The Life And Times of Chief Martin Brody

Today is a bit of an odd one. I want to talk about the life of Chief Martin Brody from Jaws.

As a fan of film and television, I tend to follow the careers of actors that I like. In so doing, you typically see how the actor begins in roles that are poorly defined or strange and where they feel swallowed by the role. These are often bit parts of experimental films. As they grow they tend to zero in on certain types of roles that fit them well. Then they have their hit or string of hits as they reach their prime. Finally, they wind down by reverting to supporting roles or nostalgia roles.

Consider Robert De Niro, for example, who achieved fame in the very off-the-wall film Taxi Driver. He then slowly shifted to roles that involved cops or mobsters. In so doing, he had a string of great hits like Midnight Run and Goodfellas. He milked that for a while with a few notable standouts like Ronin. Then he started sliding down the backside of his career, playing parodies of the roles that made him famous, in films like Analyze This and the really depressing nostalgia film The Family.

But there is one actor who took a different course. This actor took roles that let us trace his career as if he were the same person on film and his films document his life: Roy Scheider.

Scheider, aka Detective Buddy “Cloudy” Russo began his life working with Popeye “Gene Hackman” Doyle in The French Connection. But the mean streets of New York were too much for him and after his failed attempt to arrest and convict Alain Charnier, a wealthy French heroine smuggler, he decides to change his name to Martin Brody and moves to Amity, Massachusetts to become their police chief. But a run in with a giant shark, and it’s angry kin, teach Russo that living on an island is not for him.

So Russo changes his name again, to Frank Murphy and he becomes a helicopter pilot for the LAPD. But where Russo goes, controversy follows and Russo soon finds himself destroying a multimillion dollar attack helicopter and exposing a Federal government plot to stir up problems in the barrio so they can shoot the ensuing rioters.

Shunned by his fellow officers and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, Russo decides to become a scientist. And going by the name Dr. Heywood Floyd, an anagram of “Hey, It’s Russo!”, he ends up hitching a ride aboard a Russian spaceship for Jupiter, where he kills the Hal 9000, finds God and dumps a giant baby in our orbit.

Finally, he takes a job as the captain of a submarine, where he goes by the name Capt. Nathan Bridger, before failing in that and becoming the head of the Italian mob... Don Falcone. And thus, the circle of life is kind of strangely complete.

Actually, if you hack off the last couple, it really does seem like it could all be the same man. What does this mean? I have no idea. What was the point of this article? Uh. I don’t know that either, but I liked Roy and I do find this interesting. Roy is the only actor where it feels like the main movies of his career take place in the same universe with him being the same character.... The French Connection, Jaws, Jaws 2, Blue Thunder and to a lesser extent 2010.

Interesting or no?