Michael Moore on Memory of Roger Ebert via Facebook

There are so many thoughts going through my head about the passing of one of the most important people of my life – Roger Ebert. You could make the case that he “discovered” me. Here’s the excerpt from my book about the first time I met him: http://mmflint.me/12mArsT

After the screening was over, he was telling people it was one of the best films he’d seen in the past decade. I couldn’t believe it. I was still on unemployment. The next day he wrote an incredible piece in the Chicago Sun-Times, the first to tell the world about me and my movie:
http://mmflint.me/14Hynjd

[…]

Over a decade ago, before he got cancer, he sent me a personal letter about how he was going to lose weight and get healthy — and told me I should join him. I eventually did, and i began down the long, slow road to a better self. He lost something like a hundred pounds and never felt better. And then cancer struck. Driving though Chicago one night he told me the story of why and how he thinks he got it. He told me that back in the early ’50s, a Chicago hospital decided to try to cure children’s colds or other simple ailments by blasting them with radiation. He believed that is what set off the chain of events that would eventually debilitate him with this disease. He said that many of the other kids like him who were in the program had also contracted cancer. It was a sad story.

Continue reading at Michael Moore on Memory of Roger Ebert

Related article `Radiation babies’ worry: Experts believe thyroid cancer is related to childhood treatments via Chicago Tribune (November 14, 2004)

NYT obituary ROGER EBERT | 1942-2013: A Critic for the Common Man via New York Times