Jaws: Roy Scheider and his Brodyisms

While checking the listings for Birmingham’s Electric Cinema I saw the following:

Electric Beach Party – Jaws & Roy Scheider Tribute

Friday 18^th

Summer comes early to the Electric with this special tribute to the late, great Roy Scheider and one of the scariest films ever made. The Electric Cinema Film Orchestra will return with a full 22 piece orchestra! £9 standard and £15 sofa with free Pina Coladas!

That sounds like fun and I’ll probably go. Jaws is one of my favourite films and Scheider’s death in February has got me thinking a lot about it. Scheider was more synonymous with Jaws than even his co-stars Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss, but it wasn’t his only great film. His acting résumé featured numerous shark-free classics of 70s cinema including The French Connection, Marathon Man, All That Jazz and Klute.

He also turned up in films that weren’t so critically acclaimed but I like them anyway. For instance, he was great in John Frankenheimer’s adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s 52 Pick-Up (1986), David Cronenberg’s body horror remix of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (1991) and John Badham’s copter-based conspiracy thriller Blue Thunder (1983).

Mind you, I’ve always had an inordinate weakness for Elmore Leonard, William Burroughs and copter-based conspiracy thrillers.

Date movies

Scheider also starred in Peter Hyams’ criminally underrated sequel to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, entitled 2010: The Year We Made Contact (1984). Surprisingly, he didn’t appear in any other date movies of the era such as Spielberg’s 1941, Ridley Scott’s 1492 or the 1984 adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984).

(He was, however, perfectly cast in the role of stretchy super-genius Reed Richards in the 80s Fantastic Four movie I vividly imagined as a kid.)

Be that as it may, Scheider will always be remembered as Amity Island’s Police Chief Martin Brody and that’s just the way it should be. I love Jaws and have lost count of how many times I’ve watched it. In fact, my brother and I once kept an inflatable Jaws shark suspended above our pool table in lieu of a lamp. Only true fans would do something that ridiculous.

Like all my favourite films it’s part of who I am. Its scenes and characters are hard-wired into my imagination and can manifest themselves in strange and unpredictable ways.

Or to put it another way, I like to quote it a lot.

So Brody

For instance, when faced with the insufficient storage capacity of the modern supermarket shopping basket I’ll often snarl: “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” When Scheider ad-libbed that famous line during the filming of Jaws he didn’t get strange looks from shoppers, shelf stackers and instore security staff. While photographing people, I like to substitute the traditional “Say Cheese!” with Chief Brody’s more ballsy shark-slaying pose-prompt: “Smile, you son of a BITCH!” That gets a mixed response, especially at weddings. I’ve also been known to blurt out “This was no boating accident” to describe anything that doesn’t fit the strict maritime definition of “boating accident“.

In land-locked Birmingham, that tends to include most things.

Ad: Roy Scheider at Amazon

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52 Pick-Up (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

Based on the explosive bestseller by great American crime writer Elmore Leonard and with top-notch direction by legendary filmmaker John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate), 52 Pick-Up evokes the chilling reminder that if you have a lot, you have a lot to lose
Roy Scheider, Ann-Margret, Vanity (Actors)
John Frankenheimer (Director)
English (Subtitle)
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)

Bestseller No. 2

Night Game

Amazon Prime Video (Video on Demand)
Roy Scheider, Karen Young (Actors)
Peter Masterson (Director)
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English (Subtitle)

Bestseller No. 3

The Men's Club

Amazon Prime Video (Video on Demand)
Roy Scheider, Frank Langella (Actors)
Peter Medak (Director) - Leonard Michaels (Writer) - Thomas Coleman (Producer)
English (Playback Language)
English (Subtitle)

Bestseller No. 4

Seven Ups

Bestseller No. 5

Still Of The Night

Factory sealed DVD
Meryl Streep, Roy Scheider, Joe Grifasi (Actors)
Robert Benton (Director) - Story By David Newman And Robert Benton Screenplay By Robert Benton (Writer) - Arlene Donovan (Producer)
English, French (Subtitles)
English (Publication Language)

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Sorcerer (1977) (BD) [Blu-ray]

Roy Scheider, Francisco Rabal, Ramon Bieri (Actors)
William Friedkin (Director) - Walon Green (Writer) - William Friedkin (Producer)
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)

Bestseller No. 7

The Rage

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Lorenzo Lamas, Kristen Cloke, Gary Busey (Actors)
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English (Playback Language)
English (Subtitle)

Bestseller No. 8

Sorcerer

Amazon Prime Video (Video on Demand)
Roy Scheider, Francisco Rabal, Ramon Bieri (Actors)
William Friedkin (Director) - Walon Green (Writer) - William Friedkin (Producer)
English (Playback Language)
English (Subtitle)

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Jaws 3-Movie Collection [DVD]