Fuck Roger Ebert

Imagine how far down the emotional shitter your life has to be to be this triggered by some dude who reviews movies.... This world is truly full of losers.

Ebert made a really snarky --- and really uninformed and really stupid --- comment on Twitter about Ryan's death VERY close to the accident itself. He was trying to make a "Jackass" joke but the timing and the context were really just God-awful, and perhaps inexcusable and by the time he realized he'd done actual damage to Ryan's family and friends, and his movie franchise and his memory, it was too late to unwind it. He apologized multiple times, but the harm had been done. I won't attempt to defend what he wrote, because it's indefensible. Needless to say, the sting remains, undiminished by Ebert's own death a couple years or so afterRyan's.

Although I almost never agreed with Ebert's assessment of any movie, I always read his reviews, because he was a brilliant historian of the film industry and because he wrote so well. Was he smug and condescending? Yes, frequently, but so are a lot of people who are experts on a topic to which they've devoted their entire lives.Could he be insulting and insufferable? You bet, when confronted by someone who refused to accept that there is art and beauty in the medium of film. Not all FILMS are artful and beautiful, of course, but the medium itself is capable of greatness and capable of reaching and moving people. Roger felt that and saw that and wrote that, and the The movie industry -- and the world -- has been much poorer in the eight years since he left us. I'm really very sorry that you don't agree. I wish you did, for your own sake, because I believe you missed an important resource and perspective without realizing it.

Why the animosity?

Because he made a crude "joke" on Twitter too close to the date of the car wreck that took Ryan's life, before he was even in the ground.