Source: NYDailyNews
Author: Helen Kennedy

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Famed movie critic Roger Ebert, who was robbed of speech by throat cancer, has a new computerized voice cobbled together from words he recorded for DVD commentary tracks.

“It’s nice to think of all these great movies sloshing around and coming out as my voice,” he wrote in a column Sunday.

Ebert’s new voice is a mix of words he said on the DVD critiques for everything from classics like “Casablanca” and “Citizen Kane” to the cult porn film he wrote, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.”

He wrote that he had been using standard computer programs to turn typed text into sound, including one his wife liked where the speaker “had a British accent and sounded like a slightly crabby headmaster.”

But his own words – taken from original recordings unearthed in warehouses at Warner Brothers, the Criterion Collection, New Line and 20th Century Fox – are a vast improvement, he said.

“Yes, ‘Roger Jr.’ needs to be smoother in tone and steadier in pacing, but the little rascal is good. To hear him coming from my own computer made me ridiculously happy,” Ebert wrote.

“I played it for (wife) Chaz, and she said, yes, she could tell it was me.”

Since being diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2002, and suffering numerous surgeries and some near-fatal complications, Ebert, of Chicago, lost the ability to speak, eat and drink. He uses a feeding tube and needs 24-hour nursing care.

He has written poignantly about his memories of food and missing the companionship of the dinner table.

Ebert, 67, who once dated Oprah Winfrey, will appear on her show Tuesday, talking in his new – and yet also old – voice.