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Roger Ebert

Thursday, Sep 15, 2011 3:01 PM UTC

I do not fear death

I will pass away sooner than most people who read this, but that doesn't shake my sense of wonder and joy

By Roger Ebert

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

I don’t expect to die anytime soon. But it could happen this moment, while I am writing. I was talking the other day with Jim Toback, a friend of 35 years, and the conversation turned to our deaths, as it always does. “Ask someone how they feel about death,” he said, “and they’ll tell you everyone’s gonna die. Ask them, In the next 30 seconds? No, no, no, that’s not gonna happen. How about this afternoon? No. What you’re really asking them to admit is, Oh my God, I don’t really exist. I might be gone at any given second.”

Me too, but I hope not. I have plans. Still, illness led me resolutely toward the contemplation of death. That led me to the subject of evolution, that most consoling of all the sciences, and I became engulfed on my blog in unforeseen discussions about God, the afterlife, religion, theory of evolution, intelligent design, reincarnation, the nature of reality, what came before the big bang, what waits after the end, the nature of intelligence, the reality of the self, death, death, death.

Many readers have informed me that it is a tragic and dreary business to go into death without faith. I don’t feel that way. “Faith” is neutral. All depends on what is believed in. I have no desire to live forever. The concept frightens me. I am 69, have had cancer, will die sooner than most of those reading this. That is in the nature of things. In my plans for life after death, I say, again with Whitman:

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

And with Will, the brother in Saul Bellow’s “Herzog,” I say, “Look for me in the weather reports.”

Raised as a Roman Catholic, I internalized the social values of that faith and still hold most of them, even though its theology no longer persuades me. I have no quarrel with what anyone else subscribes to; everyone deals with these things in his own way, and I have no truths to impart. All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it. I know a priest whose eyes twinkle when he says, “You go about God’s work in your way, and I’ll go about it in His.”

What I expect to happen is that my body will fail, my mind will cease to function and that will be that. My genes will not live on, because I have had no children. I am comforted by Richard Dawkins’ theory of memes. Those are mental units: thoughts, ideas, gestures, notions, songs, beliefs, rhymes, ideals, teachings, sayings, phrases, clichés that move from mind to mind as genes move from body to body. After a lifetime of writing, teaching, broadcasting and telling too many jokes, I will leave behind more memes than many. They will all also eventually die, but so it goes.

O’Rourke’s had a photograph of Brendan Behan on the wall, and under it this quotation, which I memorized:

I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don’t respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.

That does a pretty good job of summing it up. “Kindness” covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

One of these days I will encounter what Henry James called on his deathbed “the distinguished thing.” I will not be conscious of the moment of passing. In this life I have already been declared dead. It wasn’t so bad. After the first ruptured artery, the doctors thought I was finished. My wife, Chaz, said she sensed that I was still alive and was communicating to her that I wasn’t finished yet. She said our hearts were beating in unison, although my heartbeat couldn’t be discovered. She told the doctors I was alive, they did what doctors do, and here I am, alive.

Do I believe her? Absolutely. I believe her literally — not symbolically, figuratively or spiritually. I believe she was actually aware of my call and that she sensed my heartbeat. I believe she did it in the real, physical world I have described, the one that I share with my wristwatch. I see no reason why such communication could not take place. I’m not talking about telepathy, psychic phenomenon or a miracle. The only miracle is that she was there when it happened, as she was for many long days and nights. I’m talking about her standing there and knowing something. Haven’t many of us experienced that? Come on, haven’t you? What goes on happens at a level not accessible to scientists, theologians, mystics, physicists, philosophers or psychiatrists. It’s a human kind of a thing.

Someday I will no longer call out, and there will be no heartbeat. I will be dead. What happens then? From my point of view, nothing. Absolutely nothing. All the same, as I wrote to Monica Eng, whom I have known since she was six, “You’d better cry at my memorial service.” I correspond with a dear friend, the wise and gentle Australian director Paul Cox. Our subject sometimes turns to death. In 2010 he came very close to dying before receiving a liver transplant. In 1988 he made a documentary named “Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent van Gogh.” Paul wrote me that in his Arles days, van Gogh called himself “a simple worshiper of the external Buddha.” Paul told me that in those days, Vincent wrote:

Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map.

Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?

Just as we take a train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. We cannot get to a star while we are alive any more than we can take the train when we are dead. So to me it seems possible that cholera, tuberculosis and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion. Just as steamboats, buses and railways are the terrestrial means.

To die quietly of old age would be to go there on foot.

That is a lovely thing to read, and a relief to find I will probably take the celestial locomotive. Or, as his little dog, Milou, says whenever Tintin proposes a journey, “Not by foot, I hope!”

