There are
many reasons Dennis Quaid has been such a durable movie star—his gruff
Texan masculinity, his athleticism, his musicianship—but most of all it's
that famous grin, a sly and disarming gesture from an actor who usually plays
it straight. After his older brother Randy started to make a career for himself
in Hollywood, Quaid dropped out of college and pursued acting, eventually
landing a key role in the 1979 sleeper hit Breaking Away. From there, he slowly moved up the
marquee in the '80s, joining an impressive ensemble as a cocky astronaut in
1983's The Right Stuff, then landing lead roles in such hits as Enemy Mine, Innerspace, and The Big Easy. As Jerry Lee Lewis in 1989's Great
Balls Of Fire!,
Quaid was at the center of a critical and commercial fiasco, but few could deny
his fevered performance or his musical chops, which lead to him fronting an
ongoing musical side project called D.Q. And The Sharks. A string of flops and
personal setbacks hampered him throughout much of the '90s, but Quaid has come
back strong in the last decade, with major roles in Frequency, Traffic, The Rookie, Far From Heaven, The Day After Tomorrow, In Good Company, American Dreamz, and Vantage Point.
Based on
the true story of running back Ernie Davis, the first African-American to win
the Heisman Trophy, Quaid's new film The Express casts him as Coach Ben
Schwartzwalder, the hard-nosed head coach of the Syracuse Orangemen football
team. At a time of racial discord, Schwartzwalder recruited greats like Jim
Brown and Davis, who had to overcome enormous prejudice from inside and outside
the program. Quaid recently spoke to The A.V. Club about taking football notes from
Jim Brown, and rebooting his career at the end of the '90s.
The
A.V. Club: How would you characterize the relationship between Coach
Schwartzwalder and Ernie Davis?
Dennis
Quaid: Ben Schwartzwalder was a tough-as-nails
old-school coach. We're talking
about 1959. Ernie was a very graceful human being, naïve in a lot of ways, I
think. It's set during a time of racial turmoil, before the Civil Rights
movement really kicked in. Their relationship embodies the movie. Ben was a man
of his times. You would label him a bigot, even though he was a groundbreaker
as far as being one of the first coaches to actively recruit African-Americans
players to his team. But he was a man of his time. So he lived by the rules of segregation, and in a way didn't
care to change things. I think Ernie changed him, not in an argumentative way.
I think just in who Ernie was and the way he grew to love Ernie. Ben had had
Jim Brown [as his running back] before that, and they butted heads. It was a
very abrasive relationship. Ernie and Ben wound up really becoming father and
son.
AVC:
You're talking about Jim Brown and their relationship being abrasive. But the
film implies that there was some sort of respect, some sort of willingness on
Jim Brown's part to assist him in recruiting David.
DQ: Jim had great respect for Ben. And
hence Ben had great respect for Jim as well, as far as his ability, and Jim for
Ben when it comes to coaching because Ben made him a better player. Jim Brown
was a really good friend of mine before this movie, and he was my greatest
resource. I talked to him about who Ben was, and who Ernie was too. Jim Brown
saw the movie, and he's a straight-talker. [Laughs.] He said he really found a
new respect for Ben, after seeing the film, and realizing who he was in the
context of the times.
AVC:
What did Jim have to say specifically about Ben? About working with him? What
sort of troubles did they have?
DQ: Ben was an obsessive coach, even
when he wasn't on the football field.
On the bus, he would still be doing X's and O's. Coming up with new
plays, his mind… he lived, ate, and slept football. He only cared about what
was going on on that field. He didn't really see anything about the
difficulties of the African-American players on his team, nor really care to
know anything about them. He just didn't want any of that coming on to his
team.
AVC:
It was all about W's.
DQ: Yeah, exactly.
AVC:
Did you talk to his wife?
DQ: I didn't talk to his wife at the time. I really used Jim
Brown, and watched film of Ernie. I would have liked to have gone to Syracuse
to meet her, but I had just came off another movie and jumped into this one.
Ben's wife, Reggie, she's 96. She was my date at the premiere in Syracuse. She
loved the film. She said she didn't want it to end.
AVC:
Along with Everybody's All American and Any Given Sunday, this is the third film you've
made about football. How well to you understand the Xs and Os of the game at
this point? What sort of
temperament do you think it takes to coach?
DQ: This is my first time really playing a football coach.
Usually I've been a player. It's much easier to be a coach. You don't have to
stand around in the pads all day. Movies are very tedious and with a lot of
takes, you're out there 14 hours sometimes, especially in 1959 cleats. That's
kinda tough. But I definitely have an understanding of the game. I didn't play
football in school, but I've been a fan of football all my life. I have a fair
understanding of it. Doing movies about it really helps because you know what
makes them work and what doesn't.
AVC:
Do you have a sense of the impact a coach can have on football compared to the
impact a coach has on other sports?
DQ: It's absolutely everything. It
really is, because it's the coach who does the recruiting. We're talking about
college football here, but it's the coach who does the recruiting. It's the
coach who really takes this raw talent and molds it into that next level,
before the pros. Molding the team and getting these individuals to work as a
team—that takes knowledge and that takes time. It takes a strategy. Also,
the coach is there for calling plays, having a strategy on how to beat another
team, what their weaknesses are, and clock management. It's a huge thing.
That's why you see coaches over the years who have winning seasons as opposed
to somebody else who comes in with the same team, and, well, it's downhill from
there.
AVC:
Schwartzwalder was also a war hero. He served in Normandy. Do those sorts of details, that kind of
background, inform how you play a character like him?
