A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
|
|
|
World of Westfahl |
Encyclopedia Introduction |
All Entries |
Acknowledgements
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
|
SCHEIDER, ROY (1932–2008). American actor.
It is not surprising to learn that Scheider
originally sought to excel in athletics, not theatrics, but after having his
nose broken in a boxing match, he looked around for a less dangerous outlet for
his fierce energies and ended up on stage. Transitioning into television in the
1960s, he also made an inauspicious film debut in The Curse of the Living
Corpse, but after some other forgettable performances, he finally got the
audience's attention, and an Oscar nomination, as a police officer in The
French Connection (1971). This led to his first major role as the most
unimpressive of the three male leads in Jaws, for which he was duly
punished by being the only lead actor summoned back for the sequel, the
unintentionally laughable Jaws II, wherein he essentially parodied his
own weak performance in the original. A series of further embarrassments
ensued: the film designed to establish him as a major film actor, the
misleadingly-titled Sorcerer (1977), didn't; in the surrealistic All
That Jazz, his tendency towards excess, matched by that of director Bob
Fosse, drove the film way over the top; and it is just as well that the fulsome
sentimentality of the Disney movie Tiger Town went largely unnoticed.
Only some successfully executed routines in the mildly futuristic Blue
Thunder served to counter Hollywood's growing suspicion that Scheider's
laborious histrionics were box-office poison.
Regarding his next major disappointment, 2010:
The Year We Make Contact, the kindest thing to say is that Scheider was
miscast. In the original 2001: A Space Odyssey, Heywood R. Floyd,
portrayed with appropriately limited skill by William Sylvester, was a perfect
embodiment of homo bureaucratis, a functional cog in the world's
societal machinery of which the supercomputer HAL was only a natural extension;
and, while the film's co-author Arthur C.
CLARKE
fleshed out the character in subsequent novels, he remained a man most
noteworthy for his humdrum ordinariness. To play such a character, why on Earth
would anyone cast an actor who would endeavor to transform Floyd into a
bellowing, passionate heroic figure? But that was one misguided aspect of
director Peter HYAMS's misguided vision, unsurprisingly repudiated by film
audiences.
In the 1990s, no longer being offered leading
roles in major films (unless one counts his unexpected appearance in Naked
Lunch), Scheider was called back to the spotlight one more time by Steven
SPIELBERG, who, having failed to emulate the success of Rod
SERLING's The Twilight Zone with Amazing Stories, now set his
sights lower and endeavored to emulate the success of Irwin
ALLEN's
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea with SeaQuest DSV. Incredibly, he
failed again, due in large part to his decision to cast Scheider as the captain
of the series's high-tech submarine. Watching him flail about, vainly
struggling to animate the proceedings, one gained a new appreciation for the
underrated talents of Richard BASEHART. Belatedly recognizing what the problem
was, the producers made a last, desperate effort to save SeaQuest DSV by
humiliatingly removing Scheider from his leading role and placing Michael
Ironside in command, but to no avail.
Soldiering on, Scheider maintained his
excellent physical condition by acting in whatever venue might welcome him,
though none of his productions ever seemed to find their way to any neighborhood
theatres. Among other incongruities, he oddly emerged as a favorite choice to
play the President of the United States (in Executive Target [1997], The
Peacekeeper, and Chain of Command) and portrayed a priest in two
direct-to-video sequels to Dracula 2000. It was officially a staph
infection that ended his life in 2008, but one prefers to think that, having
kept himself in overdrive for so many years, Roy Scheider simply wore himself
out. Meanwhile, the laidback Nicholson, about the same age, seems to be doing
fine—offering an object lesson, perhaps, for energetic young actors.
| ||||
To contact us about encyclopedia matters, send an email to Gary Westfahl. Hosted & Designed By:
If you find any Web site errors, typos or other stuff worth mentioning,
please send it to our Webmaster.
Copyright © 1999–2013 Gary Westfahl All Rights Reserved Worldwide
