Santo Domingo,Dominican Republic,1977.

It's very unusual for a fan or anyone to receive a letter from a movie star asking for some help.

I could not be luckier I received a letter from none other than Roy Scheider back in 1977.

Let me tell you how it happened:

At that time I was working in the PR. deparment of the local branch of

Gulf and Western Industries in the Dominican Republic.

G+W was presided by the late Charles G. Bluhdorn who fell in love with the island and invested a lot of resources in his social and economic development. He sponsored the creation of Altos de Chavon , an artist village where Parsons School of New York has established an academy.

Mr. Bluhdorn was very passionate about his projects for this island.

One of them was turning into a movie making mecca and for that purpose he constantly invited , producers,directors,writers and movie stars so they could appreciate the natural beauty ot the country.

Several films were actually shot there. For iinstance , the scenes despicting the Old Havana in Godfather ll used the colonial Santo Domingo as the backdrops.

Havana produced by Robert Redford was filmed almost in its entirity in Santo Domingo.

Well let's get back to Scheider.

Paramount convinced William Friedkin to film a remake of Clouzot's classical film La salaire du peur( the Wages of Fear), a spine chilling thriller unsurpassed yet.

The filming The Sorcerer , the titile of the movie , created a sensation in among the Dominicans who were not used to see so many trucks and cameras, and crews.

Many peasants and fruit vendors thought it was a wonderful opportunity to make money as extras or allowing their cows or little huts in the movie.

The problem is that the extras kept changing the money agreement every day and even held strikes against the production.

The weather did not help much. As you all are aware , when it rains in the tropics is like the deluge.

So many inconviniences took place that many superticious Dominicans believed it had to do the name of the title of the film:

El Brujo , in Spanish. The Sorcerer.

The production had to be moved to Mexico and the USA to be completed after the budget went over the roof.

It seemed that Mr. Bluhdorn was not very happy and neither Roy Scheider.

To be honest with you I never met the actor but I knew the G+W executive who was very friendly to me.

A few weeks, I don't remember when when the production was almost over and some statements published in a New York newspaper by Mr.Scheider referring to the Dominican people did not please Mr. Bluhdorn.

He was so mad that he swore that Mr.Scheider would never get another Paramount contract.

The famous Spanish actor Paco Rabal starring in the Sorcerer asked me to meet with him at his hotel.

He need my advice on how to clarify things with Mr. Bluhdorn.

He was talking on behalf of Roy Scheider who claimed he was misquoted or taken out of context.

He did not hold anything against the Dominican people.

Well I suggested that Mr. Scheider sent me letter so I could deliver it to

the Paramount executive.

A few days letter I received the letter posted from a Holiday Inn in the USA.

I don't recall the exact terms of it but there was an apology and explanations of how things happen.

I delivered the letter to the executive office.

I still don't know what were the results of my intervention.

I still keep the the letter's envelpe with Roy Scheider's signature on it: an unexpected autograph.

I never got to see the movie , but I have read that it was a success.

Probalby William Friedkin's last success.

Here are some comments I found on the net about the two films in imdb.com.Please see the two movies to compare.

"A remake of Henri-George Cluzot's 1953 film The Wages of Fear (also on DVD in a lovely Criterion Disc), this William Friedkin film stars Roy Scheider (at his weary, doomed finest) as one of four men exiled to an unnamed South American country by their mistakes and crimes. Trapped in squalor (and it's damn convincing looking squalor, too, far beyond the sunbaked black-and-white compositions of Wages of Fear; this film looks like it's leaving mud on your shoes), unable to return to the lives they abandoned, they're driven by circumstance to accept a normally unthinkable job. They have to drive old, unstable dynamite from its storage site hundreds of miles over mountain terrain and washed-out roads to the location of an oil well fire so the blaze can be snuffed out. The pay is exorbitant -- but it's commiserate to the danger. The risks are colossal ... and they ultimately have no choice."

"Sorcerer is tense, suspenseful film-making at its finest; you become physically uncomfortably during this film thanks to the incredible sense that at any minute our heroes would literally be blown to hell. (I mean, we all walk around with the philosophical knowledge we could die at any moment, but talk about your concrete metaphors ... ) Friedkin creates a palpable sense of place, and Scheider is immensely powerful as a man whose every move suggests that he knows he's doomed. Taut with suspense, completely convincing and breathtakingly human, Sorcerer is an unfairly maligned film that delivers in every way.

And the Score is unique and nightmarish. A new DVD would be welcome to many happy fans."

This is an extraordinary movie. From the opening scene showing the squalor of a Latin American town with filth and vultures in the street and naked children begging for food amid the oppressive, fly-stirred heat, to the finale on a winding mountain road, it is just plain fascinating. True, some of the action does not bear close scrutiny. One does not siphon nitroclycerine nor does one avoid potholes or bumps in the road by driving at forty miles per hour. No matter. Let's allow a little license. And the title doesn't entirely make sense because the wages of sin are death, but the wages of those who followed their fear and did not seek to drive a nitroclycerine truck over 300 miles of bad road are life. Again, no matter. This is such an original movie, every scene like little or nothing you've ever seen before (and for sure will never see again), that the little inconsistencies and some stretching of what is possible are not important. This is man against nature, man against himself reduced to a simple task. It is life in the raw. One mistake and you are dead."

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Lundon Boyd in

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