Appreciation: Siskel & Ebert at 50

Having lived in Chicago for over ten years before relocating to Dallas in July 1984, I can honestly say for much of the late 70s and early 80s, I grew up reading film critics Gene Siskel’s and Roger Ebert’s columns almost every Friday in their perspective newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times and watched their weekly film reviewing program, “Sneak Previews” (1975-1996) (the original title was called “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You.”)

 Chicago film critics Gene Siskel (L) and Roger
Ebert (R) as they appeared in the Nov. 
1975 pilot of their reviewing program
"Opening Soon at a Theater Near You."

I cannot say I agreed with every movie they recommended like "Howard's End" (1992), “Natural Born Killers” (1994), and "The English Patient" (1996). I cannot tell you how many films I've sat through critics liked (not just Siskel and Ebert) that had me wanting to scream at the top of my lungs as I stormed out the theater, "Da f--k is this sh-t?!?!?!"

I walked out of “The English Patient” (1996) twice and still have not seen one of their ten best movies of 1998, “Babe: Pig in the City.” My reading their reviews and watching “Sneak Previews” was not so my hoping the films I planned to see would be a movie they recommended. My reasons for reading their reviews are their unique writing styles and notable on-air disagreements.

It's the only reason why today, I still often download Siskel and Ebert’s review segments on YouTube to hear them argue passionately why one disagrees on a title the other likes, such as “Apocalypse Now” (1979), "Benji the Hunted" (1987), “The Doors” (1991), and "Full Metal Jacket" (1987).

If I had listened to their negative criticisms on their weekly show, I’d have avoided "1941" (1979), the "Airport" disaster movies of the 1970s, "Basic Instinct" (1992), "Batman & Robin" (1997), "Battlestar Galactica" (1978), "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" (1979), "The Black Hole" (1979), "Buck Rogers in the  25th Century" (1979), "Cannonball Run II" (1981), "City Heat" (1984), "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery" (1992), "The Color of Money" (1986), "Crocodile Dundee" (1986), "Dune" (1984), "Event Horizon" (1997), ”The Final Countdown” (1980), "Firestarter" (1984), "The Fog" (1980), “Hangar 18” (1983), “The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1996), "Last Action Hero" (1993), "Police Academy" (1984), "Porky’s" (1981), "Psycho II" (1983), "Raw Deal" (1986), “Rhinestone” (1984), "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975), "Rocky III" (1982), "St. Elmo's Fire" (1985), "Showgirls" (1995), “Toys” (1992), "Waterworld" (1995) and "Wyatt Earp" (1994).

To quote Gene, “Oh! The pictures I’ve seen!”



I don’t regret watching any of the atrocities Gene and Roger loathed. Some I liked. Some I didn’t. The ones I didn’t they at least managed to be bad enough to the point it was a fun bad movie I loved to hate. Others were guilty pleasures. In short, IT'S ALL ABOUT BEING ENTERTAINED DAMNIT!

...and later when the show became "Siskel & Ebert
At the Movies."

What I remember most about Siskel’s written reviews in the Tribune in the 80s was how he came up with a phrase that summed up his overall opinion of the film. Those one-sentence phrases, usually in small boldface letters, were always above the credits. I remember the phrase he gave to “Superman III” in 1983, “Where is all the love?” The question fit the tone of what was missing from the third installment that to Siskel, was most present in the first two movies.

I did not start watching “Sneak Previews” until it went into syndication in 1978 on PBS. Back then the two recapped the movies they just reviewed with either a yes or no vote to each one. After I moved to Dallas, however, I did not catch the program as much. I always took it for granted thinking the two hosts would always be around until the show was canceled. Or they would continue to write reviews in both metropolitan papers until they retired.

According to a Feb. 20, 1999, article in the Chicago Tribune, the duo signed on with Tribune Entertainment in 1982, which expanded the number of stations that carried the show and changed the title to “At the Movies.” When Buena Vista Television took over the program in 1986, the title was changed again to “Siskel & Ebert & the Movies.” By that time, television audiences had already familiarized themselves with the Chicago critic’s thumbs up/thumbs down style to film recommendations.

Their popularity increased with occasional guest appearances on talk shows like “The Late Show with David Letterman”, “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”, “Regis & Kathy Lee”, and “Oprah Winfrey” and were even parodied in Mad magazine and movies like “Summer School” (1987) and “Godzilla” (1998).



“Now that I’ve inspired a character in a Godzilla movie, all I really still desire is for several Ingmar Bergman characters to sit in a circle and read my reviews to one another in hushed tones” Ebert wrote in his 1998 review of “Godzilla.”

“Godzilla” director Roland Emmerich and writer Dean Devlin created the characters Mayor Ebert, played by Michael Lerner and his assistant, Gene (Lorry Goldman), in response to the negative criticisms the two gave to their previous movies, “Stargate” (1994) and “Independence Day” (1996). Audiences embraced both sci-fi pics thus proving not everyone listens to movies critics. Those two blockbuster films were examples that critics don’t determine a picture’s fate at the box office. Audiences do - hence the word, “critic-proof.”

Just as I enjoyed getting two different perspectives in print, the best moments on their program were when the duo disagreed. There was Siskel in 1998 praising the Sandra Bullock/Nicole Kidman comedy, “Practical Magic” (1998), saying how the film gave some unique insight about witchcraft. Ebert retorted back saying the picture had nothing to say about witchcraft. To him, it was simply a dumb comedy.



When Siskel gave thumbs up to “Star Trek: Insurrection” (1998) in December that same year, he told Ebert the movie’s thought-provoking discussions about interfering with alien life were “more profound than anything Yoda ever said” in the Star Wars trilogy.

