As we all know, TIFF has come and gone, and a couple other writers on here have shared some interesting insight on this year’s festival. There have been a lot of films and even a lot more special guests, like Chaz Ebert. For those who are possibly wondering, Chaz was Roger Ebert’s wife and stayed by his side no matter what. Chaz and her husband created the Roger and Chaz Ebert Foundation, and she’s made some great strides both with and without Roger. For example, her book: It’s Time to Give a FECK: Elevating Humanity Through Forgiveness, Empathy, Compassion, and Kindness. Sounds like a long title, but it’s a worthwhile read. As you can imagine, it’s about what we can do to make the world a better place for each other and ourselves. I honestly know some people who could benefit from this.
While Chaz had her book signing session at TIFF, she got an exciting opportunity to present the Ebert Director’s Award to Agnes Varda, and coincidentally the book signing was in the Agnes Varda lounge. Sometime after TIFF, I got to reach out to her and chat and we had an exciting discussion about her reading material. Now check out some of MY reading material, this interview between us, that was transcribed with steady effort and a lot of respect.
HNMAG: So this book is all about human values and how to act civilized. How does it apply to film industry people?
Chaz Ebert: Actually, it’s because of the film industry that I wrote the book in the first place. The E in Feck stands for Empathy or Ebert. It was actually my late husband Roger Ebert who said that films are a machine that generates impulsivity allowing us to put ourselves into the shoes of another person who’s different from us. Someone of the different age or race, ethnicity, religion. To grasp a better understanding of that person, whether you agree with them or not. It was from that work on empathy that we did together and endowed some organizations that the book evolved.
HNMAG: And you also got a chance to talk about it at TIFF. What was that experience like?
Chaz Ebert: First of all, The Toronto International Film Festival is one of my favourite festivals. It was also one of Roger’s favourite festivals. Because you have films from literally all over the world, the Toronto audience just seems to love films even more than some other audiences and we were treated so well I considered it special for a lot of reasons. Both for the films that are on there but also for the people that we’ve met there over the years. Cameron Bailey as the head of the festival has continued that welcoming tradition.
HNMAG: Did they ask a lot of questions and were you able to answer a majority of them?
Chaz Ebert: It felt like kind of surreal being in the Varda lounge, having the book signing there. It was well attended and people asked a lot of questions about whether finding the world being a little more polarizing now than in the past and wondering that’s why I wrote the book. When I first started the book, it was just before the pandemic, before the world shut down and so I was writing the book during the pandemic as well and it was more a result of the isolation. The loneliness I was feeling while writing this book saying, “When the World comes back together, I would love to come back with more people being compassionate toward each other and having a connection to each other and that’s one of the reasons for the book.
HNMAG: So have you seen anybody connecting more now that COVID is kind of in the past now?
Chaz Ebert: I have to be honest: In the beginning, when the world first started opening up, I saw things, people connecting like never before. I think people were so hungry for connection and wanting to feel the humanity of other people and people just wanting to have someone that you can just put your hand on their shoulder. Some people were really isolated, really alone, I mean by themselves in a small apartment. Other people may have been fortunate enough to have another friend or another family member or small group of friends that they could see during the pandemic but a lot of people were alone. In the beginning, there were a lot of people being kinder and nicer to each other and then it took this abrupt turn where people started going back into their own silos of separation with people who only thought like them. This is certainly something that I saw in the United States, but people in Canada were telling me it was the same thing. When I went to festivals in England, France, people were saying similar things. We don’t know if this is a political shift or something else but people to give a Feck, to reconnect and get together and to recognize the humanity in the other person.
Chaz told me some more interesting stories from people she found out in her journey of talking about the book. She even explained how she emphasizes the word joy because she wants to see the joy people can share.
HNMAG: And was everyone very friendly and appreciative of your book?
