Roger Ebert blogged about his profile in Esquire. If you haven’t, make sure to read the Esquire profile. Cliches to describe it: heartbreaking and uplifting. But it’s interesting to read about Roger Ebert’s thoughts on the magazine article:
I knew going in that a lot of the article would be about my surgeries and their aftermath. Let’s face it. Esquire wouldn’t have assigned an article if I were still in good health. Their cover line was the hook: Roger Ebert’s Last Words. A good head. Whoever wrote that knew what they were doing. I was a little surprised at the detail the article went into about the nature and extent of my wounds and the realities of my appearance, but what the hell. It was true. I didn’t need polite fictions.
Now that I think about it, Roger Ebert is one of the first writers whose name I was familiar with as a kid, and of course it was from hearing the two thumbs up line so often. But as I got older, his movie reviews always held extra weight for me.