I'm rather bummed by the news of Roy Scheider's demise (and I'd like to note that - as I wrote that - I pronounced the word "demise" like Quint talking about his third wife):
Roy Scheider, the jagged-nosed actor who brought complexity to tough-guy roles in such films as "The French Connection," "Jaws" and "All That Jazz," and was also known for political activism off the set, died Sunday afternoon at a hospital in Little Rock, Ark. He was believed to be 75, and had been battling a form of blood cancer for three years.
Scheider, who lived in Sag Harbor, N.Y., died at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital, which specializes in the treatment of multiple myeloma, a form of cancer that affects blood cells. He died of complications from the disease, said Leslie Taylor, a university spokeswoman.
[...]
In a career spanning four decades, Scheider appeared in more than 60 films, as well as in numerous roles on stage and television. But his most acclaimed roles came in a span of eight years in the 1970s, beginning with "The French Connection" in 1971.He probably will be best remembered for his role as Martin Brody, the water-shy police chief in "Jaws" (1975) who uttered the immortal line: "You're gonna need a bigger boat," after seeing the size of the shark. He once lamented that the role "will be on my tombstone."
His favorite role, he said, was playing choreographer Joe Gideon, a thinly disguised stand-in for Broadway choreographer Bob Fosse, in "All That Jazz" (1979) -- a role for which the former boxer had to learn to dance. "That will always be my favorite film," he told the San Jose Mercury News in 1999. "But I never worked harder in my life. I felt I had to prove myself to the dance company. I didn't want to misrepresent them. . . . I was in relatively good shape. But at the end of the day, I'd return to the Holiday Inn with my Tiger Balm."
I admit, my first exposure to Scheider - and a big reason why I loved the guy - was Jaws. Like Harrison Ford in Raiders, it's impossible to picture anyone else as Chief Brody, even when you realize that everyone from Charlton Heston to Robert Duvall was considered for the role.
But he had plenty of memorable parts, in addition to the aforementioned French Connection and All That Jazz, especially:
The Seven-Ups - Solid performance by Scheider is almost lost in '70s New York atmosphere. Sweet car chase, though.
Marathon Man - Scheider played Dustin Hoffman's secret agent brother, and I was always sort of disappointed nothing ever came of Goldman's 1986 sequel, Brothers.
Sorcerer - Freidkin was apparenly not too happy he had to settle for Scheider as the lead, who's second banana to the rain forest cinematography anyway. It's neither of their best work, and was a box office flop, but I'd still give it a look.
Jaws 2 - Give the man credit, he turns in a perfectly acceptable performance in what was perhaps the most inevitable sequel of all time. Scheider's "tombstone" comments are pretty hollow in the context of his coming back to the trough a second time, however.
Blue Thunder - Please spare me your aviation nitpicks, for it's clear the filmmakers never anticipated the heightened scrutiny that would come with the VHS and DVD era. "Catch you later," indeed.
2010 - I remember almost nothing about this movie. Was Helen Mirren naked in it? Because that would've been something.
52 Pick-Up - Rita Kempley of the Washington Post called this "Death Wish for yuppies," I prefer to think of it as a white blaxploitation movie, with Clarence Williams III thrown in for authenticity's sake.
They go downhill from there, really. Only true masochists should subject themselves to Listen to Me (Kirk Cameron's last movie that didn't have "left behind" in the title) or The Peacekeeper (Dolph Lundgren and Montel Williams: together at last). I even tried to get into SeaQuest: DSV, but often found myself falling asleep four hours earlier than intended on Sunday as a result.
RIP, Roy.
I recently watched a cable marathon of Jaws 1-3, and I was surprised to see that Part 2 (which I hadn’t viewed in about a decade) was actually about 1/3 a great movie, with Scheider’s performance going way beyond “perfectly acceptable” into “surprisingly powerful and affecting.”
Don’t get me wrong—Jaws 2 is a SERIOUSLY flawed flick, with glaring problems that can’t be overlooked. The Shark appears way too early and way too blatantly; sure, the audience already knows what to expect, but the initial reveal just creates a sucking vacuum of suspense. The film also violates the tenets of sequeldom by unforgivably withholding the good stuff…there shouldn’t be an inverse relationship between increased killer fishage and the resulting carnage—aside from a shot that looks like food coloring in an aquarium, the film is bloodless. And the whole enterprise completely crumbles at about the halfway mark when the Sheriff-centric plot jarringly shifts into showcasing the cringeworthy, insufferable teens (who, after the terrifying events from just about two years prior, never should’ve gone near the water in the first place).
