Hey, thanks a lot for giving me the link.

Cool find!

Now we can all find evidence that Ebert is insane!


"GArefeeld geTs! 3 staRS! and SO does GODFATHER II!# Fatbert HAS relly Lost hisa mind!"!!>$!1"

That picture of him is sort of creepy.

While I wasn't alive at the time, it's my understanding that during the 50s and 60s, Negro was the accepted term for refering to an African American. Calling someone "black" would be considered taboo, much like calling someone a "negro" would be today. I don't know when this switched but it seems to be a fact that few people my age are aware of. I'm also not sure if these terms were used differently regionally.

Yes, that's my understanding too. It was the fact that it was such an anachronism that made me smile. Especially coupled with the mentions of this 'new' MPAA that we all know so well (and Ebert rails against any chance he gets).

I wasn't taking a dig at Ebert. I was just being charmed at the notion of how things change.

I'll bet they were and still are, as my friends expect to be referred to as 'black'.

Or maybe you just like everything!


Anyway, this is great. I admire and enjoy Ebert's writing so this is a small-scale dream come true.

United Negro College Fund?

Bloom County had one strip that dealt with the whole "what do we call 'them'?" conundrum that so many white folk worry about. It ran through Negro, Colored People (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), etc.

I prefer 'darkie', but that's just me.

Found a transcript - at plays better in cartoon form. I tried to break it up into the proper formatting as I remember it.

Mom: That's the most adorable little colored girl playing outside.
Steve: "Colored"? You're saying "colored people" in 1988? You know better, Ma.

Mom: Then why the "National Association for Colored People? I don't think Negroes mind at all.
Steve: Don't say "Negroes," Ma! You can't say "Negroes"!

Mom: Can I say "United Negro College Fund"?
Steve: You are baiting me, Ma!
Dad: That's it. We're leaving.

Mom: Stay put, Reginald. "Mister Socially Sensitive"isn't finished shaming his parents into enlightenment.
Steve: Everybody just calm down. Let's agree to use the the New-Age term "People of Color."

Mom: People of Color.

Steve: People of Color.

Mom: Colored people.

Steve: NO!!
Dad: We're leaving.

I did a search for zero star movies. Back in the day, Ebert reviewed Behind the Green Door, Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones (not zero stars), and Calligula. I guess he got too big to review porn.

Check out his review of A Clockwork Orange! Interesting, to be sure. This is perhaps the only case where I would boldly challenge both Ebert and Pauline Kael in debate.

Ha, well in truth back then those films all got wide theatrical releases. Deep Throat was a box office sensation, if you can imagine a porno raking it in at the box office. But that was then. Fortunately (or unfortauntely if you like watching porn in theaters) it's all on home video now.

The one thing that really bums me out about the site is that the Movie Answer Man and Articles aren't as easy to search out as the movie reviews.

You can select 1973 and get all the reviews published that year, but you can't do that for anything else.

I'd really like to go back and read all the Answer Man's (since I only started reading them in 2000), but I had to sit there and click Next Page about a hundred times just to get to 1999.

The search function is a little too broad. For instance, I did a search for Clint Eastwood, and it returned every review that even mentioned his name, not just his movies.