Tuesday, Sep 11, 2001 7:51 PM UTC

Movies the way God meant them to be seen

What do Fred Astaire's feet, Kirk Douglas' dimple and Willie Wonka's hat have in common? Boneheaded studios and incompetent projectionists are cropping them out of the picture.

By

I hold this truth to be self-evident, that all movies deserve to be seen in their original aspect ratios. Four recent events suggest that this truth is not universally evident:

  • In Chicago’s Grant Park, a summer film festival holds free screenings on a big screen for as many as 10,000 movie lovers. The 2001 season began with “An American in Paris.” Introducing the film, I was startled to discover that it was being shown in widescreen — in what’s called a 1.65-to-1 aspect ratio. But like almost all films made before 1954, “An American in Paris” was photographed in the 4:3 ratio, or pretty close to a square screen. By trimming the top and bottom of the original picture to artificially widen it, the projector was cutting off, among other things, Gene Kelly’s feet. I learned that the entire season was planned for 1.65:1, despite the booking of such other 4:3 classics as “The Maltese Falcon,” “Meet Me in St. Louis” and “Top Hat” — with the cutting off of the even more sublime feet of Astaire and Rogers. Protesting, I learned this was not a mistake but a policy; the festival was being underwritten by HBO, and an HBO executive in New York had insisted on widescreen “so that people will not think we’re showing television.”
  • “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” came at last to DVD, in August 2001. Although it was shot in widescreen, it had its sides cropped off to make it into a 4:3 image. A Warner Home Video spokesperson told me: “It is in a full-frame format as research indicates that families prefer a full-frame presentation.” In other words, “we have chopped off a third of the original picture so that what is left will fill your TV screen and not subject you to the torture of seeing the entire picture area in letterbox format.”

  • At the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, there is an exhibit of video art by Nam June Paik. Paik’s works include performance pieces from 1968-69 by Charlotte Moorman, the cellist who often performed topless. There is also a collaboration with John Cage in 1975. All of these pieces were obviously shot in the original video format of 4:3. They were being shown on new Samsung flat-panel widescreen video monitors, which have a ratio of 16:9. This was an opportunity for vertical letterboxing (black bands at the left and right, to preserve the original ratio in the center), but instead all of the films were being shown widescreen, meaning heads and feet were sometimes missing; one could occasionally hear Cage talking, but not see his mouth.

  • A friend in Manhattan showed off his new 16:9 widescreen HDTV. He was watching a golf tournament. He had the picture set to widescreen, although the program was being broadcast in 4:3. This created a stretching effect in which all of the golfers looked like the Michelin Man, and were hitting a little ball that was now oval instead of round. My friend wasn’t missing any of the picture, but he was distorting it by stretching. Widescreen TVs have a setting allowing them to center a 4:3 picture. When I pointed this out, my friend replied serenely, “I like it that way. What’s the use of spending all that money on a widescreen TV if you’re not going to use it?”

    My friend can do whatever he wants. It’s his TV. The other three cases are incidents of artistic vandalism. I was dumbstruck by the depredations at the Guggenheim. An art museum would never obscure the top and bottom of a painting. If video art is art, then it must be treated as art, and seen as the artist made it.

    Until 1954, the movies lived in prelapsarian bliss. All of them, save a few noble experiments like Abel Gance’s three-screen “Napoleon,” were shot in the 4:3 ratio, deemed the “Academy ratio” because, originally set as a standard by Thomas Edison, it was so certified by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Then, as television made inroads into the movie audience, Hollywood fought back with widescreen, wider screen and widest screen. Movies in CinemaScope, VistaVision and other wide-gauge formats went as wide as 2.55:1. Then television started buying the movies and showing them, and that influenced a drawing-in of the sides; most movies began to be shot in the more malleable 1.65:1, with “widescreen” usually meaning about 1.85:1.

    When these movies were shown on TV, they were “panned and scanned,” which meant the visible area was manipulated to contain as much of the essential action as possible. In the late 1970s, the emerging home video industry adopted panning and scanning. Viewers expected a movie to fill up their whole screen, whether it had been shot in 4:3 or not. This led to strange results; in “The Graduate,” when Benjamin stands palpitating with his back to the wall while Mrs. Robinson takes off her nylons, you can see all of him, but only her toe.

    The solution was “letterboxing,” in which the full width of the film could be shown. But it was only with the rise of laserdiscs in the mid-1980s that letterboxing gained popularity. The wide picture was shown in a band across the middle of the screen, with black masking the top and bottom. In the case of subtitled movies, this provided a splendid black background below the picture for subtitles. Laserdisc users were sophisticates and early adopters. When letterboxing began to infiltrate VHS tapes, however, renters brought them back to the store complaining they were flawed because they didn’t fill the whole TV screen. Most video clerks didn’t understand letterboxing, and some chains refused to handle the format because of “too many complaints.” I personally had the experience of explaining letterboxing to one of the executives of a national video store chain, several years after he should have known what it was.