The duo’s yearly tradition was to list their personal best and worst movies. I remember in 1993 when the competitive rivals listed a title the other one liked calling it his number one worst. Ebert’s worst pick was Siskel’s favorite, “Carnosaur”, a cheap sci-fi/horror film that starred Diane Ladd as a scientist who creates a dinosaur. Siskel, on the other hand, who throughout his writing career did not like a lot of actor Burt Reynolds’ movies and with good reason listed Ebert’s favorite, “Cop and a Half”, as his personal worst. As the end credits rolled, the two were still arguing about how one could possibly like the other.

And as the series of shows evolved, the subject was not just on movies. Over the course of 24 years together. the pair hosted specials on the Oscar nominations and the early film careers of rising stars like Jim Carrey and even discussing Digital Video Disc (DVD) players.

What was especially apparent on television was how enthusiastic both were when discussing a film whether they embraced or despised a picture. I could tell they spoke from the heart. Siskel was so dedicated to his profession that I could not believe it when in May 1998, shortly after his operation for a brain tumor, he was back. Sort of that is, reviewing movies from his hospital bed phoning in his comments on a segment while Ebert spoke live from the balcony.

“I’m in a hurry to get well, because I don’t want Roger to get more screen time than I,” Siskel said.



Before the program ended, Gene asked Roger jokingly if anyone sat in his seat in his absence. In the months after his surgery, it was noticeable he was not the same. His speech was a little slower, but I expected that after an operation and the passion was still there. I thought for sure he was recovering and did not even know he had taken a leave of absence from the program in early February to recuperate until I read his obituary in the Tribune.

When Siskel died Feb. 20, 1999, at 53, Ebert was quoted in the Tribune saying he thinks the show will continue but it “will never be the same without him.”

It wasn’t. It took a while getting used to not seeing “the tall, skinny one” sitting across from Ebert in the balcony every week. Back then as I brought up both Chicago newspapers online, it felt like I was only reading one when it came to the weekly film reviews.

As the saying in Hollywood goes, however, “The show must go on” and the show did. Ebert featured revolving guest hosts in the balcony in 1999 before settling with fellow Chicago Sun-Times critic, Richard Roeper, in 2000 as his new co-host thus changing the program’s title to “Ebert & Roeper” which continued until the show’s cancellation in 2010.

In honor of Siskel & Ebert's pilot episode, “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You” which premiered 50 years ago this week, I thought what better way to celebrate than to watch a film the two disagreed on that I liked.

I watched “Career Opportunities” (1991).

©11/19/25

Did she or didn't she?

Indecent Proposal «««½
R, 117m. 1993

Cast & Credits: Robert Redford (John Gage), Demi Moore (Diana Murphy), Woody Harrelson (David Murphy), Seymour Cassel (Mr. Shackleford), Oliver Platt (Jeremy). Screenplay by Amy Holden Jones based on the novel by Jack Engelhard. Directed by Adrian Lyne.

Movie directors are sometimes synonymous with the types of films they make. Director Adrian Lyne is one such example.

If you were to look at Lyne’s list of credits, from "Flashdance" (1983) and "9 1/2 Weeks" (1986) to "Fatal Attraction" (1987), you would find the subject in every one of his movies has been about relationships, sex, and vice versa.

Lyne’s latest film, "Indecent Proposal", is no different. The movie’s title is a perfect line for a mystery thriller, but it isn’t. The revelation here is the picture deals more with the moral dilemmas people sometimes face when it comes to money than it is about sex.

Enter David and Diana Murphy (Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore), a young married couple of the 1990s who become victims of the Reagan/Bush recession.

David, a freelance architect, has found himself out of a job, while Diana hasn’t had much luck in the real estate business.

The problem with the Murphys is their marriage follows the rule of Murphy’s Law which is "Everything that can go wrong will.” With debts piling up faster than they can count, the couple head to Las Vegas in a last-ditch attempt to win enough cash to pay them off.

After losing all their winnings, the couple meet John Cage (Robert Redford), a handsome, mysterious, gentleman and high risks gambler who borrows Diana for a game of craps.

He eventually thanks the Murphys for bringing him luck by paying for their costly, lavish hotel room and makes them an offer they can’t refuse over a game of pool.

“I’ll give you one million dollars if you let me have your wife for a night,” Cage says to David.

What follows is a unique twist of fate where the three characters wind up getting hurt as they ponder the decisions they make.

Lyne incorporates a couple of clever aspects from his past films to flesh out the characters. In an early scene reminiscent to the knife welding sequence in "Fatal Attraction", Diana goes after David with a butter knife because he is so messy. She has almost the same sexual appetites Kim Basinger’s character in "9 1/2 Weeks" exhibited. Like Basinger’s character, who was sexually compromised by Mickey Rourke in that movie, Diana also feels used when she sacrifices herself to Cage.

Redford is probably one of the nicest looking bad guys you will ever see. He is like the Cary Grant of the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. Watching him over the years, I have found it hard to hate the types of immoral characters he’s played from an outlaw in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) to a surveillance wizard in "Sneakers" (1992).

Playing Cage as a cunning, debonair gambler is something Redford has done before in films like "Havana" (1990) and "The Sting" (1973). Cage is a lot like Rourke’s character in "9 1/2 Weeks." He is wealthy, never tries to draw any attention to himself, and stays in the background, never revealing his past.

