- It’s Just You and Me Now, Sport: On “Manhunter: The Final Cut” (July 21, 2026)
When Michael Mann‘s “Manhunter,” an adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon, was released in August 1986, it was not a success by any means—it received largely mediocre reviews that dismissed it as a case of style over substance and those reviews, combined with a title that meant little to potential viewers, a cast of largely unfamiliar faces and a new distribution company that was already floundering, helped to keep audiences away. However, once “The Silence of the Lambs” became a phenomenon in the early ’90s, and word got out that there was a previous film featuring Lecter, viewers found it. As the years went on, it would grow to be a cult favorite and reappraised by many as a masterwork in its own right.
Now, 40 years after that initial theatrical stumble, the film is returning to theaters as “Michael Mann’s Manhunter: The Final Cut,” which gives viewers both a 4K restoration supervised by Mann and a new cut, though the newness may vary depending on how many of the various versions of the film that have emerged over the years that you have seen. Regardless of the changes, to see “Manhunter” on the screen is still a truly overwhelming experience that, save for a couple of moments that betray its age and the era when it was made, is as beautiful, fascinating, and frightening now as it was back in 1986.
The film stars a then-unknown William Petersen as Will Graham, a one-time FBI criminal profiler with the ability to get into the mindset of the monsters that he is pursuing. The problem with this is that, once he does get into those mindsets, it isn’t so easy for him to return to normalcy. An attack by a serial killer named Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox)—yes, the spelling is different—inspired a mental breakdown in Graham that proved much harder to overcome than the physical scars he received from the encounter. Now, he has retired to a seemingly bucolic life on the shores of Captiva, Florida, with his wife, Molly (Kim Griest), and their young son Kevin (David Seaman), that, as the film begins, is interrupted by the arrival of Graham’s former superior at the FBI, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina). He needs Graham’s skills to help them apprehend a new serial killer, an entity dubbed the Tooth Fairy, who has already butchered two entire families and seems poised to kill more unless he is stopped.
Graham isn’t exactly eager to return to the fold—he isn’t even sure if he can continue to make the connections with his unknown prey in the first place—and assures Molly that all he will be doing is examining evidence and won’t be anywhere near the action. When a hunch pays off in the revelation of a previously overlooked fingerprint, Graham finds himself pulled in further, even agreeing to meet with Lecktor (Brian Cox), ostensibly to get his professional insight but really to help him further get into the killer mindset, a gambit that Lecktor almost immediately recognizes which inspires him to have a little bit of fun at Graham’s expense, though few will quite agree with his particularly brand of funning.
While Graham is pursuing his target in the hopes of finding them before the end of the lunar cycle that they seem to be working off of, the film moves to a second narrative track to introduce us to the Tooth Fairy himself, a St. Louis film lab worker named Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), a man with the kind of large, intimidating presence that, if he got in line behind you at your local coffee shop, you would not only leave but reconsider your devotion to caffeine. One day, he meets co-worker Reba McClane (Joan Allen), who doesn’t shy away from him—the fact that she is blind surely being a contributing factor—and they spend an evening together that veers from strange to creepy to romantic and leaves him with the sense of acceptance for which he has been searching. Inevitably, it doesn’t last as a misinterpretation of events essentially destroys what humanity remains in him and sets the final act into terrifying motion.
You have to remember that at the time that Red Dragon was published, serial killers were not as prevalent in popular culture as they would eventually become; material of this sort was considered to be bleak beyond compare. In fact, one director that infamous producer Dino De Laurentis had contacted about doing the film version rejected it after reportedly finding the material “violent and completely degenerate.” (That filmmaker was none other than David Lynch.)
The project landed with Michael Mann at an odd point in his career. The former TV writer had made two feature films and while the first, the heist drama “Thief” (1981) earned decent reviews and did okay at the box office, his 1983 adaptation of F. Paul Wilson’s WWII-era supernatural thriller “The Keep” was a project beset by post-production issues and fights with the studio that ended up being a critical and commercial disaster (albeit a stylishly made one that is still worth checking out).
However, this misstep was all but forgotten a year later when a new cop series on which he served as an executive producer, a little thing called “Miami Vice,” would instantly become one of the most groundbreaking and influential shows of its era. As it happened, the “Miami Vice” connection would be at least a part of why this film was initially dismissed by critics.
Although the narrative more or less followed the basic parameters of Harris’ novel—though he would drop such elements as the detailed look into Dollarhyde’s background and the book’s original climax (which Dario Argento would more or less pilfer for the ending of his 1987 giallo “Opera”)—he and cinematographer Dante Spinotti would use a number of stylistic gambits to help place viewers into the mindset of the characters as a way of putting them in Graham’s shoes. These range from strong color tints (a cool blue for Graham to represent the peace he has found since leaving the FBI and a grisly green to suggest the chaos within Dollarhyde) to utilizing a different frame rate at one key point to underscore the chaos.
Unfortunately, few at the time recognized what Mann was doing here and instead condemned it as nothing more than an extended “Miami Vice” episode that was all style and no substance, which did little to spark interest in an audience that was already beginning to move away from that show.
