Fade to Black - Roy Scheider

"You're going to need a bigger boat."

With that line, Roy Scheider cemented his place in movie history. The line is a beautiful piece of writing and acting, and it helped Scheider make Jaws the smash hit that it was.

Scheider died yesterday after fighting a battle with myeloma.

I always loved Roy Scheider. When I was a kid, Jaws made him the king of cool. Who else could climb the mast of a boat, face an oncoming great white shark, and blow it to smithereens while believably muttering, "Smile, you sonofabitch." For years I thought the line was, "Smile, you sonofa--" KA-BOOM. Later, with the miracle of VHS, I could rewind the scene, turn the volume way up, and find it. The missing "bitch."

Scheider made an excellent everyman. In Marathon Man he was great as Babe's older brother, and in French Connection he was superb as Popeye Doyle's partner. In 1979 he tried his hand at playing Bob Fosse, in the semi-bio-pic All That Jazz, and it got him an Oscar nomination.

My favorite scene in Jaws is when Drefuss and Shaw are comparing scars from the old days, showing off their machismo. There's a cut to Scheider, and he pulls up his shirt a little and looks at his belly, rubs at it, then sheepishly pulls the shirt back down. Stab wound? Bullet hole? He never says.

All That Jazz
Scheider never made it to superstar status. The big hiccup came when he had to turn down the choice role of Michael in The Deer Hunter. That one gave De Niro his uberactor moniker, while Scheider had to keep his contract commitment to film Jaws 2. It would be an understatement to say that Scheider got the short end of the stick on that deal, and I've often wondered if it stunted his career. From then on he was a very good character actor, and a leading stage man, but movie superstardom never arrived.

In his later years, he contented himself with TV, and much later, the odd anti-war demonstration. I never watched him much during this stretch. Seeing the star of Jaws act as a nice guy in SeaQuest just didn't do it for me. His post-80's films were just so-so, and I felt a little sorry for him. No need to, since he was crying himself to sleep in a big bed full of cash, but I just thought his career could have been more, leaning towards Gene Hackman or Morgan Freeman.

Not to be, but no matter. From now until the end of entertainment, somewhere on late night TV, you'll hear those magic words: "You're going to need a bigger boat."

Photos: Yahoo Movies