Friends of Ebert: Jon Vickers

Jon Vickers, Director of the IU Cinema

“I knew Roger, first meeting in the late 1990s ... He would always make time to talk if I saw him at a festival or elsewhere in public. He had a summer/weekend home near our cinema in Michigan.”

“I feel that Roger Ebert wrote criticism that could be both intellectual and accessible, and his love for the art form always come through. I can think of no other critic who was such an ambassador for the movies. He will be missed.”

What Ebert said about Vickers:

"I know a couple named Jon and Jennifer Vickers, who moved to Three Oaks, Mich., (population 1,829) and bought the local movie theater. It’s 30 miles from the closest multiplex. They show first-run art films and after eight years are a solid success."

“I think audiences must be developed. In the town of Three Oaks, Mich., a movie lover named Jon Vickers bought the little downtown movie house and began to show foreign and independent art films. It was slow going at first, but now, six years later, his theater is doing great business and is sold out on weekends."

"A friend of mine who lives in the town says, ‘no, the patrons aren’t all ‘summer people’ from Chicago.’ She goes to the theater in the middle of the winter and sees the same local people she sees in the supermarket. People are not dumb unless you treat them as dumb.”