Dennis Quaid: Out of the Line of Fire

While pretending not to notice diners and servers checking him out while pretending not to be impressed, Quaid elaborates, "The things that made me want to be in movies don't really exist anymore. I was impressed with the things I saw in the late '60s and 70s-- Five Easy Pieces, Scarecrow, The Last Detail, Bonnie and Clyde, Fat City, Klute. There was a roughness, a style of filmmaking that doesn't exist now. Some of that roughness exists today in independent movies, but the movies of the '60s and 70s weren't anything like Jackie Brown, where Tarantino is trying to 'do' himself. And the critical faculty has left us. It's not Pauline Kael's passionate, great writing about movies anymore--it's all, 'Thumbs up! You need to know about this one!'"

I ask Quaid how he's come to terms with a career that's considerably lower-key than he might have hoped. "Sometimes, it just doesn't happen, you know?" he observes with a fuck-all, sidewise grin worthy of Harrison Ford. "A lot of it is luck, a lot of it is being in the right place at the right time. Why am I not doing the next big hit? Probably because my taste isn't middle of the road. It's not for the general population. Kurt Russell and Bruce Willis are really good at doing action movies, but I couldn't see myself doing that kind of film. I'm not putting down those guys at all, but it's just not my nature. I certainly feel I'm a success, even if I'm not doing the next big hit. I'm lucky to be doing what I'm doing. Some people are really good at being a movie star. I'm not in that mold, I guess. I don't want to be a Tom Cruise or a Tom Hanks or a Mel Gibson or a Bruce Willis. For me, it just winds up being too much attention.

"Besides," he continues, "you wind up having to do movies that become a formula. I've chosen to do movies that have wider ranges. That's my strength, but, as a career move, it's also my weakness."

Surely one advantage of being in hit movies is getting first crack at better scripts. Quaid nods in agreement and says, "But I don't look at Tom Cruise's and Tom Hanks's new movies and think, 'I could have done that.' That's one way to drive yourself crazy."

It could be argued, actually, that great scripts have come Quaid's way, and that he shot himself in the foot by passing on them in favor of bad choices. "It's true, I've turned down a lot of stuff," he admits. But when I begin to rattle off a list of movies he's rumored to have flirted with, he stops me, without apology or self-flagellation, and says, "I did turn down Francis Ford Coppola on The Outsiders, but that's because, that same day, I also got offered The Right Stuff. Then he offered me Peggy Sue Got Married at the same time I was also asked to do The Big Easy. Guess he probably won't offer me anything again, right? Urban Cowboy was sort of written for me, and that was a heartbreak because John Travolta decided to do it. The director wanted me for An Officer and a Gentleman, but the studio guys didn't. Batman I probably would have taken, if I'd been offered it. I shouldn't have turned down Steve Kloves's The Fabulous Baker Boys when it was presented for [my brother] Randy and me. I did Steve Kloves's next movie, Flesh and Bone, though, and I'd like to be in every film he makes." Jeesh. And I didn't even get around to asking about Ghost, Pretty Woman and a slew of others.

The notable time when Quaid picked material others might not have seen the promise of and lucked out was with The Big Easy. His combustible vibe with Ellen Barkin turned the sexy crime thriller into a minor classic. "Ellen is tough," says Quaid, "but she's really good. I come at things from odd angles and she does too. I'd like to work with her again." Can he say the same for some of the leading ladies he hasn't struck fire with, like say Julia Roberts, who played his wife in Something to Talk About? "Chemistry just happens or doesn't," he observes. "You -can't predict it. You don't even have to like the person to have it. I never saw Julia Roberts off the set--it was basically a business thing. I'd come in, she'd be there, that's it. There was this 'star' thing going on, too, because, with her, that star-making machinery was really working."

Issues of material and sexual chemistry aside, Quaid's career was affected by something more within the realm of his own doing. Around the time of Great Balls of Fire! he finally caved in to the booze and cocaine addiction that had been wreaking havoc in his life and career. "I started to lose it, big time," he says, recalling how he got combative with the press and even once declared he would not make another movie until his rock band, the Eclectics, bagged a record deal. "With me, it came down to a lot of things--certainly to ego. I lost my perspective fast. I was frustrated with my career, about not getting certain things. I was caught up in the star machine. It's a losing game. Finally, I asked God to take all that fame away from me. And he sure did." Quaid lets out a burst of rueful laughter. I ask him about the rumor that he and rock wild man Jerry Lee Lewis once came to blows. Fixing me with a crazy, funny, Lewis-like stare, he declares, "Hey, that guy carries a .38 and a pint of Seagram's 7 he drops his pills into. Not a good combination. I'd never lay a hand on him."

Turning serious, Quaid adds, "Look, I'm glad I went through all those things, but I've been living the sober life for so long, it's like we're talking about somebody else. It probably hurt my career. No, I'm sure it did. I do miss cigarettes but I really don't miss the blow at all. Once in a while, I think, 'A glass of wine with dinner might be nice.' But that's really it. Doing anything like that again is out of the question, especially being a dad. To me, that comes first. Jack's only six now, but when he's ready, I'm going to tell him everything I went through, even the wild period. If he hears it from me, maybe I'll help him avoid a few things. Maybe."

Being sober and a dad are perfectly in keeping with Quaid's newest endeavor--he's just directed and starred in the TNT film Everything That Rises, which he describes as a "contemporary Western family drama." The story follows a Montana couple (Quaid and Mare Winningham) struggling to hold onto their valuable acreage in the face of encroachment by rich developers, then facing even more difficult problems when their son (Ryan Merriman) gets critically injured in a car crash for which Quaid's character bears culpability.

"Directing is a path I want to keep going with," Quaid asserts. "Even though I always knew I would direct, I didn't think I would love it. But all the minutiae I don't like about film as an actor, I wound up loving as a director. It's my frame: I decide what colors, what brushstrokes, rather than just being an actor responsible for my part.

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