Chaz Ebert: Yes, they are. People love it. Even something as simple as the cover of my book is: It’s yellow with little black words, and Feck is written in Pink. All of those are very deliberate, intentional decisions that we made about the book cover. I don’t want people to think of the other 4-letter f-word, so we intentionally put those letters in pink to soften them since it’s an acronym. There are so many things, even just the cover of the book, when I’m talking to people about it. They look at it and they smile, I think yellow is a colour that makes people smile and people say it’s really a timely book. The things about forgiveness which is one of the principles I find the most difficult. But they say it’s very timely to talk about being more empathetic toward each other.
HNMAG: Were there any other interesting things you came across at TIFF?
Chaz Ebert: One of the things that still gives me joy when I go to TIFF is the fact that you close off some of the streets. It feels like you’re at a giant welcoming street fair. I love that you can walk along the street and everybody you walk past is going to the festival and you stop and talk to people asking them what films you’re going to see and you’re standing in line asking “what’s the best thing you’ve seen?” or “can you give a recommendation?” I love that, it just creates such an atmosphere of joy. That doesn’t always happen at every film festival so I like that aspect.
HNMAG: And as someone who was married to a film critic, did you learn some of his mannerisms that you incorporated into this book?
Chaz Ebert: Well, the empathy was the biggest thing because he really believed so much, he felt that he was fortunate to be able to talk about connecting people through a medium like the cinema. I always said it was sort of a cosmic joke that he was called a critic. A film critic is a very fine profession but the word critic sometimes alone has a negative connotation. He was one of the kindest, most generous, compassionate people that I knew and so I used to smile and say, “For somebody with a kind heart to be known as a critic, is just a cosmic joke.” (laughs)
HNMAG: Have you made any other books besides this one?
Chaz Ebert: I am working on 2 books: A partial memoir and another book I can’t really talk about at the moment. I just directed my first documentary! It’s called Wellness Warrior, it’s about a woman who was 17 years old and her husband who was 34 at the time. He was an Eastern-European professor. They started a health retreat in North America, in Tecate, Mexico called Rancho La Puerta. Later, she and the professor divorced and he died, but she continued to operate another spa in California called The Golden Door. She became very famous for her health retreats, she’s now 102 years old and she still lectures once a week at Rancho La Puerta.
Chaz added the reason for the name Wellness Warrior is because this woman, Deborah Szekely reinvents herself every 10 years. When she was 90 years old, Deborah advocated people to take care of their own health, and stop depending on pharmaceutical companies. Hence the nickname, Wellness Warrior. But now that Deborah has a different mission, the perspective has changed, but her resilience still stands strong and healthy. Chaz’s short documentary premieres at the Chicago Film Festival next year in October.
HNMAG: What about the books? Will they be published soon?
Chaz Ebert: Yes. I’m hoping the second book will be published in 2025. But It’s time to give a Feck, I really wrote this book so you could pick it up almost anytime whatever’s going on in the world and I have exercises at the end of each chapter. People can go in, read the chapter, then it’s like a workbook. I give assignments where you can think about things, people you want to forgive or people from whom you want to ask forgiveness. One of the most popular exercises in the book (several people have told me that they love it), is pick a character from a movie or a book. What is it about that character, what characteristics does that protagonist have that you like or aspire to? You can make yourself better by patterning yourself after that person and there are other exercises after each chapter. It’s not only a book for reading but a workbook for helping to improve yourself and humanity.
HNMAG: What inspired you to make this into a workbook?
Chaz Ebert: Because I didn’t want to just seem like I was preaching to people. I like having people make suggestions to do something where I can maybe improve myself or maybe enhance something I’m thinking about. When I was a kid, I was an avid reader and I never wrote in my books. I used to call books my friends, I didn’t want to write in books. When I did this book, the publisher said, “If you want to put the lessons in, put them at the end of each chapter and people can write in it” I said, “NO, I don’t want people writing in the book!” and they said, “That’s what people do these days.” People have told me they love being able to write at the end of the chapter so they can stop and think before going on to something else. There are some people who don’t want to write in the book so they get a notepad. But I’m really glad I listened to the publisher and put the exercises at the end of each chapter.
