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et al.: From the Desk of... p E 0 P L E N T H E A w 0 A K p L A c E ..............................................................................................p o P L r N T d . As a critic, so does Ebert, who-point Behind every edly ignoring the late Kenneth Tynan's line, "A critic is like the palace eunuch who great woman and sees the trick done every night and rages Film critic at large he can't" - wrote the original screenplay every great man for Russ Meyer's campy Beyond the Valley of n endless flow of cinematic flotsam the Dolls back in 1969. there is an Aand jetsam keeps infiltrating the tiny Those who sometimes find Ebert's office of the Chicago Sun-Times's Pulitzer preferences too cerebral would be pleas office. Prize-winning film critic, Roger Ebert, and antly surprised to see the critic's likes and to the despair of the cleaning ladies, none dislikes, flamboyantly displayed in his of it appears to be in any hurry to leave. As cluttered cubicle. a result, the janitorial staff now gives his An alluring cut-out pinup of Marilyn desk wide berth. Like the Water Tower on Monroe in the famous skirt-blowing scene North Michigan, Ebert's cinematic lair from The Seven Year Itch is propped up in seems to have become a Windy City land front of Clark Gable and a smoldering mark. Vivien Leigh (Gone With the Wind). Original His cherubic countenance is well posters from Casablanca, The Wild One, and known to the millions of viewers of Siskel Headline Hunters are close by. & Ebert at the Movies, the weekly TV film On Ebert's desk, a gum ball machine review show on which he appears with filled with marbles, a Rolodex, and a tele From a New Book and more often against-his co-host and phone share equal billing with plastic re by Alumni rival, Chicago Tribune film critic Gene productions of Mickey and Minnie Mouse Siske l. Their show has probably done and Donald Duck. In a jumble of consis HAL DRUCKER more to institutionalize the "thumbs up" tent chaos, nearby is a can of Bear B-gone, and (or, conversely, "thumbs down") signal an "extra strength formula for life's un than the Indy 500 drivers. Syndicated bearable situations-skunks, raccoons, in SID LERNER nationally, the 30-minute program is the laws, lawyers, bosses"; Metro-Goldwyn commercial reincarnation of PBS's Sneak Mayer and Orion paperweights; an Previews, which the two started in 1978. "Underworlf' miniature typewriter; a Celluloid obviously embodies life to three-year-old press pass; and a simulated Ebert, who joined the paper at age 24, after Venus flytrap from Little Shop ofH orrors. graduating with a journalism degree from On a credenza to the left are copies of the University of Illinois. "The first mov Ebert's books, as well as those of his favor ies that really got to me," he recalls, "were ite film critics- Pauline Kael, of The New animated films like Walt Disney'sDumbo. I Yorker, and Dwight MacDonald, formerly With FP Mode/. thought they were real, much more real with Esquir(}-and additional mountains of Photographs by Sing-Si Schwartz. than photographed movies. And the first movie compendia. Behind his desk is the movie that made me think I'd make a pro ATEX editorial computer used by writers Excerptedfrom From the Desk Of. Copyright © 1989 by Sid Lerner and Hal Drocker. Published by fession out of moviegoing was La Dolce at the Sun-Times. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Vita. It broke a lot of rules." Sitting serenely in the center of it all is 14 • SYRA C USE UN IV ERSI T Y MAGA Z I N E Published by SURFACE, 1989 1 Syracuse University Magazine, Vol. 6, Iss. 2 [1989], Art. 5 ..................................................................................................... DECEMBER 1 989 • 15 https://surface.syr.edu/sumagazine/vol6/iss2/5 2 et al.: From the Desk of... ...................................................................................................p E 0 p L E N T H E R w 0 R K p L A c E 16 • SYRACUSE UN I VE R S I TY MAGAZ I NE Published by SURFACE, 1989 3 Syracuse University Magazine, Vol. 6, Iss. 2 [1989], Art. 5 ............................................................................................. the mainstay of Ebert's professional exis hour days on an IBM PC word processor at Times best-seller list for three years tence, a portable Tandy Radio Shack her four-by-five-foot easel desk. In winter, Sheehy is the contributing political editor Model 100, through which his stories can when even a baseboard space heater and for Vaniry Fair, often writes for the New be sent out