Tonight, I had the good fortune to be invited to a screening of William Friedkin's 1977 thriller, Sorcerer. Friedkin is most famous for having directed The Exorcist and the Oscar-winning The French Connection, both of which belong in the pantheon of great films. After the closing credits, the organizer of the screening arranged to have Friedkin participate in a Q&A session with us via Skype. He quipped that Sorcerer star Roy Scheider became more difficult to work with after his great success in Jaws...which leads to this Blargh Post.
There are many overrated actors in Hollywood, but fewer underrated ones. Scheider is one of the latter. If you haven't seen The French Connection (Oscar-winner for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, etc.), you are missing out on many fine performances. Scheider was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Buddy Russo, and he earned it. He is very believable as a rough-and-tumble police detective, and expertly plays the "Robin" to Gene Hackman's "Batman".
Scheider as Amity Police Chief Martin Brody is the decent, middle-class average guy who provides the human center of the cast of Jaws. With larger-than-life Robert Shaw as Quint, and Richard Dreyfuss as the rich biologist Matt Hooper, Scheider provides a character that the audience can relate to. This cast was one of the best of the 1970s.
The undisputed star of Sorcerer, Scheider plays an Irish-American teamster who participates in a robbery gone wrong. Forced to flee the country, he ends up in a hell-hole of a central American country. Desperate to flee to a better hiding spot, he and several others in similar predicaments agree to transport by truck a decaying cache of dynamite through the jungle and mountains. As you might expect, it is a precarious situation. Scheider's sly humor always comes through in his characters, and this role is no exception.
After Marathon Man and All That Jazz (which resulted in a second Oscar nomination) Scheider never really had the opportunity to play many interesting roles. The 1980s saw him work, but not in films of the same caliber. The 1990s were even worse, with gigs in a number of straight-to-video flicks and a starring role in a less-than-impressive TV show featuring a talking dolphin:
Roy Scheider died of blood cancer in 2008. I, for one, will always appreciate his talent.
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