DQ: That explained a whole lot about
him. He volunteered to go. He wasn't drafted. He was 30 years old, and went
into the army. He was one of the soldiers that came off the ships and stormed
the beach at Normandy. Told me a lot about him, and you know I think he brought
that same kind of military discipline to his coaching.
AVC:
How much of your career is owed to your athleticism and your ability to play
music and other skill sets outside of acting? It seems like quite a bit.
DQ: Well, you use what you have. Let's put it that way: When you
go in for the interview and they say, "Can you ride a horse?" you're always
supposed to say, "Yeah, like the wind" whether you've been on a horse in your
life or not. [Laughs.] Then you go out and learn.
AVC:
How did you get involved in the film Far From Heaven?
DQ: Todd Haynes thought of me for that
role, and I'm really glad he did. I think he chose me because my screen persona
or whatever. You wouldn't think of me in that role, and that was why he wanted
me. This was a guy who was pretending to be the straightest arrow there was in
life, even though he wasn't, and just couldn't handle it.
AVC: Given the film's connection to the
films of Douglas Sirk, and how much acting styles have changed for the movies
since they were made, did you have to adjust your own style to fit the movie
and what the movie was trying to do?
DQ: Well, there's two things I have criteria for doing a film:
The script, which is the story, and the filmmaker, and it's a filmmaker's
medium. I like really strong directors, and so when I do a film, I'm out there
to serve the director, really, which is in turn to serve the script, to serve
the director cause he's the one making the film. I relied on Todd Haynes for
that.
AVC:
Was it a challenge on your part? Because the acting style of a Douglas Sirk
film is…
DQ: Melodramatic.
AVC: Yeah. Much more theatrical than we see
in movies today Did that take some getting used to?
DQ: Yeah, sure, but once you've been doing it for a couple of
days, it's just fun, you know?
AVC: How did you go about playing the
president in American Dreams?
DQ: I just had fun with it, really, to tell you the truth. You
know, I'm from Texas, but the character wasn't Bush. It really wasn't Bush.
Okay, it was Bush and it wasn't Bush. It was a parody, is what it was. It was a
parody on America, not just on political figures, but on everybody. All of us.
I had a ball doing it. It was with [writer-director] Paul Weitz, who I'd done In
Good Company with
as well. So I just had fun with it basically.
AVC:
When you're playing a parody version of Bush—or "the President,"
anyway—and you're playing the buffoon, do you have to talk yourself out
of thinking that you're a buffoon?
DQ: Well, I myself am a buffoon. You
have something against buffoons? [Laughs.]
AVC:
Well, the character maybe doesn't think of himself as a joke.
DQ: Right. That's the whole idea of
parody. They don't think of themselves as a joke, the character doesn't think
of himself as a joke. That's what makes it so funny, that people take
themselves so seriously.
AVC:
Do you have any wisdom about how to stick around in the industry as long as you
have?
DQ: You have to have the ability to
remake yourself. Whatever that is. Every several years… Every five to 10 years.
Because you're getting older and the parts are going to change, to make that
transition. That's what I would say. Also you just have to stick to it. You
have to have the fire in your belly. I'm having more fun now with acting than I
did when I first started out, because I'm doing it just because I really enjoy
it. I'm not trying to "make it" anymore. I'm not trying to be anything, you know? The biggest
this and that for anybody. I'm just enjoying it.
AVC:
You talked about being able to change and adjust. What are some of those
pivotal roles for you?
DQ: Breaking Away would be the first, then from there
would be The Right Stuff, and then from there, The Big Easy. Maybe from there Innerspace and Great Balls Of Fire. And from there we skip! [Laughs.]
We skip another 10 years, or several years, to The Parent Trap. Then Frequency, and The Rookie.
AVC:
About that skipping part. What was it like trying to get back in the game after
dropping out for a bit?
DQ: I took one year off which turned
into two. Hollywood has a very short memory. To get back in the game—the
scripts were there, and I really liked some of those movies, but finding
scripts was tough. It was… Look, this is not a job. Actors do well. I hate to
hear actors whine and complain. But artistically it was kind of struggle during
part of the '90s.
AVC: Great
Balls Of Fire
is one of your major roles, if not your signature role. And the type of music
that you play with [your band D.Q. And] The Sharks bears that out. Yet the
movie itself had a troubled reception, not least from Jerry Lee Lewis. What are
your thoughts on that whole experience, looking back?
DQ: Jerry Lee Lewis was right over my
shoulder during the entire time we were shooting it. That was a fascinating
time in my life, really. He was one of my piano teachers. By the time the film
came out, to tell you the truth, I myself was not really happy with it. But the
movie, it's strange—it's gotten better with age. I really like it now.
AVC:
How so?
DQ: I don't know, maybe it's just
because I've finally gotten away from it. People seem to really like the film.
It's just fun to watch I guess.
AVC:
You said that Jerry Lee Lewis was right over your shoulder. Was his
reception—and the reception in general—to film awkward for you?
DQ: The reception it got when it came
out was because the studio handled it like it was a summer movie. They tried to
get the broadest possible audience for it, including kids. That's kind of tough
to get when you have a movie, at its core, about the relationship between a
22-year old guy and a 12, 13-year old girl.
AVC: I
don't remember seeing many movies this summer about that.
DQ: And cousin, too, by the way.
AVC:
You've been acting quite a while. Are there roles you regret not getting, or
conversely, roles that you were pleased to turn down?
DQ: Yeah, there's a ton of those, you
know? But I have no regrets. There's only one real regret that I have, and
that's that David Lean, who is my favorite director of all time, gave me the
role of Nostromo in Nostromo. And I went over there to Nice and met with him and got to
ask him every question there was, spent an afternoon with him. Unfortunately,
he wound up dying of cancer before we could shoot the film. That's my only
regret.