Roy Scheider (1932-2008)

This past Sunday actor Roy Scheider passed away at age 75. He was best known for his role as the beseiged police chief of Amity in Steven Speilberg's JAWS. Before that, he caught the attention of critics, movie-goers and his acting peers as Gene Hackman's partner in THE FRENCH CONNECTION. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal. He was nominated again for Best Actor in 1979 for Bob Fosses's ALL THAT JAZZ wherein he played the self-loathing, egomaniacal, self-destructive choreographer Joe Gideon. The whole film was a Fellini-like 8 1/2 reflection of Fosse's own life at that time. His portayal was mesmerizing ... an inbelievable whirlwind of movement, sweat and energy with a cigarette dangling from his lip screaming direction to his dancers, spinning out of control and finally into a fatal heart attack set to an amazing fantasy musical number featuring a hospital heart surgery operating room, the Angel of Death and a tap dancing performance by Ben Vereen. It sounds insane, it was, but it was unforgettable. It was an anti-musical of sadness, self-loathing and dark humor. Scheider was beyond magnificent in a role originally intended for Richard Dreyfuss. I cannot imagine anyone but Scheider in the role, though you would never think of him in the role and it was justifiably given its due with Oscar nominated recognition. I recall hoping against hope that he or Peter Sellers, in BEING THERE, would be awarded that year, but ... they lost to Dustin Hoffman in a very sentimental turn in KRAMER VS. KRAMER. I will always remember him as an actor with a superlative sense of intense dedication. He was believable in every role I saw him in ... whether it was the father and law man of solid principle trying to preserve a sense of community against a force of nature, the pill-popping hard working artist and dancer, the C.I.A. brother of Dustin Hoffman in MARATHON MAN, the hard driven truck hauler of liquid nitro in William Friedkin's SORCERER, the Los Angeles policeman at the helm of a futuristic armed helicopter in BLUE THUNDER, the psychiatrist involved in a bizarre Manhattan murder in Robert Benton's STILL OF THE NIGHT, or one of my favorite roles in Jonathan Demme's Hitchcockian flavored thriller THE LAST EMBRACE. In that film he played a secret agent who, while sitting in a restaurant with his wife, watches her assassinated before his eyes. The entire film he is consumed with guilt, wondering why and who and if he might have been the intended target. Each time I have viewed him in a film, he is different, different men of varying professions and complexity ... but he was always excellent and always the person he was inhabiting. He had that aura of a tough passionate New York actor, though he was from New Jersey, originally ... and you just don't see his type much anymore. See some of these films and see for yourself. I think you'll see what I mean.