In founder's honor, empathy takes center stage at Ebertfest

Apr. 20—CHAMPAIGN — When Chaz and Roger Ebert would make the trip to their spacious lakehouse tucked away in the woods in the small town of Harbert, Mich., they rarely had reason to venture away from the property.

A guesthouse overlooking the lake gave way to a 100-foot-wide secluded beach, and they'd invite musical and theatrical performers onto the small, elevated stage at one end of the family room. If they wanted to watch a movie with their guests, they'd screen it on the large projector at the other end of the family room.

But one evening in 1994, the Eberts made it a point to plan a date night and head into town. They wanted to see a movie that they had enjoyed so much when they watched it at a screening for critics — and only a trip to the theater would do for a second viewing.

"Because we saw movies so many times during the week for him to review, we didn't (go to theaters) often," Chaz said. "That's why I remember 'Forrest Gump' so specifically. ... To go while we were at the summer house was really special. I think we only did that once."

During their time together, Chaz would accompany Roger to many of the daily screenings that he attended as a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Afterwards, they would wait to discuss them until after he wrote his reviews, because neither wanted Chaz's opinion to alter his critique.

Sometimes, they'd debate, with Chaz taking on the role of Gene Siskel or Richard Roeper, his co-hosts and oft-times foils on "At the Movies."

After watching "Forrest Gump," they had little reason to debate.

"Roger and I absolutely loved 'Forrest Gump,'" Chaz said, "and we love it because Robert Zemeckis did a really spectacular thing: He took 'Forrest Gump' really seriously, and so did Sally Field, the mother. The film could've been done as a parody, it could have been done as a lot of things. ... Talk about full-on empathy."

'A magical movie'

In a speech outside the Chicago Theatre in 2005, Ebert called movies "machines that generate empathy," which allow viewers to gain a greater understanding of others that are different form them in some way.

Ten years after her husband died after a long battle with cancer that left him unable to speak, Chaz and other Ebertfest organizers decided to honor Roger at this year's festival with a theme of "Empathy at the Movies."

The four-day festival at the Virginia Theatre will close Saturday evening with a showing of "Forrest Gump," which Ebert described in his review as "a meditation on our times, as seen through the eyes of a man who lacks cynicism and takes things for exactly what they are." Mykelti Williamson, who played Gump's shrimp-loving friend, Bubba, will be the special guest.

"What a magical movie," Ebert wrote to close out his review.

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The festival also features "Wings of Desire," a 1987 movie about an angel who longs to live in the human world. Ebert wrote that the movie was "about being, not doing," and gave it four stars.

Ebert also gave four stars to 1994's "Fresh," which he called "a movie filled with drama and excitement, unfolding a plot of brilliant complexity, in which the central character is solemn and silent, saying only what he has to say, revealing himself only strategically." Producer Lawrence Bender will take the stage after Saturday's 10:30 a.m. screening at the Virginia.

Among the movies at the festival that Roger didn't live to see are "In and Of Itself," a 2020 film about magician Derek Delgaudio that Chaz said was unlike any movie she'd ever seen; 2019's "My Name is Sara,'" the true story of a girl who must hide her identity as a Jew to survive the Holocaust; 2017's "American Folk," which tells the story of two singers on a cross-country road trip after their flight is grounded in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks; the 2022 documentary "Marian Anderson: The Whole World in Her Hands," about the soul singer and civil-rights activist; and 2020's "Nine Days," in which five unborn souls are interviewed for a shot at one life on earth.

Usually, the festival's more serious films are broken up by comedies. Not this year.

"This year, as we were putting it together, we realized that, in the films that we chose, there are moments of levity and a few light moments, a few funny moments even though they're not comedies," Chaz said. "The thing that I look for more than anything when I'm sitting in the dark watching movies, I want something that just cracks my heart wide open, and all of these movies do that."

'She changed his personality'

Roger's outward empathy, some say, wasn't always readily apparent until he met Chaz.

Of course, his negative reviews, many of which were compiled into two books, were always biting, including the time he panned the 1986 film "Three Amigos" on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" with one of its stars, Chevy Chase, sitting next to him.

In everyday life, though, he softened, as detailed in 2014's "Life Itself," an often-times brutally honest documentary about the details of Ebert's life and career that followed him in his final days. In the film, Siskel's widow, Marlene Iglitzen, chuckles as she tells a story about Ebert grabbing a cab in front of her when she was eight months' pregnant.

"He's not that way anymore," Iglitzen says in the movie. Chaz "changed his life immeasurably. She changed his personality."

Chaz heard from her late husband's friends about how she changed him for the better, which surprises her to this day. Maybe, the former civil-rights attorney surmises, his sarcasm was too harsh for some, and maybe his identity as "the life of the party" was softened by her presence.

But the deep-down empathy that made movies so special to him, she argues, was always there.

"The depth of his goodness was so profound," she said. "When we talked about people and talked about humanity and how we would order the world or a community that we wanted to see, it was just breathtaking to me."