The Quaid Conspiracy | Vanity Fair

The Quaid Conspiracy | Vanity Fair:

But these oddball antics prepared no one for what would happen in 2007: Randy’s expulsion from Actors’ Equity for bad behavior on the set of Lone Star Love—a retelling of The Merry Wives of Windsor set in the 1860s in which Randy was cast as Colonel John Falstaff. The musical would have been a coup for Quaid; if it had gone to Broadway, it would have fired up a career comeback that had begun with his 2005 appearance in Brokeback Mountain. (In 2006, Quaid sued the producers of the film for $10 million, claiming they had misled him into believing that it was an indie production, causing him to take a lower fee, when it was really a big-budget release. “The circumstances of him dropping the suit are as mysterious as the circumstances under which he filed his claim,” a Focus Features spokeswoman said at the time.)

Two weeks before Lone Star Love, then in rehearsals in Seattle, was set to move to New York, Quaid “called in sick and was not seen again,” said Jack Herrick, the composer and musical director of the show. (Randy denied this, saying, “I would never walk off any show.”) “We had got a lot of warnings from people in the industry that [the Quaids] were dangerously unhinged,” said Herrick, “but Randy had been entirely charming and won the creative team over in the casting process.”

Problems began when “Evi became more and more involved, and as that happened it became more and more contentious,” Herrick said. A major issue was Randy’s costume, over which he insisted he had final approval. “He ended up in a very strange costume of [his and Evi’s] creation,” said Herrick. Randy dyed his hair beet red and wore a codpiece the size and shape of an official N.F.L. football. “It was a huge cock,” said Evi. “It was fucking great. It looked like gay Vivienne Westwood.”