Harrelson, making a break into feature films now that NBC’s "Cheers" (1992-1993) officially ended its 11-year run, has the potential to be a dramatically promising actor. His portrayal of David as a caring, concerned, and jealous husband is someone I felt sympathy for.

The clever, sometimes witty, script takes into account the shady moral values people sometimes have. When Diana asks David about taking Cage up on his offer, she casually says, “Well we had affairs before we were married. Besides, look at all the things this money could do for us.”

In another scene, David calls his lawyer (Oliver Platt) to negotiate the deal Cage has set up.

“Don’t you know that you never set up a deal without your lawyer,” he says. “I know we could have got at least $2 million for her.”

The one thing I have noticed in all of Lyne’s movies is the way he choreographs the love scenes. The sequences always have an alluring, seductive nature to them. He continues that trademark here; maybe even going a step further since Moore’s body, (or her double), exhibits a great looking tan.

Lyne also does one thing I have never seen done in other card playing films. Using different camera angles and close-ups, he manages to hold the viewer’s interest and turns a game of craps and roulette into something exciting to watch. It’s almost as if he wants the audience to root for the Murphys to win.

"Indecent Proposal" redefines the familiar statement, “Money cannot buy love and happiness.”

It is also one of those rare love stories where the end song, “A Love So Beautiful,” sung by Roy Orbison, fits the tone of the entire movie.

Originally Published: ©4/7/93

Iryna Zarutska, Charlie Kirk, and my ever increasingly tense hatred of social media

The unsettling news last week of how social media users couldn’t get enough watching the uncensored “snuff” videos of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian woman stabbed to death on a subway train in Charlotte, North Carolina and the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a rally at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah brought to my mind how users couldn’t get enough viewing another “snuff” video the minute it aired live on such platforms as Facebook the morning of Aug. 26, 2015.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the same loathsome pieces of s--- who watched Zarutska and Kirk’s violent ends were the same ones who watched WDBJ news reporter Alison Parker, 24, and photojournalist Adam Ward, 27, being shot and killed during a live television interview along with Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce in Moneta, Virginia, who was wounded in the attack ten years ago.

Seeing the video at the time in which the killer - a fired WDBJ reporter and disgruntled employee filmed on his cellphone and immediately posted it on his Facebook and Twitter accounts solidified the negative opinion I already had about social media before the shooting happened. I just couldn’t find the right words to describe my intense hatred.

That is until Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called social media last week what it is today – a “cancer on our society” in the wake of Kirk’s assassination.

At the time of my publishing the Parker column on Sept. 2, 2015, the viewing numbers of that clip on YouTube upon my search for “Alison Parker” or “reporters shot” ranged in the six and seven digits on several user accounts that replayed the barely two-minute interview and aftermath in its entirety.

Almost immediately after the disgusting segment aired online, a comment from a group called “The Comical Conservative” posted a smiling photo of Parker and Ward together saying, We won’t post that sickening video of these two getting shot. We WILL post this…a beautiful picture of both of them. Let’s remember them at their best. They deserve better from all of us.

At the time I wrote the column, not only was I “outgunned” (no pun intended) so to speak but the editorial staff at the campus newspaper I published the column at wrote an editorial defending that the video be viewed in its entirety.

“It will sound horribly callous, but I think that video needs to be out there so that people understand just how awful and real this was. And maybe – just maybe – that would help usher in meaningful discussions and laws on gun control,” said a friend of mine who replied underneath my Facebook post of the picture. “Unless people are confronted with the horrible reality, it allows them to avoid the real issues at play here. I don’t like suggesting it because I know for the families it would be absolute torture but perhaps if we all put ourselves in the victims’ shoes for a moment, it tilts the conversation.”

If any “meaningful discussions” took place at the time of that incident I didn’t hear any. Much the way I have yet to hear any “meaningful discussions” about what Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk experienced. But I’ve read some of the commentaries and took note of one in particular from media personality Khloé Kardashian on Instagram who shared posts from a Dr. Raymond Nichols, a Greenville, South Carolina-based chiropractor.

“A woman is stabbed to death on a bus. A man is killed in front of a crowd. And people record it…like it’s just another trending video. Those videos go viral. And we just keep scrolling like it’s normal. Like this is life now,” Nichols said in his post.

“We don’t have a violence problem. We have a numbness problem. Evil became content. Death became a trend. Humanity became scrollable,” Nichols wrote. “People don’t flinch anymore. They don’t cry anymore. They just comment. We’re losing the one thing that makes us human: the ability to feel. This isn’t politics. This isn’t left or right. This is about your soul. Because if you can watch life slip away in front of you and feel nothing…you’ve already lost yours.”

I haven’t viewed the Parker/Ward killing video clips since it aired that day ten years ago. I have not searched for it, nor do I know if it is still on YouTube. A part of me likes to think in the years since that maybe some higher up at the video platform developed a conscience and put themselves in the same horrific situation as Parker and Ward and choose to pull them out of respect to the victims and their families. I already know the answer and it’s not the one I want.

If such grisly incidents in which you watch “life slip away in front of you and feel nothing” whether it’s George Floyd, pictures of dead kids gunned down outside a McDonald’s by a mass murderer or watch souls jump to their deaths from the World Trade Center that for a brief moment fail to leave a sickening feeling in your stomach then you really have lost the one thing that makes you human. A soul. 

Want to debate me? Bring it! In the words of Charlie Kirk - "PROVE ME WRONG!"

Last week's killings make me shudder to think how many videos I'd find on the internet and YouTube upon my typing in such searches as "Iryna stabbing" or "Kirk shooting" let alone the hit numbers they've since generated on repeated viewing.

