The Big Picture - 3. “The Thumbs” | Gene and Roger

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

In the early ’80s, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert went from PBS stars to pop-culture celebrities. That newfound fame tested their already-heightened rivalry. But it also united them as they made one of the riskiest moves of their careers—a move that would change the way films were talked about, and that made Gene and Roger bigger than ever. Host: Brian Raftery Producers: Amanda Dobbins, Sean Fennessey, Isaac Lee, Noah Malale, Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It was the fall of 1982, and Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were in New York for their biggest TV gig to date, the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. Welcome back to Saturday Night Live. Across the aisle from me, Gene Siskel, film critic of the Chicago Tribune. And this is Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. And this is history's first live review of a television show still in progress. The host that evening was Chevy Chase, and the musical guest was Queen. This is early 80s SNL, so the episode was... fine?

Some good Eddie Murphy stuff, but heavy on the piscopo. Towards the end, Siskel and Ebert made their surprise cameo, dressed in their usual sweaters and blazers. They reviewed some of the night's sketches and riffed on Chevy's movie career. And Chevy, meanwhile, made some goofy faces behind their backs. Well, in another movie, scenes like old times, I know that the best scene there was played by Chevy's hand. He was hiding under the bed when Goldie Hawn stepped on her hand with her high-heeled shoes. The hand played the scene, though though like Marlon Brando. It was really one of the great acting hand jobs of all time.

Even in the early 80s, when the show was in a free fall, an SNL cameo was a sign of success. Most of the show's surprise guests were people like Robin Williams or Andy Warhol, pop culture figures who were instantly recognizable. Siskel and Ebert may have been big stars on PBS, but SNL was a very different level of fame. That's why, right before Showtime, Siskel and Ebert were freaking out. Their SNL rehearsal had gone terribly, so the critics had been rushed backstage and told to cut down their script. They sat there with a typewriter, counting words and arguing over who would get the most lines.

Marlene Iglesin, Jean's wife of almost 20 years, remembers how rattled the critics had been that night. They both walked into the unknown phenomenon of celebrity together. So they were scared out of their minds. From the moment Sneak Previews premiered in 1978, the show earned Siskel and Ebert a passionate fan base. Strangers stopped Gene and

Roger on the street or in the airport to talk movies. Colleges, conferences, and talk shows brought them in as distinguished guests. An orthodontist in Indiana even paid $750 at a fundraiser just to have dinner with Siskel and Ebert in their home city of Chicago.

That's like $3,000 now to have dinner with two movie critics. When Gene and Roger first started working together, they worried they'd end up embarrassing themselves on TV. Instead, they became cult icons, and then ultimately, full-on superstars. Here's Tom Shales, the Pulitzer-winning TV critic for The Washington Post. If you did a huge survey of the country, there aren't that many people probably who give

a darn about the movie criticism that goes on, but they made people care. They got people to care and tricked them into watching, sort of, by turning it into a kind of a soap opera, The Adventures of Roger and Jean. For The Ringer, I'm Brian Raftree, and this is The Adventures of Roger and Gene. It took a lot of practice to make sneak previews work. Before each taping, the critics spent the week taking in as many films as possible. Once screenings

were done, everyone would gather at the fake movie balcony for the show's Thursday taping. The sneak previews format didn't change much in those first few years. What did change was Siskel and Ebert themselves. After a few stiff early appearances, the critics finally began to loosen up.

Their conversations felt easy and natural, even when they were arguing. And they got a kick out of celebrating the kinds of films that critics weren't supposed to take seriously. Here they are talking about Swamp Thing, a comic book flick that few of their colleagues thought much of at the time. You know, you saw this movie before me, and you told me that you thought it was pretty good,

and I thought, now this is a case where you, and we have had this running battle, where you will find one element in a movie, I find sometimes, and then you'll say the movie is great, and I'm always complaining you're not being tough enough. It's my great failing, right? Great failing in life, okay. Excuse me.

