Siskel & Ebert (TV Series)

Winter People/Say Anything.../Field of Dreams/She's Out of Control/Dead Calm (1989)

Roger Ebert: Self - Host

Quotes 

• Gene Siskel - Host : Seeing "She's Out of Control" is really a depressing experience. It is neither lifelike, nor an effective fantasy. That scene you just saw tries to rip off "10", but it isn't "10". Rather, this film exists in a strange netherworld, I think, of what Hollywood considers entertainment, but is really a sinkhole of tawdry values. The film is photographed ineptly in tight TV shots, and when I saw "She's Out of Control", I became so depressed, I actually thought about quitting my job as a film critic, feeling as though the movies had abandoned me, because what I was seeing there really wasn't a movie. It was some sort of strange concoction of uh, really... just, someone who didn't understand what movies are all about. Fortunately, however, I would see the movie "Say Anything..." later in the same day, and all is right with the world. I'm still on the job.

  Roger Ebert - Host : You know, people probably think you're joking when you said...

  Gene Siskel - Host : No, I'm really...

  Roger Ebert - Host : ...That you were really thinking of quitting your job. I know what you felt, because I sat there, and I thought, "Life is precious, life is short, and the IDIOTS who made this film are taking two hours out of my life, and robbing it from me, in order to give me less than nothing."

  Gene Siskel - Host : Yeah.

  Roger Ebert - Host : I mean, a movie like this is a crime, because what it does is, it robs life from people by requiring them to spend two hours having such a terrible experience happen to them. Jean-Luc Gudard, the great French director, once said, "The way to criticize a movie is to make another movie." And you put your finger right on it, because the next movie we saw the same day was "Say Anything..." Also about a father, also about his daughter.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Right.

  Roger Ebert - Host : Same kind of basic situation. But, here's a trash movie and here's a great movie.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Uh, it's really bad. I always wonder, when I'm in a bad, I don't know if you have this reaction: When I'm in a bad movie in a theater, uh, aren't you surprised that people stay?

  Roger Ebert - Host : I think maybe they're just, they've spent their money, they don't have any place to go for two hours...

  Gene Siskel - Host : Yes, but I would say this, when you're talking about robbing your life, see my thing is, I've always wanted to say to people is, I just want to stand up in the middle of a bad movie in a theater and say, "Aren't your lives worth more, for two hours than the", even, say, seven bucks in New York City. $3.50 an hour, that's below the minimum wage, the new minimum wage!

  [Roger laughs] 

  Gene Siskel - Host : Get out, and LIVE!

  Roger Ebert - Host : Go stand in the lobby, and TALK!

  Gene Siskel - Host : Yeah.

  Roger Ebert - Host : You know? Oscar Brotman, a Chicago film exhibitor, once told me many years ago, he said, "There's a rule", he said: "If nothing has happened by the end of the first reel, nothing is GOING to happen." And when I saw this movie, I knew, even after the first MINUTE, I knew nothing would happen.

• Roger Ebert - Host : [after the segment where they reviewed "She's Out of Control"]  It feels good to get that off our chest, wasn't it? Y'know?

  Gene Siskel - Host : I still, y'know, normally, I'd say that's the great thing about our job, is we can get back at a film the way the public can, but I can't get back at that movie.

  ["She's Out of Control"] 

  Gene Siskel - Host : No, I didn't do it justice. I really, I was really unhappy.

  Roger Ebert - Host : It did a wrong to us that will NEVER be righted... and so all we can do...

  [laughs] 

  Roger Ebert - Host : is go ahead and review our next movie, which is "Dead Calm".