Roy Scheider Dies.

Apologies, this would have been up yesterday, if it wasn’t for the internet gremlins.

Roy Scheider, one of the definitive bad ass laureates of American cinema, passed away yesterday after a two year battle with cancer. Scheider was most obviously known for his Chief Brody in Jaws, but he was a reliable (usually supporting) player in several other notably great movies: The French Connection, The Seven-Ups, Marathon Man, Sorcerer, Klute, Naked Lunch, as well as the much better than they’re known to be All That Jazz, and 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

Scheider had something that many stars, or even great actors, would kill for: your intent, insatiable curiosity. You always, in any given movie, wanted more Roy Scheider. Marathon Man boasts Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman, but it’s Scheider you wonder about. The French Connection has one of the definitive Gene Hackman performances, but you can’t help but wonder why the Scheider dosage hasn’t been upped just a little more. Some supporting, mysterious bad asses whither when promoted to the center ring: Scheider only further justified the intrigue. Sorcerer, William Friedkin’s initially maligned, but now rightly revered remake of Wages of Fear, is definitive Scheider: hard, mysterious, unsentimental, fascinating and charismatic. Scheider, like many of the 1970s icons, is a MAN first and foremost. You don’t watch him and wonder where he studied technique, you watch him and wonder when he’s gonna call the bullshit he knows everyone is feeding him.

Scheider, and this is the mark of a real star, is never caught trying to be cool, and like Bogart (to which a few blogs compared him), he projects a restless intelligence. Scheider’s cynicism isn’t brought on by ego, but by a deep reservoir of sadness and understanding. Scheider, again like all the truly great tough guys, isn’t terrified of sentiment or vulnerability though. Watch the scene between Chief Brody and son at the dinner table in Jaws, where the son mimics Brody’s hand movements. Try not rooting for this man to kill the shark after a scene like that.

Scheider was also a wonderful dickhead. Have you seen Francis Ford Coppola’s much better than you think The Rainmaker? The film is a refreshingly leisurely handling of the usual Grisham hugger-mugger, and Scheider shows up late inning as one of the faceless executives who’s trying to shirk responsibility. I don’t remember what he’s trying to shirk responsibility for, but I remember the act of shirking, if only because it signaled a brief, welcome return for a man who deserved to be treated better in the last few decades. Also check out The Rainmaker for a nice little Mickey Rourke performance, ten years before it was hip to re-hire Mickey Rourke.

I haven’t seen the film in a long time, but you should also watch All That Jazz, in which the legendary Bob Fosse recruited Scheider as method of self-examination, in another of his too few lead roles. Scheider and Fosse create what has to be one of the most macho theatre directors in movies: but they manage that without compromising the more outlandishly temperamental aspects of what we think of when we think “acclaimed theatre director.” The performance and the film are superb examples of mutual glorification and deconstruction, or glory deconstruction, which what is most supposed deconstruction is anyway (see also: Allen, Woody).

But Scheider would’ve told me to shut up by now, if only with a fleeting look.

Posted on February 12th, 2008 in Bits & Pieces |

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