It boggles the mind that so much of what Mann does well here was more or less summarily dismissed. Right from the start, Mann locks into a unique mode of suspense and dread, and manages to maintain it for the whole of his running time, one that does not necessarily rely on big action beats to keep things going. In fact, one of the most gripping and engrossing sequences in the entire thing has Graham and Crawford walking a potential piece of evidence found in Lecktor’s cell through a group of FBI analysts (including one played by, of all people, Chris Elliott) in order to glean anything they can before they have to return it—the kind of process sequence that would ordinarily get the short shrift in most procedurals but which turns into a genuine showpiece here.
An equally strong moment, and one equally bereft of traditional thrills, comes near the end in an anonymous hotel room where Graham and Crawford alternately despair and turn on each other over their lack of progress; Graham’s burst of white-hot anger ends up being the impetus for the revelation that finally breaks things open (a revelation that was indeed a blood-chiller back in the day).
There are plenty of more traditionally unnerving moments as well, ones that remain discomfiting to watch no matter how many times you have already seen it. There is the encounter between Dollarhyde and Freddy Lounds (Stephen Lang), the obnoxious tabloid reporter who Graham has utilized in an attempt to flush out his target, a sequence that starts off on a tone of dreadful terror, builds from that without any overt violence, and climaxes with one of the most jarring shock moments you will ever see.
At another point, Graham is on an airplane sifting through one of the case files before going into a reverie about Molly that he is suddenly jarred out of when the little girl sitting next to him notices the gory crime photos on his tray. Then there is the climax, where the combination of the deliberately jarring color scheme, the equally wild production design from Mel Bourne, and a particularly inspired musical choice leads to a sequence that plays like a master class in the art of suspense cinema.
Adding greatly to the power of the film are the performances delivered by a cast of actors who were not particularly well-known but prove to be ideally cast. Before this film, William Petersen was a Chicago stage actor whose only previous film appearances were a bit part in Mann’s “Thief” and the lead in William Friedkin’s 1985 crime thriller “To Live and Die in L.A.” His work here is particularly strong, both for the way that he is able to suggest the internal struggle that he faces with the dark psyche that allows him to do his job so well but at the risk of his own sanity and for the way that he is able to verbalize Graham’s internal monologues while grasping for clues without making it sound contrived. (Petersen would, of course, go on to star on “C.S.I.,” a show that is so obviously inspired by this film that it could easily be mistaken for a legitimate adaptation.)
As his target, Tom Noonan (who passed away earlier this year) is just as strong, primarily because he doesn’t play Dollarhyde as some kind of slavering maniac. He is a monster, but in his encounters with Reba, we get hints of the gentler soul that still exists inside of him to some degree—when the misunderstanding that finally pushes him over the edge occurs (“Francis is gone. Francis is gone forever.”), the moment is not just scary but strangely heartbreaking as well.
Although Lecktor is only a supporting character in the story, Brian Cox dominates every scene he appears in with a turn that is more subtle than Hopkins’ cheerfully scenery-chewing turn in the role—even while engaging in his lightly ironic banter with Graham, you always get a sense of the immense damage that his Lecktor could unleash. All of the supporting players are equally strong, but special note goes out to Joan Allen, another Chicago stage performer whose only previous film work up to this point was a role in “Compromising Positions.” It’s the kind of role that should be almost unplayable (the blind woman who briefly brings humanity to the monster without knowing who he really is), she manages to make her into such a believable and compelling character that it takes viewers unfamiliar with the story a couple of minutes to realize that she is supposed to be blind.
In many ways, “Manhunter” is a product of its era—the visual style and the clothing choices pretty much scream ’80s throughout—but the film as a whole has aged so well that it is easy to accept the occasional excesses. The only aspect that feels dated these days is the music, an area that Mann has always made prominent in his works, from the scores composed by Tangerine Dream for “Thief” and “The Keep” to the contemporary pop hits backing the action every week on “Miami Vice.” In this film, he tries for a hybrid of the two approaches that doesn’t quite land.
The score by the Philadelphia band The Reds and composer Michel Rubini is perfectly fine, if perhaps a bit too overwhelming at a couple of points where less might have been more. However, there are a few songs dropped in here and there that prove to be a distraction (particularly during the love scene between Francis and Reba). The film makes up for these excesses by providing one of the all-time great needle drops by scoring the extended climax to Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” a merging of sound and vision that fits together so perfectly in bringing Graham and Dollarhyde together at last while signifying their shared mental disintegrations that you would swear that it was written specifically for the film.
Over the years, as he has done with a number of his films, Mann would fiddle with “Manhunter,” resulting in a number of different versions leading up to what he promises is its final iteration. This Final Cut is pretty much a cleaned-up version of the Director’s Cut that he prepared for home video back in 2003. It drops a couple of moments, slightly extends a couple of scenes, and adds a scene towards the end where, after the final takedown, an emotionally battered Graham visits the home of the family who were going to be Dollarhyde’s next victims in an attempt to help recalibrate his mindset before going back home to his loved ones.
In terms of recuts, Mann is kind of hit-and-miss as a whole—while his rejiggering of “Blackhat” was an improvement, his tweaks to things like “The Last of the Mohicans” and “Miami Vice” were much less effective. Here, the film remains fundamentally the same; the changes don’t really bring anything new to the party other than the remastered visuals and sound. Personally, I still prefer the original theatrical release—it is the one that I first saw back in the day and which struck me so strongly—and when this new variation eventually arrives on home video, I hope that this initial version is included as well.
