Dr. Morbius (Bill Weber) RIP

wow. I think anyone would aspire to have an obit like that. a life well lived.

i agree

Thanks, KJB

"Bill was a mensch, a raconteur, a secret teddy bear, and one of our most cherished friends"

that sums him up nicely even though he could be a testy old cuss at times. I adored his heartfelt hatred of garbage politicians and all-consuming passion for old Hollywood - he was a true original.

beautiful obit, thanks KJB. and great article, flappy!

Wonderful, thanks for both.

Bill did stand-up comedy for a time in his early twenties, earning praise from the likes of Brett Butler and Jeff Foxworthy.

Morbz, you need to come back. I still have some questions.

Also, Bill's sister Cathy wanted to let you all know how much she appreciates all the comments she's been seeing.

xpost haha pp - I had the same thought when I saw Jeff Foxworthy

thirded lol

you might be a Morbius if you KO chickenshit hillbillies really fast

crying again rn

Instead of crying, y'all, go fucking watch The Prisoner of Shark Island.

we are going to cry if we want to

still planning on watching all of John Ford's movies but haven't gotten to them yet

Foxworthy used to be a skilled joke writer, and in the 80s and 90s would have been playing to general audiences. It's a good affirmation in context.

I still have questions.

His obit ;_;

And pardon me for saying so but he was so young! Only 58 what the fucking fuck!!!

Fuck cancer.

Yeah, I didn't know him and didn't interact with him much - mostly because I found his snark hilarious even though politically I disagreed with it. His presence is definitely missed. He was like the dad around here in some ways.

Yeah for all the jibes about morbs being old he was no age at all.

BOXCAR

I kinda liked finding out that his brother in law is called Gary Cooper.

thank you for that beautiful piece, flappy, which is not only a wonderful tribute to morbs but also describes the uniqueness of ilx -- as an institution, as a cultural archive, as a weird phenomenon -- better than anything i've ever read. i think there's an old (really, really old) post where i expressed some skepticism about john ford, and morbs's consistent high regard for him was one of the things that got me to go back and take a closer look. one more reason i'm glad i've stuck with ilx all these years. (and i have to add: thank you for slagging off noah berlatsky, the most mediocre writer on earth.)

I've just returned from a small break, and seen this. RIP Morbs :(

Bill's affection for Ford and Spielberg belied his standoffish reputation.

― Fat Tub O'Goon (I M Losted), Tuesday, October 27, 2020 2:13 AM bookmarkflaglink

Yeah for all the jibes about morbs being old he was no age at all.

― all cats are beautiful (silby), Tuesday, October 27, 2020 2:16 AM bookmarkflaglink

especially since those jokes started over a decade ago!

Who among us has not been making jokes about being ancient since we were about 32?

And pardon me for saying so but he was so young! Only 58 what the fucking fuck!!!

I hope to read this thread soon. I was aware of his illness, but had missed news of his passing til now. I will miss him here, terribly.

I had long read many accounts of what a kind good person he was irl, regardless his brilliant-but- curmudgeonly ilx persona. RIP morbs.

*sigh*

yeah

I'm still finding this quite hard to process

yeah i think that goes for a lot of us here for all kinds of reasons

I was pretty certain it was coming soon when he left the hospital back on September but still.

I got a message from the treasurer of Silent Clowns - she and her husband will really miss hanging out with "Young Bill Weber"

As someone that never ever posts here, seeing the sense of community implicit in the responses of everyone in this thread has made me yearn for what you all have and appreciate the value of individuals such as Dr. Morbius to exist as a centre of gravity for quality community. My condolences to everyone that knew this man whose name till now has resided in my filing cabinet (but now has significant importance to me). Love.

Craft

❤️

I dipped out of this thread for like a week because it got too intense but I just caught up with everything and am super moved by everyone's posts, it's made me reflect a lot not only on Bill but also ILX as a community and the ways in which it's gone so far past just "talking abt music on the internet" and how many ppl have formed meaningful connections both online and off through this, I feel super lucky to have had something like this in my life for so long (14 years!?)

Also, for others who have mentioned pleasant Julius' memories, they're selling t-shirts and have a GoFundMe on their website (https://www.juliusbarny.com/), I bought a shirt yesterday and will think of Bill fondly when I wear it.

and, boy, did our Bill disdain fashion!