Okay. You're not wrong tough enough. It's my great failing, right? Great failing in life. Okay. Excuse me. Okay. You're not wrong this time. This is terrific. Keep in mind, this was on PBS, which back then wasn't known for monster movie reviews. It was prestige TV before that even became a thing. PBS was where you watched Masterpiece Theater and the Kennedy Center Honors. When I was a kid, the craziest thing on our local PBS station was Benny Hill, this British comedy that I'd probably be arrested for even trying to describe in 2021. But even though Siskel and Ebert were on a respected national network,

they never came off as too lofty. And much like superstar chef Julia Child, another public TV celebrity, Siskel and Ebert had a talent for making something that seemed intimidating feel accessible. As film critic Kerry Rickey points out, that relatability was a big part of Gene and Roger's early success. Here are these Midwest guys, and the thing about being in the Midwest is that you could be an intellectual, but you didn't flaunt it. So they had this very refined palette, but they talked about the things they loved, like Joe Sixpack. They could make sophisticated arguments in that language. That everyman approach endeared Siskel and Eber to another rising Midwestern TV star. Around the same time the critics made that SNL cameo, they had their first appearance

on Late Night with David Letterman. At that point, the coolest show on the air. Most people, when a motion picture critic image comes to mind, most people think of somebody who is kind of goofy, too esoteric, too intellectual, or on the other hand, kind of bitchy and goofy. That's kind of the ambiance we try to recreate. You guys are just nice nice reasonable fellows reviewing films I think we're film lovers we're fans we like films we like to see good films we're disappointed when we see bad ones and we talk about them to each other I think the way a lot of people talk about movies to each other that doesn't mean that we can't talk about a serious concept or serious films it's

just that we do it from a point of view of loving the work. One of the interesting things about our show is trying to make qualified remarks. So much of criticism is simply thumbs up and thumbs down. This isn't something I have too much first-hand experience with, but it's kind of hard to sound smart on TV. If you talk too fast, no one will understand you. Too slow, no one will want to listen to you.

And you can't interrupt too much, because you'll just look like, well, someone who thinks they're too smart. Gene and Roger were deeply intelligent. But when they debated a movie, they didn't come off as know-it-alls. Instead, they developed this kind of intellectual rhythm, I guess. See how hard it is to sound smart? They used language and reference points that didn't require a film degree to understand. If they mentioned an old movie in their review, it was a classic most people had seen. And in their crosstalks, they answer the kind of big picture questions most moviegoers ask themselves when the lights come up. How are the performances? Were the characters relatable? Does the whole thing work?

They were talking to your mom. They were talking to your uncle. That's Quentin Tarantino. He came of age in the 70s, a time when local newscasts and TV shows had their own on-air movie critics, few of whom connected with viewers the way Gene and Roger did. Siskel and Ebert put all those guys out of business.

Because once everybody knew who they were, then they were the movie critics for the people. And everyone was kind of interested and would watch the show to see what they said. And if you saw thumbs up or thumbs down, you knew, without knowing the content of the review, you know what they thought about it. And in their first few years of hosting sneak previews, there were plenty of vital mainstream movies for Gene and Roger to think about. And talk about. Movies like Raging Bull, Ordinary People, Kramer vs. Kramer,

Richard Pryor live on the Sunset Strip, Apocalypse Now. Let me tell you, Roger, that I don't think it's such a big achievement to make a heart-rendering film about Vietnam. I think that America is so conflicted about the war. The people who served feel bad about it. The people who didn't serve feel bad about it. The people who didn't stop it. I think that you can show almost anything to do with Vietnam, and people feel, oh, my

God, the human waste. Roger Ailes, That may be true, but on the other hand, this movie is made on such an epic scale. The filmmaking is so good. The performances, particularly by Martin Sheehan and Robert Duvall, are so good that we don't see stuff like this every day. This is an extraordinary event. It's worth noting that Gene would eventually change his mind about Apocalypse Now. It was one of those Siskel and Ebert arguments that went on for years.

