Escape Into Books
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For four decades, Chicago critic and broadcaster Nick Digilio has watched movies for a living. Now he’s turned that long, strange trip into a book: 40 Years, 40 Films, a hybrid of film history and personal memoir that tracks one pivotal movie from every year of his reviewing life.
Published by Chicago indie house Eckhartz Press, the book moves from cult classics and Oscar winners to underseen horror gems, using each title as a jumping-off point to talk about Digilio’s own life on and off the air. In a new interview with RogerEbert.com, he calls it a way of revisiting both the films and the person he was when he first saw them.
A Life in Movies, From WGN Nights to Podcasts
Digilio reviewed his first film professionally in March 1985—Friday the 13th Part V—after longtime WGN personality Roy Leonard invited the then–twenty‑something movie obsessive to start covering the “crap” he didn’t want to see anymore. That on‑air break kicked off a 35‑plus‑year run at WGN Radio, where Digilio became a fixture of overnight talk and Chicago film chatter, before shifting to podcasting in 2022.[1]
In 40 Years, 40 Films, each chapter centers on a single movie—from Blue Velvet and Barton Fink to recent blockbusters like Dune: Part Two—while also chronicling where Digilio was in his life and career. He writes about his mentor Leonard, his time in Chicago storefront theater, and the shift from live radio to downloads and earbuds. The book also dives into his long‑running love for actor Jeff Bridges and his all‑time favorite movie, Magnolia, which gets a full essay of its own.
Early readers from the arts world are already weighing in. Singer‑songwriter Suzanne Vega and actor Stephen Tobolowsky have both praised the book’s mix of behind‑the‑scenes anecdotes and accessible criticism, according to Digilio’s announcement on his site.[2]
Sobriety, Horror Movies, and a Changing Media Landscape
Not all of the stories are nostalgic. Digilio has been open about alcoholism and sobriety with his listeners, and the book returns to that subject in a chapter on Mad Max: Fury Road. He describes first seeing George Miller’s film multiple times in a single day while drinking—and then seeing it again, newly sober, and realizing how much more of the movie’s detail and craft he could finally take in.
That personal honesty runs alongside his trademark genre enthusiasms. The 40 chosen films lean hard on horror, psychological thrillers, and what he calls “remote‑droppers”—movies like Midnight Run that he’ll always stop to watch when channel‑surfing late at night. For readers who love tracing the cross‑pollination between books, films, and TV, it’s another critic‑driven roadmap through modern screen storytelling, much like recent deep dives into Bernard Herrmann’s Hitchcock scores in a new biography of the composer.
Digilio also uses the book to reflect on how criticism itself has changed, from the days when local callers could challenge a host live on WGN to a podcast era driven by on‑demand listening and social media feedback. For readers fascinated by the business and culture of movie coverage—as with recent looks at how Netflix data proves just how many hits start as books—his vantage point offers a ground‑level account of how audiences follow stories across formats.
40 Years, 40 Films debuted with a Chicago launch event on December 12, underscoring how closely tied it is to the city where Digilio built his career.[2] For film‑loving readers, it’s less a strict canon list than an invitation: here’s one critic’s life in 40 movies—now go argue with the choices, and maybe discover a few new favorites along the way.