“The (Kirk) video is all over social media. It’s kind of hard to avoid. And you can just kind of stumble right into it,” Democratic Senator Mark Kelly told Politico. “You usually don’t see these mass shootings as graphically as this one. I hope some of these social media companies can scrub this off the internet because it’s not good for kids to see this.”

To quote one character in the deplorable sadomasochistic trash pic, “8MM” (1999) “There are some things that you see, and you can’t unsee them.”

It’s true. I can’t “unsee” the atrocities I’ve already seen but I can choose to not only avoid uploading them but also dump social media all together.

I’ve debated since 2015 whether to take a long break from social media and go silent or delete my accounts from several platforms all together and go off the grid. You want to find me, here’s something new to try – pick up your f------ god---- cellphone and call me! And no, I don’t respond to texts!

I’m all out of love for these “cancer on our society” platforms like Facebook and X.

Last week’s latest uncensored “snuff” films and social media’s never-ending bloodthirsty quench to watch them over and over proved it was only a matter of time before I quit social media all together.

The question now is no longer “when” but “how soon.”

©9/15/25

Mourning the loss of larger-than-life icons completely normal

Ever since Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car accident in August 1997 at 36, I found it embarrassing to mourn the life of someone I didn’t know but only through news stories and the tabloids. Yet, the day of her funeral the following weekend in September, I called in sick. All the result of my being subjected to all the media and tabloid outlets reporting on her early untimely demise. I couldn’t function emotionally.

I felt the same way when attorney, journalist and magazine publisher John F. Kennedy Jr. died, along with his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and her sister Lauren Bessette in a plane crash in 1999. Both Princess Diana and JFK Jr. were lives unfinished. I still saw the 38-year-old JFK Jr. as the three-year-old son who saluted his father’s flag draped casket at President John F. Kennedy’s state funeral in November 1963. Even as I write this blog, I get teary eyed thinking about hearing the tragic losses of both JFK Jr. and Diana over twenty years ago.

Although I wasn’t a devoted fan of actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner, 54, best known as Theo Huxtable from “The Cosby Show” (1984-1992), heavy metal pioneer and Black Sabbath founder Ozzy Osbourne, 76, and professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, 71, who died last week I understood the emotional tributes devoted fans and other prominent figures in the entertainment industry expressed on social media.



I grew up with those entertainers in the early 1980s as did most everyone my age. They were a part of my generation. Their passings like so many others we’ve known half our lives leave a gaping hole. Like as though it’s ok if we leave this earth as we’re not larger-than-life figures whose works touched millions. Icons like Jamal Warner, Ozzy and Hulk Hogan, like countless notable figures whether it’s in entertainment, journalism, music, news, politics and sports are not supposed to die!

It’s bad enough when a revered icon like Diana and JFK Jr. go before their time when they had their lives still ahead of them. It’s another when a notable reviewer, news anchor and songwriter leave devoted followers with the promise they will return doing what they did best following medical treatment. Like as though they already knew the end was coming but didn’t want to leave fans without hope.

That’s how I felt when Chicago Tribune movie critic Gene Siskel announced his taking a leave of absence from “Siskel & Ebert” on Feb. 3, 1999, the film reviewing program albeit in different forms he had been cohosting with Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert since the mid-1970s. Siskel was diagnosed with a brain tumor and underwent treatment the year before. Even Ebert didn’t know how terminal his partner’s diagnosis was until Siskel died Feb. 20 that month at 53.



“I’m in a hurry to get well because I don’t want Roger to get more screen time than I,” Siskel said. I was counting on him to be back at the balcony later that year just in time to hear his thoughts on “Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace” (1999) in May. I didn’t care if he gave it thumbs up or thumbs down. I just wanted to hear his opinion.

I took ABC news anchorman Peter Jennings at his word that on his “good” days the “James Bond 007 of news” would be back on “World News Tonight” when he delivered what was his final newscast April 5, 2005, and would begin treatment for lung cancer. Jennings died on Aug. 7, 2005, ten days after his 67th birthday on July 29.



I thought Canadian songwriter, singer, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen was just suffering from writer’s block when the 82-year-old legend told the New Yorker he wouldn’t be able to finish his vault of unfinished songs and poems. He was even more uncertain he’d be able to do a follow-up to his 14th studio album, “You Want It Darker” released in October 2016, barely a month before the artist’s death of leukemia.

"I am ready to die," Cohen said. "I hope it's not too uncomfortable. That's about it for me."



It goes without saying that every time we learn the news some noteworthy personality has passed, fans flock to YouTube in hopes of listening to their music videos, watch clips from their shows and interviews or check the streaming services to see if their movies and television shows are available. I did that when Jamal Warner died at 54 from accidental drowning while on vacation with family in Costa Rica watching early clips of “The Cosby Show” on YouTube.

I watched the often-hilarious commercials Ozzy Osbourne did over the past twenty years that documented his mumbling ordering at Starbucks, telling a taxi driver where to go and complaining to a waiter about his dinner. None of them could understand him. It’s almost as if he was playing, if not parodying himself. Finally, his only way of communication in those clever ads was texting on his Samsung cellphone.



I found Osbourne’s appearance on Conan O’Brien Oct. 18, 2001, who was brought in to cheer up the Late-Night staff following the 9/11 attacks echoed what’s been missing from late night television for decades and why “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was canceled. Late Night forgot how to be funny.



And finally Hulk Hogan. Most remember his days with the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling. I remember him more for his first big screen appearance in “Rocky III” (1982) as wrestler Thunderlips who fights Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) in a charity match.

