I won't claim to know Roger Ebert, but he's always been generous to me. He was already a megacritic when I first went to him, in the early 1990s, with interview requests. He'd invariably help out, even though I was publishing on the web (then, even more than now, considered print journalism's ugly sister). He'd quickly answer follow-up questions, and even wrote a short essay for a magazine I edited.
Plus, the guy was among the most committed filmgoers I've ever met. During Sundance's more formative years, I'd see him at the 8 a.m. press screenings and at the 11 p.m. ones, one of a half dozen members of the media who'd skip free booze and mini-quiches to watch some weird-ass movie from Inner Mongolia.
And Ebert's always been a DIY guy. He'd wait in line with the proles, and back then I found it amusing that he'd 1) post sometimes-choppy festival journals on his website and 2) dare to take his own fuzzy snapshots and post those, too. Now we know: our world-famous movie reviewer was a protoblogger. Over the years, Ebert's been caricatured and pilloried -- the guy who supposedly substituted two thumbs for real film writing. To me, he's our finest populist movie scholar.
Cancer's put him out of action, hopefully temporarily, but he's still doing the right thing.