via MCI Mail. Ebert takes it standing portable radiator don't keep her York Times Magazine and Parade, among everywhere he goes, to facilitate meeting warm out on the terrace, she wears muk others, and appears regularly on such pro deadlines. luks-"! got them on a writing assignment grams as Nightline, the MacNeil Lehrer News "It's my computer mailbox," he ex that sent me to western Alaska"-and Hour, and Good MomingAmerica. plains. "You can make a local telephone gloves (which don't inhibit her ability to Even so, she has a hidden goal not call in Toronto or Cannes and dump it in, type) to keep going. Spring and summer everybody knows. and it comes out the other end." are a different story. "Central Park is my "I love the theater," she admits, "and front yard," she says, "and when the my secret dream is to write a play." weather is warm, I spend two hours a day having lunch on a park bench, reading, and watching the pigeon feeders." -..------u-LI-n On the window ledge over her easel is a [ C H I L --- Journalist, author, and lecturer framed invitation showing Sheehy stand ing next to a life-size, die-cut picture of The French chef ormally, I would feel like a shut-in President Reagan, with a bird perched on Nwhen I'm writing, because I love the his head. The caption reads: "Tina Brown s the eponymous cooking instructor of outdoors," says Gail Sheehy, standing in invites you to the celebration of the publi APBS television's long-running The her nestlike 12-by-12-foot office, nine cation of Gail Sheehy's newest book. .. ." French Chef, she endeared herself to her floors above Fifth Avenue on the glass Next to this is an in-box of research files for millions ofviewers as a harried host, fero enclosed terrace of her "working" apart an article she is writing on Margaret ciously wielding her giant balloon whisk, ment. "Here I feel like I'm outside even Thatcher, a small quartz clock, 10 or so ref who kept offering sage advice to herself in when I'm inside." erence books, and a framed photograph of Childian malapropisms. As the bifocals Outside is an incomparable view of "all my favorite people"-Sheehy with slipped, ingredients ker-plopped to the Central Park and Manhattan's Upper West her sister; husband Clay Felker, editor of floor. Yet she remained unflappable. "If Side. On the terrace are potted rosebushes, Manhattan, inc.; and daughters Maura and this happens, just scoop it back. Remem laurels, pines, and a birch tree, which Mohm. ber, you are alone in the kitchen, and spring to life during warm weather. (T here There is also a large, opened Webster$ nobody can see you!" is also a circular trampoline, on which the Third International Dictionary ("I always Was it all an act? Could that tall but fraz trim, five-foot-three-inch author goes into like to use a new word in every article"), an zled TV gourmet be the same blue-eyed, her Flying Wallenda routine mornings at 5, elegant photograph of Sheehy and Felker brown-haired Julia Child who now sits when she's working on overdrive and taken in one of England's Great Houses cool, unflustered, and totally in control of needs to discharge the extra energy.) "To during their recent trip, and floral-print tin her environment-in an office directly be able to watch when thunderstorms start boxes containing desk accessories and above the kitchen Craig Claiborne once and the wind begins swirling is a wonder supplies. On her desk is a large bronze described as "the best-equipped in all of ful thing," she explains. "I couldn't live in statue of a mythical nude female warrior Boston"? Manhattan and be a writer any other way." astride a flying horse (recalling the News Yes, indeed. She regales the visitor with Sheehy's airy office contains reminders women's Club symbol), a 1987 Christmas a rendering of how her written testimony of her accomplishments: two of her four present from her husband, who gave it to brought down the House of Representa Front Page awards from the News her as "a spur." tives last year. Along with other members women's Club ofNew York, whose symbol "The Shoeleather Sheehy Award," a of the Authors Guild, she lobbied Con is Pegasus; cassettes of her numerous gag gift given to her by Vaniry Fair political gress to throw out a provision in the 1986 interviews- "! just came back from Lon editor Elise O'Shaughnessy, consists of a Tax Reform Act that would have denied don, where I did 40 in two weeks" -and a pair of women's shoes entirely covered writers the right to deduct expenses in the 1979 Harvard Graduate School of Business with magazine articles Sheehy wrote for year they were incurred.