of a movie in terms of counting the words. Whether or not it's as deep is another question. What we do on television is more of a consumer guide to the movies, with opinions. A lot of what we are communicating has to do with body language, tone of voice, and strength of emotion. When you watch our show, you are not getting something you would necessarily read. If you had a transcript of what we say, it would not be something I would wish to have substituted for the way I write. You can easily imagine a Siskel & Ebert transcript area on the Internet, but we don't want people to read what we say - we want them to listen to it. Am I indifferent or am I excited when I say the words? That changes the entire meaning.
Does being online provide some of this missing context? You can expand at will on your print and television points.
Here's what happens. My print review for the Sun-Times goes on CompuServe, and it's syndicated around the country. Then I get onto the forum, and I find that there is no aspect - of a major movie anyway - that isn't potentially brought up. When you write a review and publish it, you may get some letters to the editor, but people do not send a lot of paper mail over movie reviews. When you write a review and it goes online, you are going to get a dozen messages within the next 24 hours. The other thing that's interesting is that the Showbiz forum is a relatively expert area: there are several other film critics who hang out there, some writers, craftsmen, and technical guys. It tends to be more serious. There are other areas in CompuServe that are more fan-oriented.
Does this new medium change the relationship between critic and audience? It strikes me that it makes everyone a critic in the same way that camcorders have convinced all too many people that they are filmmakers.
That's true. Everybody's opinion is more or less equally weighted online. I've been writing film reviews for the Sun-Times since 1967. The paper has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, but the people you primarily write for are your editors. They are the first people to read it. When I got online, suddenly specific details were being questioned instantly, and I was being called on things. You have to understand that, especially in 1990, and even to a degree today, the average person online is not a liberal arts graduate who belongs to a film society. Even though most of the people in the Showbiz forum are big movie lovers, their occupations tend to be more technical or managerial. They don't really get involved in a whole lot of humanistic piety; they are more into what happened and how can we prove it.
How has this experience changed your criticism?
I am a better critic now, because I am engaged in an ongoing criticism of my work by people who are not in the least impressed by my reputation. I am just another guy online. Anyone can put a movie review online. And one review seems almost as likely to be accessed as another, especially if nobody else has reviewed the movie.
A point I see you making repeatedly online is that you are not there to reflect the sensibilities of some average moviegoer - you are there to give your own views and sensibilities. In that sense, doesn't interactivity begin to shape your criticism by overexposing you to other views?
The critic who tries to reflect the views of his audience is not a critic, he's a ventriloquist. I am interested in input, though. Take, for example, The Usual Suspects. The people online who disagree with me have not changed my mind about that movie. [Ebert gave it one-and-a-half stars out of four.] What was interesting in reading all of their messages was that I am now able to empathize better with those people. Also, I understand that the movie has made a huge impression - it's probably the most-discussed film since Pulp Fiction. I can tell if a movie is going to make some sort of a special impact on people because a certain kind of message starts coming in right away.
Tombstone, for example, was a movie that the studio decided not to even screen for the critics. It came out at Christmas, and I missed seeing it in its opening week. But I got dozens of messages about Val Kilmer's performance as Doc Holliday.
No performance in five years generated more forum traffic or e-mail. So, I knew I had to see this movie as soon as possible; I knew the studio was probably wrong in its attempt to "hide" the movie from the critics - which is always its way of signaling it has no faith in a film.
Do you find the less-than-decorous conversation online disconcerting? I notice periodic waves of Roger Sucks posts.
Some little kid ... actually there was only one Roger Sucks; one of these little kids who writes in capital letters and can't spell. He was obviously using his mother's account. But people can tell me I'm all wet, and that's fine. I don't get offended.
Today, with 3.6 million CompuServe subscribers, there appear to be around 200 messages per day in your forum. In the next couple of years, we might expect that 3.6 million to grow to more like 23 million. You have also indicated that a publishing of your e-mail address in a book a few years ago is still causing you problems. Is interaction even possible in the future?
Well, we may reach critical mass. That idiotic book, E-Mail Addresses of the Rich & Famous, was no help: I begged them not to run my address. When your address appears in a place like that, your mailbox starts filling up with messages like, "Is this really you? Please write back!!!" That is really a form of the artificial-intelligence test in which you try to determine whether you are communicating with a computer or another person. When I'm on the forum, for example, I get instant chat messages that say, "Is this really Roger Ebert?" I usually just ignore them. If I answer "Yes," they write back, "No, it's not." If I answer "No," they write back, "Yes, it is." If I write, "The answer to that question cannot logically be settled via computer," they write back, "Gee, I was just trying to be friendly." To get back to your original question, if I start getting 10,000 e-mail messages a day, it just won't work anymore.
What does Gene Siskel think of all of this?
Well, Gene and I have quite different approaches to computers. We both got Tandy 100s at the same time, and when our show began to be distributed by Buena Vista Television, we both were on MCI Mail. But Gene had a retrograde experience: he forgot how to use MCI Mail and stopped using it. Then, for a long time, he didn't have a computer at all. A year ago, I convinced him to get a Macintosh 6100. I told him that since the Chicago Tribune is part-owner of America Online, he should ask for a free account from the Tribune. So, he got one, but then he said he couldn't get the AOL software. I said, "Gene, every household in America has a thousand AOL disks; they come shrinkwrapped inside every publication known to man, including Field & Stream and Modern Bride."
He said, "I don't know, I'm going to get somebody from the Tribune to come over and put it in for me." So, eventually somebody from the Tribune came over to Gene's house and now he's got AOL. Nothing happened again for another five months. Finally, I went over to his house and put my e-mail address into his address book. For about six months now, I've been sending him messages, and then last week something came over him. I sent him an e-mail: "Why don't you ever answer my messages?" He answered: "This is my answer."
So, the lad is just not Wired. Let's face it - Siskel tired; Ebert Wired.
