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A review by shepcatzero
Opposable Thumbs by Matt Singer
4.0
Roger Ebert said that a movie isn't about what it's about; it's about how it's about it.
Opposable Thumbs's subtitle, "How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever," describes the what, but the how is more remarkable: It's a love story.
The handful of TV producers and executives who spun the first iteration of their show into being may have thought they were capturing lightning in a bottle, when in fact they were containing the nuclear reaction of two volatile elements in a TV studio — two bitterly competitive professional rivals who wouldn't have given the other the satisfaction of exiting the melée no matter how chaotic it got.
It wouldn't have worked with any two other people. It didn't. Singer's book details the complete roster of smart, thoughtful, engaging critics who followed, and with a stocked liquor cabinet and guns to their heads, you couldn't get any two of them to re-create the defiant, sparring alchemy that Gene and Roger brought to the balcony every week.
But the joy of this book is watching how Gene and Roger's rivalry slowly gave way to mutual respect and the realization that they were in this thing together, more Curtis and Poitier in The Defiant Ones at the outset than the battling, bickering Lemmon and Matthau they presented to the world over time, though always inextricably bound in the public imagination. That they eventually became closer personally, brotherly even — softened perhaps by the presence of their wives and children, and also tragedy — without ever sacrificing the edge and opinionated fire that characterized their professional relationship, is the hopeful but bittersweet arc these characters and their audience deserved. If only there had been more time.
Opposable Thumbs's subtitle, "How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever," describes the what, but the how is more remarkable: It's a love story.
The handful of TV producers and executives who spun the first iteration of their show into being may have thought they were capturing lightning in a bottle, when in fact they were containing the nuclear reaction of two volatile elements in a TV studio — two bitterly competitive professional rivals who wouldn't have given the other the satisfaction of exiting the melée no matter how chaotic it got.
It wouldn't have worked with any two other people. It didn't. Singer's book details the complete roster of smart, thoughtful, engaging critics who followed, and with a stocked liquor cabinet and guns to their heads, you couldn't get any two of them to re-create the defiant, sparring alchemy that Gene and Roger brought to the balcony every week.
But the joy of this book is watching how Gene and Roger's rivalry slowly gave way to mutual respect and the realization that they were in this thing together, more Curtis and Poitier in The Defiant Ones at the outset than the battling, bickering Lemmon and Matthau they presented to the world over time, though always inextricably bound in the public imagination. That they eventually became closer personally, brotherly even — softened perhaps by the presence of their wives and children, and also tragedy — without ever sacrificing the edge and opinionated fire that characterized their professional relationship, is the hopeful but bittersweet arc these characters and their audience deserved. If only there had been more time.