 

All these images and memories are frozen in time.

Sadly, there is no end. We’re not reaching that age. We ARE at the age now where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away. In the coming days, weeks, months and years and the rest of our lives we’ll hear of a number of household names who’ve gone to meet their maker. Death and mourning is a part of life. We’re all mortal no matter what your status is. At least we got plenty of memories of such celebrities to fondly look back on appreciating the God given talents they gave us.

©7/25/25

Appreciation: St. Louise de Marillac School (1976-1984)

“There are places I'll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain”

-"In My Life" – The Beatles - 1965

Such were the lyrics from “The Fab Four” that came to mind upon learning that St. Louise de Marillac School (1958-2020), located in La Grange Park, Ill, that I attended from first to eighth grade (1976-1984) shut its doors for good in mid-2020.

The elementary school, like so many private grade and high schools in the Chicago area and across the country, became a victim of low enrollment and unaffordable high tuition.

In short, the writing was on the wall as to the school’s future years before the Archdiocese of Chicago’s announcement in January 2020 that the campus, along with four other Catholic schools in the city would close in June.

The one thing I can say about St. Louise is I still remember all the administrators and teachers who taught me those eight years. While I don’t remember all their first names, I know all their last names – misspellings and all. I admit I even had a crush on a few of the women teachers' years before my first crush on the one who taught my freshman typing class at Bishop Lynch High School in Dallas, Texas named Mrs. Jennifer Walls in the fall of 84’.

What made all the administrators, nuns, teachers, who also included my band instructors, is all of them exhibited one trait or more that made them stand out from each other.

First – Third Grade

Sister Petronia was my first-grade teacher. Whenever she got upset with a student her comment to that person was always, “I’m ashamed of you!”

My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Kozen, who lived a couple blocks from the school walked to work every morning. I still remember the time when she asked me to read some paragraph aloud in class and I had trouble saying the word “pupils.” I kept saying the word, “pimples.”

For much of that 1977-78 school year Mrs. Kozen didn’t understand the hype some of us students had (it was likely ONLY me) over a costly $10 million sci-fi box office bomb that made zero money called "Star Wars" (1977) that spawned countless movie franchises and forever changed how Hollywood studios marketed them.

Sister Cresentine was also my second-grade teacher who taught us reading and math. On her good days, those days when either one student or all of us didn’t get on her bad side that is, she always joked with the class. On the days where she couldn’t get a student to solve an easy math problem, Sister Cresentine would exhibit her wrath throwing the textbook at the shocked classmate asking them to leave her classroom.

Of all the nuns I had at St. Louise, my third-grade teacher, Sister Bernadette, would have been the most attractive when not in her nun’s uniform. I can’t say that for certain since I never saw her in regular clothes.

Mrs. Dort’s Shoe Collection

My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Melodie Dort, was a short attractive redhead who, for much of the 1978-79 school year, always wore high heeled open toed sandals. On some days she even wore an ankle bracelet. Looking back on her today, I wonder on a teacher’s salary if the money she spent most on was her high heels and if her closet resembled singer Celine Dion’s shoe collection filled with shelves of pumps. 

Mrs. Dort was one among the three teachers I developed a crush on. My grade school-boy crush on her was the result of my always being seated in front of her class. I was not a good boy that year when it came to grades, so it was hard not to notice what she wore five days a week!

The other fourth-grade teacher I had was Mrs. Bibly who taught us math class. She also played the piano and there were weeks when we had singing classes. The only song I remember her playing on the piano though was "Chattanooga Choo-Choo."

Ms. Collins’ Hiccups Cure

Whenever a student developed hiccups my fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Jean Collins, had an immediate cure for them. She’d take that student in the hallway during class. Within a minute that person would be back in the classroom minus any hiccups, though there were times I would see that student with a startled look on their face coming back. 

 

Like Mrs. Dort, Ms. Collins, like so many teachers, taught standing up from her desk. Because of being on her feet for several hours, Ms. Collins, in the early afternoons, would stand behind her desk taking one of her heels off, stretching her aching foot before putting her shoe back on, then doing the same with the other. I know people reading this would equate my comments with Oscar winning screenwriter/director Quentin Tarantino’s foot fetish trademark he’s incorporated in most all his ultra-violent movies. His much-known fetish is the ONLY reason Tarantino made "Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood" in 2019 in my opinion. 

When it comes to my interests, however, the older I get the less and less I give a damn what anyone else thinks. Again, in my defense, how the hell do you expect me not to notice what Ms. Collins did standing behind her desk those nine months when I was sitting in front of the class?

My other fifth grade teacher, Ms. Janice Walsen, taught us math and history and during the summers held remedial classes for those of us with continuing issues in mathematics in the basement of the school’s rectory where the parish priests resided. Of all the teachers I had there, Ms. Walsen was the only one who remained at St. Louise long after I graduated in May 1984. I think at one point she may have been the school’s principal.

St. Louise’s Classiest Dresser

Mrs. Violet Zetlitz (1932-2013), my other sixth-grade teacher, is ironically the one I remember more who, yes, was the third teacher I had a crush on. I had her for reading and social issues courses, but it was the afternoon social issues course I liked most. It was that class she taught that got me interested in Greek mythology which began with her telling us about the fall of Troy and the Trojan War.

Mrs. Zetlitz was never at the front of the classroom when the bell rang, however, at the beginning of class. She would enter the classroom from the back, slowly walking from behind – the clacking of each heel hitting the floor every few seconds the way a dominatrix slowly struts into a dungeon in preparation for a disciplinary session with some blindfolded tied-up submissive. I can still hear those slow clacking sounds she made wearing those pumps. For much of that 1981-82 school year she was always in heels and sporting business type suits and dresses. Of all the teachers I had at St. Louise, Mrs. Zetlitz was the classiest dresser.

