Dennis Quaid: Out of the Line of Fire

"Mark Spragg's script was something I really connected to," he continues. "I tried for about a year to shop it around as a feature, but as soon as I said the word 'Western,' it was, like, 'Forget it.' But TNT wanted to do it. And they give you the support and money to make it, and leave you alone."

They left him alone in, roughly, his own backyard. "I wound up shooting in Montana two miles from the house I've had there for years," he says, laughing. "We had 32 days of production and I brought it in at 31, which was incredible considering we were shooting just one valley over from The Horse Whisperer and I think they lost a month and a half because of weather. We never lost a minute."

Quaid is particularly proud of his actors in the film. "I cast everybody in the movie," he says. "Mare Winningham is just a fantastic actress who was perfect to play this wife and mother. Harve Presnell, who's in his 60s, is known for The Unsinkable Molly Brown and, more recently, for Fargo, but it's like he's never really been exposed. He gives the kind of performance he could win awards for." And what about the offbeat casting of Meat Loaf in a key role? "I know he isn't the first person you'd think of," says Quaid. "But he has a real quality and he's going to have quite an acting career. He's also a real family man. All that stuff about when he'd down a fifth of bourbon onstage? It was iced tea. He had to be Meat Loaf for the crowd, you know?"

Everything That Rises has left Quaid so sanguine about directing that he's currently looking to direct a theatrical feature in which he won't star, and he also thinks he's not the only one in the household who ought to be doing this kind of thing. "Meg should direct, too," he says. "She's got a great eye, great taste and she's already a very good still photographer. She knows how to tell stories with pictures."

Speaking of Meg Ryan, with whom he fell in love 12 years ago while they were making Innerspace, how does he explain the dynamic that's kept him with her through times that could not all have been rosy? "We're very different and I think that's been good for us," he explains. "I'm sort of wild, loose, and she's very down to earth, sensible, sweet. I can't imagine what my life would be without her. Right now, Meg's doing a movie in New York and I'm here taking care of Jack. We make it a point that at least one of us is with Jack. She comes home from her shoot or I come home from mine or else we go to each other's locations. I'm not going to have a nanny raise him."

Quaid looks out the window, then continues, "I like our little life. We don't really go out. We don't do the 'Hollywood' thing. We've been very lucky to be able to stay out of the tabloids and all that garbage. We've made three movies together, but we don't even get associated with each other, as far as our careers go. I mean, it's not like we're 'Bruce and Demi.'"

Quaid also says that his new addiction--vacations in India-- helps give him a peace of mind. "India is like Mars in some ways," he says. "[But] I feel like I belong to that culture more than I belong to this one, because people are so big-hearted there. In the midst of so much poverty and misery, they're like, 'Hellllo! How are you?' For the past five or so years, I've gone back every year."

Taking vacations in India, instead of, say, Aspen, and staying out of the Hollywood party circuit has kept the Quaid-Ryan marriage out of tabloid range. Then again, is anything out of tabloid range? Why haven't the hyperactive press ever cast these two as tragic figures in a real-life, latter-day version of A Star Is Born? "I'd have to still be doing drugs and alcohol and making an ass out of myself for that to happen," Quaid quips. Then, laughing with dark delight, he observes, "They're not really interested in me anymore. They 'killed' me after Great Balls of Fire! I'm dead, see? I don't matter. Meg does the magazine covers now and I'm dead." Quaid lets out a laugh filled with relief, and devoid of self-pity. "And the great thing about being dead is that nobody's watching."

Nobody? Hardly. Along with his TNT family epic and mass audience Disney caprice, Quaid's about to be seen by art-house audiences alongside Nastassja Kinski in what he deems "a truly great, beautifully made film" called Savior. In it, he plays a sort of double-agent American mercenary. "It's not an easy 'date' movie," he says, "which is why it was really hard to find a distributor for it. But I'm proud of the work [director] Peter Antonijevic did and it's the kind of movie that I love doing."

He's also just been signed to star for Oliver Stone in On Any Given Sunday, in which he'll play an up-in-his-years pro quarterback who is asked to bail out of the game early by coach Al Pacino. He reportedly won the role because of his stellar turn in Savior. Seems plenty of people are watching Quaid these days.

Quaid's overall attitude is so humble that I wonder if life as a star is easier for him now, sans pressure and frenzy. "I'm getting much more joy out of working now than ever before," he says, as we head outside. "It doesn't matter that someone else is getting better or bigger parts. All that stuff is falling away for me now because I've figured out that movies are not that big a deal. It's only pop culture and what can you hold onto in that? I've made a lot of money already, but now it's about doing what I love to do. I think I'm really good at what I do. Really good. And hopefully, when Meg and I are in our 70s, we'll still be working."

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Jeremiah Chechik for the June '98 issue of Movieline.

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