RIP, Roger Ebert.

His last words: “I’ll see you at the movies.”

“So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I’ll see you at the movies.”

Bonus: much more Ebert awesomeness.

Update, via Ehron Asher:

“Had the good fortune to meet Roger Ebert when he and Werner Herzog hosted a two day master class/screening of Aguirre, the Wrath of God in Boulder a few years ago. I was moved by how his passion for cinema seemed only to grow throughout his illness, and by how tremendously brave he was – a man with half a face and without the ability to speak or eat…to go on appearing in public and sharing his distinguished, respected and essential voice and opinion with film lovers around the world.

I hope that he and Gene Siskel are born in the next life together as twin brothers and spend their childhood sucking their thumbs, then using them to make the movies they loved so much.

Ladies and Gentleman, the balcony is closed.”

Read the full obit at The N.Y. Times here:

“…Mr. Ebert’s struggle with cancer, starting in 2002, gave him an altogether different public image — as someone who refused to surrender to illness. Though he had operations for cancer of the thyroid, salivary glands and chin, lost his ability to eat, drink and speak (a prosthesis partly obscured the loss of much of his chin, and he was fed through a tube) and became a gaunter version of his once-portly self, he continued to write reviews and commentary and published a cookbook he had started…”

He was more than a famous film critic, the first to win a Pulitzer Prize, the first honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was an author, a prolific New Yorker caption contest submitter, poet, a thinker, a mentor, a humorist, a TV host, a journalist syndicated in 100s of papers nationwide.

Ten Twelve Roger Ebert Things.

1. “When I am writing, my problems become invisible, my problems become invisible, and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be.”

2. “I believe that if, at the end of it all, 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.”

3. How to judge film (or art, generally): “Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions never lie to you.”

4. Vulnerability, with frankness, without self-pity. “At this point in my life, in addition to writing about movies, I may write about what it’s like to cope with health challenges and the limitations they can force upon you. It really stinks that the cancer has returned and that I have spent too many days in the hospital. So on bad days I may write about the vulnerability that accompanies illness. On good days, I may wax ecstatic about a movie so good it transports me beyond illness.” Posted April 2nd.

For reflection, even as we ache in sadness at this or any loss of a worthy loveable sentient being: Steve Jobs, on cancer:

Death is very likely the single best invention of life’ – Steve Jobs

“And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.” ~ Steve Jobs

And now back to Mr. Ebert.

5. A quote from him about Fellini’s “8 1/2”: “These days, directors don’t worry about how to repeat their last hit, because they know exactly how to do it: Remake the same commercial formulas. A movie like this is like a splash of cold water in the face, a reminder that the movies really can shake us up, if they want to. Ironic, that Fellini’s film is about artistic bankruptcy seems richer in invention than almost anything else around.”

6. Ebert, on his own death, from his book “Life Itself: A Memoir,” also reprinted over at Salon.

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.”

7. His Citizen Kate commentary. “And while waiting for the DVD to ship, this is a pretty good article to read as a primer.”

8. Roger, on his death: “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. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, 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.”

9. His AMA, on Reddit.

10: Via Reddit: