Roger Ebert and Me: What Happens When a Famous Critic Hates ...

So here?s what happened the first time I met Roger Ebert.

Friday, September 18, 1992.

The Friars Club was roasting Billy Crystal and, because I?d written a few jokes for this verbal onslaught, I was in the ballroom of the New York Hilton that afternoon. As was Roger Ebert, who, along with his much thinner partner, Gene Siskel, possessed the most highly regarded opposable thumbs in the country.

It was in the pressroom prior to the festivities that I went up to him and introduced myself. We exchanged a few pleasantries and that was it. He seemed nice enough. Perhaps a little taller than I thought he?d be, though I?d only ever seen him sitting in a chair on television so maybe I was unfair to have prejudged.

My next encounter with Roger was not in person. It occurred some two years later, after a movie I?d written was released. The movie began as a novella I?d written titled ?North.? My son, Adam, was nine years old. He was at that age when he?d be looking across the dinner table at my wife, Robin, and I, and from the expression on his face you could tell he was thinking, ?I can do better than these two.? So, taking that cue form our firstborn, I wrote a book about a boy named North who, feeling unappreciated by his parents, declared himself a free agent and then travelled around the world offering his services as a devoted son to the highest bidding set of moms and dads.

I sent the galleys to my friend Rob Reiner asking for a blurb for the book jacket, and, much to my unbridled delight, he liked the book enough to want to direct the movie version of it. An author?s dream! To write a book and then be hired to adapt it into a screenplay! And then cast Bruce Willis, Elijah Wood, Dan Aykroyd, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Rita Wilson, and an eight-year-old actress named Scarlett Johansson to star in the forty-million-dollar film version of it! And then have a Hollywood premi?re for it! Where everyone I loved, including my wife, children, and parents, who flew in from (you guessed it) Boca Raton, were in the audience.

Up to that point, the premi?re was undoubtedly the most exciting evening in my professional life and I couldn?t possibly have been happier.

Until the next morning.

July 22, 1994.

When I read Roger Ebert?s review. Which I couldn?t help but interpret as something less than a rave:

I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

Now, because I have a tendency to be a tad hard on myself, I took the time to reread it. Slower this time. Looking for a hidden adjective. Or perhaps the phrase ?I?m just kidding? (as in ?I?m just kidding when I say that I hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie?) that I somehow overlooked the next twenty-five times I read this death notice. But no. There was no getting around it. There was something about ?North? that apparently irked Roger Ebert.

To be fair, this was not the only negative review that the film received. There were a number of them. O.K., I?m lying. There was a veritable avalanche of them. But because it was written by Roger Ebert, this was the one that everyone on the planet read.

And quoted.

To me, by friends who called to express their sympathies: ?It?s like Ebert stuck two thumbs up your ass and then had a tug of war with himself.?

To Robin, who came home from the neighborhood supermarket we?d been shopping at for years and said, ?I?m wondering if maybe we should order in for awhile.?

To our son Adam, who, when he grew tired of defending his dad to his L.A. classmates, asked if I?d be offended if he changed his last name to Sorkin.

To say the least, the review was embarrassing.

And hurtful.

I write. This is what I do. My job is to sit down with my vocabulary, select words, and place them in an order that will not only hold a reader or viewer?s attention but also give him a laugh or two along the way. If you like what I wrote, well, I?m happy you enjoyed my effort. If you didn?t care for it, well, I?m sorry, but it?s not a war crime.

Don?t get me wrong, Roger had every right to dislike, or even hate, this movie. It was his job to give his opinion and he was a terrific writer, so maybe that was also part of the reason why it bothered me so much. That a fellow wordsmith had been so personally negative of how I defined myself.

Years passed. And, like all hurts, Roger?s words receded into the past where the sense memory it evoked became shielded by scar tissue.

Ebert went on to give other movies both good and bad reviews, and I went on to write things that have gotten both good and bad reviews. Oh, well, as Hyman Roth said in ?The Godfather: Part II,? ?This is the business we?ve chosen.?

But, like the desire to run into a former lover, the one who dropped us for the one they ended up marrying, for years I wondered what would happen if I crossed paths with Roger Ebert again. What would I say? How would I say it? And would the police have to intervene?

So here?s what happened the next time I met Roger Ebert.

March, 2006.

I was on tour promoting a book I?d written when someone I was having lunch with in a Chicago restaurant pointed him out.

I became transfixed. I watched him eat. I watched him laugh. And, when he got up, I watched him as he worked his way to the men?s room. Within seconds, I excused myself and did the same.

So there we were. Downstairs in the men?s room of a restaurant.

?Roger??? I heard myself say as we were both exiting.

?Yes,? he answered.

A beat of silence. One that he appeared to be using to figure out where he may have known my face. And one that I used to figure out what I was going to say next. It was clearly my turn to talk. Some twelve years after that review.

?Alan Zweibel,? I said.

Another beat of silence. One that he appeared to be using to tighten every muscle in his body.

And one that I broke by saying, ?And I just have to tell you, Roger, that that sweater you?re wearing? I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate that sweater.?

One last beat of silence.

Then I smiled. And then he smiled.

Then I started laughing.

And then he started laughing.

And then we shook hands.

Rest in peace, Roger.

The film rights to Alan Zweibel?s latest novel, ?Lunatics? (co-written with Dave Barry), were recently sold to Universal with Steve Carell attached to play one of the leads. Zweibel is on Twitter and Facebook.

Photograph of Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel at the thirty-first annual Publicists Guild of America Awards Luncheon, by Ron Galella/WireImage.

Source: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/04/roger-ebert-memories-bad-review-zweibel.html

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