Ten years ago today, film critic Gene Siskel passed away. On the Sun-Times Web site, Roger Ebert has posted a moving remembrance of his long-time sparring partner, some-time nemesis, and dear friend. It's a long, rich piece, so I encourage you to read it all, but here's one of the more interesting bits:

Once we were invited to speak to the Harvard Law School Film Society. We walked into their Mock Trial courtroom armed with all sorts of notes, but somehow got started on a funny note, and the whole appearance became stand-up comedy. Separately or together, we were never funnier. Even the audience questions were funny. Roars of laughter for 90 minutes. I'm not making this up. I don't know what happened. Afterwards Gene said, "We could do this in Vegas. No, I'm serious." He was always serious about things like that.That night we had dinner together in a hotel in Cambridge, and had our longest and deepest philosophical discussion. We talked about life and death, the cosmos, our place in the grand scheme of things, the meaning of it all. There was a reason Gene studied philosophy: He was a natural.He spoke about his Judaism, which he took very seriously. His parents had started the first synagogue on the North Shore after World War II. "I had a lot of long talks with my father about our religion," Gene told me. "He said it wasn't necessary to think too much about an afterlife. What was important was this life, how we live it, what we contribute, our families, and the memories we leave." Gene said, "The importance of Judaism isn't simply theological, or, in the minds of some Jews, necessarily theological at all. It is that we have stayed together and respected these things for thousands of years, and so it is important that we continue." In a few words, this was one of the most touching descriptions of Judaism I had ever heard.

What united Siskel and Ebert as critics was not their oft-hyped on-screen disagreements, but rather their unabashed love of movies, their deep--never showy--knowledge of filmmaking, and their unstinting desire to see it done better. But, as Ebert writes, one of the most accurate descriptions of their friendship came from Buddy Rodgers, who observed, "You guys have a sibling rivalry, but you both think you're the older brother."Some of that rivalry is on display in this clip of them filming promos for their TV show. It's a bit long, and, well, R-rated. But it's also hilarious--especially the last few minutes as the two of them rip on WASPs--and touching.