A portrait of Roger Ebert made of text by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
When I saw Slashfilm‘s post on Roger Ebert‘s list of best 2009 films (20 of them, not one of them Avatar), I remembered watching him on his show for years, up until his cancer surgery that removed a great deal of his lower face and neck. The photo that is the basis for my drawing appears above the post at Despite this surgery, which took his ability to speak, he continued to write, and as a salute on NPR stated so nicely:
“When Roger Ebert lost his ability to speak following cancer surgery, it wasn’t clear exactly what his future would hold, but it turns out that he entered a phase of his career that’s been utterly fascinating. He does talk about politics a lot on his blog, but even if all you read is his coverage of movies and culture, it’s well worth the time.” from Getting Personal: We Salute 10 Of Our Favorite Pop-Culture Humans Of 2009 – Monkey See Blog : NPR at Tue Dec 29 2009 23:35:51 GMT-0500 (EST) on
So, in my quest for doing (hopefully) interesting, poignant, and helpful sketches over the next year, I wanted to share my text-based portrait of Roger, with apologies to the original photographer who is not credited on Slashfilm. Shame. Also, I just read a great essay by Ebert that the NPR piece led me to at
He may not be able to speak, but he has certainly not lost his voice.
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