February 28th, 2024, marked my tenth anniversary of working at RogerEbert.com, which seemed like a fitting full circle moment to bid this extraordinary chapter of my life farewell. Other projects that were birthed directly from the work I was able to publish as a result of the Ebert site are now demanding of my full attention, and I must ensure that they will cross the finish line. I left at the end of that month overwhelmed with gratitude for the unceasing support I’ve received from my boss, Chaz Ebert, cherished co-workers Dan Jackson and Sonia Evans, and my fellow editors Brian Tallerico, Matt Zoller Seitz, Nell Minow, Robert Daniels and Nick Allen. 

Having the opportunity to champion the work of such filmmakers as Kantemir Balagov, Chinonye Chukwu, Emily Hagins, Deborah Kampmeier, Barbara Kopple, Oz Perkins and Nanfu Wang, as well as interview such phenomenal talents as Julie Andrews, Michael Cera, Rebekah Del Rio, Abby Ryder Fortson, Rodrigo García, Greta Gerwig, Dave Goelz, Marielle Heller, Werner Herzog, Isabelle Huppert, Bing Liu, Lily McInerny, Thomasin McKenzie, Frank Oz, Anna Paquin, Paweł Pawlikowski, Parker Posey, Paul Schrader, Saniyya Sidney, Hailee Steinfeld, Julia Sarah Stone, Mary Sweeney, Sydney Sweeney, Lili Taylor, John Travolta and Melora Walters, to name a few, on that platform has been and will forever be one of the greatest joys of my life.

The group photo you see at the top of this article is from my farewell luncheon, held at Chicago’s University Club. Pictured, from left, are Peyton Robinson, a brilliant writer recommended to Chaz by my wife, whose career is flourishing at the Ebert site; my amazing wife, Rebecca Martin Fagerholm, whom I met around midnight on Patti Vasquez’s radio show, as a result of my Oscar press room coverage; my dad and one of my best friends, Mike, who made the trip from his home in Woodstock, Illinois (we both spoke at length about my mom, Allison, who was there with us in spirit, and is the person who knew I was a writer before I did); Pat McDonald, who was the Hagrid to my Harry Potter during my HollywoodChicago.com days, and has remained a dear friend ever since; Chaz Ebert, a truly phenomenal woman whose kindness and generosity is apparent on every page of her new book, It’s Time to Give a FECK…

…Myrin New, one of the funniest and loveliest people I know; Sonia Evans, Chaz’s daughter and one of the greatest people I will ever work with, who graced Rebecca and my wedding with her presence, and who gifted me a care package filled with my favorite snacks from the office; Dan Jackson, Chaz’s nephew and absolutely indispensable project/office manager, who became like a brother to me over the past decade (he can rest assured that our running gags will continue for as long as I’m around); and Brian Tallerico, my editor for the past 15 years to whom I will forever be indebted for the opportunities he granted me, including the one that ultimately led me to the exciting projects I’m tackling today. Thank you everyone for making my first day off the job one of the happiest of my life.

For my farewell essay, I compiled fifty of my articles from the past decade that I hold especially close to my heart. I am humbled to have played a part in helping extend Roger’s legacy into the decade following his passing, and I want to thank all of my colleagues and our readers for helping keep film discourse alive and well. Thank you, Chaz, for having faith in me every step of the way. And thank you, Roger, for your endless inspiration. I hope I did you proud. Below you will find the tenth and final volume of my work published at RogerEbert.com over the past twelve months, alongside additional interviews I had the joy of conducting for my wife’s site, Cinema Femme. Click on each bolded name, and you will be directed to the full conversation…

“As a filmmaker, I want to convey the poetry of everyday life. It doesn’t have to be about a hero’s journey arc or other conventional tropes. It can just follow a few weeks in the timespan of a young couple in college, or a few days in Florida where you get to experience the magic of Disneyland. I think that really influenced the films that I want to make, which are real and honest and just feel relatable to the human experience.”—Brooke Westphal, director of “Young People”

“She’s a young orphan who lives in isolation and is very poor, but despite her bleak situation, she finds the capacity to dream, resist, fight back and adapt—which is a key word for how people survive in an environment that is constantly changing and flooding without any official sort of support from the state. The mud island is a no man’s land bereft of property, infrastructure, roads or cars. I was surprised by the strength of this young girl who was capable of rowing like a champion at 11 years old. It’s sort of like watching the birth of a heroine.”—Angelos Rallis, director of “Mighty Afrin: in the time of floods”

“Tara and Keith are Chicago theatre legends. Keith and I had done ‘The Humans’ ten years before, and so I knew him from that. I wrote the character of Dan with him in mind, and we did a reading with him. Then he emailed us and was like, ‘My daughter would kill me if I didn’t ask if she could audition,’ so we did a reading with her, and she was amazing. We cast her right away. As for Tara, she is such a phenomenal actor that Alex and our casting director, Mickie Paskal, were very smart in saying, ‘Cast this family!’”—Kelly O’Sullivan, writer/co-director of “Ghostlight”

“We completely felt that we were in good hands. Harold was there running the ship, but he was still thinking about his family through it all, supporting both things at the same time. He was very freeing, and I think the brilliance of most good directors is in the casting, not in nitpicking what you’re doing while you’re working. Had I known how sick Harold was, I would’ve sent him a love letter saying just how much I treasured the time I had worked with him, what a mensch he was and what a lovely set he created.”—Marita Geraghty, star of “Groundhog Day”

“He’s using his platform to open the door for the next generation. Gelila always says it best: he roots for the underdogs. We’re underdogs. He could’ve gotten anyone to do this documentary, and for whatever reason, he entrusted it to us because of how we saw something that maybe everyone else didn’t see. To have someone like that with that type of platform constantly believing in us when he doesn’t have to, that is inspiring and very unique.”—Armani Ortiz, co-director of “Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story”

“My ultimate goal in acting is to tell stories of people who don’t have a voice to tell their own story. Sex trafficking is such an epidemic. It’s disgusting and absolutely terrible and those women do not have a voice to speak up for themselves, so this role fully aligned with my whole “mission” as an actress. In addition to that, I love working with complexity in characters, such as the fact that Candy betrayed her friend. I would love to play a villain in order to move through the complexity of bringing empathy to someone whom others deem as being undeserving of it. This isn’t to say that Candy is a villain by any means, but that aspect of her attracted me as well.”—Sophia Adler, star of “Harlan Coben’s Shelter”

“I think the thing that draws people to this genre more than anything is the ability to face and process real world anxieties from the safety of a theater seat, and for me and for many others, the fear, anxiety, and shame of not knowing how you’ll crawl out from under debt, or pay rent, or take proper care of your (mental) health, is a very real thing. I wanted this movie to make those people feel seen.”—Jason Miller, director of “Ghosts of the Void”

“I realized there could be thousands of orphan girls who have similar stories like me, affected by the floods and climate change. I experienced so much over this six-year journey and I have learned a lot. I hope people will like the film. They will realize that thousands of people like me are struggling in their life every day but they don’t lose their hope. Instead, they become more resilient.”—Afrin Khanom, subject of “Mighty Afrin: in the time of floods”

“Bill was very kind to me on the set, and I think he liked that I had a history with Second City. When we were shooting the scenes in the restaurant, he took my shoulders and physically turned me toward the camera. He said to me afterwards, ‘I did that so you wouldn’t be edited out.’ I couldn’t believe how generous that was. Bill would do many different takes, and his approach would be so different in each of them. It would be a different level of energy or pacing or timing or emotion. He would do about seven, and then in the last one, he would nail it, but he was pulling from all of them to come up with that final take. It was so interesting to watch, and he had the license to do that because of Harold.”—Robin Duke, star of “Groundhog Day”

“Kelly is a terrific writer. Her words are easy to say and since it’s not overwritten, there’s so much to play. They create such a wonderful set where they give you the time to develop your character. There are certain looks that we give each other that Kelly and Alex use to convey important things, rather than have us articulate it with dialogue. Those are the moments that really move the story along and give you insight into how the family dynamic works with these people.”—Keith Kupferer, star of “Ghostlight”

“Everything in it is about body language. Something that David said to me early in the process was that I, as the writer and creator, don’t need to impose an opinion about the church onto this film. People are going to come to their own conclusions. Just holding the space for the setting to exist is going to be enough to translate what I’m saying. We don’t need as much words, we just need bodies in space, and bodies relative to their environment. It is such an environmental film that getting the locations, putting people in those spaces and having them interact with the environment was half the job.”—Bridget Frances Harris, director of “Places of Worship”

“In some ways, the current landscape only further underscores how important some of our platforms are like Doc10 and its traveling little sister Doc5, along with the community activation screenings where we are bringing organizations together with films to try to connect the two in order to amplify both of their efforts. Since the gatekeepers have narrowed the channel by which you can get onto streaming platforms, it just makes our platforms that much more important because they are becoming one of the only ways that people can see these great films.”—Paula Froehle, co-founder of the Chicago Media Project

“I realized that Madea exists in my community too. His persona and his work in general can speak to different people on a global level who come from similar backgrounds. I also think there is a huge gap between them and people who come from academia and look down on what he makes because they don’t consider it to be art. I don’t understand why people think that Tyler’s work is bringing our culture backwards. If someone is really drawing from where they come from, who am I to say that it’s not good enough?”—Gelila Bekele, co-director of “Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story”

“Harold was so accessible, gracious and generous. I’ve seen other people creating that sort of environment onset, but not to the extent that he did. It has helped me on subsequent projects when I’ve shot my own stuff, or even as an actor on a show when the guest is coming in. I do everything I can to make them feel welcome because then it allows them to do better work. It’s better for everyone if you are kind.”—David Pasquesi, star of “Groundhog Day”

