Jeez. You watch a movie and write about it and then one of the actors has to go and die a couple of days later.
Roy Scheider’s character in Marathon Man is murdered halfway through that movie, but even as a government agent carrying diamonds for a Nazi war criminal he turned in one of his workmanlike performances as a sort of everyday guy in a strange situation. While he was never exactly an action hero, he had a lithe, snakelike speed that made him believable in movies like Jaws where his physicality was needed to stay alive.
I don’t remember seeing Jaws when it came out—I was only in my early teens—but my guilty Roy Schieder pleasures were from the period when he was trying to build on the great success of Spielberg’s film but not quite hitting it.
I will admit this here and now, since Barbara doesn’t read the blog: I loved All That Jazz. Barbara hates the movie because of Bob Fosse’s reprehensible personality and I think she feels it absolves him too much, but I’ve had a copy of the soundtrack for thirty years and even though I haven’t listened to it for twenty, I probably remember it by heart.
Then there’s Blue Thunder, the inspiration for the execrable TV series “Airwolf.” But I have that soundtrack too.
I’ve got a post that’s sitting on my hard drive about the French classic film Wages of Fear, which William Friedkin remade with Scheider in the starring role as Sorceror. Gotta bump that up on Netflix.
Here’s to Roy Scheider. Never let the sharks get you.