Un Homme est Mort
Roy Scheider, dead at 75. Though I’ve got a head start on the Monday morning news sources, I assume this’ll be heavily covered, so just a brief word on the man’s sequel and remake work. He garnered a brief, snarky mention in this blog a few weeks ago, but the man generally did good work.
Scheider appeared more reputably in sequels to two AFI Top 100-type movies, reprising his role as Chief Brody in Jaws 2 (before getting out while the getting was good) and taking over William Sylvester’s role as “moon…American…Floyd, Heywood R.” in the unloved 2010. He didn’t make it into The French Connection II, or it could have been three.
His chief role as Martin Brody in Jaws lent him an authoritative air in casting directors’ minds; after Jaws, he went on to play three doctors (though I’m not entirely convinced of Dr. Benway’s credentials in Naked Lunch)(despite the name, Marathon Man’s Doc was not an M.D.), an officer, two colonels, a mayor, a captain (a sea captain, on three seasons of SeaQuest DSV), an apparently Spanish Cardinal, and Presidents Carlson, Baker, and Cahill.
His sequel work beyond the abovementioned is fairly limited: Angels Don’t Sleep Here (the sequel to Backflash), Dracula II, and Dracula III. His only remake is the 2004 Punisher do-over, unless you feel like counting All That Jazz.
Tags: jaws, roy scheider
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The argument being that All That Jazz being a remake of Fosse’s life? Or of 8 1/2?
8 1/2 is what I’ve generally seen, though of course I’m always open to new and interesting theses.
Thanks for the reminder about those two sequels (one more ostentatiously Eastern European than the next) to Wes Craven Presents Wes Craven’s Dracula 2000: A Wes Craven Presentation. (The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of horror franchises) Although considering that both films are sequels to Dracula 2000, and both feature lower numbers after the titular name, maybe it doesn’t count? Is there a rulebook on this?
Nice to see that R-Scheid was representing New Jersey, too. Looking back, there was a little bit of Orange, NJ in Martin Brody. It was the unremarkable white guy part.