Twelve years ago, Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and now better known simply as "the fat one," was asked if he would appear on a new movie-review program being produced by WTTW, the local PBS station. He was intrigued by the idea but not by the prospective costar: his archrival from the Chicago Tribune, Gene Siskel. "The answer," Ebert recalls, "was at the tip of my tongue: no." Nor did Siskel, now frequently referred to as "the other one," relish the thought of sharing a stage with "the most hated guy in my life."
Siskel and Ebert still do not get along, at least in public, but they have put that antagonism to good use. Their show, originally called Opening Soon at a Theater Near You and later Sneak Previews, went national in 1978 and soon became the highest-rated series in PBS history. In 1982 they moved to commercial syndication. Today, under the title Siskel & Ebert & the Movies, they reach an audience of 8 million, ranking in the Top Ten of all once-a-week syndicated shows on TV.
The Mutt-and-Jeff pair are certainly the most popular and conceivably the most powerful movie critics in the country. Probably no encomium is more sought after by film publicists than "Two thumbs up -- Siskel and Ebert" (reflecting their device of signaling thumbs up or thumbs down for good reviews or bad). Just how much impact they have at the box office is less certain, but some in Hollywood think it is substantial. Said Comedian Eddie Murphy at a recent press conference: "Siskel and Ebert go 'horrible picture,' and, I'm telling you, ((they)) can definitely kill a movie."
Maybe, maybe not, but what keeps viewers tuning in is the chance to see them try to kill each other. The format of their show is simple. For each film (four are reviewed in a typical half-hour, plus an extra segment on videocassette releases), one of the pair will introduce clips, describe the plot and give a capsule review. Then comes an ad-lib passage in which the other offers his comments or rebuttal. The cross talk often gets testy. After the two disagreed about Susan Seidelman's comedy Making Mr. Right, Ebert concluded defiantly, "I enjoyed myself from beginning to end." Replied Siskel: "You usually do enjoy yourself; it's the film I didn't like." Or here is Ebert trying to convince Siskel that Alan Parker's thriller Angel Heart is not too slow moving: "You want television . . . let's hurry and tell the story." Siskel: "Don't lay that on me . . . you know I don't want television any more than you do." Ebert: "In that case, I'm sorry you have to be on this show."
Samuel Johnson and Matthew Arnold it's not, yet the program has virtually invented a new TV genre. Two sets of clones are currently trying (mostly in vain) to match their success: Rex Reed and Bill Harris on At the Movies; Jeffrey Lyons and Michael Medved on Sneak Previews. Meanwhile, Siskel and Ebert are frequent guests on the Tonight show and have mock-settled their differences in a basketball-shooting contest on Late Night with David Letterman. Movies now even make fun of them: in Hollywood Shuffle, two streetwise blacks review movies in a takeoff called Sneakin' in the Movies.