Whether it is that original version or this new Final Cut, “Manhunter” is a flat-out masterpiece that is both Mann’s greatest work as a filmmaker as well as one of the greatest cinematic thrillers ever made. Balancing an alternately gorgeous and haunting visual style with a gripping, twisty narrative, compelling characters, and convincing emotional stakes, it is a film that grabs you right from its creepy opening moments and holds you spellbound until the end credits roll, and most likely long after that.
For those who have never seen it before, Mann’s striking combination of art and pulp will stand out in stark contrast to the comparative mediocrities of contemporary thrillers. For those who have seen and adored it, you will be relieved to know that it is still as tense and watchable as ever.
“Michael Mann’s Manhunter: The Final Cut” is playing in limited theatrical release starting July 24, and traveling throughout August.
- Closer to Trees: Hirokazu Kore-eda on “Sheep in the Box” (July 20, 2026)
Across his films, one of director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s core thematic interests has been that of found family, the way people whose shared histories should normally divide them instead find kinship with one another. His films, from the wayward children of “Nobody Knows” to the eclectic outsiders who populate “Broker,” find ways to foster a sense of safety among each other. With his latest, “Sheep in the Box,” Kore-eda explores these questions in the context of science fiction, complicating his questions around belonging and family by introducing artificial humanoids and generative AI.
Director Hirokazu Kore-eda.
The artificial humanoid in question is named Kakeru (Rimu Kuwaki), who lives with his parents, Kensuke (Daigo Yamamoto) and Otone (Haruka Ayase). Kensuke and Otone are still actively mourning the death of their son Kakeru and, through a company called ReBirth, order an android replica of their child. While the robot Kakeru may physically resemble their son, there’s dissonance between how he acts and how Kensuke’s and Otone’s son originally was.
It’s in that gap between expectation and reality that Kore-eda adds new wrinkles to the questions that have long captivated him: Can families be healed through technology or is it an unworthy salve? What can an intentional community look like with beings who have no soul? Does an algorithm gain any sort of humanity the moment it takes on corporeal form?
Not too long after “Sheep in the Box” premiered in Competition at Cannes, RogerEbert.com sat down with the master filmmaker about the influence of The Little Prince, how he approached his sympathetic depiction of AI while being fully aware of its detriment to the environment, and the embodied practices that continue to help him stay rooted in a world that’s going increasingly more digital.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Until watching your film, I had honestly forgotten that the title, “Sheep in the Box,” was in reference to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book, The Little Prince. What significance does that book hold for you, and why did you choose to anchor the text around it?
Hirokazu Kore-eda: Well, I read the book as a child, and to be honest, I didn’t really understand it. There were certain scenes that I remembered as is often the case, and I knew that imagination was key to this story. When I knew I was making this film about humans and generative AI, I knew that I wanted the mother to read a bedtime story to this humanoid that had come into her home, but I also thought it’d be interesting if the humanoid didn’t understand the story, and the scene of the sheep inside the box came back to me. I thought, “He wouldn’t have the imagination to know that there’s a sheep inside the box,” which I thought could be really interesting.
So I wrote that scene featuring the book, then came up with the idea of the snow globe, and ultimately of him rescuing the prince from inside it. Ultimately, I thought it would make a good title that connects back to this theme of imagination that I wanted to ground this film.
One of the famous lines in this book is “It is only in the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” That line feels like it can apply to your whole filmography, particularly works like “After Life” or “Monster.” Looking at your work, you’ve been very heart-forward, very human-centered, and I’m wondering if you find that line a succinct way to summarize your philosophy of art-making.
You would be right. I came across that in a book I was reading by the architect Ryue Nishizawa, who is mentioned in the film. I was reading some of his writings, and he said that in architecture, the most important things are the things you can’t see. It came back again in the film, and the idea that what’s most important for the parents is not when they can actually see what looks like their son in a physical form, but rather when he leaves them, and they are able once again to imagine their son in the trees in the garden. For humans, it is more important and beautiful to imagine new possibilities rather than keep their love in the realm of memory. This is the story of them coming to realize that.
Sheep in the Box (NEON)
As much as the film is about generative AI and humanity’s relationship to it, you’re also offered musings about nature as a whole and how that complicates that dynamic. I think of the opening sequence where we see the drones flying through Kamakura: it is an intersection of humanity, technology, and nature. You’ve talked about how the way humans communicate is very similar to trees, so I’m wondering if you can flesh out that parallel.
Well, I read a lot of books about trees and how they communicate, and they communicate with each other through their roots and their leaves and in ways that human beings can’t see, and that’s how they protect the forest from invaders, including insects, and they keep their environment healthy. They have this system that connects them all, which is astonishing. Then I started researching generative AI and saw in the news that AIs have already begun communicating with each other without human interference.
I spoke to some scientists, specifically AI researchers, who said that this is a possibility in the near future, that AIs will be able to interact without any contribution from human beings, and that they might start connecting and working out how to survive. In that case, I thought the way the AI communicates might be more similar to how trees communicate than to how human beings communicate. Maybe, as in the story, the way generative AI is working is closer to trees.
I think in the past, human beings were also connected in this way. Even if it was not a 1:1 ratio with trees, human beings connected through their imaginations. With this film, I wanted to set out whether that way of connecting–through our imaginations–is something that we’re still able to do or whether we’ve lost that ability, and how we might relearn that muscle.
You hold a sympathetic view of AI in this film, which I found to be in tension with as a viewer, if only because I think about the environmental devastation caused by the proliferation of data centers. Were you thinking through this tension when working on this film, of whether you might have been too sympathetic in your portrayal?