But you know what? Jaws 2 has a legitimate Lovecraftian undercurrent that, while squandered, can’t be ignored, and Scheider OWNS those early scenes. The palpable transition of his traumatized Sheriff Brody from skittish unease, to desperate distress, to haunted madness as he tries to save an ungrateful and ignorant populace is striking, and his physical transformation—with increasingly haggard and wan features, progressively wider, whiter, and wilder eyes, and an ever-present sickly sheen of sweat—just adds to the depth. The viewer actually believes that Brody’s lost it by the time he’s casually and methodically hollowing out his bullets and filling them with cyanide…and then it’s confirmed when he uses said bullets in an unhinged, credibility-destroying beach rampage. After his well-deserved firing, Brody is broken and boozy and lost; ultimately, The Shark did devour him. (Well, until he has to play super-dad to his idiot sons, that is.)
And Jaws 2 never really needed The Shark proper, because all of the pieces are there for everything to simply be paranoia on Brody’s part. The missing divers at the Orca wreckage, the whale carcass, the exploding skiiers, and the too-few gobbled extras: all could’ve been accidents without any connection. Yes, it certainly would be a cheat to make Jaws 2 jaws-less, but so much more could’ve been mined from Brody’s nightmares coming to life around him, and the film shamefully abandons all the ominous buildup to cop out with the cowardly and trite “rescue the offspring” path for Brody’s redemption.
Had the script maintained the menace and dread of the beginning, with the setpieces staged in a different order and the focus being exclusively on Brody Vs The Unknown / Brody Vs Society / Brody Vs Himself, you could have had a pretty nifty flick.
(But, then again, that probably means we’d lose the awesomeness of seeing a shark eat a helicopter.)
Helen Mirren in 2010? Meh:
At our house we are seriously bummed about Mr. Scheider passing. His depiction of Chief Brody—everyman faced with an unusual problem—completely expresses my husband’s fear of the water—a guy afraid of the water who lives on an island. “You are going to need a bigger boat” will be forever uttered to express particular dismay at a seemingly insurmountable problem. Right along with Indiana Jones’ “Truck? What truck?” to express determination.
He was also a pretty creepy serial killer on Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Was he Det. Bobby Goren’s father?
Scheider was marvelous in 2010; you should see it again. Of course, I’m a sucker for anything by Clark. There were some nice moments between Scheider and Elcar (as Floyd’s jovial Russian counterpart). And, well…you can’t go wrong with having a dolphin pool in your freaking living room.
Also, for the record, All That Jazz was a seminal movie in my young life. And now you know…the rest of the story.
Seaquest:DSV was a total yawnfest until Roy was replaced by Michael Ironside and they stopped doing trippy eco-friendly ‘save the space dolphins’ stories and started doing actual science fiction action-adventure. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen until the third season, and by that time, NBC was so sick of all the bitching various cast and crew members had been doing constantly about script quality and creative direction during the first two seasons that they just gave up on the fucker and killed it.
It’s a pity. That last half season — the 13 episodes when the show was called SEAQUEST 2032 — were, briefly, the best SF on TV at the time. What’s more of a pity is that very few hardcore SEAQUEST fans stuck around for it, and it may never be released on DVD. (Although if it was, and I had a chance to watch the eps again, maybe I’d discover they weren’t as good as I thought. It works out that way much more often than I want it to.)
None of which should be taken as any indication I didn’t like Roy Scheider’s acting; ALL THAT JAZZ is one of my favorite films and BLUE THUNDER is a furtive pleasure, too.
While running the risk of sullying this obit piece with comments about film in which to see Helen Mirren nekkid, I would point out that she was in the Penthouse Film Production of Caligula…nekkid.
Sorcerer was a dark, distressing film, unhappily underrated. I saw it in Houston when it came out in 1977 (the year I got married!). Thoroughly depressing, it haunts me still.