Why Randy Quaid Disappeared From Hollywood

For over 30 years, Randy Quaid was one of Hollywood's most colorful and dependable character actors. His career got off to a propitious start with his appearance in Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 classic "The Last Picture Show," and quickly took flight when he earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his portrayal of the sensitive, soon-to-be-imprisoned screw-up Meadows in "The Last Detail." 10 years later, Quaid achieved film doofus immortality as the loan-seeking rube Cousin Eddie Johnson in Harold Ramis' "National Lampoon's Vacation." Quaid had been funny in movies before, but now he was a proper drama-comedy double threat, and his brand of performance wasn't the type to curdle. He had a long, profitable journey ahead of him provided he didn't do something crazy like accuse the industry's most powerful people of trying to kill him.

Randy Quaid's downfall was so surreal it felt like performance art like he was playing Cousin Eddie on peyote. Quaid managed to amass a load of legal trouble which forced him to flee with his wife Evi to Canada, where he made a disturbing documentary and numerous YouTube videos, including one where he and Evi had (fake) sex. No one's kink-shaming here. If he wanted to segue into adult films, more power to him. It's what was being said on these videos that kicked them over the line.

Why did Quaid's career take such a bizarre turn? I'm no psychiatrist, but I'll do my best to make sense of something that is decidedly nonsensical.

Like any great character actor, Quaid tended to improve every film he was in just by stepping in front of the camera. He got your attention with his broad, 6'5" frame, and line delivery that, depending on the role, ranged from whiny ("Quick Change") to stentorian ("LBJ: The Early Years," for which he earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie). Even at his most pathetic (maybe as the gullible, good-hearted Amish goofball Ishmael in "Kingpin"), there was something dangerous about him. You didn't want to cross Quaid's characters for fear of physical violence. In this way, his off-in-the-future freakout was presaged by his rampaging, hockey-crazed lawyer Peter Blunt in the dreadful "Caddyshack II." I think I would've preferred him to meltdown and become a mad scientist like the nefarious Elijah C. Skuggs in Alex Winter's wackadoodle-in-a-good-way "Freaked."

Quaid remained a legitimate presence into the 2000s, where he played no-nonsense rancher Joe Aguirre in Ang Lee's masterful "Brokeback Mountain." Alongside his Emmy-nominated supporting turn as Colonel Tom Parker in the TV movie "Elvis" and a suitably menacing turn as mobster Bill Guerrard in Ramis' underrated "The Ice Harvest," the then 55-year-old Quaid seemed to be entering the second half of the 2000s with a bit of swagger. Perhaps that second Oscar nomination was in the offing.

That's just about when his career hit a brick wall going 200 mph.

In 2006, Quaid made for an unlikely King of Spain in Miloš Forman's "Goya's Ghosts," and won acclaim two years later for his portrayal of a hired killer in the crime comedy "Real Time." That career renaissance didn't seem completely out of reach, though there were signs of trouble in 2006 when he sued Focus Features for money owed due to the unexpected box office windfall reaped by "Brokeback Mountain." The heartbreaking love story cost $14 million to make and made $178 million, of which Quaid believed he was owed $10 million on top of whatever he'd made initially. This was an absurd cash grab, one that Quaid dropped without ever receiving a dime he believed was coming to him.

Then the strange legal troubles started. In 2009, Randy and Evi were arrested for skipping out, via an invalid credit card, on a $10,000 bill at a Santa Barbara inn. Randy paid most of the outstanding amount, but later on, warrants were issued for their arrest, which led to further trouble that found Evi pleading no contest to a fraud charge. In 2010, the Quaids were found occupying a guest house on a Santa Barbara property they previously owned, which netted them a burglary charge and more warrants due to missed court appearances. Rather than face the music in the U.S., they moved to Vancouver.

Enter the Star Whackers.

In 2010, the Quaids began fighting extradition to the United States by claiming that they were being stalked by a nefarious group called the Star Whackers. In the Quaids' telling, this outfit was responsible for knocking off recently deceased actors like Heath Ledger and David Carradine (whose family, it should be noted, did not accept the Thailand police's conclusion that the "Kung Fu" star died of auto-erotic asphyxiation). Feeling that they were not being taken seriously, the Quaids made a documentary titled "Star Whackers" that purported to blow the lid off the scandal in which they'd found themselves bottled up. The doc, alas, is an incoherent visual manifesto that features a usually nude Quaid cavorting with wildlife and fondling himself. "The Thin Blue Line" this is not.

Nevertheless, the Star Whackers were a serious enough threat for the Quaids to keep battling extradition until Randy's repeated attempts to get Canadian citizenship proved completely futile in 2015. The couple then traveled to Vermont and turned themselves in, at which point they were expected to be shipped off to California to deal with criminal charges and outstanding warrants. But a Vermont judge found problems with the California case, thus allowing the Quaids to walk free — and they were so grateful that they pledged to make a permanent home in Vermont.

After that splendid 2005 and landing a pivotal role in a new Miloš Forman movie the following year, it's puzzling that Quaid would so rapidly run himself out of the industry. Of course, in his version, it's the Star Whackers' fault, but if you watch the videos they shot about this clandestine cabal, the whole concept feels like the biggest joke in the world to them. If it's an act, it was likely concocted to garner the attention they received from gossip outlets like TMZ. How that was supposed to generate money beyond all the notoriety was probably about as well thought through as the decision to shoot a faux-port video in which Randy and Evi simulate sex with the latter wearing a Rupert Murdoch mask.

If, however, the endgame was an end to Randy's career, then mission accomplished.

Now that he's thrown in with the MAGA crowd in support of President-Elect Donald J. Trump (he was a vociferous supporter of the convicted felon's debunked claim that the 2020 election results were rigged), it's questionable whether or not Randy Quaid will make a comeback. When was the last time you saw MAGA-philes James Woods, Gina Carano, or Jon Voight in a studio-backed motion picture (and Francis Ford Coppola's independently financed "Megalopolis" doesn't count)?

Oddly, all of the legal issues and even the demented decision to feign a sex act on the person of ultra-powerful Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch could have been excused. What likely did Quaid in professionally was his absurd pursuit of $10 million for his supporting turn in "Brokeback Mountain." He was asking for 70 percent of the budget! It was the sign of an unserious man who would rather cause headaches for producers than accept market value at the level of the production in which he was involved. Quaid set his own house on fire and the one he was squatting in for good measure. It'll take a heroic act of charity on some powerful filmmaker's part (e.g. Christopher Nolan) to bring Quaid back to Hollywood — which is just where the Star Whackers want him.