Do you think AI is more damaging to the environment than humans? It’s true that technological progress has damaged the environment in various ways, but I don’t think we can place the responsibility for that at the door of AI. It’s human responsibility. It’s human beings who have chosen to live this way, but I’m not trying to absolve AI of any responsibility.
In the film, I wanted to show that these human beings who started out living in nature have now moved into cities and can’t live in the forests anymore; that’s what civilization is to them. Whereas the humanoids representing the dead children and those who reject the children who’ve been rejected by society can now live in the forest, and maybe it’s a bit cynical, but it’s as though the human beings have been left behind by this new society that they’re making.
I suppose if I’d had the parents living happily ever after in the forest with the machines and the children, then that would have been a fairytale ending, but that’s, I think, impossible. So I’ve tried to give them a difference.
Sheep in the Box (NEON)
You ground so much of the film’s action in the house occupied by Otone and Kensuke. It feels very much like a living character, warm and inviting during the day because of the way it holds natural light, but for that very reason, it feels more terrifying in the evening, when it holds more shadow. How did you and Production designer Okada Takuya ultimately decide on that house?
That’s a real house in Kamakura that was built by a couple. The wife is an architect, and the husband works with wood exactly like a film. I came across this house with that walkway without any railings, and I imagined a child living there, running carefree, unafraid of the night and rejuvenated by the day. 70% of the shots you see are us using the real house. There was about 30% of the house that we couldn’t use, such as the bathroom, bedroom, and part of the kids’ room, so I had Okada-san recreate that based on the designs of the house.
At the film’s press conference, you talked about how technological progress, while great, also makes things more uniform. Each of your films feels and looks distinct; what practices are you holding to that help retain your sense of identity?
I’m writing this new screenplay, and as you can see [shows script book], I don’t move things around on the computer screen. I have to have it on the paper and then add my notes. I can better organize my thoughts when I use my hands; it helps with creativity to have those ideas physically embodied, and the same goes for writing. It’s a bit like the analogy of the AI having a physical body, because that helps give it an identity, and in this way, my ideas sort of take shape physically as I use my hand to make these marks on the paper. It all starts from there [gestures to script book]. It’s an important element of my creativity, and it’s my philosophy.
I almost feel bad having my computer here now in front of you with my questions.
(Laughs) Don’t worry, I use one too.
Sheep in the Box (NEON)
As much as the film comments on technology, nature, and humanity, this is ultimately a film about parenting. Even though Kensuke and Otone shouldn’t punish themselves for what happened to Kakeru, as parents, they can’t help but turn the blame inward. Has working on the project made you think about technology as a form of absolution?
I’m not sure how well I managed to achieve this, but I thought if the role of that humanoid was to show up, assuage their guilt, and then disappear again, that would be very convenient. But at the same time, if he shows up, gets them to face up to their guilt, and then disappears again, that would be quite cruel.
So I wanted him to show up and get them to somehow face up to their guilt, but then I started thinking about what it is about his presence that allows them to be healed. I think it’s because this boy grows up to become an architect in a sense, but influencing both of those parents, he becomes a new kind of architect, and in that sense, he’s turning the guilt of the past into something positive for the future. The humanoid has the idea of building his own house, and his parents have both contributed to his being able to do so.
It’s a new step, a new possibility that goes beyond the guilt, and that’s what the scene where the three of them are standing with their backs to us looking at the tree is- that’s the way that I hope the audience will take that scene.
I’ve spoken with Neo Sora, and he’s spoken about a desire for filmmaking as a way to push back against the historical amnesia that, in his mind, is gripping Japan. Your works feel similar in that they’re earnest calls to remember.
What a great thing to say. He’s so young, and it’s very encouraging to have such young people articulating these ideas. But I think the fact that people can stand up in public and say Look at the crimes they’ve done and say, “That had nothing to do with us; we’re not responsible. ‘ ” It’s a lack of awareness but also a lack of imagination.” In that sense, it’s tied in the way memory intersects in this film, but I wouldn’t say that’s something I directly explored with this film.
“Sheep in the Box” is in select theaters now via NEON.
- Roger loves Chaz (July 18, 2026)
Roger and Chaz Ebert‘s wedding was held on July 18th, 1992. Here is a reprint of a blog posted by Chaz to commemorate it.
HOW DO I LOVE THEE: SONNET 43: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways….I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death….
When I was a young girl with thoughts of romantic fancy dancing through my head, I envisioned the day when a suitor would write a poem or song dedicated to me. During our courtship, Roger wooed me with Shakespeare, often quoting from “Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day.” Then one year, my Beloved said he would do one better, and on our 20th anniversary, he surprised me with this article entitled: “ROGER LOVES CHAZ.” He excerpted it from a chapter in his memoir, “Life Itself.” It has been four years and three months since Roger passed away, but today, July 18, on what would have been our twenty-fifth anniversary, his words were once again reverberating, and so please permit me to share them with you once more. And today, I am adding a brief video that I call Joy. —Chaz Ebert
WEDNESDAY, July 18, is the 20th anniversary of our marriage. How can I begin to tell you about Chaz? She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed to be heading. If my cancer had come, and it would have, and Chaz had not been there with me, I can imagine a descent into lonely decrepitude. I was very sick. I might have vegetated in hopelessness. This woman never lost her love, and when it was necessary she forced me to want to live. She was always there believing I could do it, and her love was like a wind forcing me back from the grave.
