How to eulogize Gene Wilder? I keep sitting here trying to find words worthy of the man who gave us Willy Wonka and Dr. Frederick Frankenstein and the Waco Kid. None do him justice. The most fitting tribute to Wilder came from Wilder himself, in a classic song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: When traveling in the world of his creation, what we saw defied explanation.
Wonka said if you
“The way I imagine it, after the fight, he’s riding home in a cab, with the roar of the people chanting ‘Rocky!’ still in his ears. And he just drops over dead. In other words, he has achieved everything possible and he dies when he’s on top. I don’t think people want to see Rocky when he’s 80.”
It is with a heavy heart and our thumbs way, way down that we report that film critic Roger Ebert has passed away at the age of 70 after a long public battle with cancer.
Just days after announcing a leave of absence from writing to deal with a recurrence of cancer, the Chicago Sun-Times reported this afternoon that legendary movie critic Roger Ebert has died.