Video: It Stinks! You're Crazy!

Twelve years ago, Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and now better known simply as "the fat one," was asked if he would appear on a new movie-review program being produced by WTTW, the local PBS station. He was intrigued by the idea but not by the prospective costar: his archrival from the Chicago Tribune, Gene Siskel. "The answer," Ebert recalls, "was at the tip of my tongue: no." Nor did Siskel, now frequently referred to as "the other one," relish the thought of sharing a stage with "the most hated guy in my life."

Siskel and Ebert still...