Voiceless eloquence

It is no secret that my favorite movie critic is Roger Ebert. A few years ago he suffered from cancer and the consequences of multiple surgeries, and can no longer speak, eat, or drink like he used to be able to.

Recently, he was the subject of a brutally honest profile in Esquire magazine by Chris Jones. It is a 7-part article but worth a full read.

Roger Ebert can’t remember the last thing he ate. He can't remember the last thing he drank, either, or the last thing he said. Of course, those things existed; those lasts happened. They just didn't happen with enough warning for him to have bothered committing them to memory — it wasn't as though he sat down, knowingly, to his last supper or last cup of coffee or to whisper a last word into Chaz's ear. The doctors told him they were going to give him back his ability to eat, drink, and talk. But the doctors were wrong, weren't they? On some morning or afternoon or evening, sometime in 2006, Ebert took his last bite and sip, and he spoke his last word.

After you read the Esquire article, hear about it from Roger Ebert himself. Ebert blogged about the background of the interview and how he felt it played out and what compelled him to be allowed to be the subject of the profile.

I knew going in that a lot of the article would be about my surgeries and their aftermath. Let's face it. Esquire wouldn't have assigned an article if I were still in good health. Their cover line was the hook: Roger Ebert's Last Words. A good head. Whoever wrote that knew what they were doing. I was a little surprised at the detail the article went into about the nature and extent of my wounds and the realities of my appearance, but what the hell. It was true. I didn't need polite fictions.