Rah rah Roger!

Roger Ebert hasn't been on TV in almost a year. That's because he can't talk, his mouth droops, and he has an enormous gauze bandage over his throat that makes him look a little less glam than he usually isn't.

But he's going to appear in person this week at his annual Overlooked Film Festival in Urbana, Illinois, anyway. "We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to miss my Festival," he writes on his website.

I like this picture. It strips all the poignancy from the subject, and reduces the pity felt by the viewer. It's how I would like to look if I went through the post-operation hell that Ebert went through last summer, when attempts to replace the mandible removed during salivary gland cancer surgery failed.

If you're a longtime reader, you know exactly why Ebert refuses to hide himself from the public eye, and is dismissing friends who've urged him to stay away until he's completely healed. Back in 1999, his friend Gene Siskel died without so much as notifying a soul outside his immediate family. Gene was in denial, as I recounted in a memoir of my afternoon with him, and afterward, Ebert was heard to be telling anyone within earshot, "If I get cancer, I'm telling everyone!" He did, and he did.

Take your time, Rog. Tony Scott is a great fill-in for you on the show -- but he's no replacement.

Comments

[Dean]

Roger was in Champaign, IL, not Urbana. The festival is held at the Virgina Theatre in downtown Champaign. Alan Rickman was there too.

[Bent]

As long as you're correcting, you might go with "Virginia" rather than "Virgina."

(NOTE: *yawn* --AB)