Chicago Film Lovers React to Roger Ebert's Passing

Film critics and film lovers in Chicago's suburbs struggled to find the words to express the loss they felt at the passing of the beloved veteran film critic Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times. 

Cecilia Cygnar, film critic for Niles-Morton Grove Patch and film specialist for the Niles Public Library, said, "The main thing is that I’m very sad.  He was a national treasure…in the film world and in popular culture. Whether you agreed with him or not, he always seem to command a level of respect among his peers and among the public. 

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"It is a great loss.  NO ONE will be able to replace him.  Other have tried…but never succeeded and never will."

Dann Gire, longtime Daily Herald film critic and a friend of Ebert's, said, "It's inconceivable that they would have a world without Roger Ebert in it. He's such a part of life in Chicago—he's a native Illinoisan and a great Midwesterner. 

"He truly is irreplaceable."

Gire, the founding director of the Chicago Film Critics Association, said Ebert was a member of the association for the past 20 years, and had served on the board of directors for the last few years. 

Ebert's long and illustrious career

The Chicago Sun-Times, the publication where Ebert reviewed movies for 46 years, reports Ebert died Thursday in Chicago following a long battle with cancer. Referring to Ebert as the nation's most influential and prominent film critic, the Sun-Times writes of Ebert's decades with the newspaper and also about the 31 years he spent reviewing movies on T.V.

Earlier:

In a Sun-Times blog post on Tuesday, Ebert wrote he would be taking a "leave of presence" to deal with his health issues. 

The "painful fracture" that made it difficult for me to walk has recently been revealed to be a cancer," Ebert wrote in the blog "It is being treated with radiation, which has made it impossible for me to attend as many movies as I used to." 

Wednesday marked his 46th anniversary as film critic for the Sun-Times, according to the blog post. 

Ebert also wrote 15 books, contributed to several magazines and had plans to host the 15th annual Roger Ebert Film Festival in Champaign-Urbana – his hometown — in coming weeks, according to the Chicago Tribune. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for a Sun-Times review, according to The New York Times. 

He continued to review movies and write despite operations during his battle of cancers to the thyroid, salivary glands and chin, that left him without the ability to eat, speak or talk, according toThe New York Times.