7 Notorious Roger Ebert Feuds

For the most part, the late film critic Roger Ebert (1942 to 2013) reserved his war of words for verbal sparring partner Gene Siskel. Their program, Siskel & Ebert, was as much a clash of wits as it was a movie review program.

But Siskel was not the only person to draw Ebert’s ire. Take a look at seven times the critic locked horns with actors, directors, and even one Jackass.

1. Roger Ebert vs. Rob Schneider
2. Roger Ebert vs. Vincent Gallo
3. Roger Ebert vs. Video Games
4. Roger Ebert vs. the Oscars
5. Roger Ebert vs. Richard Corliss
6. Roger Ebert vs. Bam Margera
7. Roger Ebert vs. Disney

Roger Ebert vs. Rob Schneider

Saturday Night Live alumnus Rob Schneider parlayed his notoriety from sketch comedy into a film career. His 1999 film Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo, about a somewhat naïve sex worker, was successful enough to warrant a sequel: 2005’s Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. While fans of the first were amused, most critics were not. Los Angeles Times writer Patrick Goldstein effectively heckled the movie, sarcastically writing that it was “sadly overlooked at Oscar time” and denouncing Schneider as a “third-rate comic.” Schneider retorted by purchasing ad space in trade publications like Variety, alluding to Goldstein’s status as a “third-rate, unfunny, pompous reporter” who has never been honored with any major awards, including a Pulitzer Prize. (Schneider would later allege Goldstein had not actually seen the film at the time he took a swipe at it.)

Ebert quickly took up arms for his peer in criticism by seizing on Schneider’s mockery over that coveted honor, which Ebert actually had won in 1975 for film criticism. In his own thumbs-down review of European Gigolo, Ebert wrote: “As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.” Ebert also pointed out Schneider’s own shortcomings as an award nominee: “Schneider was nominated for a 2000 Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to Jar-Jar Binks.”

Despite this animosity, Schneider was magnanimous toward Ebert when it mattered. In 2012, as the critic was battling complications from cancer, he revealed he had received a flower bouquet and a warm note from Schneider. “The bouquet didn’t change my opinion of his movie, but I don’t think he intended that,” Ebert wrote. “It was a way of stepping back. It was a reminder that in the great scheme of things, a review doesn’t mean very much.”

Roger Ebert vs. Vincent Gallo

Actor and director Vincent Gallo faced a firing squad of critics for his 2003 film The Brown Bunny, an independent feature many viewers found narratively meandering and uncomfortably explicit. Among the naysayers was Ebert, who emerged from a screening in May 2003 dubbing it “the worst movie in the history of the Cannes Film Festival.” Gallo was apoplectic and spared little in his retort, calling Ebert a “fat pig” and even, Ebert alleged, putting a “hex” on his colon and prostate.

“It is true that I am fat,” Ebert wrote, “but one day I will be thin, and [Gallo] will still be the director of The Brown Bunny.”

Surprisingly, Ebert later revised his impression of the film after Gallo made further edits. “A funny thing happened,” Ebert wrote. “Gallo went back into the editing room and cut 26 minutes of his 118-minute film, or almost a fourth of the running time. And in the process he transformed it.” The movie, which he previously decreed as among the worst ever conceived, was now a three-star endeavor.

That did little to appease Gallo, however. In a 2018 essay, Gallo insisted he had not cut that much time from The Brown Bunny and that the discrepancy came from an outdated running time listed in a Cannes program. It was, he said, only about eight minutes shorter. “If you didn’t like the unfinished film at Cannes, you didn’t like the finished film, and vice versa,” Gallo wrote. “Roger Ebert made up his story and his premise because after calling my film literally the worst film ever made, he eventually realized it was not in his best interest to be stuck with that mantra. Stuck with a brutal, dismissive review of a film that other, more serious critics eventually felt differently about.”

Roger Ebert vs. Video Games

Ebert dismissed many films in his lifetime that undoubtedly annoyed certain fandoms—he was a notorious adversary to the Friday the 13th franchise, for example—but a 2010 blog post about video games provoked what may have been the strongest reaction from readers. In his diatribe, in which he proclaimed “video games can never be art,” Ebert argued that by giving over control of a narrative to a player, interactive games lost the authorial intent necessary to create a work of art. “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, [or] novelists,” he said.

This stirred a strong response from gamers, who left well over 4500 responses to his blog entry, most of which expressed astonishment Ebert would dismiss the medium. Attempts to indoctrinate Ebert with game suggestions were unsuccessful; game critics and game industry authors like Tim Bissell attempted to defend gaming from Ebert’s critique. Even author Clive Barker waded in, writing, “Let’s invent a world where the player gets to go through every emotional journey available. That is art. Offering that to people is art.”

Ebert disagreed, adding that he was unwilling to play a game to further any conversation. “I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place,” he wrote in a follow-up to the controversy, which drew an additional 1655 replies.

