Two thumbs up!

So while I was contemplating my mortality and the meaninglessness of existence it suddenly occurred to me: now would be the perfect time to make a movie about Siskel and Ebert.

But who would be willing to make such a low stakes dream about two unsexy guys that talk about movies? Well to me, the choice is clear: it’s Ben Affleck. What makes that choice so appealing is that not only can Affleck perform behind the camera, but he perform in front of it as none other than Gene Siskel. Just lose 50lbs, throw on a bald cap, and BAM…you have the film critic from the Chicago Tribune. Even better to play opposite of him would be his good buddy Matt Damon as Roger Ebert. Affleck can transfer some of his lost weight over to Damon, throw on a wig, and now we have the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic from the Chicago Sun-Times. It would be a great irony to have two very hot actors from the 90s play the very misshapen critics that reviewed them earlier in their careers.

The source material for this film would of course be Matt Singer’s Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel and Ebert Changed Movies Forever. Reading that book you realize that their on screen rivalry wasn’t a put on. They genuinely had a sibling-like love/hate relationship with each other. While Ebert was no saint (there’s one instance earlier in the show’s history that had me shaking my head), Siskel was so competitive that he’d deliberately do things to fuck with his co-worker’s career outside of the show. As the series progressed, their relationship became more cordial, but Siskel kept his battle with cancer mostly private with Ebert not knowing the full extent of it until it was too late. Ebert was hurt by this until his own death in 2013.

Would people be willing to go to the theaters to watch this? Fuck no! This is straight to Amazon Prime shit. Which is strange considering the subject material is about two guys who go to the theaters. But I think there’s enough elder millennials and Gen Xers who clamoring for this kind of stuff. So Ben Affleck should get to pulling the trigger on this project.