Opposable Thumbs
How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever
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Opposable Thumbs
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Narrated by:
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Matt Singer
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Written by:
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Matt Singer
About this listen
Once upon a time, if you wanted to know if a movie was worth seeing, you didn’t check out Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB.
You asked whether Siskel & Ebert had given it “two thumbs up.”
On a cold Saturday afternoon in 1975, two men (who had known each other for eight years before they’d ever exchanged a word) met for lunch in a Chicago pub. Gene Siskel was the film critic for the Chicago Tribune. Roger Ebert had recently won the Pulitzer Prize—the first ever awarded to a film critic—for his work at the Chicago Sun-Times. To say they despised each other was an understatement.
When they reluctantly agreed to collaborate on a new movie review show with PBS, there was at least as much sparring off-camera as on. No decision—from which films to cover to who would read the lead review to how to pronounce foreign titles—was made without conflict, but their often-antagonistic partnership (which later transformed into genuine friendship) made for great television. In the years that followed, their signature “Two thumbs up!” would become the most trusted critical brand in Hollywood.
In Opposable Thumbs, award-winning editor and film critic Matt Singer eavesdrops on their iconic balcony set, detailing their rise from making a few hundred dollars a week on local Chicago PBS to securing multimillion-dollar contracts for a syndicated series (a move that convinced a young local host named Oprah Winfrey to do the same). Their partnership was cut short when Gene Siskel passed away in February of 1999 after a battle with brain cancer that he’d kept secret from everyone outside his immediate family—including Roger Ebert, who never got to say goodbye to his longtime partner. But their influence on in the way we talk about (and think about) movies continues to this day.
Photographer/© ABC/Getty Images.
©2023 Matt Singer (P)2023 Penguin AudioYou may also enjoy...
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What the critics say
One of People’s Must-Read Books for Fall 2023
“Opposable Thumbs is a welcome reminder of an era when film criticism actually mattered...But it was Siskel and Ebert who, in Singer’s words, ‘democratized criticism, turned it into mass entertainment.’” —The New York Times
“The Siskel & Ebert rivalry, and its legacy, comes alive in the new book Opposable Thumbs.” —Chicago Tribune
"Siskel and Ebert bustled into the world at a time when movie critics mattered more, before the culture fragmented into a million voices and “influencers,” and they ruled that world with iron thumbs. In this sense Singer’s book is a time capsule of a bygone era every bit as irreplicable as the partnership at its core." —The Los Angeles Times
What listeners say about Opposable Thumbs
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- JF Brandauer
- 2024-11-01
An engrossing book read brilliantly by it's author.
Matt Singer achieves a rare feat : bringing back to life two great icons of film criticism and beloved media personalities. Through his detailed research and selected excerpts, Singer manages to pay a lively tribute to two men who succeeded in democratizing film criticism but also cinema in many of its forms and genres. Listening to the author's excellent narration, I also found the enthusiasm one could have in following Siskel and Ebert during all these years both in writing and on television and, all the more, missing both of them. In short, and I can live with the cliché, two thumbs way up for this great book.
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