英语访谈节目:决定电影命运的著名评论家罗杰·艾伯特

DAVID EDELSTEIN:Well, it's an amazing thing.

When he first started on TV, remember, he wasn't universally loved. He and Gene Siskel were people—a lot of people tuned in just to see them bicker, because it was said that they kind of didn't like each other off-camera. And people referred to them derisively as the fat guy and the other one.

But, slowly, as people grew up with Roger, as new fans came of age, he in part—also because of his Pulitzer—managed to acquire a lot of authority, and to make film criticism serious on television, which it really hadn't been at that point.

Then, what was absolutely stunning was that his greatest gift was his voice, his ability to speak extemporaneously. When he lost that, he went and he reinvented himself. He turned himself into this amazing blogger, more passionate than ever, someone whose voice was infectious and who every day set an example for all of us in what to do when—you know, when life gives you a lemon.

I think he wrote 1,000 times better after he lost his voice than he did before. In some ways—in some ways, I mean, as terrible as, of course, it was, it was a blessing for him as a writer and a thinker that he could lay out his philosophy of life, his aesthetic and his politics in a way that he never had before.

HARI SREENIVASAN:So, what is it about that show that made it so successful? The two of them co-hosted it together for almost, what, 23, 24 years.

DAVID EDELSTEIN:Well, a lot of critics went on TV and talked and were not really challenged by anybody.

But they were very, very different people. You had Siskel, who was very prickly and scattershot and really, really kind of moody and not that much of an intellectual, and Roger, who was—who managed to be very, very centered and to kind of keep the discussion on track.

And they taught us not just how to think about movies, which I think we knew how to do, but how to talk about them, so that we didn't just sit there and say, well, I liked it. Well, I liked it, too. Let's give it a yes.

They actually engaged with each other. They thought. They aired different world views, different personalities, different temperaments. And I think they created a template for a lot of shows that followed, none of them anywhere near as good as the original "Siskel & Ebert at the Movies."

HARI SREENIVASAN:Did getting a thumbs up or thumbs down actually have a measurable difference on a movie?

DAVID EDELSTEIN:Oh, sure it did.

I mean, look, the phrase two thumbs up has passed into the lexicon. There are people still nowadays who say, I give it two thumbs up, even if it's their own thumbs. Yes, you know, it was—Roger often lamented that, you know, quote ads were all reduced to silly superlatives and adjectives.

And I once reminded him, to his great irritation, that as much as he wanted to see more intelligent quote ads, a lot of it these days was two big thumbs.

On the other hand, if you could win over Ebert and Siskel, you knew that there was going to be an audience.

Ebert—you see, Ebert didn't think just about his own responses. And he didn't think about the history of cinema. I mean, he did, but first and foremost, he thought about you, the viewer at home. You know, what are you going to make of this? What is everybody going to make? What can we learn from this? How can we support this filmmaker or that filmmaker? It's really an inspiring legacy.

HARI SREENIVASAN:I mean, it seems even Facebook stole the thumbs up for the like button, right?

I want to ask ...

DAVID EDELSTEIN:He copyrighted it, though. He did copyright it.

HARI SREENIVASAN:Did he really?

DAVID EDELSTEIN:Yes, he did. Oh, yes.

HARI SREENIVASAN:So, I want to ask, what are you going to remember about him as a peer? Because I'm sure there's hundreds of movies that the two of you disagreed on. But when you read his work and compared it to your own, what is going to leap out at you?

DAVID EDELSTEIN:Well, I think the funny is, you know, Roger never really represented a certain aesthetic.

He wasn't—his writing wasn't transformative, the way someone like Andrew Sarris or Pauline Kael was, people whose aesthetic we still argue about. As I said, what I remember about Roger was that public persona, that public dimension.

He reminded us that movies weren't just some private thing that we sat in the dark and were sort of bathed, bathed in the light of the screen, that they were—that each and every one of us, our own responses, you know, were—were a starting point for a larger debate, a larger cultural debate. What does this mean? What is this artist trying to do? How can movies transform all of our lives, teach us what it is to transcend our mundane reality?

That's what inspires me most about his legacy, not just even so much any individual things he wrote, although he was a fine writer. He was a lucid writer. It was the—it was that—it was that public dimension to what he did that is hugely important.

HARI SREENIVASAN:All right, David Edelstein, thanks so much for your time.