Like Sister Petronia, Mrs. Zetlitz also had a saying when a student stepped out of line. She’d warn the person what would happen if they got out of line again uttering the words, “That is not a threat. That is a promise!”

The Female Mr. Hand Who Kept Up With the Latest Technology

I don’t know if seventh grade (1982-83) was the most controversial since our “Class of ’84” had developed a reputation of being the ones who got into the most trouble. During the fall of that year, our seventh-grade teachers Mrs. Joyce Allen and Mr. Wojecki, and perhaps the upper powers-that-be like our principal, Mr. Bob Winski, decided the “goodie-goodie” students should be separated from the troublemakers. Mrs. Allen would teach the troublemakers in spring 83’ and Mr. Wojecki would take the “goodie-goodie” students. I was not the least bit happy I got placed with the “goodie-goodie” crowd.

I wanted nothing to do with the “goodie-goodie” crowd that year and made attempts avoiding them at all costs if not getting into trouble with the rabblerousers during recess. Some of which was mostly my doing. It's always the “Quiet Ones” you have to watch out for, you know!

The two things I recall most about Mr. Wojecki was how he couldn’t stand it when students couldn’t sit still at their desks and utter the word “Um” which wasn’t a word in the English language. The other is the brief discussion we had in class in September-October that year about the still unsolved Chicago Tylenol Murders that occurred where less than a dozen people died from cyanide-laced capsules.

Mrs. Allen, who also doubled as the gym teacher, was like the stern grandmother who didn’t tolerate any crap from our class. There were moments if a student said something about how our parents allow us to watch morally corrupt trashy programs like "Three’s Company" (1977-1984) on school nights she’d get disgusted as that is not what she would allow her kids to watch. I saw her as the female equivalent of Mr. Hand, the high school teacher Ray Walston played in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (1982), who believed every student he taught smoked dope.

From what I remember Mrs. Allen was big on the latest technology. She didn’t own just one but two VHS recorders when they first came out in the early 1980s, which to me meant you were wealthy. Thanks to that knowledge knowing she could copy VHS movies from one VCR to the other I tried getting her to do a pirated copy of "Return of the Jedi" (1983) I got from another classmate during the 1983-84 school year. Mrs. Allen, however, said the recorded copy she made was worse than the one recorded in a movie theater on a video camera and wasn't worth giving me the pirated copy. I was thankful; however, I got her to dub me a copy of "Twilight Zone: The Movie" (1983) that "legally" came out on VHS that year.

Class of '84 graduate student Cheryl Granado
posing in front of Mrs. Allen's silver DeLorean.

Mrs. Allen returned to teaching us again in eighth grade during the 1983-84 school year as did Ms. Collins. In a way, the two of them teaching our class represented a finality for both as once we graduated in May, both were leaving St. Louise. That year, Mrs. Allen drove a silver DMC DeLorean to school before that car became a plutonium fueled time machine in "Back to the Future" (1985). As someone who was never die-hard fan of the time travel movie trilogy (1985-1990), the one and only reason I’d buy LEGO’s 2022 ultimate collector movie replica building set of the car today is because of the real one Mrs. Allen drove, minus Dr. Brown's flux capacitor.

Looking back on that final year with Ms. Collins, I think she was disappointed I had gotten so rebellious those nine months compared to how I was a good student when she taught me in fifth grade. That final year I saw myself (and to this day still do) as either a rebel without a cause, a rebel without a clue or a combination of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde any day of the week. Yet in my defense that rebelliousness I displayed had a lot to do with the troublemakers I hung out with. At the same time, when my parents made the decision in January of '84 that we would move to Dallas, Texas in July that year once I graduated from St. Louise in May, as much of a hatred I had developed for “The Windy City” and how I really couldn’t stand most anyone else I came in contact that year, in my mind, I WAS ALREADY IN DALLAS!!!

All the rest…

There were close to a handful of others who either taught or scolded me throughout those eight years. 

The most I remember about my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Carolyn Hammerschmidt (1940-2025), is she was the most religious who often did the Gospel readings at Saturday masses. I don’t think there was a time when I attended 5 p.m. mass Saturdays or served as an altar boy on those days that I didn’t see her there. If she wasn’t there, I would have wondered why.

From 1976 to 1984 I had Mrs. Arlene Fencl (1933-2021) for science class. During seventh and eighth grade I, much like our whole class, participated in the yearly science fairs. I don’t remember what project I did for seventh grade but the one I did in eighth grade was a dud which was weather related about fog. I couldn’t get “the fog” to show up in a glass bottle. I should have sought horror director John Carpenter’s advice for the experiment. Of all the teachers who yelled at us, I think it was Mrs. Fencl’s whose voice was the loudest and could be heard down the halls of St. Louise on the second floor of Junior High. Fencl later served as St. Louise’s principal for 15 years.

“An excellent teacher and principal,” said Class of '84 alum, Michele Betti. “Never an agenda - just the subject matter of the day. A consummate professional. What all educators should strive to be. She will be truly missed.”

Then there was Sister Julitta who taught us religion classes during seventh grade and took charge of the altar boys for the parish. Like, Mrs. Allen, Sister Julitta, who I didn’t know until now doubled as St. Louise’s assistant principal during the 83-84 school year was also one who didn’t tolerate any crap from students. In the early years I swore I saw her discipline one of her students in the hallway physically striking them. Whereas the altar boys (and girls) of today who are allowed to wear trash clothes under their mass outfits like jeans and gym shoes during services, we had to wear dress shoes and dress clothes when serving mass. 