Roger Ebert vs. the Oscars

Ebert was a regular champion of films that might not have gotten much attention otherwise. His four-star review of the 1994 basketball documentary Hoop Dreams likely led to the movie being discovered by audiences. Ebert called the film, which documents the years-long journeys of aspiring professional ball players in Chicago, was “one of the great moviegoing experiences of my lifetime.”

Ebert was subsequently dismayed to learn that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had failed to nominate Hoop Dreams for Best Documentary. Two of the five films that were nominated, he wrote, weren’t even feature-length but under one hour each. Oscar voters, he barked, seemed more intrigued by talking heads on camera than real life unfolding in the moment as it does in Hoop Dreams.

Ironically, Ebert would himself become the subject of Hoop Dreams director Steve James: James helmed Life Itself, a 2014 feature based on Ebert’s memoir. It, too, didn’t make the final cut for Oscar consideration.

Roger Ebert vs. Richard Corliss

While most of Ebert’s wordplay was reserved for Gene Siskel, he would occasionally find himself in dust-ups with other film critics. In 1990, Time magazine reviewer Richard Corliss wrote an essay for Film Comment in which he bemoaned the growing influence of bite-sized reviews that relied on the pass-fail premise: the letter grades of Entertainment Weekly or the thumbs-up or down praise or condemnation of Siskel & Ebert.

Of the latter, Corliss wrote: “This is, shall we say, no film university of the air. The program does not dwell on shot analysis, or any other kind of analysis. It is a sitcom (with its own noodling, toodling theme song) starring two guys who live in a movie theater and argue all the time.”

Ebert took to Film Comment to respond. In the following issue, he wrote: “[A]t least part of [Corliss’s] discontent is a textbook case of mid-career crisis. He started with grand ambitions, he has achieved most of what he hoped for, and now he asks, with Peggy Lee: Is that all there is? Like many others his age (which is more or less my age), he finds the cause of his malaise in the disintegration of everything in general and other people’s standards in particular.” Corliss, Ebert charged, was just as guilty of shrinking film criticism within the celebrity-cover confines of Time. Worse, he had referred to Ebert’s program as Siskel & Ebert & the Movies, an outdated title. “I wonder if Corliss watches the show very much,” Ebert charged, pointing out that he and Siskel had done many themed episodes over the issues that turned controversial topics within the industry (colorization, product placement) into mainstream discussions.

Corliss responded in the same issue, likely after getting a peek at Ebert’s comments from editors. He insisted he did watch Ebert’s show, which he again mistitled, “to see the clips and enjoy the wrassling.” He addressed Ebert’s assertion that, by word count alone, he and Siskel often devoted more space to any one film than Corliss could in Time. Perhaps, Corliss conceded, but he also dove into lengthier reviews that could still do wonders. “One of the pleasures of writing for this magazine is that you can take forever getting to the point, and then discover that the ‘forever’ is the point,” he wrote.

As spats go, it remained fairly cordial. The two continued to socialize, and Corliss wrote fondly of his peer after Ebert’s passing in 2013.

Roger Ebert vs. Bam Margera

Many X (formerly Twitter) account holders recognize the pain of sending an ill-considered Tweet, and Ebert was no exception. In 2011, he responded to the news of Jackass co-star Ryan Dunn’s fatal automobile accident with a cruel remark: “Friends don’t let jackasses drink and drive.”

Dunn’s close friend and Jackass co-star Bam Margera did not take the comment in stride. “I just lost my best friend, I have been crying hysterically for a full day and piece of s*** roger ebert has the gall to put in his 2 cents … about a jackass drunk driving ... f*** you! Millions of people are crying right now, shut your fat f***ing mouth!”

Ebert took to his blog to try and quell the hurt feelings, though his response was still laced with moral furor. “To begin with, I offer my sympathy to Ryan Dunn’s family and friends, and to those of Zachary Hartwell, who also died in the crash,” he wrote. “I mean that sincerely. It is tragic to lose a loved one. I also regret that my tweet about the event was considered cruel. It was not intended as cruel. It was intended as true.”

Roger Ebert vs. Disney

Siskel & Ebert spent decades under the Disney umbrella, which owned and distributed the syndicated program up to and following Siskel’s death in 1999. Later, in 2007, Ebert and Disney began butting heads over thumbs.

Ebert was in the middle of a contract renegotiation for the show—which he continued to produce and contribute to though his cancer treatment had kept him off-camera—when, according to Disney, he insisted the show stop using the thumbs-up, thumbs-down metric in a power play. (Ebert and the estate of Gene Siskel held a joint trademark on the idea of using thumbs-up as a movie ratings device.)

But Ebert challenged this, writing on his blog that it was Disney who had ordered the thumbs be subtracted. “They made a first offer ... which I considered offensively low,” Ebert wrote. “I responded with a counteroffer. They did not reply to this and … ordered the Thumbs removed from the show. This is not something I expected after an association of over 22 years.”

Ebert would continue his affiliation with the show for only a short time, when he and co-host Richard Roeper opted to depart as Disney took the show in another direction. (It would be canceled in 2010.)

Read More About Roger Ebert: