Remembering Roy Scheider

Everyone remembers Roy Scheider as the guy who needed a bigger boat in Jaws, or Popeye Doyle's partner in The French Connection. I always preferred him in the late Bob Fosse's 1980 film All That Jazz as Joe Gideon, a self-destructive, womanizing Broadway genius a lot like Fosse himself. It was a volcanic performance that should've won the best actor Oscar instead of Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer.

It was 1999 when my affection for that movie led to an interview with Scheider in Tampa when he visited his All That Jazz co-star and Fosse's former lover Ann Reinking's Broadway Theatre Project for young stage talent. Watching him watching them was delightful. Chatting with them about Fosse and the film was everything I could hope for as a fan. Now Joe Gideon's death scene -- longer and more dazzling than any on film --  won't be the same.

But what I want to do is replay the last part of the story I wrote in 1999, an anecdote that says everything necessary about an actor devoted to his craft, and who'll be missed:

"Look at the amount of performance that was in what we saw out there," he gushed. "We saw several kids in there who could audition tomorrow in New York City and get some work. "Besides the music and dance, every one of those kids were so damn sincere. They had so much feeling for what they were doing. You couldn't help but be touched."

That was especially true for the session's final question, posed by Paddy Heusinger, 18, of Jacksonville. Heusinger appeared nervous when he asked Scheider to identify a moment in a movie or play that deeply moved him. Scheider's intuition prompted him to turn the question around, asking Heusinger for his most memorable dramatic experience.

Heusinger was coaxed into reminiscing about a scene from Neil Simon's Broadway Bound. "I don't like Neil Simon much, because there's no subtext to his work," Heusinger said. "But he's won Pulitzers and everything, so ..." Scheider smiled at the teen's boldness.

Late in the play, Heusinger said, the mother of the play's hero Eugene wonders if she has ever done anything right for her son. "You birthed me," he softly replies, and they reach out to each other for a farewell dance. Heusinger's voice cracked, and he wiped tears from his cheeks. The scene, he sobbed, reminded him of his own parents' support.

Scheider didn't say a word, or try to relieve Heusinger of that emotional response. When Heusinger was seated again, Scheider's voice, more solemn than before, rose above the audience's sniffles for his closing comment: "This is why we do what we do. We must do it. We have to communicate. We have to touch each other with our art."

Somewhere in the hereafter, Bob Fosse smiled, flicked his cigarette ash, and called it a wrap.