Had you asked me earlier in the week which current television show’s cancellation would upset me the most, I probably would not have thought to say At the Movies. But it is the only show I have watched for fifteen years and still DVR. And it is the only show whose passing seems like the death knell for a certain type of entertainment and engagement. Most of all, it is the only show that, believe it or not, helped to actually develop a part of my personality.

Although the program as we know it began in 1982, I started watching in the mid-’90s, just as the tastes I now have were beginning to take hold. I spent countless Sunday mornings and Saturday nights on the floor of my grandparents’ house listening to the repartee between Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, soaking in this foreign world of evaluation and appreciation. I remember in those days usually siding with Siskel, but when Ebert felt passionately about something, I usually agreed with him. Week-to-week I might have been more of a Siskel, but my top ten list usually looked more like Ebert’s. Come to think of it, in those days before everyone on the Internet was a critic, the show may have been the first time I saw a top ten list. It prompted me to write my own for the first time in 1995.*

So I had some nice memories associated with “the balcony,” but it probably had more of an impact on me than I’ve ever realized. Siskel and Ebert taught me how to be a critic of film and the world around me. These men were intellectuals, and from them I learned an aesthetic vocabulary that no one else in my life had ever taught me.  I learned how much an artist’s intention should matter. I learned that just because you’re supposed to like something doesn’t mean you should. I learned that there was a rich tradition of movies beyond what was playing at the Aurora 6, and I first started seeking them out based on Siskel and Ebert’s recommendations. I still catch myself parroting the ideas found in their specials on letterboxing and black and white.

After the death of Siskel, the show was never really the same. Ebert shuffled around guest hosts until settling on the affable Richard Roeper, and Roeper manned the balcony with other guests after Ebert left due to his thyroid surgery complications. The show entered a dark period when Ben Manckiewicz and Ben Lyons took over two years ago, (I wish I could dig up their ignorant dismissal of Synecdoche, New York to shame them.) but Michael Phillips and A.O. Scott restored dignity to the program earlier this year. Even ten years after Siskel’s passing though, no one has equaled the give-and-take of opinions that originally informed the show. Those thumbs up and thumbs down wouldn’t look the same on anyone else.

With the firing of Variety’s Todd McCarthy and the cancellation of At the Movies, the Powers That Be could not make it more clear that film criticism is not good business. And people are voting with their dollars too. As Ebert himself puts it: “There has been a fragmentation of movie watching. Theatrical distribution is now dominated by the big-budget, heavily marketed 3-D of the Week. Such films have a success utterly independent of critics. Like junk food, they’re consumed by habit and may be filling but are high in cinematic sugar and fat. The consumers of that product don’t think of a movie as an investment of two hours of their lives.” Despite those sobering developments, Roger (I feel as if I can do the first name thing. I mean, we’re twitter friends after all.) and his wife Chaz are developing a bigger and better movie critic show for TV. He still has a sense of hope, so I guess—Ebert being my mentor and all—I should too. At the Movies is dead; long live At the Movies.

* Twelve-Year-Old Chris’ Top Ten: 1. Casino, 2. The Usual Suspects, 3. Seven, 4. Heat, 5. Toy Story, 6. GoldenEye, 7. To Die For, 8. Braveheart, 9. Get Shorty, 10. Leaving Las Vegas. I’d definitely change the order and substitute Before Sunrise or Showgirls for James Bond, but not bad. Holler at me, Mike Figgis!