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Roger Ebert once opined that video games can never be an art, while admitting he has never played one. Similarly, he has made a living of publicly deciding whether a movie is bad or good, yet his own filmmaking experience is confined to a single sub-par screenplay in the 70’s and guest lectures at the University of Chicago¹. Ebert’s opinion is no more important than anyone else’s; he just happened to give his at the right time and place, someone agreed with him, and he wound up on TV for the next 35 years dispensing his two-cents as if everyone gave a shit. This granted him a sense of entitlement; a feeling that his word MUST be the gospel, even when out of his element. He needs to be the voice of public opinion because it validates him, though ironically, he now has no voice.²

So, it does not surprise me that he would give a hair-trigger response to the death of Ryan Dunn just hours after it happened. But unlike the way he got his television gig, this opinion was not given at the right time and place. No one asked for it; not the Chicago Sun-Times, not opponents of drunk driving. He is 100% entitled to it, and he isn’t exactly wrong. But there is a time and place. Sometimes, even critics should shut their mouths. Which again is ironic, because he no longer can.³

Roger Ebert has lived vicariously, but only through the characters that populate the films he reviews. Ryan Dunn, on the other hand, lived his actual life to the fullest. He had seen and done things we will only imagine, and even things we will always deny having a desire to do. It is not hard to imagine that a life like this can cause envy in a man who has spent a great majority of his life sitting in a chair, staring at a screen. My point is this: many of us have lived vicariously through Ryan Dunn. Who has ever lived through Roger Ebert?

Goodbye, Ryan Dunn.

¹As they say, those who can’t do, teach.

²Too soon?

³Definitely too soon.