Yesterday, after the news about Roger Ebert broke, Chicago radio host Milos Stehlik reached out to Werner Herzog. Herzog and Ebert had been friends for decades, Ebert having been a great admirer of Herzog’s 1972 film Aguirre, the Wrath of God. From there it was nearly always a love-in, Ebert often writing tributes to the director. But it did not obviate Ebert’s critical eye.
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To Stehlik, Herzog did sound a hopeless note. Of course, he said he had only heard the news of Ebert’s death a few minutes before. He was audibly upset; at the end of the interview he made a sound that could only have been a sob. He said that Ebert was among the “very last” serious writers about movies. He worried that the trend had shifted to celebrities, and celebrities only. There were a few others who wrote seriously, Herzog said, but “none of [Ebert]’s caliber.” “My question is, what do we do without him now?” Herzog said. “What do we do?”
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