R.I.P.

Mom's Italian. 100% And while she could have poured the over-exuberant passion that is the genetic cross my people bear into anything obvious - food, language, Catholicism, music, Sophia Loren - she opted at an early age to funnel my genetic disposition into her love for the cinema.

We'd go every week, right after church, our reward for the pennance that was 10AM mass. And without cable television, without a VCR, my cinematic cravings were only sated on the homefront via the weekly sit-down with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Thankfully, then as now, they were accessible via rabbit ears.

As far as my wonder years go, there was nothing on television that proved more influential than Sneak Previews, the duo's original incarnation of their Siskel & Ebert format which ran through 1982. In retrospect, I'd be hard pressed to not flag it as the best show ever.

I shit you not. I'll gladly go mano-e-mano with whatever overlauded American masterwork of scripted entertainment you can throw into the ring on this one, cochise. In my humble opinion, no American television program was as consistently intelligent, informative and - perhaps most importantly - flat out entertaining as the twentysome years that these two ruled the balcony; perhaps thousands of half hours that constitute, in retrospect, the greatest film class ever - for me, you, anyone.

If they boxed this shit on DVD, I'd buy it. From the moment I saw them gush enthusiastically over The Empire Strikes Back, I can honestly say that I never missed an episode - even with the hurdles set forth by collegiate hangovers, women and Siskel's untimely death in 1999. I was - and even with Roeper, still am - this show's bitch.

And now, it's over. In his online journal, Ebert officially closed the balcony yesterday. He writes:

I was surprised how depressed I felt all day on July 21, when Richard and I announced we were leaving the "Ebert and Roeper" program. To be sure, our departures were voluntary. We hadn't been fired. And because of my health troubles, I hadn't appeared on the show for two years. But I advised on co-hosts, suggested movies, stayed in close communication with Don DuPree, our beloved producer-director. The show remained in my life. Now, after 33 years, it was gone - taken in a "new direction." And I was fully realizing what a large empty space it left behind.

Yes, we're planning to continue the traditional format in a new venue, and taking the thumbs along with us. I'm involved in that, and it will be a great consolation. But somehow I thought the show Gene Siskel and I began would roll on forever. How many other TV formats had survived so long? I sat in my chair and day-dreamed.

I remembered a Saturday afternoon, it must have been the winter of 1975-76, when Gene and I were eating hamburgers in Oxford's Pub on Lincoln Av. with Thea Flaum, a young woman who would produce the show for WTTW, the Chicago PBS station. You didn't read her name in the news coverage of our departures, but she was the real "creator" of the show, as TV uses that term.

She told us she would build a balcony for us, and sit us across the aisle from one another. She told us we couldn't wear suits and ties - no one wore them to the movies. She came up with the idea of Spot the Wonder Dog. The show was monthly at first. On Sunday afternoons before a taping, we would separately sit across her dining room table from her and rehearse our scripts. We had "discussion points" we tried to memorize.

We were bad at that. If one guy dropped a discussion point, the other guy got mad. "We can't remember these points," Gene said, "but we can talk to each other." During that first season (the show was called "Opening Soon at a Theater Near You"), the final format took shape. In the pub that day, Thea told us, "You boys have no idea how far this show is going to go. One day you'll be in national syndication. You'll be making real money. You wait and see."

Her prophecy came true. The day we fully realized it in our guts, I think, was the first time we were invited to appear with Johnny Carson. We were scared out of our minds. We'd been briefed on likely questions by one of the show's writers, but moments before airtime he popped his head into the dressing room and said, "Johnny may ask you for some of your favorite movies this year."

Gene and I stared at each other in horror. "What was one of your favorite movies this year?" he asked me. "Gone With the Wind," I said. The Doc Severinsen orchestra had started playing the famous "Tonight Show" theme. Neither one of us could think of a single movie. Gene called our office in Chicago. "Tell me some movies we liked this year," he said. This is a true story.

Now the time has come to awake from my daydream. That's all history - treasured history, but past and gone, all the same. I remember what Gene said to me in that dressing room before the Carson Show: "Roger, we're a couple of kids from the Midwest. We don't belong here."

For the sake of it, sit through their review of Cop and a Half.

Two things I love about that clip; Siskel's reaction, as it often was when either found themselves in complete disagreement, masterful in how universal its bafflement was. Yet on the flip side, their enthusiasm for something they liked almost - almost - always produced a feeling that you simply had to see something that garnered a "Thumbs Up", just to experience the enthusiasm felt. Even Cop and a Half, but perhaps on cable. Basic. With rabbit ears.

Man, I miss these guys. But if it's not too late, is anyone even considering Skip and Steven A.? The fact that they agree on nothing but the disposibility of Maggie G - pure gold.