Well, luckily, that's all he disdained.

lol

haha!!

idgi

Dunno if Morbs was a Pet Shop Boys fan, but this essay that Ned posted years ago makes me think of him:

A peek into the past: Neil Tennant on the power of hate

have to say, of all the female candidates we initially had, I did not expect Klobuchar to be the last one standing.

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, February 12, 2020 10:15 AM (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

she's the Pet Shop Boys candidate

"being boring"

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, February 12, 2020 10:19 AM (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Can he forgive her?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAOLL1jpp4s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn9E5i7l-Eg

I spent some time combing the archives of ILX and Morbs' Letterboxd profile to come up with a pretty good snapshot of the "Morbs canon," in order to give him a posthumous ballot for ILX's all-time movies poll.

Hope everyone gets time to watch a bunch of these in his honor!

TOP TIER

2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Atalante, L' (Jean Vigo, 1934)
Black Girl (Ousmane Sembène, 1966)
Chienne, La (Jean Renoir, 1931)
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
Crowd, The (King Vidor, 1928)
Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
Europa '51 (Roberto Rossellini, 1952)
Fires on the Plain (Kon Ichikawa, 1959)
Fox and His Friends (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1975)
King of Comedy, The (Martin Scorsese, 1982)
Leopard, The (Luchino Visconti, 1963)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls, 1948)
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The (John Ford, 1962)
Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976)
Miracle of Morgan's Creek, The (Preston Sturges, 1943)
Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)
Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936)
Moment of Innocence, A (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996)
Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967)
Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell, 1936)
Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
Tristana (Luis Buñuel, 1970)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

RUNNERS-UP

Adam's Rib (George Cukor, 1949)
Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog 1972)
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959)
Andrei Roublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
Aparajito (Satyajit Ray, 1956)
Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
Boat, The (Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline, 1921)
Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958)
Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)
Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol & Paul Morrissey, 1966)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
City of Sadness, A (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989)
Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)
Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
Cops! (Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline, 1922)
Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)
Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943)
Dekalog (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1989)
Diary of a Chambermaid (Luis Buñuel, 1964)
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
Edvard Munch (Peter Watkins, 1974)
Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg, 1987)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
Far from Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002)
Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1998)
Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964)
GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The (Sergio Leone, 1966)
Harland County U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple, 1976)
Heart of the World, The (Guy Maddin, 2000)
His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)
How To Kiss (Bill Plympton, 1989)
I Know Where I'm Going! (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1945)
I'm Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007)
Inn in Tokyo, An (Yasujirō Ozu, 1935)
In the Street (James Agee, Helen Levitt & Janice Loeb, 1948)
Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1918)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956)
It's a Gift (Norman Z. McLeod, 1934)
Jetée, La (Chris Marker, 1962)
Joy of Life, The (Jenni Olson, 2005)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
Lady Eve, The (Preston Sturges, 1941)
Lady from Shanghai, The (Orson Welles, 1947)
Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944)
Law and Order (Frederick Wiseman, 1969)
Local Hero (Bill Forsythe, 1983)
Lola (Jacques Demy, 1961)
Lola (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1981)
Long Goodbye, The (Robert Altman, 1973)
Long-Haired Hare (Chuck Jones, 1949)
Lost in America (Albert Brooks, 1985)
Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian, 1932)
Maltese Falcon, The (John Huston, 1941)
Man Escaped, A (Robert Bresson, 1956)
Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944)
Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme, 1980)
Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2005)
North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
One Week (Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline, 1920)
Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1939)
On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)
Othello (Orson Welles, 1951)
Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)
Passion of Joan of Arc, The (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)
Plaisir, Le (Max Ophüls, 1952)
Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Rabbit of Seville (Chuck Jones, 1950)
Rayon Vert, Le (Eric Rohmer, 1986)
Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948)
Round-Up, The (Miklós Jancsó, 1966)
Saddest Music in the World, The (Guy Maddin, 2003)
Seventh Seal, The (Ingmar Bergman, 1956)
Shop Around the Corner, The (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940)
Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, 1955)
Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
Son, The (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2002)
Sons of the Desert (William A. Seiter, 1933)
Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)
Stars in My Crown (Jacques Tourneur, 1950)
Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme, 1984)
Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
Tabu (F.W. Murnau, 1931)
They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948)
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
Umbrellas of Cherborg, The (Jacques Demy, 1964)
Underground (Emir Kusturica, 1995)
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (Frank Tashlin, 1957)
Xala (Ousmane Sembène, 1975)

(Plus dozens more from Ford, Fassbinder, Hitchcock, Spielberg, etc.)