Most accounts indicate that Evi Quaid is the monster, Randy just kind of generally weird and monumentally P-whipped.
I’ll never get for the life of me why people like Randy Quaid, Phil Hartman, and many who aren’t famous stay in marriages like this. (I have a cousin who left a woman like this and within a couple of years was in a relationship with another woman just as bad.)
They can’t be happy, and even a fox knows to gnaw off its own foot if the alternative is slow agonizing death. Do they stay because of the children (who’d probably be better off in foster care) or the expense of divorce or… what exactly? Are they just freaking terrified of being alone? When your entire family and former friends and even your acting guild all cut you off then I’d think you HAVE to know on some level that it’s not just a matter of being misunderstood so much as “I’m married to a psycho hosebeast from hell”, so it must be like a smack addiction- they can’t recover.
Personally I would put any spouse or significant other ‘on notice’ the first time that I ever had to apologize for their behavior. (The important word in that sentence is the first time I had to apologize; anyone might have a public meltdown at some point under extreme or unusual circumstances, but if there’s anything to them they will apologize themselves for their actions.) I’d much rather be alone for the rest of my life than in a relationship that made me and everyone around me miserable; sex you can get with an ATM card and a discreet escort agency, and the rest you can get with a housekeeper or personal assistant who don’t terrify people and if they do you can fire them (not that I would imagine wives like Evi or Mrs. Hartman spend much time darning socks and picking up drycleaning).
Please note that I’m not bashing women- just Xanthippe-on-acid wives whose husbands won’t ditch them. (There’s many flip-gender equivalents as well, but when the man is the asshole there are other considerations [fear of violence, abuse, breadwinner, etc.] that might better explain the matter, whereas in this marriage he earns the money and he’s 6’5 so I don’t think he’s being abused).
Sometimes the same psychological stuff can be at play with female-on-male domestic abuse, no matter how absurd it might seem to outsiders – telling someone no one else would want them, making them so down they live for the brief moments of praise or sunniness you offer them, threatening to take away or hurt the kids. That being said, hadn’t heard this before so it’s more of a general comment than one on his relationship. From that laundry list of nuisances, it sounds like they deserve one another.
Her IMDb page lists two producer credits, both for Randy Quaid films and neither more recent than 1999. Now, IMDb does not list everything ever made. It’s possible she produces industrial or educational films, for instance, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say no, she’s not a filmmaker.
Art films (not art house films) aren’t usually listed on the IMDb so she could be making those. It’s incredibly hard to find anything on her that isn’t about both her and her husband, though – I really wanted to check it out after that IMDb description!
Sort of surprised they’ve been married for over 20 years. That’s pretty crazy in itself.
Oh here we go– looks like there’s some prescription drug abuse, rampant alcoholism and domestic violence. Lovely. (Not that any of that is for certain, of course.)
The film she directed and they funded was called, ironically, The Debtors. It bankrupted them, was bashed by critics, never got wide distribution, and has an imdb rating of 5.2, but otherwise it was a smash.
Evi Quaid has the eyes of a crazy woman. That’s all I have. If I met her in person, she has a look about her that would tell me to stay far, far away from her.
You know those guys that stand outside the carnival tents coaxing people to pay to go inside? “Friends, through here lies one of the great marvels of medical science! See with your very eyes the singular, the amazing, the mysterious Yak Woman!” They’re the barkers.
I find I kinda like the idea of a literal barker, though.
Oh, okay, I thought there was another meaning to “barker” than a carnival barker. I’m still going with “barking mad” from all that I’ve read about her!
It’s a sad story, really, those two. They seem mired in something that will not end well at all.
What does it mean to be banned from Actor’s Equity? Does this mean he essentially can’t work on the stage?
This gave me a chuckle because I initially was trying to imagine what kind of movie John Wayne, Robert Conrad, and Sherman Hemsley would make together.
I guess it means he can’t work as part of a top-flight professional theater company in the United States. There are probably non-Equity than Equity theaters, but they tend to be small and are often run as non-profits, with cast and crew not paid or paid very little.
The Other Sons of Katie Elder. (Since Wayne and Michael Anderson and Dean Martin and Earl Holliman can be brothers [from a mother who had her first kid at 12 and her youngest when she was 50 and was apparently with an Italian guy at some point] no reason Conrad and Hemsley couldn’t slip right in there somewhere.)
And on Little House on the Prairie there was an abused kid who loved his abusive Paw. Didn’t try gnawing on him though- that probably would have really gotten him riled.
Barry Williams (Greg Brady) got fined $50,000 for touring in a non-Equity production of Sound of Music a few years ago. They can’t legally make him pay the fine of course, but they can ban him from working in any Equity productions until it’s paid, which I don’t know if he ever did or not, which is bad news if you’re a stage actor. I’ve seen the Equity and non-Equity productions of several shows and you definitely want to see the Equity (the talent can be good in each but the budget is a lot better in the Equity).
