LIFE ITSELF directed by Steve James. A VSC release. 120 minutes. Opens Friday (July 11) at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNNNN
In the fall of 2012, Steve James was offered the chance to make a movie about the life and work of Chicago film critic Roger Ebert. This made sense to everyone who heard about it. After all, Ebert’s impassioned support of James’s Hoop Dreams helped that 1994 documentary find distribution and launched James’s career.
James, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure. In Toronto for an early screening of the film arranged by the Doc Institute, he admits he had some reservations.
“I didn’t know him well,” James says. “I think that was a virtue, actually. He had been a great champion of Hoop Dreams [and] he was very supportive of [James’s subsequent doc] Stevie. The Interrupters he got behind big time, and he was outraged when we didn’t get short-listed for the Oscars. But we never hung out. I never thought you could.
“That actually put me in a much better position to tell his story,” he continues. “I felt freer to put the warts in, to look at him critically. I wouldn’t have done the film if I didn’t admire him – life’s too short. But I didn’t want it to be a tribute piece. And he didn’t want that either.”
What no one realized when shooting started was that Ebert would be dead four months later. A hip fracture put him back in the hospital, which led to a new cancer diagnosis. And suddenly, Life Itself became about living and dying.
“He was home for two days during the entire four months,” James says. “The rest of the time he was either in the hospital or in rehab. And yet all those things I wanted to capture about him are still there. In a way it’s even more moving because [we] know he’s dying and yet his sense of humour is there. The resilience, the stubbornness – it’s still Roger. That was a revelation for me, to be there to see that. But it did change the temper of the film.”
There’s one element of Life Itself that somehow isn’t affected by Ebert’s death, and that’s his relationship with his wife, Chaz, who introduces the 7 pm screening Friday (July 11). Not only is she by his side throughout every awful step of his deterioration, but their romance becomes something we – and Roger – can cling to as his time grows shorter.
“You can see why he fell in love with this woman at the age of 50,” James says. “As his buddy Bill Nack says in the movie, he was looking for love and family his whole life. He was an only child, he lost his dad early and had a tough relationship with his mother. He found it all in her. She’s a remarkable person.”
The more time James spent around Roger and Chaz, the more he came to admire their relationship – and their honesty with each other. One of the most intense moments in Life Itself comes when James captures the couple fighting – truly fighting – over whether an exhausted Roger should try to get up a flight of stairs unassisted.
“I fully expected that Chaz was going to pull me aside and say, ‘Does that have to be in the film?'” he recalls. “And I would have probably said, ‘You know what, let’s talk about it down the road. Let me cut the film and we’ll talk about it.’ And then I would have made my case and I would have used it if I wanted to. But I figured I was gonna have that conversation, for sure.”
And?
“She never asked me to take it out,” he says. “At one point before I had shown [the finished film] to her, she said, ‘I just have to ask – is that scene at the foot of the stairs in the movie?’ And I went, ‘Yeah.’
“And she goes, ‘I figured.'”
Interview Clips
Steve James on Roger Ebert’s need to live honestly after his surgery, and during the making of Life Itself:
James on the original conception for the film:
James on screening Life Itself for a jury of Ebert’s peers:
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
