Q&A: Roger Ebert

This interview took place on Progressive Radio, March 30, 2003. Click here and scroll down to find audio versions.

Rothschild: Tell me what was your reaction to Michael Moore's acceptance speech at the Academy Awards.

Ebert: I heard him give the same speech the day before at the Independent Spirit Awards, where he stood up straight, and looked the audience in the eye, and took his time. It got a good response, although that audience was more receptive than the academy. But I have a feeling an acting coach could have analyzed his performance at the Academy Awards and said he was prompting the Academy to dislike his speech because he hunkered over the microphone, and he talked too fast and defiantly, as if he was trying to get it out before he was stopped. His body language and his verbal language all kind of sent the wrong message.

Nevertheless, I agree with what he said. I don't think Bush was legitimately elected President. But I was very offended as a reporter when Michael came directly back to the pressroom where I was, along with 300 or 400 other reporters, and lectured us, "Now do your job. Don't report it was a divided house. Only five loud people were booing."

Q: It didn't sound like only five people were booing.

Ebert: No, it wasn't five. I was just talking with Sean Welsh at the Wisconsin Film Festival, who directed "Spellbound." He was one of the directors Michael had invited up on stage, and I asked him very carefully about that, and he said, "No, it sounded about 50-50." But Michael immediately went into this spin-control mode. In one interview, he said it sounded like the stagehands were yelling at him, and that the boos started before he had really gotten into his speech, and that they were amplified. And then he said a lot of the boos were people booing the booers. This is like we're in grassy knoll territory now. I think he would have been better off saying, "Well, you know, the Academy wasn't ready for my opinion, and it was pretty divided: About half of the people booed me." Which is what it sounded like to me.

Q: I was surprised by the amount and the volume of the boos. Why do you think there was such a divided house?

Ebert: The Academy is paranoid about its image. I think they did not want America to feel that they subscribed to what they feared Michael Moore was going to say because he talked so quickly that they couldn't really assimilate what he was saying in time to do anything more than realize that he was going over the edge as far as they were concerned. I would propose to you that if Michael Moore had taken a deep breath, and looked straight at the audience, and said, "I am a nonfiction filmmaker during a fictitious Presidency," and stopped, I think he basically would have gotten a positive response to that. But his whole delivery was wrong. I think his delivery prompted the audience. They were not ready to assimilate that much that quickly. You know, they didn't boo anyone else, and there were several other anti-war speeches that were applauded.

Q: But they were much less explicit.

Ebert: Yeah.

Q: I mean, "Shame on Bush" is about as explicit as you can get.

Ebert: But by the time you got to that, the boos were already 30 seconds old.

Q: How do you think it played with the larger audience, the American public?

Ebert: I think it gave ammunition to Michael Moore's enemies. I think it played into their hands.

Q: We had a long discussion about this the day after at The Progressive. Some of us, like me, were just so delighted to hear someone get up and say that out loud -- to say we're defiant, we're not going to accept this man and this man's illegal war -- that it gave us a real sense of positive energy.

Ebert: You know, they say be careful what you ask for because you're going to get it. On our "Ebert & Roeper" program, we have an annual show where we pick the winners -- who ought to win the Oscars, and then at the end of that show there's a segment where Roeper and I say what we would most like to see. So I wound up and said, "I'd like to see Michael Moore get up there and let 'em have it with both barrels and really let loose and give them a real rabble-rousing speech. I asked, basically, for that to happen. And then, when it happened, I don't think Michael Moore really sold it to that audience in a way that would have been more effective. So I'm in favor of people getting up there and saying it, but at the same time there is a way to communicate effectively so as to help your cause, and I don't think Michael found that.