Monday, February 11, 2008

Non-archaeology post I just wanted to throw out the Roy Scheider obit. I really liked him (not personally, of course). I first became aware of him via Jaws; I'd read the book before the movie and, although he didn't look like what I imagined Brody to look like, he played him the way I imagined. He really captured the Everyman nature of that character, a basic guy who just happens to be caught up in something totally weird.

My first date movie (and the first one I saw real naked female breasts!*) was All That Jazz, which was totally bizarre when I first saw it, but after I got a little older and 'got it', I liked it even more. I just remember thinking through the whole thing "Well, stop smoking, you stupid moron". The last scene with the body bag being zipped up is a real killer, one of the best cuts in cinematic history, IMO.

He was in some other stuff that I really liked. I already posted some on 2010 which I still like to watch even though the politics -- that were way overplayed, again IMO -- kinda make it stick out like a sore thumb. I also liked Blue Thunder which had one of the best scenes ever: It's about a new helicopter, and he's using it to listen in on the Bad Guys from outside their office building (it's got a super-quiet rotor mode and fancy listening devices) and eventually the main Bad Guy looks out the window and just notices the thing hovering there. . .and then it silently flies off. It ended up spun off as kind of a neat TV show called. . . .something or other. Had Jan Michael Vincent in it, I remember that.

He did a TV show called SeaQuest DSV which seemed like a cool idea but I quit watching it after a few eps because it was pathetically PC.

I've never seen the whole thing, but his car chase in The Seven-Ups is one of the great ones, especially the end.

Once I get my big-ass TV, 2010 is going to be one of the first movies on it. Thanks for all that, Roy.

* Technically, the first boobs I saw were in Vanishing Point. I was like 9 and we saw it at a drive-in so I wasn't in much of a position to fully appreciate it.