I wonder what Sister Julitta would think of all the changes the Catholic church has undergone the past few decades let alone the pedophile scandals involving hundreds of priests. The sex scandals forever put a stigma on the church and had a number of once devoted Catholics (me included) vacating choosing to either join other religious denominations or stop attending masses all together as a result.

My principal, Mr. Robert Winski, doubled teaching us computers all of which came from Radio Shack. A majority of us failed those classes as they involved us actually doing programming, none of which I understood.

Mrs. Jeri Kolack, the school secretary, ran the school plays and the bowling league, and Mrs. Rosicky taught a book reading class (I confess I NEVER read any of the books assigned) after school during the 83-84 school year and sometimes logged scores for the students during the weekly bowling leagues.

Michael McLynn (1929-2021) doubled as both the head of maintenance for the school and as a Deacon who lived behind the campus off 31st and for several decades conducted masses with the parish priests.

When McLynn passed away in 2021, St. Louise alum from my 1984 graduate class, Michele Santiago (1970-2022) posted on the Graduates of St. Louise de Marillac School, La Grange Park, Il Facebook page, writing “Where do you find the words to describe the people that helped you become the person you are today? My fondest memory of Mr. McLynn was when he taught our gym class. I’m wondering where I can find a 45 RPM record of his warm-up's routine" called "Chicken Fat" (1962).

Lastly, there was Mr. Ed Ward (1941-2023) and Ms. Louise Thorson (1952-2018), the band instructors I had from fourth to eighth grade. The two were like your best friends during those years so long as there was no concert coming up, which on those days, the question was who was more stressed out. Them or the band students?

I still remember the four priests who officiated over the masses during the years I was there. Father Mark Simpson ran the altar boys for a year before leaving the parish with Sister Julitta taking over. Father Zimmerman was another who left the parish before 1984. By the time I graduated the only priest St. Louise had on a full-time basis was Edward J. Borisewicz (1925-1990).

Father John Keating (1934-1998) served at St. Louise from 1975-1983. Keating became Bishop of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia in 1983. Our class chose Keating to do our confirmation in spring 1984. Keating was among the few priests who advocated having only male altar servers doing masses.

All these individuals had something that made them stand out and yet, every one of them had one thing in common. I can’t speak for anyone else but they served as our second parents who were not afraid to discipline me or the class when the time warranted. Sure, they joked with us every now and then, but all made sure we knew who was in charge.

St. Louise class of '84 alums at a reunion.

While the parish remains open with churchgoers still attending, the question begets as to what becomes of the school other than being an empty building. I still know the locations of the administration office, teacher's lounge, the library and all the classrooms on the first and second floors, the band room and Colonnade Room where gym class, concerts, plays and talent shows were held. I wouldn’t need to fly up there to break into the school to take pictures of what the place looked like. I know it all from memory.
 

I have heard of schools closing but I never would have expected St. Louise de Marillac to join the list. I’ve always thought the school would be around long after I’ve left this mortal world.

Which brings me back to the ending lyrics from "In My Life" that summarizes my time at St. Louise over forty years ago.

“Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I love you more”

©7/16/25

My Personal Best Films: Apocalypse Now (1979)

Apocalypse Now ««««
R, 147m. 1979

Cast & Credits: Marlon Brando (Colonel Walter E. Kurtz), Martin Sheen (Captain Benjamin L. Willard), Robert Duvall (Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore), Frederic Forrest (Jay ‘Chef’ Hicks), Sam Bottoms (Lance B. Johnson), Laurence Fishburne (Tyrone ‘Clean’ Miller), Albert Hall (Chief Phillips), Harrison Ford (Colonel Lucas), Dennis Hopper (Photojournalist), G.D. Spradlin (General Corman). Screenplay by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

1980 Academy Award
Nominations

Best Picture

Best Director
Francis Ford Coppola

Best Supporting Actor
Robert Duvall

Best Art Direction/Set
Decoration

Best Cinematography - 
Winner

Best Film Editing

Best Writing, Screenplay
Based on Material from
Another Medium
Francis Ford Coppola
John Milius

Best Sound - Winner

“This is the way the world lives. Not with a bang. Whimper.”

That was what Dennis Hopper’s doped up, hippie photographer thought about life in war torn Cambodia during the Vietnam War while hanging out with a group of natives led by a once highly decorated Green Beret colonel named Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) in "Apocalypse Now."

If you change the first sentence to read, “This is how the film ends,” you’d have my opinion of what I thought of Oscar winning director Francis Ford Coppola’s original 1979 Vietnam war epic after watching it for the first time in its entirety in 1987.

Up until then the most I had seen of "Apocalypse Now" was the first hour on network television back in the early 1980s, though edited for adult content, the movie still came with a parental advisory warning.

As a young kid who was still astounded by visual effects, or “movie magic” as it was called thanks to "Star Wars" (1977) I never felt guilty being awed viewing scenes of death and destruction on the big or small screen. I didn’t care if the film was a science fiction movie taking place “in a galaxy far, far away” or a fabled war epic that uses the Vietnam War as its subject matter. I saw "Apocalypse Now" as escapist entertainment.

Such is the reason why for my sudden interest in the film during that early first hour seeing a young Harrison Ford as Colonel G. Lucas, whose name role was a homage to director George Lucas who gave Ford his start in "American Graffiti" (1973) before becoming a household name as smuggler Han Solo in "Star Wars" (1977).