Does that sound too dramatic? You were not there. She was there every day, visiting me in the hospital whether I knew it or not, becoming an expert on my problems and medications, researching possibilities, asking questions, making calls, even giving little Christmas and Valentine’s Day baskets to my nurses, who she knew by name.
Chaz is a strong woman, sure of herself. I’d never met anyone like her. At some point in her childhood a determination must have been formed that she would make a success of herself. She was born into a large family on the West Side of Chicago, and already in high school was a tireless achiever. Her school yearbook shows her on every other page, a member of everything from the National Honor society to Spanish Club, and as vice president of the senior class to best dancer. She won a scholarship to the University of Chicago, but didn’t accept it: “What did I know? Nobody told me it was a great university. I just wanted to get out of Chicago, to go somewhere on my own.” She went to the University of Dubuque, and in keeping with the times she was a civil rights activist.
There she met her first husband, and soon they were married and raising their children Josibiah and Sonia. She might easily have called off her professional dreams and returned to Chicago, where Merle was an electrical engineer. She went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison for a BA in sociology, and then graduated from the DePaul College of Law, the alma mater of generations of Chicago politicians and lawyers. And all this time raising her family, as she and Merle moved to the suburbs and bought a home. She was a litigator at Bell, Boyd and Lloyd, an important firm. After 17 years she and Merle were divorced, but remain friends.
We like to tell people we were “introduced by Ann Landers,” which is technically true, although Eppie Lederer didn’t know her at the time. The night I took Eppie to an open AA meeting, we decided to go out to dinner together afterwards; this was the first and only time we ever had dinner for two. In the restaurant, Chaz was at a nearby table that included a couple of people I knew. I didn’t know her, but I’d seen her before and was attracted. I liked her looks, her voluptuous figure, and the way she presented herself. She took a lot of care with her appearance and her clothes never looked quickly thrown together. She seemed to be holding the attention of her table. You never get anywhere with a woman you can’t talk intelligently with.
Something possessed me to pull off one of the oldest tricks in the book. “I have a couple of friends over there I’d love for you to meet,” I told Eppie, and got up to take her across. As the introductions went around, Chaz was included. When we went back to our own table, I had her card. I studied the card and showed it to Eppie, who said, “You sly fox.”
I came back from the Toronto Film Festival with the card on my mind. I called Chaz and invited her to attend the Lyric Opera, which I’d subscribed to a year earlier because Danny Newman, the Lyric’s press agent, had stood in my office door and said, “A man like you not going go the Lyric, you should be ashamed.” Chaz, who later told me she never expected to hear from me again, said, “Actually, I’m on the women’s board of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.” I said I loved the Symphony, but I had, cough, subscription seats at the Lyric for Monday night. The opera was “Tosca.” She said it was her favorite. “Does that scare you?” “No,” I said, “why should it?” At the time I knew nothing about “Tosca.”
We went to dinner afterwards at a restaurant in Greek Town. Something happened. She had a particular quality. She didn’t seem to be a “date” but an equal. She knew where she stood, and I found that attractive. I was going out to Los Angeles a few days later, and I asked her to come along. We formed a serious bond rather quickly. It was an understood thing. I was in love, I was serious, I was ready for my life to change. I had been on hold too long. She lived on the 82nd floor of the Hancock Center and started sending me daily e-mails, even after we’d seen each other earlier the same evening. Her love letters were poetic, idealistic and often passionate. I responded as a man and a lover. As a newspaperman, I observed she never, ever, made a copy-reading error. I saved every one of her letters along with my own, and have them encrypted on my computer, locked inside a file where I can’t reach them because the program and the operating system are now 20 years out of date. But they’re in there. I’m not about to entrust them to anyone at the Apple Genius Counter.
Our lives grew together. One day in May at the Cannes Film Festival we rented a car and drove over to San Remo in Italy to visit the grave of Edward Lear, and on the way back we stopped in Monte Carlo and in a cafe over coffee I proposed marriage. Why did I choose Monte Carlo, a place I have no desire to ever see again? I should have chosen London or Venice or for that matter Chicago. I wasn’t thinking in those terms. We were sitting there talking in a little cafe at the end of a happy day and I became overwhelmed with the desire to propose marriage. Chaz filled my mind. She excited me physically. She was funny. She made a reading of my life rather quickly, understood what I did and how I had to do it, and after I proposed marriage she resigned as a lawyer because I wanted her to travel more than she would otherwise be able to.
Chaz became the vice president of the Ebert Company. It wasn’t merely a title. She organized my contracts, protected my interests, negotiated, wheeled and dealed. I’ve never understood business and have no patience with business meetings or legal details. I had a weakness for signing things just to make them go away. She observed this, and defended me. It was a partnership.
We had times together I will always remember. Right after our first Christmas together, we flew to Venice, where I promised Chaz it would be rainy, cold, deserted, and we would have it all to ourselves. That was how I’d first seen Venice in 1966, and it was the same. It was romantic, sleeping late in the Royal Danelli and then waking up and making love and looking out across the Grand Canal. The hotel was half empty, the rooms a fraction of the summer cost. The city was shrouded in mist and always haunting. Romance in the winter in Venice is intimate and private, almost hushed. One night we went to the Municipal Casino, carefully taking only as much money as we were ready to lose, and we lost it. In a little restaurant we had enough left for spaghetti with two plates, and then lacked even the fare for the canal waterbus. We walked the long way back through the night and cold, our arms around each other, figures appearing out of the fog, lights traced on the wet stones, pausing now and again to kiss and be solemn. It was one of those experiences that seals a marriage.
