
Life Itself
We all are born
with a certain package.
We are who we are.
Where we were born,
who we were born as,
how we were raised.
We're kind of
stuck inside that person...
...and the purpose of
civilization and growth,
is to be able to reach out
with other people.
And for me, the movies are like
a machine that generates empathy.
It lets you understand
a little bit more
about different hopes,
aspirations, dreams and fears.
It helps us
to identify with the people
who are sharing
this journey with us.
Exactly five months
before his death,
Roger and Chaz and I
met to plan
the beginning of an ambitious
schedule of filming,
including interviews
and critic screenings.
Roger mentioned in passing
that his hip was sore.
The very next day
he entered the hospital.
So now I got a
hairline fracture to the femur bone.
I didn't fall and have no idea
how it happened.
It's bloody painful.
This is my seventh time at rehab.
This table is weird.
I type much, much better
at home in my usual chair.
Show Steve the new chair.
It reclines.
He will see more of it.
So Roger, did you not pay
your insurance premiums,
and so you didn't get
the chair till now?
Steve, I'll do the jokes here.
This is Flora.
Also, this is Sonya Evans,
my stepdaughter.
I do what they tell me to do.
or work a little bit?
Steve is the director.
I'm just gonna sit down.
Although Roger had supported
my films over the years,
this film was the first chance
to really get to know him.
Steve, shoot yourself
in the mirror.
There he is.
Hi, Carol.
I'm Carol.
I'm Roger's assistant
for over 20 years,
Roger and Chaz.
And Zero Dark something
is winning all the awards, Roger.
It won another big award.
And the Bears lost.
"My daily..." What?
"briefing."
Okay, Roger.
And then Mayor Daley's,
you know, nephew
went to court today.
Remember, for the Koschman thing
that the Sun-Times
really uncovered...
I always worked
on newspapers.
There was a persistent need,
not only to write,
but to publish.
published the Washington Street News,
which I solemnly delivered
to neighbors in Urbana, Illinois,
as if it existed independently of me.
At the News Gazette,
a line-o-type operator
set my by-line in lead:
"By Roger Ebert."
I was electrified.
When I went home with it,
you could put your by-line
on everything.
My parents finally
had to take it away from me.
Everything was by Roger Ebert.
And I went to work full-time
for the local newspaper
when I was 15,
first as a sports writer,
general assignment,
working late,
being there with the newspapermen
back in the '50s.
It was unspeakably romantic.
I can write,
I just always could.
On the other hand,
In the spring of 1960, I announced
I wanted to go to Harvard,
like Jack Kennedy
and Thomas Wolfe.
"Boy, there's no money to send
you to Harvard," Daddy said.
of the University of Illinois:
to provide knowledge
for a better tomorrow.
I would go
to my hometown university.
I wouldn't be
an electrician like my father.
He told me one day
his father said to him,
"Roger, there's professors
over there,
that's what you oughta do some day.
You wanna sit there
with a pipe,
and a cardigan sweater
with your feet up on the desk."
early on that Roger had a gift.
and I ran into him then.
During my years at Illinois,
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Citation
Use the citation below to add this screenplay to your bibliography:
"Life Itself" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2021. Web. 23 Jan. 2021. <https://www.scripts.com/script/life_itself_12550>.