Remembering Roger Ebert

In other news, I'm sure you've already heard about the recent passing of Roger Ebert by now. But I felt compelled to throw in my two cents, and this is the first real opportunity I've had to do so.

I started writing movie reviews online back in 2003 because I thought it would be something fun to do. Watching and talking about movies is something I've always enjoyed, so I thought it would be a cool hobby to pick up. I'm far from a professional film critic or even a good writer, but I still enjoy doing that a full decade after I created "Sutton at the Movies." And as the years have gone by, I've often found myself looking to Ebert's reviews for inspiration if I was suffering from a particularly bad case of writer's block. While I disagreed with Ebert's opinions just as many times as I agreed with him, he always expressed himself in a way that was engaging, entertaining, and intelligent. Even if you felt differently about a movie than he did, Ebert always found a way to make a convincing argument about why he liked or didn't like something.

And truth be told, Roger Ebert made me want to be a better writer. I know I'll never, ever be on his level. He was light-years ahead of everybody else, on a plateau where only he and Gene Siskel resided, while I'm just a guy who writes dorky little articles on the Internet a few times a month as a hobby. And I could win the Pulitzer Prize a hundred times and still never be as good at this as Ebert was. The best I can do is to keep on trying, because there's no fun to be had in the opposite. And all that's left for me to say is this: Thank you, Mr. Ebert. Thank you for making movie critiquing fun. I hope you had as much fun writing your reviews as I had reading them.