At Cannes we bought a chicken sandwich for Quentin Tarantino in a beach restaurant, after “Reservoir Dogs” had been a success but he was broke. The next time we saw him at Cannes was after “Pulp Fiction,” when Miramax had rented a ballroom in the Carlton for him. It was the first time we remembered. Another night, after seeing “Boyz N the Hood” and being awed by it, we drove out of town for dinner with John Singleton, so young and filled with plans. Chaz seemed to know everybody and to remember all the names; I had often been more abstracted than anyone realized.
We had fun together. In Salvador, the capitol of Bahia in Brazil, we decided to go to a Lambada nightclub, and practiced the dance in our hotel room. Wandering around the town, we saw a dress shop with local fashions and Chaz bought a low-cut white summer gown with lots of ruffles. She looked sexy as hell when we left the hotel. When we walked into the club, an odd silence fell. Something was wrong. People seemed to be smiling for the wrong reasons. An English-speaking waitress took mercy on us, and explained the dress was a national costume intended for pageants and such. Wearing it to a nightclub was like me dressing as Uncle Sam.
In London, we stayed at 22 Jermyn Street, the former Eyrie Mansion. Chaz drew me into the contemporary art scene. I’d started collecting my Edward Lear watercolors in the 1980s, but after we moved into our town house with expanses of bare wall, we could think in terms of larger paintings. In the Purdy-Hicks Gallery on the South Bank, where we’d gone to look at work by our friend David Hiscock, we saw a spacious canvas in a store room and found ourselves side by side just regarding it. This was by Gillian Ayres, a formidable abstract expressionist who covered huge areas with bright impasto. It was a work inspired by a kite festival in India, and its energy flooded the room. Over a few years we obtained five works by Ayres, and even had dinner with her one night at the Groucho Club, where the raffish atmosphere matched her roots in London’s 1950s.
The greatest pleasure came from annual trips we made with our grandchildren Raven, Emil and Taylor, and their parents Sonia and Mark. Josibiah and his son Joseph came on one of those trips, where we made our way from Budapest to Prague, Vienna and Venice. We went with the Evans family to Hawaii, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Venice, and Stockholm. We walked the ancient pathway from Cambridge to Grantchester. Emil announced that for him there was no such thing as getting up too early, and every morning the two of us would meet in a hotel lobby and go out for long walks together. I took my camera. One morning in Budapest he asked me to take a photo of two people walking ahead of us and holding hands.
“Why?”
“Because they look happy.”
At last I could show off my city secrets. I was happy enough to drift for years lonely and solitary through strange cities, but it was more fun with the family. One quality the children had was the ability to feel at home anywhere, in restaurants, theaters, museums. They were attentive and absorbed. They had been well raised.
Those times seem more precious now that they’re in the past. I don’t walk easily anymore. When we were married I told Chaz that in 1987 I’d had a salivary tumor removed. Good Dr. Schlichter observed the surgery and told me, “They got it all. Every last speck.” But I was warned my cancer was slow-growing and sneaky, and might return years later. That’s what happened, and it set into motion all of my current troubles.
I mentioned how expert and exacting Chaz became in my care. Now I must tell you of her love. In the hospital, day after day, she was my staff of strength. In the rehabilitations she cheered me through every faltering step, and when I looked at a flight of three steps I was intended to climb, it was her will that helped me lift my feet. To visit a hospital is not pleasant. To do it hundreds of times is heroic.
The TV show was using “guest co-hosts” and Richard Roeper held down the fort. But after the first surgery failed and I nearly died, it must have been clear to her that my TV days were over. She never admitted it. She had faith, she encouraged me, her presence gave me strength. She brought my friends to see me. Studs Terkel came several times. Father Andrew Greeley was cheerful and optimistic. She brought McHugh and Mary Jo, Gregory Nava, Jon and Pamela Anderson, the mayor’s wife Maggie Daley, the actress Bonnie Hunt (who had once been an oncology nurse at Northwestern). Chaz had become friends with the healer Caroline Myss, and brought her to my bedside to evoke positive thoughts. I did not and do not believe in that kind of healing, but I see only good in the feelings it can engender. I am no longer religious, but every single day Chaz took my hand before she left and recited the 23rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer, and from this I took great comfort.
After I was allowed to return home for the first time, Chaz decided I was ready for the Pritikin Longevity Center near Miami. We’d been going to Pritikin, first in Santa Monica and then Florida, since before we were married, and their theories about diet and exercise became gospel to me (sometimes more in the breach than the observance). I had for years been an enthusiastic walker, but now, after rehabilitation, I was using a stroller and it was slow going.
I couldn’t eat the largely vegetarian diet at Pritikin, but Chaz knew the cooks would blend a liquid diet to supplement my cans of nutrition. She also informed me that I was going to walk, exercise, and get a lot of sunshine. Because it was painful to sit in most chairs, Pritikin found me a reclining chair that faced a big TV. I had brought along a pile of books. I cracked open the sliding doors and a fragrant breeze came in, and I would have been completely content to stay there just like that. It was not to be. Chaz ordered me on my feet for morning and afternoon walks, with my caregivers trailing along behind me with a wheelchair. I’d go as far as I thought I could, and Chaz would unfailingly pick out a farther goal to aim for. She was relentless.
