Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, and Gene Siskel, film critic for the Chicago Tribune, started out as newspaper enemies, each one trying to bludgeon the other in print with pointed barbs or exclusive interviews with Hollywood royalty. The competition continued when someone had the bright idea to put the two of them together on television to critique ...
Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, and Gene Siskel, film critic for the Chicago Tribune, started out as newspaper enemies, each one trying to bludgeon the other in print with pointed barbs or exclusive interviews with Hollywood royalty. The competition continued when someone had the bright idea to put the two of them together on television to critique the coming attractions.
In the process of becoming legendary, they also came to know and love each other while continuing to put a stick in the eye.
This is their funny and engaging story, as told by scores of people who were involved with them and their show over the years. In the end they stood tallest when they stood together.
"Enemies, A Love Story" is published for e-readers by Now and Then Reader, Digital Publishers of Serious Nonfiction. The piece originally appeared in print form in the first issue of the newly launched magazine, "The Chicagoan."
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Josh Schollmeyer is an executive editor at Playboy. He won a National Magazine Award as an editor at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He lives in Chicago.
The Chicagoan’s centerpiece is "Enemies, A Love Story," detailing the relationship between Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. Author Josh Schollmeyer (also one of the magazine's executive editors) interviewed who knows how many people to get the three dozen voices (mine included) that make up this compelling and revelatory oral history.
Robert Duffer
Hours later I couldn’t sleep because the writer, Josh Schollmeyer, who is the executive editor at Playboy, had just created one of the most innovative and arresting approaches to his subjects and the form that I can recall reading. I say this without hyperbole: it’s the finest piece of feature writing I’ve read in years.
Roger Feder
...a brilliant, 25,000-word account of the epic relationship between film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Enemies, A Love Story: The oral history of Siskel and Ebert was written by Josh Schollmeyer, an executive editor at Playboy, who spent more than year conducting nearly 50 interviews, poring over tapes and transcripts, and unearthing new insights into the most intriguing and influential partnership Chicago has ever produced.
A founding editor of The Chicagoan, Josh Schollmeyer works by day as the Executive Editor and Director of Digital Content at Playboy, where he is overseeing the summer relaunch of the magazine’s smart phone app and ebook series. Previously, he served as deputy editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. After helping the Bulletin win a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2007, he spearheaded the editorial effort to transition it from a print publication to a digital newsmagazine akin to Politico. His writing has appeared in the Smithsonian magazine, Maxim and Chicago. His Bulletin feature, “Lights, Camera, Armageddon,” was selected to appear in Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Science and Nature Writing, and the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists honored his Chicago magazine profile of baseball analyst Steve Stone with a Peter Lisagor Award for excellence in feature writing.
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