Share your story of a funeral that changed your life. Maybe it was someone close to you — or not. Send an email, or even better — a voice memo with your smartphone to record your voice about a funeral that changed your life.
Send it to deathsexmoney wnyc. On the next episode — another sort of life-changing moment. When comedian Chris Gethard started dating Hallie Bulleitt, he fell hard, and developed a sudden interest in interior decorating.
So look at all these frames and all this bedding. Chaz Ebert stopped practicing law when she married Roger, and ran the business side of things for him. They worked side-by-side throughout their marriage.
At some point, he asked me to be his voice. So we would do some things on the computer, and then he would say, but I want you to say this. You know, and so we — when he was very sick, it felt like we became one person.
And I know those boundaries so well because when he got better and he got stronger, those boundaries were resurrected. And I became my own person again and he became his own person. But the period where we became one was a very interesting period when I think back on it. But I actually did feel him in my soul when we became one person. What changed between you two when he was no longer able to talk to you with his voice? Almost nothing, because Roger and I developed almost a mental telepathy.
We were so in tune with each other that we actually could speak to each other without words or without even being in the same room. Like a deep ability to understand what he was prompting, like what he wanted to communicate?
And I know that happens — sometimes when he was in the hospital, I would wake up in the middle of the night and I would call the hospital and I would say, oh my God, he is so cold, would you please go in and put the warming blanket on him? And the nurse would come back and go, well how do you know? Did he call you? See, you know, I have to tell you. I just knew it. Yeah, I do. And our bond was so strong that I wondered about it. It does. He is blissful.
But now I firmly, firmly believe in an afterlife. I have zero fear of death. What I do talk about with my children and grandchildren is living. And telling them to do, find their passion in life and live it. A little less than a year before his death, Roger wrote a blog post, titled Roger Loves Chaz. Does that sound too dramatic? The complete list is at rogerebert. If the you like the show — tell some other people. Share this episode on Facebook — or write us a review on iTunes.
Again, send your stories of life-changing funerals to deathsexmoney wnyc. I just knew that when I talked to you, I just knew it, I thought, this is going to be a disaster. She then received her M. Ebert went on to receive her J. Ebert began her career in as a litigator for the Region Five office of the U. Environmental Protection Agency. After three years, she left the agency to join the litigation department at the Chicago law firm of Bell Boyd and Lloyd LLP, where she focused on mergers and acquisitions and intellectual property.
Ebert then began working at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Her work there focused primarily on race and age-based workplace discrimination. In , she became the vice president of Ebert Company Ltd. In , she married film critic Roger Ebert and continued to play an important role in the company over the following two decades, and often traveled with her husband and his business partner, film critic Gene Siskel.
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.
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.
The opera was "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 , 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.
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