Ford was in only one scene in "Apocalypse Now" whose character feeds background information to Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) on Kurtz, the green beret Willard is assigned to assassinate for military crimes against American forces. Ford was among the less than a handful of cast members whose screen time was less than fifteen minutes and likely consisting of less than a dozen pages of dialogue. Others in the cast whose appearances and dialogue lasted just as long included Robert Duvall as Col. Kilgore (who received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor) and the hefty Brando who doesn’t show up until the last half hour when Willard meets his prey.

Duvall’s Kilgore is a loud authoritative military leader with a deep interest in surfing (he has his own personal surfboard) who during battle asks a soldier and fellow surfer if he prefers using a light or heavier board when riding the waves.

"Apocalypse Now" featured a number of memorable big-bangs during that first hour like the opening shot of military helicopters flying above the Vietnamese jungles dropping napalm bombs; all of which I saw but didn’t hear. What I heard instead was the haunting lyrics from The Doors’ Jim Morrison singing “The End.”



On those unsettling scenes of impending death and destruction, however, is another shot that caught my eye within that first hour other that got me excited. The clip is an early battle sequence where a group of military helicopters descend on an enemy village taking out the Vietcong with the music of Richard Wagner’s "Ride of the Valkyries" blaring from a chopper’s sound system.

Like I said earlier, seeing military servicemen dying in battle didn’t phase me as when a Vietcong woman drops a hand grenade in a chopper full of American military servicemen as they worked to get their wounded airlifted killing everyone aboard. I was awed by the visual effects.

That was enough for my dad though who watched the film with me and served in the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam from 1968-69 (he came home in 1970) to reprimand me for citing how cool I thought that scene was. No matter how I looked at it, the shot still showed soldiers dying in combat. For anyone like my dad who served in Vietnam (though he never saw combat but was almost injured and could have been killed during an attack on the base he was stationed at), such a disturbing scene could be enough to dredge up unpleasant memories of the real thing for those there who went through such an experience.

I don’t believe dad’s reason for seeing "Apocalypse Now" on the big screen in the late fall of 1979 had anything to do with him serving in Vietnam, however. I think the one and probably only reason for seeing the controversial much talked about war epic is because it starred his favorite actor, Martin Sheen, in the lead role. 

Even before I saw the movie on network television I remember watching "Sneak Previews" (1975-1996) where Chicago film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert discussed the film on their show. The pair’s divided opinion was one of the top disagreements the two would have throughout their twenty plus years together. Siskel didn’t like it while Ebert listed the film among the best movies he’d seen that year. The two wouldn’t disagree on another controversial Vietnam war epic until 1987 when Stanley Kubrick’s "Full Metal Jacket" was released.

I wasn’t impressed when I finally saw the film in 1987. Siskel’s dislike of the picture back in 1979 only justified my reasons for not embracing it either as I understood where he was coming from. As the ominous plot of the original 150-minute film progressed (Coppola released two extended three-hour director’s cuts  in 2001 and another in 2019)  so did the look of the picture, which was almost pitch black.

The climax was so dark that about the only thing visible aside from Brando’s menacingly bald shaved head were the explosions going off throughout his compound. I found watching the picture decades ago to be a long and tedious exercise after that first hour- as long and sometimes uneventful as the Nung River Willard and his boat crew travel to find his prey where the only thing to break up the monotony were the sudden bursts of combat violence.

I have since developed a more positive opinion of the film now. The script, written by Coppola, John Milius with the narration by Michael Herr, made me want to become a screenwriter, not Quentin Tarantino.

“Everyone gets what he wants. I wanted a mission. And for my sins they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service,” says Sheen’s Col. Willard.

There is no doubt Kilgore’s line “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” is likely found in some book listing several memorable quotes from movie’s past. Since my diabetes diagnosis in 2006, I’ve jokingly used that quote on social media when giving myself injections replacing the word “napalm” with “insulin.”

Having watched the ’79 theatrical version again recently I finally got what the film’s message attempted to convey about the Vietnam War which is best summarized early on by a G.D. Spradlin’s General Corman.

“You see, Willard, in this war, things get confused out there. Power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity. But out there with these natives, it must be a temptation to be God. Because there's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.”

"Apocalypse Now" was all about various soldiers’ attempts to stay sane in an insane world. Examples include Sheen’s Captain Willard in his Saigon hotel room drinking heavily smashing a mirror and injuring his hand in the process as he awaits his next assignment. There is Duvall’s Kilgore who turns the ravaged Vietnamese shores into a California surfing beach parties where American servicemen guzzle down beers and eat barbeque around a night campfire following a day of fighting.

"The more they tried to make it just like home, the more they made everybody miss it," Willard says of Kilgore's method to his madness.

The reason behind the soldier's behaviors exhibited by Kilgore and the less than a handful of servicemen who accompany Willard down the Nung Valley was to keep them going off the deep end in a world that had already gone mad; a path Brando’s Kurtz had already taken.

"Apocalypse Now" may be a fabled war movie loosely based on or inspired by Joseph Conrad’s classic novel, "Heart of Darkness." The one thing this picture got right was that most every soldier who lived through, fought, served and died in Vietnam was scared out of their wits. Why else would some of them go to great lengths to keep themselves from getting shot like sitting on their helmets to keep their testicles from getting blown off while exchanging gunfire with the enemy.

Now over forty years after its original release the most hauntingly memorable line that comes to my mind instead of Hopper’s photojournalist are the last words of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz.

“The horror...the horror.”

©5/21/25