{"id":399673,"date":"2025-11-23T18:49:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T18:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/399673\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T18:49:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T18:49:13","slug":"siskel-and-eberts-50th-anniversary-celebrated-on-stage-in-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/399673\/","title":{"rendered":"Siskel and Ebert\u2019s 50th Anniversary Celebrated on Stage in Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tExactly 50 years after their first joint TV appearance on Chicago\u2019s public TV station, Gene Siskel<\/a> and Roger Ebert<\/a>\u2019s legacy received a heartfelt celebration Saturday in their hometown \u2014\u00a0including a live stage performance of the pair\u2019s on-screen dynamic.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show, starring Zack Mast and Stephen Winchell (both veterans of Chicago\u2019s comedy and improv community), looked back on the early years of their TV pairing. Siskel (Winchell) and Ebert (Mast) presented it as a special episode of their show Sneak Previews, presenting clips of their own work and commenting on how their relationship grew and changed over those years \u2014\u00a0and how they went from very stiff TV performers at first to, with the help of producer Thea Flaum, the iconic faces of film criticism in the United States.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show is part of a month-long celebration of Siskel and Ebert that has also included weekly screenings of films they championed on TV and in print: Eve\u2019s Bayou, Breaking Away, Drugstore Cowboy and, concluding the series on Nov. 25, John Sayles\u2019 Lone Star. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe programming developed by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs\u2019 Chicago Film Office to honor Gene\u00a0Siskel\u00a0and Roger Ebert stands as a testament to their lasting cultural impact. By reviewing films through accessible, authentic conversation, they transformed the way the world engages with cinema,\u201d Kenya Merritt, acting commissioner of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, said in a statement. \u201cTheir dialogue helped elevate Chicago as a global hub for thoughtful, passionate film discussion and as a place that champions emerging artists. As we celebrate their 50-year legacy, we also honor the generations of filmmakers, critics, and audiences they inspired. Their influence continues to shape how we uplift storytelling and creative innovation here in Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSaturday was not the first time Winchell and Mast had played Siskel and Ebert on stage: Last year, they did a performance at a local theater that re-created an infamous 1987 episode<\/a> of their show (then titled Siskel & Ebert & the Movies and in national syndication). The director of that show, Kaitlin Schneider, was also working on the 50th anniversary performance with producers Paul Durica and Meredith Milliron, and through her Winchell and Mast came aboard. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe pilot episode<\/a> of Siskel and Ebert\u2019s show, then called Opening Soon at a Theater Near You, aired the day before Thanksgiving in 1975 \u2014 and it was not great. \u201cThey are so bad in that first episode,\u201d Winchell told The Hollywood Reporter a few days before Saturday\u2019s performance. \u201cIt is shameful how stiff and wooden they were. It\u2019s a very, very far cry from even just a couple years later, when they\u2019re really hitting their stride and being the people we all know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe re-created clips in the live show \u2014 as well as Siskel and Ebert\u2019s commentary on them \u2014\u00a0emphasize how they adapted to being on TV. In a 1976 episode where they discuss Taxi Driver, both men come across as disinterested and aloof, but in clips from just a couple years later, they\u2019re talking to rather than at each other and engaging in the debates that made them famous. <\/p>\n

\n\tBoth actors say they spent a lot of time on YouTube studying how Siskel and Ebert presented themselves and the way they interacted. They also took inspiration from Josh Schollmeyer\u2019s oral history Enemies, A Love Story and Matt Singer\u2019s book Opposable Thumbs.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlaying Gene, I wanted to get the mannerisms down,\u201d Winchell said. \u201cHe leans in, he does this kind of chop with his hands. He\u2019s always moving around, he\u2019s counting [with his hands]. I wanted to incorporate some of those things into this performance. Everything we\u2019re doing on stage is original. This is an original script, so we\u2019re not re-creating anything. I \u00a0have a bag of Gene tricks that I\u2019ll do whenever the play is at certain points. I know he would probably shake his head a certain way, or say \u2018Roger\u2019 a certain way.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tMast also said he and Winchell leaned into the contrasting styles of the two men, which came through both in their writing for the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times and on TV. \u201cThey\u2019re both very eloquent, but Siskel is very erudite. Ebert is more \u2014 I use simple in a complimentary way,\u201d Mast said. \u201c[His style is] simple, plainspoken, to the point. Gene would use the erudition as a weapon on Ebert and vice versa. But I also think that the way that we observe those characters in order to re-create them as closely as possible, including that famous argument [in their 2024 show], led us to a deep understanding of how these guys talk, but always with a focus on what are they trying to do to each other. I think it\u2019s led us to, in this show, find moments where the two are agreeing on things is really where that relationship shone through.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMast and Winchell\u2019s performance \u2014 which was at times uncanny in its resemblance to the two critics \u2014 won praise after Saturday\u2019s performance from two people who knew Siskel and Ebert as well as anyone:\u00a0their widows, Marlene Iglitzen and Chaz Ebert. They were part of a panel discussion after the performance that also included Flaum, Sneak Previews assistant director Michelle McKenzie-Voigt and Richard Roeper, who became Ebert\u2019s co-host after Siskel died in 1999.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was so spot on,\u201d Igiltzen said of Mast and Winchell\u2019s performances. Chaz Ebert added, \u201cOh my goodness \u2014\u00a0I wasn\u2019t expecting it to be that good.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tDespite the bumpy start to the show, Flaum said she could see early on that the pairing would work, and PBS stations agreed: Opening Soon and then Sneak Previews soon spread across the network, and the show switched from monthly to bi-weekly to weekly production by 1980. It helped, she said, that the mid- and late 1970s were \u201ca good time in the movies,\u201d with that decade\u2019s renaissance in American film.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe panelists also reflected on the legacy Siskel and Ebert created. \u201cFifty years later, they\u2019re still part of the conversation\u201d about film, Iglitzen noted. Ebert\u2019s work lives on at RogerEbert.com, and Siskel\u2019s name is on the film center at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She added, \u201cI know if they were here, they\u2019d be doing a podcast together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChaz Ebert also said that she\u2019s been approached about a Broadway play centered on the two men, and that a movie about Siskel and Ebert\u2019s time together is in development. <\/p>\n

\n\tRoeper said he sees Siskel and Ebert everywhere \u2014 after a recent screening he attended, he saw a father and daughter debating whether the movie was good. \u201cThere are millions of Siskels and Eberts out there,\u201d he said. \u201cThey live on in everyone who sees a movie and afterward needs to go and talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exactly 50 years after their first joint TV appearance on Chicago\u2019s public TV station, Gene Siskel and Roger…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":399674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,88344,5386,1818,124880],"class_list":{"0":"post-399673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-gene-siskel","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-roger-ebert"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115600514752333451","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}