    Laserdiscs never caught on. Fewer than 2 million machines were in service when in the late 1990s the movie industry introduced DVDs, which became the most successful new home electronics product in history. Today some 16 million machines are in use, and because so many DVDs are purchased instead of rented, their dollar volume exceeds VHS tapes at many stores. With the introduction this autumn of recordable and rerecordable DVD machines, the VHS format is doomed.

    Most DVD fans insist on letterboxing. Warner’s decision to pan and scan “Willy Wonka” in 4:3 ultimately created a firestorm of protest. The studio belatedly announced a widescreen edition. (Families may “prefer a full-frame presentation,” but what Warners forgot is that many Wonka fans are no longer kids but have grown up into video purists.) True, letterboxing is an ordeal with a really wide picture on a really small screen. To watch the letterboxed “Lawrence of Arabia” in Panavision (2.20:1) on a 17-inch TV would not be a pretty sight. But screens are growing larger, and two other developments are important.

  • Slowly but inevitably, consumers are turning to widescreen HDTVs. They can take a widescreen image and pop it out to fill the available screen. (“Lawrence” would still need to be letterboxed, but the effect would be much less severe.)

  • Many movie buffs are turning to overhead projectors and wall-mounted screens. The new overhead projectors can handle both widescreen and anamorphic formats, filling the wide screen you have been thoughtful enough to provide for them.

    TV projectors are now so good (and more affordable) that most serious home movie nuts prefer them to big-screen conventional sets. From the point of view of the cost-to-picture size ratio, they are cheaper. New upscale homes include an obligatory “home entertainment center,” and if the installer has not specified a widescreen TV and a widescreen-capable projector, he should be locked away with “Lawrence of Arabia” and a 17-inch set until he does.

    But there are hazards still ahead. When all TV is in the 16:9 format, will classic 1.33:1 be cropped at the top and bottom to fill the screen? Since there’s less real estate to work with, this would be an even greater barbarism than the current forms of widescreen cropping. Humphrey Bogart’s hairpieces and Kirk Douglas’ dimple would disappear from cinematic memory.

    There are precedents for such meddling. In the 1970s, MGM disastrously tried a “widescreen” theatrical release of its crown jewel, “Gone With the Wind.” Among the casualties was the full impact of the dramatic “street of wounded men” shot; the cropping cut off the top of the scene and made the street appear shorter. In the 1980s, Disney tried “widescreen” versions of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Pinocchio,” but on our TV show Gene Siskel and I did a side-by-side comparison showing how much was being lost, and the studio abandoned the experiment. All rereleased pre-1954 Disney classics are now shown in 4:3, unless the projectionist in a specific theater lacks the wit to provide the correct ratio.

    That can be a problem. Many projectionists lack the skill or the equipment to properly frame movies in their original aspect ratios. This problem is more common than you might think. When you see a boom microphone dipping down from the top of the screen, especially more than one in the same picture, the odds are overwhelming that the fault lies not with the filmmakers, but with the projectionist right there in your theater, who is showing the film in the wrong aspect ratio and allowing you to see more than the intended visible picture area.

    Many people don’t know that movies were not always widescreen. I got an outraged e-mail this week from a reader complaining that the new DVD version of “Citizen Kane” was being cropped, and demanding it be shown in the “original widescreen.” It is also true that many people “prefer a full-frame presentation.” If they do, it’s their TV, and none of our business. But it’s essential at this turning point in the video and television industries to insist on the principle of respecting original aspect ratios. Widescreen HDTVs will even make that easier, centering 4:3 images and accommodating widescreen letterboxing (when necessary) with more breathing room and therefore greater height for the picture. As for the home video industry — all DVDs have two sides, and some studios have already discovered that you can use both of them, with a widescreen image on one side, and a 4:3 image on the other.

    As for those philistines who believe a movie is an image that can be molded to their marketing requirements, the proper course is to shame them. I wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times about the HBO decision to use the wrong aspect ratio in Grant Park. To quote myself: “This is one more pathetic example of the dumbing of America — to show the films in the wrong aspect ratio to placate the stupid, instead of in the right aspect ratio to reward the knowledgeable.” “Stupid” was a strong word choice (“uninformed” would have been kinder), but HBO reversed its policy. And I have a feeling the curators at the Bilbao Guggenheim will discover that those Samsung monitors do a sensational job of centering a 4:3 image.

