Roger Ebert: Remaking My Voice

April 21, 2011 10:11 AM

When film critic Roger Ebert lost his lower jaw to cancer, he lost the ability to eat and speak. But he did not lose his voice. In a moving talk from TED2011, Ebert and his wife, Chaz, with friends Dean Ornish and John Hunter, come together to tell his remarkable story. [Ted Talk video - 20minutes]
posted by hippybear (10 comments total)

(This was sort of covered last year, but the TED video is new)
posted by mathowie at 10:16 AM on April 21, 2011

In related news, Ebert, a fan of and weekly entrant in the The New Yorker's weekly cartoon caption contest, is finally a finalist for the cartoon in the May 2nd issue.
posted by ericb at 10:21 AM on April 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

I hope his caption is "Christ, what an asshole."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:45 AM on April 21, 2011

(the word is fuck)
posted by shakespeherian at 10:47 AM on April 21, 2011

I love Chaz. It would be so easy to paint her as "just" a supportive partner, but their energy is really wonderful.

We're going through premarital counseling right now -- kind of a checkup, since we've both been married before. In our first session our pastor (who is awesome) mentioned that my fiance and I had a wonderful manner between us: letting each other speak, volleying things back and forth, being close. I think a lot about how my sense of body language and awareness has changed since I've been with someone who is so respectful of me and wants to be close. I know it's made a huge difference in the way I act and communicate with other people. It's a fundamental change in the way I am.

I'd love to bring more footage like this into a discussion of couples communication and relationships. Roger talks about such fundamental questions of identity, but think how much Chaz has had to do that, too: no longer just someone at the side of someone famous, she is at times literally his voice. They seem to make such a complementary pair, but she's clearly a woman of substance in her own right. (I love it when she breaks in to offer her own commentary when she is speaking as him.)

I want to meet them both and hold their hands in mine, hoping to catch some of whatever they've got.
posted by Madamina at 10:48 AM on April 21, 2011 [5 favorites]

Chaz is great. I'm going for the second year to EbertFest next week and if it's like last year, Chaz acts as MC and is on stage all weekend and Rodger only comes out to give some pre-typed statements a few times during the festival. They're so obviously in love that it casts a great glow on everything.
posted by octothorpe at 10:56 AM on April 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Gaaaaah! It's next week already? I was JUST going to look that up.
posted by Madamina at 10:59 AM on April 21, 2011

Just an amusing quote to tide us over till the haters arrive to sink the thread and derail it into a discussion about video games: "So thank you Leonard Cohen for saving my life."
posted by aught at 11:31 AM on April 21, 2011

For anyone who didn't know, TED is having open auditions for TED talks. Deadline is April 25 to make a one-minute video.
posted by cashman at 12:02 PM on April 21, 2011

I like the Scottish version of his computerized/recorded voice the best, regardless of its limitations. The Apple version just doesn't seem to be Roger Ebert.
posted by notmtwain at 4:33 AM on April 22, 2011