Quotes from Roger Ebert

We piled into the back of his big red Sun-Times truck: Robertson, McHugh, a bagpipe player, assorted other regulars, and Good Sydney Harris. Good Sydney Harris was a Spanish Civil War veteran, not to be confused with the Bad Sydney Harris, the Daily News columnist. Good Sydney had fallen into conversation with a dominatrix named Jake, who joined us.

As the man says in the play, for this relief, much thanks.

Neither the mob nor Vegas could exist if most people weren't optimists

Unlike modern films where superstars dominate every scene, the Hollywood films of the golden era have depth in writing and casting, so the story can resonate with more than one tone.

You look at them and wonder how, at any stage of the production, anyone could have thought there was a watchable movie here.

The movie has, above all, effortless charm. Once we catch on that nothing much is going to happen, we can relax and share the amusement of the actors, who are essentially being asked to share their playfulness.

Another of Keaton's strategies was to avoid anticipation. Instead of showing you what was about to happen, he showed you what was happening; the surprise and the response are both unexpected, and funnier. He also gets laughs by the application of perfect logic.

and the sexes eyeing each other uneasily, for nothing is easier for a teenager to imagine than rejection.

He was an editor for seven years before directing his first film, and his career stands as an argument for the theory that editors make better directors than cine-matographers do; the cinematographer is seduced by the look of a film, while the editor is faced with the task of making it work as a story.

The 1960s ended sadly, as did Bonnie and Clyde, as did Jules and Jim, as did Thelma & Louise, a film they influenced; the movement from comedy to tragedy was all the more powerful for audiences who expected one or the other.

The children of Birmingham did not really die in the State of Alabama, however, because Alabama is a state of mind, and in the minds of the [white] men who rule Alabama, those children had never lived [...] their blood is on so many hands, that history will weep in the telling...and it is not new blood. It is old, so very old.

Listening to Bailey, it occurred to me that the best commentary tracks are often by experts who did not work on the film but love it and have given it a lot of thought. They're more useful than those rambling tracks where directors (notoriously shy about explaining their techniques or purposes) reminisce about the weather on the set that day.

Fallacy of the Talking Killer. The villain wants to kill the hero. He has him cornered at gunpoint. All he has to do is pull the trigger. But he always talks first. He explains the hero's mistakes to him. Jeers. Laughs. And gives the hero time to think his way out of the situation, or be rescued by his buddy. Cf. most James Bond movies.

The world of French crime films is a particular place, informed by the French love for Hollywood film noir, a genre they identified and named. But the great French noirs of the 1950s are not copies of Hollywood; instead, they have a particularly French flavor.

Fast Food Rule. Wanna know what the summer's blockbuster is going to be? See who McDonald's does the marketing tie-in with. Wanna know what blockbuster will do disappointing business? See who Burger King ties in with.

The Toys of a Lifetime

if you don't flush out the pipes, they'll run brown.

he knows he's running wild--and chooses to, burning up the future years of an empty lifetime for a few flashes of freedom

It is a truism that Hollywood trailers advertise not the movie that has been made, but the movie that the studio wishes had been made.

Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's basilica.

The movie teaches us how action is the enemy of suspense—how action releases tension instead of building it. Better to wait for a whole movie for something to happen (assuming we really care whether it happens) than to sit through a film where things we don't care about are happening constantly.

which plays like porn dubbed by bitter deconstructionist theoreticians.

There is a certain kind of humor that rises below vulgarity. It isn't merely in the worst possible taste; it aspires to be in the worst possible taste.

Karl Malden once said the hardest thing he ever had to do as an actor was act as if he didn't know he was about to be hit in the head with a beer can.