Roger Ebert Talks About His Career, Hollywood Egotism, and What Makes a Good Love Story in a Rare 1990 Interview

In the most recent episode of the animated series Blank on Blank, film guru Roger Ebert talks about his career, the egos involved in the film industry ,and what constitutes a great love story in a rare 1990 interview with writer Lawrence Grobel.

I’m looking for films that come out of a director’s quixotic personal passionate imagination and not films that are manufactured to entertain large numbers of people efficiently. Even though I am often among those entertained. I love to be entertained. I love those films. But the ones that really move me are the ones where a director felt that something had to be said and he said it. …I love the acknowledgement between, in Say Anything, a very underrated movie, the fact that John Cusack loves the girl in that movie because she’s smart and not because she’s pretty. Almost always, my favorite love scenes in movies don’t involve passion, they involve nobility or sacrifice. In which somebody brings out the better side or the better nature of somebody else.