Gent

Just a brief pause before le deluge tomorrow where either Obama is stopped or rolls on like a freight train, or maybe doesn't hit blow-out expectations and somehow the Clintons spin that into a win.

I was fortunate enough to enjoy Roy Scheider speaking in person after one of his films, The Fourth War (John Frankenheimer, 1990) screened at NYU. It wasn't Scheider's best film or biggest budgeted, but he was, as always, great to watch.

Scheider was a total gent. He answered any and all question with a winning combination of self-respect and very funny humility. Wonderful stories about having all this rehearsal time with Richard Dreyfuss on Jaws because Spielberg's mechanical shark didn't work, so that the two of them could rehearse alone all day, then show up at Steven's with a bottle of red wine, eat dinner, then do the scenes for him. Which is why the movie holds up so well over time -- the shocks are totally earned by the character work.

I didn't realize until deep into the q & a how much All That Jazz was the highlight of his film acting career. Here was a summer stock song and dance man who got typecast as various shades of tough in Klute and The French Connection and Sorceror, and had fought hard, auditioning without real invitation, to get cast by director Bob Fosse in what was essentially his autobiography and mortality essay. Scheider was rewarded with an Oscar nomination, losing to the overdue Dustin Hoffman for Kramer vs. Kramer. (Hoffman later went on to win again for Rain Man.)

Scheider had the room feeling very warm and communal, everyone sharing in his good guy come far stories. I had always heard that Scheider was cool politically (lay down in the road in 2003 to protest the Iraq invasion) and he reminded me of a version of my dad, just three years younger -- Depression baby made good, essentially decent guy who could be tough when needed but never a smidgen more.

Maybe the room was a little too loose, because it was close to the end and some kid asked the innocent, instantly regrettable question out of the laughter to a previous answer: "Were you disappointed when you didn't win the Oscar?"

The laughter stopped dead. We were all suddenly embarrassed for him; he'd won us over, and this was how we repaid him? To dredge up a painful loss? The moment when Hoffman's name, not his, went into the almanac?

Scheider got serious, quiet and frank. While I can no longer quote it verbatim, it went something like this: It always feels better to win, and nobody who's honest will tell you it doesn't suck when you lose. But if you're not in it for the work, you're never going to be happy.

So Roy Scheider died yesterday of a staph infection complication from melanoma. Come to think of it, he was always so goddamn tan.

Like when I saw him live once again, at the premiere of Do the Right Thing at the Ziegfield in Manhattan. He was with a woman who may have been his girlfriend or his wife, looking for their seat. I was in the back of the orchestra, with Rick Moranis and wife in front of me, John Salley with his long legs on the aisle (sporting his brand new NBC Championship ring). Scheider came by as the lights were going down, looking dapper as usual in some kind of white suit (better show the tan), but they were running out of time.

I thought about how strange it was that this guy who had been in some of the premier AA++ films of that hard rockin' era was scrambling for a seat, maybe for the next job as well.

I remembered when he first made an impression on me (I was a little too young to see French Connection in the theaters) in Marathon Man. He plays the secret agent brother to NYC nerd Dustin Hoffman, the reason Hoffman gets in all the trouble with Olivier's Szell. Scheider's signature scene has one of the most memorable squibs of all time

Scheider is attacked from behind by a hired assassin using a razor thin piano wire, but Scheider managers to get his hand up in time to block the wire from garroting his throat. His forearm and wrist take the brunt of it, a suddenly opening long skinny gash, a long skinny geyser of red. He slams the assassin backwards. They crash around the room like Viggo in the baths this past year -- to the death.

Fate, fate fate. He 's poured his heart out into his Bob Fosse performance, arguably his career performance, but he's lost the Oscar to the guy at the top of the Marathon Man bill, his narrative brother from three years ago. No matter how much you might have expected it or not, it's gotta hurt.

Ah, well. At least he's still got the best scene in their movie together.

No contest.