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    Friday, Dec 8, 2000 8:00 PM UTC

    John Lennon, 1940-1980

    First published two decades ago, this essay has lost none of its power. It stands as an eloquent tribute to one of the 20th century's most gifted artists.

    By

    It was that troubled autumn of 1968 that John and Yoko came to Chicago, to show their new movie in the film festival. The shouts of the Democratic Convention had scarcely died down, and Woodstock had not yet been held, and “Hair” was onstage at the Shubert, and here was this goofy home movie by John and Yoko about a butterfly that took 26 minutes to fly in slow motion from one side of the screen to the other side of the screen.

    What was the movie about? We didn’t have questions like that then. There were still hippie children getting married in Lincoln Park, still little VW Bugs with McCarthy flower stickers on their bumpers, and you didn’t ask what it was about, a butterfly in slow motion. Such images explained themselves, in 1968. John Lennon and the other Beatles did more, perhaps, than any other four people to bring about that state of our cultural mind from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s.

    As long as the people who were young at that time still live, the songs of the Beatles will evoke that period as poignantly and heartstabbingly as the music of other eras still draws tears to other eyes. And as long as the Beatles themselves were all still alive, as long as people could kid themselves that there might be a reunion, a final concert, one more album, that time in history was itself still a little bit alive.

    Monday night it died with John Lennon in a brief, violent moment that didn’t make any sense. And a lot of flower children who maybe still had their tie-dyed jeans hanging in a closet somewhere, who maybe grinned the last time they found love beads in the bottom of a drawer, could contemplate the fact that they were damned near 40.

    God, it was so long ago, that first moment when we first became aware of the Beatles, and then quickly began to realize that they were changing rock music forever — and then, that they had changed all of our pop music, had a lasting influence on the way we sang and wrote and listened to songs.

    It is easy for me to remember the first time I heard about the Beatles, because the moment is locked in tandem with another I can never forget, the time when John F. Kennedy was shot. A few days before Nov. 22, 1963, there was a cartoon in the Daily Illini, the student paper down at Illinois. It showed some beetles in an audience, listening to some humans onstage. No caption. You had to understand it, and even then it wasn’t funny. But who had ever heard of the Beatles? And then, in what seemed like only a week or two, we had all heard of the Beatles, Prince Charles was no longer the only kid who wore his hair long, and the Daily Illini was interviewing campus barbers who said business was lousy.

    That summer of 1964, I went to see the movie “A Hard Day’s Night.” Perhaps because it came at the right moment in my life, or perhaps just because it was such a liberating film, so free and filled with joy and music, it moved me as few films ever have. Yes, it truly did — that formless, anarchic black-and-white movie with the Beatles running around in an empty lot, and Ringo going off to walk by himself, and John and George and Paul racing through a train and singing in the wire-mesh baggage compartment while hundreds of little girls screamed and squealed.

    The concert footage from “A Hard Day’s Night” caught better than anything else I’ve ever seen the mesmerizing mass effect of the Beatles. And there is one young girl in that film I will never forget. She is blond, she is perhaps 13, she has tears running down her cheeks, she is screaming the name of a Beatle over and over again, hopelessly crying out her passion. To see the scene is to smile: It is the instant crush of an adolescent fan. But the innocence of it, its clean lines of emotion, stand for me as an image of that time.

    There had never been anything before quite like the Beatles. Elvis had been as popular but nobody had ever been as popular and as musically important, both at once, and had also had such a fundamental influence on the way we dressed and on our attitudes. There is a sense in which the hippies, the summer of 1968 and the whole Vietnam protest movement blossomed out of the climate that was sung to by the Beatles.

    The news that John Lennon was dead came as an immense shock, infinitely sad, because one was grieving not only for his death but for the death of an era, and for the Beatles songs that played all through that time, over and over, giving it texture and a bittersweet flavor. The silly, innocent songs, like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” and the songs so deep they were poems, like “Eleanor Rigby,” and the albums that a generation scrutinized for secret messages.

    What is most touching, when you remember how we used to study the album covers and try to listen between the words of the songs for the messages the Beatles had allegedly hidden there, was that we really believed the Beatles had a message worth listening for. At their height they commanded more ideological currency than all of the candidates in the last presidential campaign — not because they had more to say, but because they were in a world still eager to listen.

    Now Lennon has been shot dead and the Beatles are no more. Ringo, Paul and George still live and the albums are still on the shelves, and Monday night all the radio stations were playing them over and over, but there is no kidding ourselves. The era they sang to, which hung on here and there long beyond its time, is over now. When I first saw “A Hard Day’s Night,” the Beatles looked so very young. Now when I see it they look younger, and younger, and younger.

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