In the gym everyday I cranked through 20 minutes on the treadmill and then worked out with weights and exercise bands. After the gym she took me outside to sit in the sun for half an hour. She explained how natural Vitamin D would help strengthen my bones, which were weakened during the muscular degeneration of weeks of post-surgical bed rest. I resented her unceasing encouragement. I was lazy. It was ever so much preferable to sit and read. But she was making me do the right thing.
She did it all over again after my next three tours through the Rehabilitation Institute. Four times I learned to walk again, and each time she took me to Pritikin or Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico, which I had grown to love. I parked the wheelchair for good, I was no longer using a stroller, I was walking, not quickly or for miles, but walking. And getting Vitamin D. At home, we took walks around the neighborhood and down to the Lily Pond in Lincoln Park. We began to go to all the screenings again. She found Dr. Mark Baker, an exercise therapist, to regularly work with me.
It must not have been the most pleasant thing in the world to trail along as I walked slowly. She must have wished we could still be taking our trips overseas. When she thought I was ready for it, she took me back to London and Cannes, and every autumn to the Toronto festival. I know that left on my own I would have stayed at home in my favorite Relax-the-Back chair. That I am still active, going places, moving, in good health, is directly because of her.
We planned all along to produce a show that would continue the Siskel & Ebert & Roeper tradition. Chaz did all the heavy lifting, the negotiations, the contracts. We were going to be the co-producers, but I told her she was born for the job. She repeatedly told me I needed to appear more on the show, even with my computer voice. My instinct was to guard myself. I can never be on television as I once was. She said, “yes, but people are interested in what you have to say, not in how you say it.” The point is not which of us in correct. The point is that she’s encouraging me. She has more faith in me than I do.
I sensed from the first that Chaz was the woman I would marry, and I know after 20 years that my feelings were true. She has been with me in sickness and in health, certainly far more sickness than we could have anticipated. I will be with her, strengthened by her example. She continues to make my life possible, and her presence fills me with love and a deep security. That’s what a marriage is for. Now I know.
Excerpted from my memoir, “Life Itself.”
Our flower girls were Gene and Marlene’s daughters, Kate and Callie.
- Chicago, Home of Great Music and Newspapers (July 17, 2026)
There I was in the spotlight, alongside my daughter, Sonia, playing Blues harmonicas onstage in front of a lively crowd. Was this some sort of a surreal dream? It certainly felt like one in the moment. But this was, in fact, an actual event that occurred on a Friday morning earlier this month.
It all began with a Chicago Sun-Times article by Neil Steinberg that I read about a Blues Camp for children at Columbia College. I thought surely that this was some sort of misprint. Why were children learning about the Blues, and why would the music be of interest to them? After reading the column, I contacted Neil, who assured me that what he wrote was indeed not a work of fiction. Fernando Jones, whom Sonia recently met by coincidence on her morning walks, had created the international music program, Blues Camp, in 1989, and it has since grown into a recognized nonprofit.
This realization immediately brought me back to the days of my youth. My love for the Blues began in Grade School. None of my friends could understand why I would want to listen to people they had never heard of like Muddy Waters, Albert King and Howlin’ Wolf. My curiosity had now peaked regarding what sort of kids would attend a camp devoted to Blues music. Thankfully, Sonia is always up for an adventure like I am, so I asked her to join me for the Blues Kids Foundation’s camp recital at Columbia. What we found there entertained and delighted us.
The stated mission of Fernando’s nonprofit is to preserve, perform and promote Blues among America’s youth, educators, parents and community members. The organization operated as a free Blues Camp for children around the world, focusing on providing cultural, social and emotional enrichment activities for its young participants. Though not all of the budding musicians we saw at Columbia are destined to be breakout performers, we enjoyed how their participation in an ensemble taught them to collaborate and cooperate with each other. It also helped them to be less self-conscious when performing in front of others. There were at least a couple standouts, particularly a ten-year-old bass guitar player named Ricky, whose mannerisms were that of an older Blues man.
Sonia Evans and Chaz Ebert (on left) playing Blues harmonicas onstage.
Watching remarkable kids like Ricky caused me to reflect on Chicago’s profoundly rich history of music. We are home to such greats as the Father of Gospel, Thomas Dorsey; the Queen of Gospel, Albertina Walker; Mother Willie Mae Ford; Mavis Staples and the Staple Singers; the Edwin Hawkin Singers; Tammy McCann; and the glorious Mahalia Jackson. We also have Blues greats and other musicians who either were from Chicago or became famous here, from Buddy Guy, Quincy Jones, Earth, Wind and Fire, the Chi-Lites, Herbie Hancock, Nat King Cole, Lou Rawls and Bo Diddley to Esther Phillips, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Jennifer Hudson, Etta James and Chaka Khan, to name a few.
House Music was invented here in Chicago by the late Frankie Knuckles, among others, and thousands flocked to Jackson Park on July 11th for the annual Chosen Few Picnic & Festival honoring him and the other visionaries behind that genre. More recently, Chicago was home to Rappers and Hip-Hop artists like Common, Chance the Rapper, Ye (formerly Kanye West) and Da Brat. What a rich tapestry.
