Eugene Kal Siskel (January 26, 1946 – February 20, 1999) was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune who co-hosted a movie review television series alongside colleague Roger Ebert.
Siskel started writing for the Chicago Tribune in 1969, becoming its film critic soon after. In 1975, he was paired with Roger Ebert to co-host a monthly show called Opening Soon at a Theater Near You airing locally on PBS member station WTTW. In 1978, the show, renamed Sneak Previews, was expanded to weekly episodes and aired on PBS affiliates across the United States. In 1982, Siskel and Ebert left Sneak Previews to create the syndicated show At the Movies. Following a contract dispute with Tribune Entertainment in 1986, Siskel and Ebert signed with Buena Vista Television, creating Siskel & Ebert & the Movies (renamed Siskel & Ebert in 1987, and renamed again several times after Siskel's death).
Known for their biting wit, intense professional rivalry, heated arguments, and trademark "Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down" movie ratings system, Siskel and Ebert became celebrated in American pop culture. Siskel was diagnosed with brain cancer in May 1998 but remained in the public eye as Ebert's professional partner until his death the following year.
Siskel was born in Chicago on January 26, 1946, the youngest of three children born to Ida (née Kalis) and Nathan William Siskel, who were Russian Jewish immigrants. He spent his early years living in a historically Jewish neighborhood on Chicago's North Side. Siskel's father died when he was four and his mother died when he was nine; thereafter, he was raised by his aunt and uncle.
Siskel attended DeWitt Clinton Elementary School in Chicago and nearby was the Nortown Theater where he often frequented to watch movies. This sparked his interest in films.
Siskel also attended Culver Academies, where he experienced anti-Semitism firsthand when a schoolmate gave him a piece of toast on which jam was spread in the shape of a swastika.
Siskel graduated from Yale University with a degree in philosophy in 1967. While at Yale, Siskel roomed with longtime Chicago TV sportscaster Tim Weigel during his freshman year (both would die of brain tumors two years apart), and was classmates with poet Paul Monette and future New York Governor George Pataki. Siskel studied writing under Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Hersey, whose reference would later help Siskel get a job at the Chicago Tribune in 1969.
Prior to his job at the Chicago Tribune, Siskel served in the U.S. Army Reserve as a military journalist and public affairs officer for the Defense Information School. For a time afterwards, he was acquainted with Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner.
From 1969 until his death in 1999, Gene Siskel served as the film critic for the Chicago Tribune, producing over 5,000 reviews during this period. In this role, he specialized by evaluating films through a viewpoint that prioritized narrative effectiveness, most notably its plot coherence and its believable character motivations, while often critiquing films that favored stylistic flourishes over substantive storytelling. His first print review, written one month before he became the Tribune's film critic, was for the film Rascal. His review of the film was not favorable ("Because of the excessive gimmickry, most kids will miss the tenderness," he wrote).
In 1986, the Chicago Tribune announced that Siskel was no longer the paper's film critic, and that his position with the paper had been shifted from that of a full-time film critic to that of a freelance contract writer who was to write about the film industry for the Sunday paper and also provide capsule film reviews for the paper's entertainment sections. The demotion occurred after Siskel and Ebert decided to shift production of their weekly movie-review show, then known as At the Movies (later known as Siskel & Ebert), from Tribune Entertainment to The Walt Disney Company's Buena Vista Television unit. Editor James Squires stated on the move, "He's done a great job for us. It's a question of how much a person can do physically. We think you need to be a newspaper person first, and Gene Siskel always tried to do that. But there comes a point when a career is so big that you can't do that." Siskel declined to comment on the new arrangement, but Ebert publicly criticized Siskel's Tribune bosses for punishing Siskel for taking their television program to a company other than Tribune Entertainment. Ebert privately suggested that Siskel join him at the Chicago Sun-Times, but Siskel remained a freelancer for the Tribune until his death in 1999. He was replaced as film critic by Dave Kehr.
The last review published by Siskel for the Chicago Tribune was for the film She's All That, published on January 29, 1999, in which he gave a favorable review, giving it three stars out of four and wrote that "Rachael Leigh Cook as Laney, the plain Jane object of the makeover, is forced to demonstrate the biggest emotional range as a character, and she is equal to the assignment. I look forward to seeing her in her next movie."
In 1975, Siskel teamed up with Ebert, film reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times, to host a show on local Chicago PBS station WTTW which eventually became Sneak Previews. Sneak Previews gained a nationwide audience in 1977 when WTTW offered it as a series to the PBS program system.
Siskel and Ebert left WTTW and PBS in 1982 for syndication. Their new show, At the Movies, was produced and distributed by Tribune Broadcasting, the parent company of the Chicago Tribune and WGN-TV. Sneak Previews continued on PBS for 14 more years with other hosts until its cancellation in 1996. It was following their departure that the pair introduced the "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" rating system which, itself, became famous enough to be parodied on comedy shows such as Second City Television, In Living Color, Bizarre, and in movies such as Hollywood Shuffle and Godzilla. In 1986, Siskel and Ebert left Tribune Broadcasting to have their show produced by the syndication arm of The Walt Disney Company. The new incarnation of the show was originally titled Siskel & Ebert & the Movies, but later shortened to Siskel & Ebert. At the Movies also continued for a few more years with other hosts until its cancellation in 1990. The show achieved top syndicated ratings in the 1980s and 1990s, and by 1990, was syndicated to over 200 stations in addition to influencing public discourse on movies through unfiltered debate.
The last five movies Siskel reviewed with Ebert on the show before his death aired during the weekend of January 23–24, 1999. On the show, they reviewed At First Sight, Another Day in Paradise, The Hi-Lo Country, Playing by Heart, and The Theory of Flight. Siskel gave thumbs up to all of them, except for Playing by Heart.
Following Siskel's death, Ebert continued the series with rotating guest hosts, which included Martin Scorsese, Janet Maslin, Peter Bogdanovich, Todd McCarthy, Lisa Schwarzbaum, Kenneth Turan, Elvis Mitchell, and the eventual permanent replacement for Siskel, Richard Roeper.
Siskel and Ebert were known for their many appearances on late-night talk shows, including appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman sixteen times and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson fifteen times. They also appeared together on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Arsenio Hall Show, Howard Stern, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
In 1982, 1983, and 1985, Siskel, along with Ebert, appeared as themselves on Saturday Night Live. For their first two appearances, they reviewed sketches from that night's telecast and reviewed sketches from the "SNL Film Festival" for their last appearance.
In 1991, Siskel, along with Ebert, appeared in a segment on the children's television series Sesame Street entitled "Sneak Peek Previews" (a parody of Sneak Previews). In the segment, the critics instruct the hosts Oscar the Grouch and Telly Monster on how their thumbs up/thumbs down rating system works. Oscar asks if there could be a thumbs sideways ratings, and goads the two men into an argument about whether or not that would be acceptable, as Ebert likes the idea, but Siskel does not. The two were also seen that same year in the show's celebrity version of "Monster in the Mirror".