They even did an entire special on Vietnam movies. On sneak previews, Gene and Roger tackled issues you rarely heard being discussed on television back then. Entire episodes were devoted to how Hollywood treated black characters, and how horror movies treated women. Nowadays, these kinds of in-depth movie conversations can be found anywhere, 24 hours a day, on podcasts, subreddits, and Twitter threads, or even just in a text chain between you and a friend. The modern film discourse is everywhere you read, everywhere you look, everywhere you listen. But in the sneak previews era, for millions of people, Siskel and Ebert were the discourse. Within two years of its debut, the show was being carried on nearly 300 PBS

stations around the country. That meant Siskel and Ebert were reaching into smaller cities and towns, where they connected with young viewers only just starting to learn about movies. Viewers like Ramin Barani. At that time when there was no social media, it was completely bizarre. It was like an alien ship landed, deposited these two men in a balcony, and they talked about movies. Barani is the writer-director of such acclaimed films as 99 Homes and The White Tiger. But in the 80s, he was a young kid in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, watching Siskel and Ebert.

At first, he mostly tuned in for the arguments, which he and his older brother would sometimes recreate at home. As he got older, though, the critics would become a crucial part of Barani's film education. It wasn't like living in New York or a big city where there were art house cinemas or anything like that. And my parents weren't really into movies. So it's kind of where you started to hear about, one, that people could talk about movies,

that that was something that could happen. And then you would hear about movies that you wouldn't normally hear about because they were independent films or foreign films that you wouldn't know about in any other way at that time. A few thousand miles away in Orange County, California, Justin Lin was watching too. I was this working class kid.

My parents had a little fish and chips restaurant, so we never went to movies. It took E.T. E.T. was so big that my dad had to close the restaurant early on like a Monday and take me and my brothers to Cerritos Mall and we watched a 10 p.m. show. Years later, Lin would graduate from watching Siskel Niebuhr to directing such films as Better Luck Tomorrow, as well as several Fast and Furious films, including Fast Five that's the really awesome

one where they drag the safe through Rio de Janeiro, and this summer's F9. But in the early 80s, Lin's main exposure to movies, and how they were made, was through Siskel and Ebert. I distinctly remember them reviewing Mr. Mom, and they were talking about, wow, wouldn't it be cool if it was the guy that was in Splash? And this is before Tom Hanks was Tom Hanks. And as a kid, I was like, oh, you have to cast. And so it kind of affected me on those levels of understanding that, oh, there's people who make this.

There's people who have to make choices when they make movies. Watching the show was one of my few ways into the world of thinking about film differently, to think about it in a critical sense. We'll be right back. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started.

By the spring of 1982, Sneak Previews was drawing millions of viewers each week, enough to make it the most popular half-hour show in public TV history. And Gene and Roger had finally landed in powerful markets like Los Angeles and New York, hugely influential cities that had once shut the show out. The fact that two critics from the Midwest

had gone national was a point of pride for Siskel and Ebert's Chicago fans, like TV producer Eric Ridehome. Chicago is unbelievably proud of itself. Anyone from Chicago will tell you the best things come from Chicago. Ridehome, who would go on to create ESPN's Part in the Interruption, was an avid follower of Siskel and Ebert. First as newspaper critics, then as TV critics.

They were hometown heroes. To know that this show was on in every city across the country, helping shape and define the movie tastes of viewers across the country. There's enormous pride in that because, of course, it validates what we already feel, that we're the best. And we're in this flyover territory that people on the coast don't always respect or appreciate. So when these guys get out there and explain it, and then they rate it and they review it, everyone takes our cue. Well, that's the way it should be, shouldn't it? With sneak previews taking off across the country,

Gene and Roger were suddenly in demand. It wasn't just the late night shows that were after them. At one point, they were even asked to play themselves in the 80s comedy, Strange Brew. An offer they declined. But that newfound fame made the competition between the two critics all the more intense. In addition to their movie reviews, they were covering Hollywood for their respective newspapers. Gene for the Tribune, Roger for the Sun-Times.

And it wasn't unusual for them to try to out-scoop each other. Especially Gene. Here he is interviewing Meryl Streep in 1983, trying to get anything he can about her next film. Do you have a co-star yet? Do you think you do? Can you say who that is? Is it someone that you've always wanted? Well, I've already told Roger, so I might as well tell you, but he's not going to. Oh, he's not going to tell you. He's pretty honorable. He won't. I'm honorable, too. But I'm tempted. I'm tempted.

Thea Flohm, the Sneak Previews executive producer, often found herself stuck in the middle of the host's ongoing rivalry. Gene, who habitually never had enough sleep, was taking a nap and was lying under the conference table in the conference room. And it was before we started taping. And Roger was in there, got a message and was on the phone setting up an interview with a big star. I forget who it was now. And Gene overheard it, never told Roger, called the publicist, got in there, got an interview first and scooped Roger. This was after they'd been working on the show together for maybe three, four years. According to one version of this story, Jean supposedly flew to New York City in order to get the drop on Roger. It was just one of the many times Jean and Roger's feud spilled over to the workplace.

They had to have the exact same sandwich at lunch so that nobody had a better sandwich. It was just the same. This is producer Carrie Lovestad, who began working with Gene and Roger in the late 80s and stayed with them for more than a decade. It was tuna salad in a pita with lettuce and tomato. I ordered a million of them over the years. They couldn't argue over whose sandwich was years. They couldn't argue over, you know, whose sandwich was better. They couldn't have sandwich envy.

They had the same damn sandwich. Still, those first few years of sneak previews helped ease some of the tension between Gene and Roger. They weren't exactly best pals. And they didn't spend time with each other when they weren't working. But Gene and Roger were no longer the crosstown foes who avoided talking to each other at screenings. Here's Marlene Igleson. They had a lot of firsts together. When they were on Letterman

and they were on the Johnny Carson show, they both froze. He asked them their favorite movies, they froze. I think they had a call, they're a producer, and asked, what are our favorite movies? They were just so uptight. I think those experiences together, becoming celebrities, was a bond. As Chaz Ebert remembers, Gene and Roger also put up a unified front when it came to business matters.

I mean, this is so unusual. I don't think people do this today. They actually had the same lawyer agent representing them to make sure that they got the same deal so that one didn't get more than the other. But together for the show, they said, let's do this because if we keep it so that we both live or die by the deals that we make, we're more likely to be more invested. And when Gene and Roger discussed business, they did it far away from the WTTW studio, which is why the Sneak Previews team was taken by surprise when in 1982, word got out that Gene roger had signed a syndication deal with a company called tribune broadcasting that meant they'd be leaving pbs the decision came as a shock to the show's viewers not to mention its staff

everybody was aghast producer nancy de los sant. They were going to go now and sell this, sell it, in exchange for money. And then they asked me if I wanted to join them. And I did say yes. And for a while there, I was a pariah. Is that the right word? At the station. If the reaction to Gene and Roger leaving PBS seems overheated,

keep in mind, in the early 80s, a lot of TV was terrible. There were only three big networks, and for every Cheers or Hill Street Blues, there were dozens of sitcoms and dramas people only watched because there was nothing else on. The people who loved sneak previews knew it was special,

and they wanted to protect it. They donated to PBS telethons and urged their friends to tune in. To some of those fans, going into commercial TV felt like a sellout move. Look, Gene and Roger were in Fugazi. They were two guys who wore sweaters and talked about Burt Reynolds movies. But public TV had made them stars and a lot of their viewers worried how the move would affect them. It was a huge deal because generally, like, PBS was its own sort of like island of misfit toys in television. So it wasn't like, you know, NBC came calling to give Julia Child a big contract or Mr. Rogers, you know. Back then, if you were on PBS, like, that was your lane.

That's film critic and podcaster Alonzo Duralde. He was 15 years old and a loyal Snake Previews viewer when Gene and Roger made their switch. And so the idea of this show that had been, didn't have advertisers and, you know, didn't have to deal with the usual sort of parameters of commercial TV was now going to move over. I think, yeah, there was a thought of like,

will they be able to do the same thing? Before signing the syndication deal, Gene spent a lot of nights pacing his kitchen, wondering if it was the right call. He and Roger were fond of PBS and felt loyal to the show's staff, but they'd had their share of frustrations with management. For one season, they didn't even have a working contract. And when PBS did try to deal with them, the critics felt undervalued. They treated me so badly, Roger said later. When I left PBS, my main motivation was anger. Not long after, Gene and Roger traveled to D.C. for an interview with Tom Shales of the Washington Post. It was the four seasons in Georgetown, which I thought would impress them.

I wanted them to feel like celebrities, although they were just now becoming really big stars on television. And I wrote later that having Siskel and Ebert argue at your table was almost like having Pavarotti come by and sing an aria for you. At the lunch, Gene and Roger admitted that leaving PBS was risky. They knew that from now on, their fates would depend on ratings, not their loyal fans buying tote bags. A show on PBS could potentially last for years, but on syndicated TV, they could be canceled within months. As Roger later admitted, we were scared shitless.

Still, if Gene and Roger were sweating the move, they didn't show it. We'd had a nice lunch, I thought, but you know how French food can be tinier than it is delicious, and so Roger standing up said, have they got a Popeye's fried chicken around here someplace?

It was a sign that the boys had not left the Midwest. Because WTTW owned the rights to sneak previews, Siskel and Ebert would have to make some changes once they switched to syndication. Soon they had a new title and a new theme song. I'm Gene Siskel, co-host of At The Movies, the movie review program. I'm Roger Ebert. This week we'll talk about Lola, a West German film about lust and despair. They also ditched the Dog of the Week segment and introduced Stinker of the Week, co-starring a skunk named Aroma.

But the biggest change would take place at the end of each episode. On sneak previews, Siskel and Ebert wrapped the show with a simple yes or no vote on each film. For At the Movies, they came up with a more definitive voting method. And two big thumbs up for Terms of Endearment, a great new movie. We had a real close split on Twilight Zone. We agreed that the second two segments were better than the first two. Gene gives it a marginal thumbs up. I give it a close thumbs down. And finally, two downturned thumbs for Psycho 2, a well-made but weak carbon copy of the great

Alfred Hitchcock thriller. On their very first Letterman appearance, Gene had made a dig about critics who rely on simple thumbs up, thumbs down reviews. But they'd learned a lot about how TV worked. And on the small screen, the appeal of those thumbs was undeniable. It didn't matter how lively and intelligent the crosstalks were. From now on, a Siskel and Ebert review simply didn't feel complete until you saw their hands at the end of the show. Would they vote thumbs up or thumbs down? It was a simple change to the Siskel and Ebert format, but when combined with their new syndication audience, the thumbs would give the critics the kind of sway they only could have imagined at PBS. Gene and Roger may have worried about the risks of leaving public television, but when At The Movies debuted in 1982, it was an

immediate hit. A few years after their appearance with Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live, Gene and Roger reunited with the comedian on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. At the time, Chase was a major movie star, and he was about to release his big holiday comedy, Three Amigos. I hate to ask you to pick a dog, because it's not fair sometimes for the people who make the movies. But is there something out there that is really so bad? Roger, he was the one who asked you if you made a movie. You go first.

I can't really recommend Three Amigos. Keep in mind, Chevy is sitting right next to them as Roger talks. Are you talking about Christmas pictures? Yeah. It's the Christmas picture I like the least. This is the happy hour. Yes.

Well, I ask you to express it. I ask you to express it. Chevy Chase has made a lot of good movies, and God willing, he will make a lot more good movies in the future. With your help. Yes. Yes, with your help. Chevy tried to laugh it off, but the Tonight Show audience knew the same thing as everybody watching from home.

When Siskel and Ebert delivered a verdict on a movie, a lot of people paid attention. And the critics were about to learn just how powerful their thumbs could be. Next time on Gene and Roger. Yeah, I only saw that movie because Siskel and Ebert told me so forcefully that I needed to.

And in the next three days, that film grossed more money than it had in the three weeks and played through May. And he went like this and sort of pulled me aside. He said, these stupid people have brought me and Roger to the convention. And we're not even under contract at this point in time. He said, it's like taking your girlfriend to a dating bar for a night out. I don't think the Tribune knew back then, but Roger had gone to open a path for Gene to leave the Tribune and come over to the Sun-Times because he felt so protective of him. Gene and Roger is written and reported by me, Brian Raftery, with story editing by Amanda Dobbins.

The show was executive produced by Sean Fennessy. Our producers are Amanda Dobbins, Noah Malalay, Bobby Wagner, and Isaac Lee. Music and sound design by Isaac Lee. Copy editing was done by Craig Gaines and fact-checking by Kellen B. Coates. Our art director is David Shoemaker. Thank you for listening.