Thursday
09Oct2008
The Big Picture Interview with Dennis Quaid
Thursday, October 9, 2008 at 12:16PM
We know the name, of course, but
Dennis Quaid
has consistently flown under the radar despite a career that would make the
overwhelming majority of actors jealous. He's been in a few Best Picture
nominees (Breaking Away, The Right Stuff, and Traffic),
some big hits (Innerspace, The Rookie, Something to Talk About,
and Vantage Point), and he looks like he's had a barrel of fun along the
way in a 30-year career filled with memorable lead and supporting roles.
The Big Picture: There have been several sports movies with your name on them. What is the draw, outside of a love for sports, that brings you to these films?
Dennis Quaid: When I’m going to do a sports movie, it has to be more. It has to have something universal that people can relate to and identify with. Like The Rookie: It was a baseball movie, but it was really about second chances in life.
I think with The Express, while it’s dealing with racial issues of that time, it’s really about living your life gracefully and facing the challenges, which Ernie Davis definitely embodied.
Did you know much about Ernie Davis getting involved with this project?
I knew the name but I didn’t really know the story. When I read a script it’s the only time I get to be an audience member, the first time experience with that story, and it had a profound impact on me.
Ernie Davis came along at a time before the civil rights movement really started to bubble up and I think maybe that’s one of the reasons his story has been lost for a time. Had he lived, I think he would have had an even more significant impact on the movement.
The football scenes really felt authentic to the times. How long did it take you guys to film those scenes?
That was filmed all throughout the shoot, interspersed. Allan Graf was really the director of all the football. He did Any Given Sunday as well, and Friday Night Lights. I’ve known him for about 30 years. He paid a lot of attention to making sure he really got the era right, and he had to re-teach the players there to block with their shoulders and not their helmets and things like that to really get the old-school technique that was taught back then.
I saw some film of him and while I don’t really look like him, I feel a responsibility when I play a real person to capture their spirit and to play them honestly, not idealistically. But my main resource was Jim Brown. He was a friend of mine already as we did Any Given Sunday together and he’s a very straight talker.
He told me about his relationship with Ben, which was abrasive and contentious at times, but he had a deep respect for the man as well, and he told me the way it really was, his times there, the atmosphere in the country and at Syracuse. He was also very close with Ernie Davis.
Will General Hawk in G.I. Joe be anything like Schwartzwalder?
(Laughs) No, General Hawk is a little bit more light-hearted. He’s more of a combination of General Patton and Hugh Hefner. Supermodels are his aides-de-camp.
[G.I. Joe] was a lot of fun to do, and I can tell you that knowing is half the battle.
This month marks the 25th anniversary of The Right Stuff.
It is, isn't it?
Do you ever go back and watch some of your old movies?
Well, The Right Stuff is a very, very special movie for me because that was really like being a kid, because I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, and Gordo Cooper was my favorite astronaut, and I grew up in Houston - Space City. I got a pilot’s license for the film. Gordo Cooper lived three miles from me in L.A. and I went flying with Chuck Yeager who was on the set the entire time.
It was great. That’s one of those movies that you’ll be channel surfing, and there it is and you kinda just sit back and watch some of it.
And how it lost Best Picture is beyond me.
Well, it didn't do well. It was also a failure at the box office when it came out. People perceived it, I guess, as a history lesson.
Reader Comments (2)
I recently saw "The Day After Tomorrow" again and was impressed by Dennis' way of portraying emotion.
OMG, the fake wolves had more emotion than Quaid or any of the other actors! It was one of the worst acted movies ever!