Randy Quaid sued the makers of BBM for $10 million, claiming they misrepresented the film’s market potential to manipulate him into dropping his price. I’m only posting the story so I can snigger over Quaid’s lawyers saying he’s dropping the suit after having reached “a backdoor agreement.”
His original understanding was he’d take a small free up front but then get a rear-end deal. I’ve heard that he’s not the only one who had a problem- that Jake Gyllenhaal got screwed while filming the movie, but on the other hand it seems neither one of the actresses playing Ledger & Gyllenhaal’s wives in the movie seems to have gotten the shaft.
Quaid said he started to walk off of the movie as he hated Ang Lee, but Lee’s young nephew and assistant Yu Tai bonded with Quaid and looked at him as a second father and begged him not to leave. Quaid said that as much as he despised Ang Lee, he just did not know how to quit Yu.
Quaid had to declare bankruptcy a few years ago and ended up doing some pretty low budget projects, but now on imdb it seems he has a bunch of work lined up. Not surprising to see his career go from bottom to top because he’s so versatile.