A Kiss Is Still a Kiss

by Roger Ebert

The Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic and co-host of television's "At the Movies" offers an inside look at the film industry and its stars, power brokers, festivals, writers, producers, directors, and films

Genres: Nonfiction, Film, Media Tie In

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Roger Joseph Ebert was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American film critic and screenwriter.

He was known for his weekly review column (appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, and later online) and for the television program Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, which he co-hosted for 23 years with Gene Siskel. After Siskel's death in 1999, he auditioned several potential replacements, ultimately choosing Richard Roeper to fill the open chair. The program was retitled Ebert & Roeper and the Movies in 2000.

Ebert's movie reviews were syndicated to more than 200 newspapers in the United States and abroad. He wrote more than 15 books, including his annual movie yearbook. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. His television programs have also been widely syndicated, and have been nominated for Emmy awards. In February 1995, a section of Chicago's Erie Street near the CBS Studios was given the honorary name Siskel & Ebert Way. Ebert was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in June 2005, the first professional film critic to receive one. Roger Ebert was named as the most influential pundit in America by Forbes Magazine, beating the likes of Bill Maher, Lou Dobbs, and Bill O'Reilly.[2] He has honorary degrees from the University of Colorado, the American Film Institute, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

From 1994 until his death in 2013, he wrote a Great Movies series of individual reviews of what he deemed to be the most important films of all time. He also hosted the annual Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival in Champaign, Illinois from 1999 until his death.

Reviews

[Alden Veazey]

There are some insane tidbits in here

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had my copy of this book for a while now (picked it up at a used book sale at the local library), but apart from reading some of it in patches, I'd never managed to sit down and read the whole thing cover to cover. In this weird moment we're in right now, of course, there's plenty of time to sit around reading, so I did.

This is a collection of mostly interview that Ebert did in the earlier part of his career as a newspaper reporter and critic (he and Siskel started their TV show in the mid-Seventies, but he was also a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, so you know he had the goods as a writer). I've read a lot of Ebert's work before, but rarely interviews. These are all ranging from the mid-Seventies to the early Eighties (there's a preponderance of interviews from various years at the Cannes Film Festival), and Ebert is not an intrusive presence in these pages because he's fairly comfortable sitting back and listening to his subjects. Whether it's Kirk Douglas holding forth on "crap foreign films," adult film star Sylvia Kristel wondering aloud what it must've been like to be Marilyn Monroe, Robert Mitchum missing the turn to get to the filming location in a long tour of Pittsburgh, or Werner Herzog having unkind words for UFO theorist Erich Von Daniken, this is an entertaining collection where the people being interviewed provide great copy for what is, on the whole, a fascinating collection.

There are some trademark Ebert pieces that reflect not only his wit but also his humanity; the two pieces on his occasional friend John Belushi, written prior to and in the wake of Bob Woodward's "Wired" biography, are insightful, and he remembers Ingrid Bergman as an actress who deserved better than she got when she left her marriage to pursue Roberto Rosselini.

This is a fantastic early book (maybe Ebert's first?) in the career of the most well-known American film critic (or certainly the most popular). I thoroughly enjoyed it, even if the interview subject wasn't my cup of tea (the Bob and Ray article was a bit much).

[Annabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Kiss is Still a Kiss is not a collection of movie reviews, but a selection of Ebert's eclectic interviews with established and upcoming actors, actresses, and directors between 1970 and 1984. Published in 1984, it is the most dated book Ebert book I've read so far--a quick glance at the cover tells you that, but most of his subjects here have since become legends, or on the cusp of it, As Time Goes By.

Ebert is as engaging and authoritative an interviewer as he is a movie reviewer. If you love dated movies the way I do, then this is a must-have, must-read book. If only to realize that somewhere out there is a grudgingly initialed .44 Magnum worth a king's ransom.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of interviews with movie stars conducted by Roger Ebert in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I was expecting this to be a pleasant look back at the film industry of that era but instead found it full of misogynistic judgements of women by Ebert and not at all like I remember the film critic on TV.

[Cary]

Enjoyed the chapter on directors most, especially the interview with Eastwood; interview with Scorcese also great. Even the lighter stuff is fun - Ebert of course just always so *readable*.

[John Truby · Rating 3 out of 5]

The piece on John Belushi was great. The rest of the book was okay too.

[Aaron Martz · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book of interviews from the '70s and early '80s with greats from the Golden Age of film like Groucho Marx and George Burns and then-current hot young stars like Brooke Shield and Sylvester Stallone. Ebert keeps himself out of most of the interviews and instead focuses on the aura around these icons. The chapter following Robert Mitchum as he gets lost in Ohio, and a later attempted interview with Orson Welles, are hilarious, and a chapter dealing with drug and alcohol abuse spotlighting John Belushi and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, among others, is heartfelt and tragic. This book, likely way out of print, is worth tracking down. It contains some of Ebert's best writing.

[Terry Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

During a recent sorting of the books of my personal library, I came across this gem by Roger Ebert I'd purchased years ago and never gotten around to reading.

My mistake. I'm sure I thought it was a collection of Ebert's reviews, but instead it's feature pieces and interviews with celebrities spanning the entire decade of the 1970s. Ebert approached his subjects with a keen eye and sympathetic ear, and spun vignettes that puts most of what passes for feature writing today to well-deserved shame.

Where else would you get a volume that gives you vintage snippets of life with Lee Marvin, Bob and Ray and Brooke Shields?

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than just a collection of essays with directors and movie stars, this can be read as insightful, touching, often funny short fiction... Ebert's skill as a writer was never so clear to me as when I first read this book. It doesn't matter if you're interested in Walter Matthau and Warren Beatty, or Groucho Marx and Lee Marvin... in Ebert's hands, these familiar faces and personalities become great characters. I read and re-read this one.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly readable collection of interviews with famous movie figures, conducted by critic Roger Ebert. I've always loved his reviews, but never knew how great his interviews were. Worth reading for tidbits like the meeting between Charles Bronson and Ingmar Bergman.

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of interviews with screen legends that I remember fondly, especially on hearing of Ebert’s death today at age 70.