Siskel and Ebert Movie Reviews

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5 thoughts on “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You – 1975”

  • John Ferguson
    March 17, 2024 at 9:54 am
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    So this ad appeared on Sunday, 11/23/75. It also alludes to the show being run regularly on Sundays. Well, not only did the show not premier that Sunday night, as far as I know the new episodes never premiered on Sundays on WTTW. It is also really strange that this ad ran on the day it did, without any mention of the show having a premier on the following Wednesday night. Maybe the show was originally meant to premier that Sunday. We do know that the “pilot” was taped on Thursday, November 20th, but that the pilot did not air until Wednesday, November 26th. I posted the listing for the pilot on the show page.

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    • firstmagnitudePost author
      March 17, 2024 at 11:18 am
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      Interesting. Who knows what they were thinking about nearly 50 years ago?

      • Patrick Shields
        March 17, 2024 at 5:16 pm
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        For two months, I started to watch the show in chronological order from 1975 to 1999 to gauge their opinions on American cinema during that time. I came to the conclusion that with the death of the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s and Hollywood’s post-Jaws and Star Wars fixation with high concept spectacles, they were frustrated with a vast majority of movies from 1975 to 1995. Only Gene’s track record of movie recommendations started to improve in the late 90s.

    • James Agee
      April 28, 2025 at 9:10 pm
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      I’ve got the 11/23/75 Chicago Tribune in front of me. It has the tv section for the entire week, and it lists “Opening Soon” airing twice: Sunday night at 10:00, and Wednesday night at 7:30. So the premiere was in fact Sunday the 23rd.

      For some reason, the Wednesday listing has a fuller description of the show, as if that were the premiere. But there’s no doubt that it aired first on Sunday.

      Siskel’s piece in this issue is an interview with Stanley Donen. The paper didn’t even bother to add a note at the end to the effect of “Watch Siskel tonight on channel 11!”

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