The Last Picture Show

We would go to private screenings, my friend Gene Siskel and I; not often, but every now and then. It was strictly for enjoyment I would come to view a motion picture that was a prerequisite of Gene’s work. He, in turn, would frequently come view for enjoyment a basketball game that was a mandatory part of mine.

One night, Siskel and I sat together at the ornate Chicago Theater, the city’s landmark show palace, waiting impatiently for a curtain to part. We were not in the balcony, which Siskel and our confrere, Roger Ebert--I was Ebert’s newspaper colleague at the time--later would incorporate into their shtick, wrapping each of their syndicated TV programs with “the balcony is closed,” but in an upstairs projection room with a limited number of seats.

Ebert was late.

I knew at the time that the two critics did not get along. I did not know to what extent.

Siskel kept looking at his watch: 8:01, 8:02. Everyone was waiting on Ebert, who was held up, I believe, at some seminar, either speaking or teaching. We were there to watch a new Dom DeLuise comedy, inelegantly called “Fatso,” and this was all the ammunition Siskel needed.

“All right,” he announced to the audience from his seat at five after 8, “for every minute Roger’s not here, I’m going to say something about him.”

At 8:06, sure enough, Siskel struck.

He gripped his chair and began to mimic a popular TV character of the time, Mr. Bill, saying, “Oh no, Mr. Roger, don’t sit down on me! Noooooooooo!”

At 8:07, Siskel said a TV producer had ordered Ebert to not wear brown, because: “Viewers will think it’s a mudslide.”

A minute later, with Siskel’s wrist in the air, theatrically looking at his watch, Ebert entered.

Siskel clammed up.

We then stopped laughing and watched the movie, which, unfortunately, kept us not laughing.

*

I regret not looking up Siskel on a recent visit to Chicago, because I’d been . . . well, not worried about him, because we weren’t that close, but certainly wondering about him. I received no holiday card from him in December, for the first time in many years. He hadn’t acknowledged a get-well card after his brain surgery last spring, nor a phone message I’d left at his office.

Upon his leave of absence in late January from a variety of jobs--the “Siskel & Ebert” syndicated show, the Chicago Tribune, TV Guide, his local TV spots and “CBS This Morning”--I asked acquaintances in Chicago what was up with Gene.

Nobody knew.

He had practically disappeared, devoting time to his family before dying last Saturday at 53.

I, like many others, had noticed a hesitation in Siskel’s speech since his too-hasty return to TV. Off the air, he moved slowly and in obvious pain, as Ebert--who over the years had gone from enemy to rival to “Gene’s like a brother to me”--could plainly see.

Siskel enjoyed his job so much--”the national dream beat,” he often called it--that last May he viewed videotapes in a hospital room, days after his operation, so he could phone in reviews. Gene probably couldn’t stand the idea of Roger flying solo.

By the middle of June, well or not, Siskel was back in his cinema seat and in his court-side seat for Michael Jordan’s final home game. He was “our Spike Lee, our Jack Nicholson,” a Chicago sports columnist wrote this week.

Critics had become stars. They were parodied by Joe Flaherty and Eugene Levy on “SCTV,” and later by Mad Magazine, which even Siskel, the old Yale philosophy major, considered the ultimate compliment. In 1985, backstage before “The Tonight Show,” the two foes--tickled at being guests of Johnny Carson--couldn’t believe their luck.

There, for the first time, they embraced.

*

I was with Siskel once at a birthday party for a TV producer and mutual friend, David Israel, when in walked another guest, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Uh-oh,” Gene said.

What?

“I panned his latest film. Brace yourself.”

Schwarzenegger came over, was sociable and never mentioned the film.

Siskel laughed and said, “I’m glad when big stars don’t take it personally.”

His last TV review aired on Jan. 24. He once said, “My fantasy is that Roger and I will do this for 40 years and we’ll have attendant nurses while we do the show.”

I wish he’d gotten his wish.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com