One of the great stars of the 1970s has died and I'm going to miss him. He was nominated for an Oscar as Popeye Doyle's partner Buddy Russo in The French Connection and made a perfect cool side man to crazy Gene Hackman. Two years later he played a version of Popeye in The Seven Ups, a movie with an equally great car chase scene that nearly killed Scheider. (When he goes under the truck, that really happened by accident and without the planned stuntman.) But his greatest role to me is as Amity's Chief Martin Brody, the former NYPD cop who has to hunt his worst killer in a shark. His line, "You're gonna need a bigger boat" is one that will always be remembered in movie history, but I love another more, "Die, you son of a....(Boom)" as the shark blows up. He was nominated again for All That Jazz and while he might have been good in the part as Bob Fosse's alter ego, I thought the movie was a mess. His last great role was a small one, as, Wilfred Keeley, the amoral head of a large health insurance company in "The Rainmaker." His death is from unknown reasons at the moment, but his movie career is immortal.
The Freditor
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