“My writing is just an extension of how I talk. I see the world as cockeyed and I also come from a family where at some point, you have to laugh. We’re Jewish, and there will eventually be something that you can’t say in words, so you just go, ‘Oy…’, which has the underlying meaning of, ‘This is what it is. Let’s try to regroup and hang onto each other,’ or, ‘Let’s fight and get through this together.’ We moved a lot when I was a kid, which meant I had to frequently be the new kid at school, so my protective coloration was to be funny. It’s disarming, especially in a young person, to be smart and funny. It calmed everybody the fuck down and they went, ‘Okay, she’s cool.’”—Joanna Gleason, star of “Into the Woods”

“Steph is this character who I feel is very awkward, gangly, and overwhelmed by the world. When you go into the Music Box by yourself, it is huge in there. It feels so massive and it was really important for me to convey how big not just that space is, but the world at large is, and what moving through it feels like when you are stimulated by things that are greater than you, by things that you don’t understand—I think, in this case, her sexuality.”—Virginia Alonso-Luis, star of “Places of Worship”

“I had read Judy Blume’s book in third grade before I even knew about the movie. My friends and I had never seen any of that stuff in a book before, and even though I grew up in a generation where that stuff is fine to talk about, it is still a really great thing. The screenplay portrays that book in such a beautiful way and also gets into how other generations are connected to it, not just one.”—Katherine Mallen Kupferer, star of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”

“We got involved in ‘Icarus’ when it was a movie about a bicyclist who wanted to show that he could easily dope himself as his hero Lance Armstrong did in the semi-professional biking world. That sparked our interest, so we got involved. Then we got a call one day from Dan Cogan of Impact Partners, who we financed with, and he said, ‘You better sit down, I think we have a different movie going on here. And by the way, I’m on burner phone, so don’t call me back.’”—Steve Cohen, co-founder of the Chicago Media Project

“It was the first time I was like, “Oh, I’m not an editor—this is an editor. We need this,” and it was so great. We actually missed a scene in “Ghostlight”! We wrapped and [Mike S. Smith] was like, “Hey, so you guys cut 101A,” and it’s a rather important scene. So we told the school that we had left something in the gym, where the scene takes place. We loaded all our shit in and shot it with a tiny crew and no lights.”—Alex Thompson, co-director of “Ghostlight”

“All of the girls were like Pauline in the beginning, but they kept going with the work until they couldn’t really get out of it, because the place grew on them. It becomes, of course, a bit of a prison because of the system of the house and the debts they have. But it is also a shelter from the world, where they have their own place and where their deepest relationships are with other women. They also have conflicts like sisters do. So on some level, they are attached to this life and the place. Despite the bad things that happen there, it is their home and they have each other.”—Iliana Zabeth, star of “House of Pleasures”

“I thought it would be great to get a little flavor of the Ebert Video Companion in there, as well as the “Siskel & Ebert” episodes that would highlight obscure titles that they dubbed “buried treasures.” So for the Appendix, I selected twenty-five lesser-known films that Roger and Gene recommended, and I watched each of them myself to ensure they had my stamp of approval as well. If people tell me that they sought out a film that they read about in the Appendix, that would be one of the best compliments that I could possibly get about the book.”—Matt Singer on Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever

“Keith and I have been in Chicago for almost thirty-two years. We came here just the two of us, and my theatre company—our theatre community—is our family. They helped raise Katherine. We don’t have immediate family here, so they pitched in and took care of her when we couldn’t. She was at our theatre from the moment she was born, and that is a safe and nurturing space for us. For me, that is the place where I am the happiest. It fills me with the most joy, and that is very much a part of what you see in this film.”—Tara Mallen, star of “Ghostlight”

“After the film was done, we were in Los Angeles and Trevor Albert, the producer, had a party at his house up in the mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Harold Ramis showed up and we were sitting outside. He pulled out his guitar and started plucking it, and I said, ‘Harold, everybody is asking me all the time how long Bill is trapped in the town.’ Harold just smiled and said, ‘Well, Stephen, it’s 10,000 years.’ I asked, ‘Why is it 10,000 years?’ He answered, ‘Well, I’m a practicing Buddhist, and we believe in Buddhism that it takes 10,000 years to perfect the human soul, and that is the story of ‘Groundhog Day’—the perfection of the human soul.’”—Stephen Tobolowsky, star of “Groundhog Day”

In addition to these interviews, I also had the wonderful opportunity last summer to cover my first festival with Rebecca, Greg Sorvig’s joyous Indie Shorts International Film Festival. I also offered musings on the future of movies, and at Indie Outlook, I once again revealed my picks for the Top 20 Films of 2023 and the films I would’ve liked to have seen nominated during last year’s awards season (both of which were led by Kelly Fremon Craig’s masterful Judy Blume adaptation, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”).

As for what I’ve been working on in the meantime, stay tuned…

Here are links to Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4, Vol. 5, Vol. 6, Vol. 7, Vol. 8 and Vol. 9 of my published work at RogerEbert.com.