How to betray Roger Ebert, and then feel really, really bad about it

If you haven’t read the Esquire profile of film critic Roger Ebert, you should. But then you should go over to the Deadspin site, and read a different kind of profile.

Writer Will Leitch didn’t talk to Ebert for this story — well, not recently. When Leitch was a younger man, he actually kept up a running correspondence with Ebert, having first emailed him drunkenly to ask about a rumour that Ebert had once had sex on the university newspaper’s desk.

A later drunken moment, though, ruins everything.

Give it a read — despite everything, Leitch does a pretty good job of portraying Ebert as a person. And a pretty nice, caring person, too.