unfortunately it looks like we have a technical problem there with a.j. hammer s report. we ll fix that and get back to that report the obituary of roger ebert. the president of the united states said this, quoting president obama, michelle and i are saddened to hear about the passing of roger ebert. for a generation of americans and especially chicagoans roger was the movies. when he didn t like a film, he was honest. when he did he was effusive, capturing the unique power of the movies to take us somewhere magical. that is the president of the united states releasing his statement. let s get a closer look now at roger ebert and his very influential work. the executive producer of ebert s ground breaking show at the movies is joining us right now, david plummer.
give us a thought, david. this is a loss for all of us. honestly, it is a loss for all of us. hearing what president obama said, you know, it just goes to show what a huge force he was. i mean, this is a movie critic. the president of the united states isn t going to say the words that he said in that statement for anybody and it goes to show that roger sort of went past just being a movie critic and became much bigger than that and honestly much bigger than many of the movie stars that he covered. he was a bigger celebrity than many of them. so a huge loss today both personally and, you know, on a national level. how passionate was he about his work? he s the most passionate person i ve ever met about the movies, about his work. i mean, the man continued to just have his work load was so above and beyond what any
other critic in the country was doing. he continued, i think last year he reviewed more than like 350 movies. somewhere around there. that is a huge work load. and while it may be just sitting in the dark watching a movie, that s still a lot of work and a lot of writing that has to be done and he continued to do that all the way through last year. despite his illness and we ll have more on that in a moment. also right now the film critic for new york magazine, he really changed the way some of us saw film critics. i like to call him the mayor of movie criticville. most of our breed are kind of twisted loners whereas roger, beginning, once he stopped drinking and stopped going to the playboy mansion which he did i guess in the 70s, he really began to think of himself as a public figure. almost a politician. he actually brought people in not only to the joy of movies but to the joy of talking about movies. he set an example with gene