Ebert：a life still being lived and fully.doc

Ebert: A Life Still Being Lived, And Fully September 13, 2011 I was born inside the movie of my life.Those words open the new memoir Life Itself from the film critic Roger Ebert, who has made movies his life for more than four decades now. He and his sparring partner, the late Gene Siskel, had the most famous thumbs on television. Now, at age 69, Ebert depends on the same thumbs-up that he and Siskel made famous to help him communicate in daily life. Five years ago, after multiple cancer surgeries, he lost the ability to speak. On the glass door of his office in his Chicago townhouse, gold letters spell out The Ebert Company Limited: Fine Film Criticism Since 1967. On the wall hangs his Pulitzer Prize, from 1975. He was the first film critic to win one. Ebert points with delight to a manual L.C. Smith and Corona typewriter on a shelf. He scribbles a message in a small spiral notebook: 1966 — bought it for $25! Used until 1980s, when I got a Tandy. Ebert still churns out half a dozen reviews every week, and typing has become his means of speech. This is Alex, he explains, a voice that came built into my computer. Alex is part of a text-to-speech program; Ebert types, Alex speaks the words. The words flow at a remarkable rate, given that he laboriously hunts and pecks with just two fingers across the keyboard. A Strong Sense Of Morality About Film Eberts first movie memory: at 3, watching the Marx Brothers A Day at the Races in Urbana Ill. The Marx Brothers seemed very strange to me and a little disturbing, Ebert recalls. Years later, I met Groucho — the name comes out GROU-ko in Alexs synthesized voice — and he still seemed very strange and a little disturbing. Life Itself A Memoir by Roger Ebert As Ebert listens to Alex hell pantomime for emphasis to make up for whats been taken away. His eyes widen; he might tap his heart to signal I love you, or thanks. Over the years, he has been treated for salivary gland cancer, then thyroid cancer, then cancer of the jawbon