The Back Row

As you’re probably aware, Roger Ebert passed away on April 4, 2013 after a long bout with cancer. Because The Back Row was under construction at that time, we have been unable to pay tribute to him until this week, but needless to say, the man was huge influence on our lives. Hell, a good portion of the films I’ve covered in “Robin’s Underrated Gems” were discovered because I read Roger Ebert’s review of them. We recently did a Shouts From the Back Row podcast about his life, and I would now like to share some clips of the most entertaining segments he did with the late Gene Siskel on their legendary TV show.

But before we do that, I would like to share my own personal anecdote about Roger Ebert. In the mid-1990s, during the early days of the Internet, I frequently spent a lot of time on CompuServe, where Roger Ebert hosted his own discussion forum for film buffs. At the time, it was a pretty thrilling experience for me to go on-line and discuss cinema with fellow movie geeks and Ebert himself would stop by to participate in the discussions and answer questions for his weekly “Movie Answer Man” column. Anyway, in early 1997, someone started a thread in the forum by asking Ebert a question about something he saw during the end credits of Scream, and I participated in the discussion and offered up some extra insight about the situation. A couple days later, the answer to the question was posted in Ebert’s “Answer Man” column and you can imagine my shock when I discovered that he had used my name and quoted me as a source! Nowadays, it’s fairly easy to be able to communicate with a celebrity on the Internet, but back in 1997, getting the chance to speak with Roger Ebert and being quoted by him was a pretty huge friggin’ deal, so I was thrilled beyond words! For this reason alone, Roger Ebert will always be one of the coolest guys who ever lived.

Anyway, here are ten random segments from Siskel & Ebert, a show I used to watch religiously. As you can probably imagine, many of these segments feature the duo getting into heated disagreements or trashing a terrible movie with gusto. They will both be missed.

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