HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Roger Ebert is still hard at work, even though it's been nearly four years since he last spoke.
Ebert, one of the most influential film critics in history, lost his voice in 2006 when complications developed after a surgery for cancer in his jaw. Today, he relies on special text-to-speech software and good old fashioned pen and paper to communicate. It's not the ride into the sunset he envisioned, but Ebert wants the world to know he's still going strong in a new interview with Esquire magazine.
"There is no need to pity me," he writes on one of the many Post-it notes that now dictate his life. "Look how happy I am."
While he doesn't want pity, Ebert confesses that his dreams are a happier place.
"Never yet a dream where I can't talk," he shares. "Sometimes I discover — oh, I see! I CAN talk! I just forget to do it."
In 1975, Ebert became the first journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for movie criticism. He is still busy writing movie reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times, a position he's held since 1967. He's also developed a love for maintaining his online journal.
"It is saving me," he says, before calling up one journal entry that better explains the impact of his online world: "When I am writing my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be."
Ebert's face has been contorted by all the surgery, making expressions difficult. However, his face manages to reveal sadness when the subject turns to Gene Siskel, his late movie review partner on the television show Siskel & Ebert, who died of brain cancer in 1999.
"I've never said this before, but we were born to be Siskel and Ebert," he shares. "I just miss the guy so much."
His doctors and wife, Chaz, would like one more attempt to restore the voice that cancer took away, but Ebert gives that idea a thumbs down.
"Over and out," he responds.
Photo credit: Ethan Hill / Esquire
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