How Leonard Cohen saved Roger Ebert’s life with one song: “I would be dead”
It can be awkwardly annoying to see your favourite movie star or director take on the challenge of being a recording artist. Many have tried, but almost all have failed. Cultural cross-pollination irks us as an audience through, one might imagine, a combination of confusion and pure jealousy. However, one man who continually crossed the artistic lines on the creative map was Leonard Cohen. A poet before he became a pop star, Cohen’s ability to weave his narrative through poetry, music, novels, and even acting would make him an icon.
Storytelling is, lest we forget, an essential part of writing. Whether the medium you’re working in is music, movies, television, literature, or journalism, the ability to tell a good story is strongly correlated with the amount of success you’ll see. That’s what elevates the best of the best, and when it came to storytelling, Cohen and his friend and film critic of the ages, Roger Ebert, knew their way around a good plot.
Ebert didn’t just review movies; his reviews became stories unto themselves. Whether he was basking in the unmatched glory of a box office smash or taking the piss out of a true bomb, Ebert managed to inject humour and insight into every single one of his reviews. While the clever captions will often read, “nobody ever made a statue of a critic,” almost every sloganeer forgets the iconic sculpture of Ebert, giving the thumbs up located in Illinois. Reading his work became nearly as fun as seeing the movies themselves, and Ebert’s approval carried a massive amount of weight to generations of filmgoers who decided whether or not they would see films based on Ebert’s assessment.
As Ebert pulled into his fourth decade of reviewing films in 2000, he had already experienced an important loss. The previous year, Ebert’s friendly rival Gene Siskel, with whom he co-hosted the programme At the Movies, had passed away. Ebert then had to deal with his own health troubles after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2002. Without much hope left, he turned to music for his salvation.
In the 2014 documentary Life Itself, Ebert explained how a Leonard Cohen song helped save his life after suffering complications from one of his surgeries. “We were all packed up and ready to go home just like today,” Ebert explained from his hospital bed with the help of an artificial voice.
“Chaz and I had a Leonard Cohen song we both really liked called ‘I’m Your Man’. It’s sort of long, and I wanted to play it one last time,” he added. “As it was playing, I had a sudden haemorrhage of an artery. The doctor rushed me into the operating room. If that song had been shorter and I had left, I would be dead.”
Ebert’s wife, Chaz, agreed, stating: “If he hadn’t been playing that song, we would have been out of the hospital already.”
‘I’m Your Man’ is only four-and-a-half minutes long, but had it been even a minute shorter, it might have ended Ebert’s life prematurely. Unfortunately, Ebert and Cohen’s lives weren’t meant to last much longer. Ebert passed away in 2013, while Cohen passed away in 2016, with cancer being a contributing factor in both deaths.
It’s easy to keep people in their lanes, especially those famed for their contributions to a certain field. However, to do so is to forget the humanity behind every art form and the connections we cherish so vitally as a lifeline to our souls. Ebert may well have been physically saved by the songs of Leonard Cohen but there are likely countless actors, directors, painters and dancers who have felt the exact same way.