Albertina Walker will be honored posthumously by Calvin Bridges next month on her birthday. Calvin was my classmate at John M. Smyth Elementary School, and recently performed at the inaugural FECK Awards in April. However, his fame extends internationally, where he has been all over the world spreading the Gospel message. He will be joined by singer Sasha Daltonn for Albertina’s birthday celebration. An even bigger event is being planned in Walker’s honor for next year.
I also feel overcome with immense gratitude for the newspaper article in Roger’s beloved Chicago Sun-Times that had informed me about this amazing camp. Though today’s newspapers are not what they used to be, I do believe that they are still an important and necessary part of our lives, especially when they prioritize local reporting. The Chicago Tribune’s Robert “Colonel” McCormick and the Sun-Times’ Marshall Field III should be commended for establishing Chicago as a leading newspaper town. Though most print media has melted away in recent years, keeping up to date on the daily news cycle is more vital than ever. I doubt the Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan would’ve had one of the most successful engagements in the history of Chicago’s Lyric Opera with his sold-out show, A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness, had it not received ample coverage from the city’s papers.
All of these thoughts were running through my mind as Sonia and I were invited to join a jovial 94-year-old woman from the audience onstage to be taught how to play the blues at the camp recital. It was as surreal a moment for me as any in recent memory, not to mention indicative of how you’re never too young or too old to learn a new skill.
For more information on Fernando’s Blues camp, visit his organization’s official site.
https://www.blueskids.com
- “The Map of Longing” Offers Real Catharsis Despite Its Teen Melancholy (July 17, 2026)
Fans of the book by Alice Kellen probably already know–Netflix’s “The Map of Longing” is more “The Fault in Our Stars” than “Bridgerton.” Yes, the Spanish series is adapted from an adult romance, but it brings a certain teenage melancholy, even as its characters are ostensibly in their 20s. So expect more earnest coming of age (think the driver’s test) and less randy fun (the sex is pretty tame, even if we do see more flesh than U.S. audiences are accustomed to).
The premise goes something like this: Greta Álvarez (a charming Alícia Falcó) believes she was born with a purpose–to save her immunocompromised sister Lucy (Georgina Amorós). But it doesn’t work, and Lucy dies in her early twenties, leaving behind a grieving family who has to figure out what life is like when the departed sister’s illness is no longer organizing their days.
The show opens after all the business of dying is done, with Greta, her mother (Laia Marull), and her father (Mario de la Rosa) stuck in their grief as they’re supposed to be carrying on. Then a handsome stranger arrives–Will Tucker (a brooding Pablo Álvarez)–with a game from beyond the grave, containing a series of challenges that Lucy created to help her family process their loss, and hopefully, live loudly and bravely.
It is maudlin and overwrought. This is a series filled with golden light and twee settings from Will’s cozy trailer to the hip but quiet bar where he works. But it also has quite a lot to say about the contours of grief. It’s hard not to shed real tears as Greta processes hers–the finality of her loss and the way it ricochets out across her life feels both real and too much to bear. And the setting reflects this: her home is a mess, where unwashed dishes and discarded tissues rule. She has to leave to find some light, but she also has to return to address her sadness at its roots.
The series is smart in portraying the family’s different responses as all valid. Her mother watches TV all day in a trance, deep in depression. Her father goes to work and seems to be functioning, even as he’s clearly avoiding his family and emotions. Greta, meanwhile, sets out to process her loss through Lucy’s game. She’s initially reluctant to accept her sister’s help, talk with Will, or participate in therapy. But she trusts her sister and slowly progresses to a better emotional relationship with her loss, thanks to the strength of their bond.
Sadly, “The Map of Longing” has neither insight nor curiosity in the male condition. Will appears as a handsome, mysterious stranger, and that’s the character at its most dynamic. In the second act, he shares his mysterious past, but the reveal makes no sense, turning him from a private person to an impossible fantasy. The show argues that there are “two Wills” and a brush with tragedy changed him–but the transition is too severe to believe. And the six-part series only gives a passing phrase as a way of explanation for how Will, who seems so gentlemanly and sensitive, could ever have been so callous in his past. The audience is simply to believe the delusion that his interactions with the Álvarez sisters could change his very being–from the way he stands to what he values–with their love and acceptance.
It’s pure fantasy, and an immature one at that. The first episode leans into this adolescent approach, making Greta the plucky heroine of too many Disney films, the one who talks too much, doesn’t know her own limitations, but somehow solves her problems with doe-eyed resourcefulness. Thankfully, in the second hour, “The Map of Longing” already starts to move away from that characterization, letting Greta feel and question in ways that match her situation and not the dream of it.
Falcó does a strong job here, even as she’s stuck with a series of strange costume choices like bad bangs for both her past and her future self. She gamely takes on her character’s plucky disposition, finding depth as her writing gets better, and showing a slow transition in fits and starts as Greta heals. She also has excellent chemistry with Álvarez, who is more likely to overplay his hand and is unable to coalesce his fractured character into a recognizable human being.
Still, it’s hard not to root for this young woman to get everything she desires—including the handsome Will, who, within this universe, certainly won’t harm her. It’s party how Falcó lights up from within as she starts to make progress, finally allowing herself to make choices for herself after twenty-plus years of existing for her beloved sister. It’s also the relatability of grief, how terribly universal it is, even if we each respond differently. Greta’s mourning is not overly sentimental or trite. It is lived in.
And so while her journey may feel too pat at times, there’s real catharsis here in seeing her earn her happiness. May we all be so lucky.
Whole series screened for review. Now on Netflix.
