Joel Siegel, 1943 - 2007.
Although I didn't approve of the way "Good Morning America" movie reviewer Joel Siegel reportedly walked out of a screening of Kevin Smith's "Clerks II" last summer (announcing: "Time to go! First movie I've walked out of in 30 [effin'] years!"), I realize now that Siegel -- who was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1997 -- was speaking as a man for whom life was, indeed, too short and too precious to waste on cruddy movies. (Even though we may not share the same definition of "cruddy.") Mainly, I just liked that he cared enough to say "NO!" Roger Ebert shares some thoughts on Siegel, who died Friday at age 63:
His cancer spread, then went into remissions, and his friends received regular medical updates. There were four kinds of e-mails from Joel: (1) Good news; (2) Bad news; (3) Encouragement involving your own problems, and (4) Jokes. Mostly we got jokes. If all else had failed, Joel could have been a stand-up comic; in early days, he was a joke writer for Robert Kennedy. On the other hand, he ran a voter registration program for Martin Luther King, Jr., in Macon, Georgia.The rest of Ebert's piece is at RogerEbert.com, along with some of Siegel's own advice for cancer patients.
Jim - no spotlight on Ebert's "Evening" review? Good lord, that's got to be his funniest since "Basic Instinct 2." The man is BACK.
I was Joel's intern at GMA about ten years ago when I was finishing up school at Barnard College in New York. He was tough in the beginning, but in the end -- we became great friends. I remember how so many toys were sent to GMA from all the movie companies as press for their big weekend openings -- Jurassic Park toys and great stuff for kids. The moment they came in, Joel would have me pack them up and send them off to The Memorial Sloane-Kettering Cancer Center Pediatric Ward for the children to play with. That was the kind of man he was...
As far as I know, I was the only intern that Joel hired to be his personal assistant. He was so loving towards me that he would even hire me to water the plants on his balcony at home just so he could pay me when he knew I needed the money.
We've stayed in touch throughout the years -- I even attended his son's bris. We've always supported one another -- my mom died of cancer when I was seventeen and Joel was always very sensitive about that with me. Always empathetic.
They say you die as you live, and I say Joel did both with grace and humor. I will miss him so dearly.
I have a friend whose about my age...late 20's and she was diagnosed with colon cancer. Was given less than a year and that was two years ago. The one thing she always kept along side her was a sense of humor (thanks to her 2 roommates and maybe in part myself.) It feels like, and this is purely speculative, that that is what helped give her strength and to perhaps remain alive for as long as she had. She was clean of cancer completely until a week or two ago. She has a blog, there's a link on my blog, it's called "Colon Cancer Sucks Ass", yeah, I know, a taste of how she's been dealing with it.