At different times over the last 20 years, Dennis Quaid has gotten one step away from megastardom. Today he may be sorry about some of his film disappointments and some of his own mistakes, but he's not sorry he's not Tom Cruise. Here he talks about when he 'started to lose it, big time' during his drug-fueled '80s days, about why his marriage to Meg Ryan is so good for him, and about how he came to be directing TNT's film Everything That Rises, and starring in Disney's The Parent Trap.
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Dennis Quaid and I are sitting at one of Santa Monica's few remaining working-class, authentically '50s, linoleum-counter restaurants. The spot, a keeper for its unfussy, small-town feel alone, wasn't our original meeting place, though. At the last minute Quaid changed his mind about the unspeakably trendy seaside bistro his publicists originally suggested. The switch speaks well of him.
"This place doesn't have any right to be here," announces the Texas-born actor, savoring the touch of down-home as he watches a man at another table wolf down a plate of pancakes. He suddenly tenses up, though, when the sanctity of this throwback to simple mom-and-pop virtues is violated by the arrival of an obviously Industry interloper. He tries to avoid eye contact, but the man, who turns out to be a film producer, ambles over to tell him how great he's looking since he's been working out again. That interruption over, Quaid visibly relaxes back into the spirit of the place.
The exchange reminds me that it's been 20 years since Quaid was a young, eager actor who would have welcomed an opportunity to make connections. If we were back in 1978, he would still be some months away from becoming a sudden sensation in Breaking Away. And that reminds me what a strange, up-and-down road Quaid has traveled over the last two decades. He has done good and great work in worthy and unworthy films; and he has seemed, alternately, a character actor stuck in a leading man's body, and an inevitable leading man in futile search of the big box office hit that would anoint him. Take 1983, for example. On the one hand, he was terrific as the ego-maniacally cocky Gordon Cooper in the ensemble of actors who distinguished Philip Kaufman's astronaut saga The Right Stuff; on the other, he starred in the hopelessly ludicrous Jaws 3-D. The sci-fi movies he did in the mid-'80s, Dreamscape and Enemy Mine, proved far from anything that would push him to A-Iist.
He probably came closest to becoming the star many thought he'd be in 1987 when he stepped back and took a low-budget police thriller set in New Orleans, The Big Easy. In that film he re-electrified Hollywood, if not the world at large, with a uniquely charming, sexy and effortlessly confident performance. But his subsequent big chances at major stardom--the sizably budgeted Disney sci-fi flick Innerspace; the mystery thriller with a then-hot Cher, Suspect; the high-style noir remake D.O.A.; and the all-American saga with Jessica Lange Everybody's All-American--all flopped.
Still, the Biz rolled out the star carpet for him in the hugely anticipated Jerry Lee Lewis rock biomovie, Great Balls of Fire!, in which he starred with the new, young, hot-as-hell Winona Ryder. When that movie tanked disastrously, and Quaid's offscreen hell-raising shenanigans soured people even further, Hollywood turned its sights away from him. He went on to do Alan Parker's drama Come See The Paradise, but despite all the hoopla around that picture, one sensed that other, higher-on-the-list actors had passed on the project. It looked like the tide could have turned when Quaid delivered a stellar Doc Holiday in Wyatt Earp, but Val Kilmer stole his thunder by playing the same character in an earlier release, Tombstone; Wyatt Earp proved an overlong snoozer in any case, and bombed. While Quaid has done quirky, promising projects that may in fact be more to his own personal taste-- Flesh and Bone, Wilder Napalm and Something to Talk About, for example--it's now been some time since he landed the kind of high-profile movies he once seemed destined for.
That covers his on-screen life. Offscreen he has lately led, with his wife, Meg Ryan, and their son, Jack, a privileged life that moves between Los Angeles and Montana, and bespeaks not only Hollywood success (Quaid's career is disappointing only in the context of extraordinary expectations), but quieter personal success as well. Now a great-looking 44, Quaid seems well aware of missed opportunities, but of a mind to accentuate the positive, which includes directing and starring in the TNT movie Everything That Rises, and starring in the Disney remake of The Parent Trap. He says that the shoot for The Parent Trap with Natasha Richardson was--against all odds--"a blast," and adds that working with the Father of the Bride writing and directing team, Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer, was a "delight." And he has reason to hold high hopes for this picture--there's hardly a baby boomer around who's forgotten the '60s original about twins, played by Hayley Mills, who scheme to bring together their divorced parents.
"I sometimes say that my judgment's off when it comes to material," Quaid observes. "But when Meg said, 'You should do The Parent Trap,' I was, like, 'The Parent Trap?' Then my friends, Callie Khouri [screenwriter of Thelma & Louise] and Kathy Kloves, the wife of Steve Kloves [writer/director of Flesh and Bone], ganged up on me for the same reason. So I read the script, and then I thought, 'OK, you guys are right.'"
How does he explain the enthusiasm for this schmaltzy movie? He lets out a laugh and says, "Well, it's one of Meg's favorite movies. Women just love how romantic it is. Even I found it romantic."
All this talk of "delight" and having a "blast" while filming The Parent Trap makes me think Quaid has gotten a good deal more laid-back in his approach to moviemaking. A while ago, he had a well-earned reputation for doing whatever he damned well pleased--and getting by with it. All of which was possible thanks to the intense heat he started out with. "I had that kind of heat right up until I played Jerry Lee Lewis," he acknowledges. "And let me tell you," he continues, "I didn't like it." Quaid's tone leaves no shred of doubt about his sincerity on this point.
"I remember one time when I was on location in my trailer," he goes on to say. "Three hundred kids were outside rocking it. There were police there, but when I had to come out, these kids rushed toward me. I was in a state of anxiety, thinking, 'Does one of them have a gun?'"
What does veteran Quaid think of the world facing the Leonardo DiCaprios, the Matt Damons and the Ben Afflecks out there now getting this kind of attention? "I'd just like to say to these guys, keep your mind on your work," he replies. "People like Matt Damon handle it better than I did, though. I've met Matt, and that kid seems like somebody who's really got a good head on his shoulders. But I think fame is worse now than when I was in my 20s and 30s, because the Americanization of the world has meant that now people all over the globe are caught up with fame." He takes a chomp of his tuna melt and adds, "If I were in my 20s dealing with the star-making machinery now, I don't know where I'd fit in. Who knows if I would even be an actor."
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.
"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.