HNMAG: Now there are a lot of resources in this article to deliver these points across. How did you find the right sources to gain research from?
Chaz Ebert: That was a little bit of a process of doing it and I had someone who was helping do a little bit of that. Some of the research for it, but some of the things are just resources that I use myself all the time or the time I came across in reading. Some of the examples that I use are things that made a big impression on me. For instance, I have a chapter where I talk about Dagmar Hamlin who collapsed on the filed and I don’t really watch football that much. I happened to be watching football and I saw hm collapse. He lost a heartbeat, I think he died for a few seconds. They resuscitated him and watching all this play out in real time, it’s dramatic and then they stopped the game which they hardly do even if someone is injured and they went to the hospital and I watched all night as people gathered inside of his hospital room. People holding hands, people praying, just keeping vigilant, it touched me so much that people were willing to do this. I hope this book is practical, I hope that people read, do the exercises, the work, and take it to heart.
Because of that, Chaz was inspired to add a few sports figures in the book, such as Colin Kaepernick, who got suspended just because he got down on one knee for the Star Spangled Banner. We know that story, don’t we? Chaz put this moment in the book because she and a friend actually had an argument over this matter. Despite this, they patched their differences when meeting up again and Chaz mentioned she’d use this example in her book. Despite the disagreement the two are friends, which I think gives a powerful message to the world today. While I don’t often share my opinions on political matters or major events (except for maybe on here at times), I manage to get along well with a lot of people.
HNMAG: Now I understand you have an organization. What is its main focus in helping solve film industry issues?
Chaz Ebert: It’s not just for film, it’s a philanthropic organization that was originally started to help give. We gave some scholarships to children and families and some to organizations that help others and some within the film industry as well. But with the organization, I did start mentoring more emerging film critics, film writers, filmmakers, and technologists as well. Because I think that technologists who also like films can create technology within the film industry or our everyday lives. I want them to apply these principles, to start thinking about forgiveness, empathy, how can we be more compassionate about what acts of kindness we can perform to make things better. That’s the purpose of the organization.
HNMAG: With how your organization has been going for a while now, what improvements have you seen over the years that were extremely changing?
Chaz Ebert: At the end of the book, I talk about some of the people who have gone through our programs. I also talk about several of the students who are doing good things. Some are from during the pandemic, one person decided to grow a garden in their yard and help feed some of the people nearby because you couldn’t go too far away during the pandemic. She started gardening and working with people to help feed people just one productive. There was one of our interns who decided to climb the highest peak in every state but when he did it, he also would stop and interview people about one of the Feck principles. He tried to see what people thought about empathy or how they were compassionate or who in their community was kind. Another one of the interns said that when she went back to Zimbabwe where she was from, she would make sure to take gently used clothes to donate to orphanages. She wanted to do something. That makes me feel good when some of these people have gone through our programs talk about what they have done. The ripple effect for me is so interesting.
HNMAG: What is your biggest hope for Canada’s film industry?
Chaz Ebert: My biggest hope is that it continues to thrive and it is really shared with more people all over the world because I have to tell you: Some of the people, not just David Cronenberg or Adam Egoyan, I like the eccentric ideas that come through in some of the films that come from Canadian filmmakers. I hope that eccentricity continues to permeate the whole film world and I just hope that the Canadian film world remains as welcoming as it is to others outside of the Canadian film industry.
I have to agree with Chaz on everything she told me here. Let’s all get a copy of her book today and see how we can improve things for humanity. After all my biggest hope for the world is we can see some more improvement as long as we keep progressing. You can find her book available for purchase here or here or even here. Let’s also keep an eye out for upcoming documentary and any other books she writes. Who knows what she’ll come up with next?