Would Roger Ebert give me a thumbs up?

I've already admitted to writing one of the worst student films of all time, a film so bad that the Director was deported back to Korea. With the recent  death of Roger Ebert, I always wonder, would he give me a thumbs up for my writing?

In other blogs, I've talked about negative non-professional  reviews for my books on Goodreads and amazon. As I go back through my archives, I can't find a single negative professional review on print, not one. As for online, in publications, I've received one harsh review from a fantasy site for my second book, Crater County. That was my fault. I was at a writing conference in Phoenix and I pestered the reviewer to review my book. He hated it because it wasn't really a fantasy book.

There must be something about Arizona, when Crater County was selected by the Tucson/Pima County library as one of the Southwest Books of the year, they also gave me a negative write-up despite putting me on the master list.  I re-read Crater County, they were probably right.

That was nine years ago, official reviewers have been kind to my words since then.

But back to Roger Ebert. I was a fan of his show when it aired on Saturday afternoons. I usually agreed with Roger. I would sometimes go to a movie on Sunday, purely on the strength of his thumb alone. I must admit that he would have hated my student film. Hell, I hated my student film.

There was a great quote in the New York Times, where when he described Rob Schneider's film, Deuce Bigelow, he stated; "that although Rob Schneider might (in my opinion) have made a bad movie, he is not a bad man, and no doubt tried to make a wonderful movie, and hopes to again.”

That reminds me of what my professor at the time stated after our student film's disastrous premiere. The late Frank Peirson, "Go and make great films." I never did. I was scared.

While I did write for TV for a few months, I never wrote another screenplay that was made into a film. Perhaps I was scared of what people like Roger Ebert would think.

In retrospect, I probably should have kept writing screenplays. Still, there's something about writing novels because you have a greater deal of control. So Roger, hopefully you have a kindle in heaven and you can download my new novel Rattlesnake Wedding.
Hopefully you'll give it a thumbs up...