Because I am a college student with no self-discipline, I frequently skip class for no good reason whatsoever. It really doesn't take much for me to cut out on a power-lecture. It could be the presence of the cute barista with the short brown hair at the State Street Starbucks, or something as simple as Robert Byrd popping up on C-SPAN looking like Mason Verger's little brother.
This past week, I was trying to make it to a political science discussion when I made the mistake of flipping on my television in order to check out the weather. I probably could have just as easily gone online to find this information, but one of my friends told me that the weather girl wasn't wearing a bra, so I felt the need to investigate. As usual, my skills as an investigative reporter failed me, mainly because by some stroke of luck, "Jaws II" happened to be on whatever second-rate cable channel I had been watching the night before. And really, this was perfect, because it gave me an excuse not to have to go to class and to ruminate a little bit about one of my all-time favorites of the silver screen — the man, the myth, the legend: Roy Scheider.
I maintain that over the entire course of humanity, nobody was cooler than Roy Scheider from 1970 through 1978, with the possible exception of Alexander the Great circa 340 – 323 B.C. Lots of people have been cool, but what separates Scheider from the pack of other angular, intense actors (and long-dead Macedonian emperors) is that Scheider's era of greatness happens to coincide with what is widely agreed upon that movies reached their zenith as an art form.
During this eight-year clip, Scheider happened to appear in some of the most popular and influential movies of all-time — "Klute," "The French Connection," "Jaws," "Marathon Man," and the underrated duo of "The Seven-Ups" and Billy Friedkin's lost classic "Sorcerer." If that's not a murderers row, then I don't know what is.
By this point you are saying to yourself, "Yes, Ray, but aren't you forgetting icons of cool like Steve McQueen and Paul Newman?" Well, let's take this on a case-by-case basis.
First up, Steve McQueen. Allow me to say I think Steve McQueen is just a bit overrated: He only made three decent movies ("The Cincinnati Kid," "The Getaway" and "The Magnificent Seven"), and by all accounts, he was pretty much one of the five worst human beings to ever live. He also shacked up with Ali MacGraw, which seems wrong on so many levels — not least of all because he stole her from Robert Evans. Also, there is the fact that it seems like every guy who wants to convince women he is some sort of a charming rogue has that same lame poster from "Bullitt" in his apartment, which is absurd because everybody knows "The Cincinnati Kid" is the better movie.
Despite legitimately being one of the thirty or so greatest movies ever made, "The Cincinnati Kid" indirectly illustrated why Roy Scheider is cooler than Steve McQueen. Along with being the movie that put Norman Jewison on the map and predicted a nation's obsession with five-card stud a good 40 years out, "The Cincinnati Kid" also features supporting turns from a 24-year-old Ann-Margret and a 21-year-old Tuesday Weld. We could just keep going on making movies for another 5,000 years, and I would lay odds that we would never again see two women as desirable as Weld and Margret in "The Cincinnati Kid." Honestly, Robert Hays could have played the lead role and he would have seemed pretty cool.
Scheider never had that kind of support. The closest thing he had to a love interest was Lorraine Gray in two "Jaws" movies, which is just sad when you really think about it. Of course, the fact that Scheider never had a legitimate shoulder to cry on only doubles his cool points, since it makes him seem like even more of an iconoclast and proves conclusively that legit cool guys don't need women to reaffirm their coolness.
The only person who runs close to Scheider in my mind is Paul Newman — cultural icon, all-around good guy and purveyor of above-average salad dressing. I will be the first person to admit that Paul Newman rocked the house in "Cool Hand Luke" — not only is it the second greatest movie ever made, but it also introduced generations of drunk college guys to the exciting possibility of trying to eat 50 eggs. "Harper," "The Sting," "Slap Shot," "Hud" and "The Verdict" are all excellent movies. But in the end, Newman's own fame works against him to a certain degree: He is such an icon — for his filmography, his eyes and his foodstuffs — that he falls more into the category of American Treasure than cool guy.
Nobody confuses Roy Scheider with an American Treasure. In his best movies, he still has that unpolished, north-Jersey attitude about him that skirts the line between jackass and reasonable man. See, this is what makes "Jaws" the perfect adventure movie: The three leads are a demented fisherman (played by tax dodger Robert Shaw), a manic marine biologist (played by Richard Dreyfus, who may or not have been coked out of his mind during the entire movie) and the solid, reliable cop who doesn't want to be out on this tiny goddamn boat and is sick of chumming this shit.
And this is what makes Roy Scheider so brilliant. In one way or another, we're all sick of chumming this shit, and Roy Scheider is one of the few actors we've ever had who understands this basic truth of human nature. In his performances, we see a man of weary professionalism and boundless dedication who still finds the time to bust his little brother's chops for running in so many marathons or complain about being forced to run a truckload of nitroglycerin through the Andes. Roy Scheider doesn't give a damn about being cool, all he cares about is getting through the last half-century. By performing without pretense, his characters inadvertently spoke for an entire pre-baby boom generation. His face is one of sun, Marlboros and Johnny Walker. His hands, briefly visible pulling in some cable at the end of "Jaws II," are scarred from double-shifts, and his gunfighter eyes speak of sleepless nights.
When you look at Roy Scheider's leathery, wind-swept face, all you may see is the weathered visage of an actor who put in some strong performances in a string of movies 30 years ago. But when I look at him, I see something more — I see America. And that's pretty cool.
Ray Gustini is a sophomore majoring in English and journalism. Do you think Roy Scheider is the coolest man ever? E-mail Ray at [email protected].
