Vanity Fair is so good at profiling rich people gone bad that it’s a little surprising it took them so long to get to the story of eccentric Hollywood fugitives Randy and Evi Quaid, but rest assured, any of that extra time was well-spent in crafting their new whopper of an article. From sentence one (“Evi Quaid called from a pay phone in Vancouver to say that she and her husband, Randy, the actor, had tried to drive to Siberia, but they ‘couldn’t figure out how to get there’”) and picture one (the Quaids glowering in a hotel room, with Evi wearing black lingerie, thigh-high boots, and a fedora), writer Nancy Jo Sales spins the oddly fascinating tale of an actor and his wife who’ve gone off the reservation, so certain are they that a Hollywood hit squad (that “could now be targeting Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan”) is after them. Here are the ten most out-there passages from the story, and rest assured that there are plenty more where that came from.
• “Evi, 47, a former Hollywood ‘It girl’ who once modeled nude for Helmut Newton and put up a show in a gallery in L.A. consisting of giant photographs of her pierced vagina, was dressed in a black YSL blazer, vest, pants, and combat boots — fugitive chic.”
• “I asked them when they believed their troubles began. They said it was in Marfa, Texas, the rural artists’ community where Giant was shot. They said they had traveled there in the summer of 2009 to ‘look at ranches and stuff’ and erect a ‘Randy Quaid museum.’”
• “She said she also suspected Jeremy Piven’s falling ill from mercury poisoning was another sign of a dastardly plot by the Broadway producers of Speed-the-Plow to collect insurance money. ‘It was an orchestrated hit,’ she said. ‘They could have put mescaline in his water bottle.’”
• “‘Madonna was funny.’ Evi said. ‘She tried to seduce Randy away. She said, “Randy, don’t you wanna come back? Jennifer [Grey] and I, we’re gonna have a ménage.”’ She laughed.”
• “In 1999, Evi directed Randy and Michael Caine in The Debtors, a film whose release was blocked by its backer, Intentional Software founder Charles Simonyi, reportedly because of his objection to a scene involving a ‘squirting rubber penis.’ ‘I love that movie,’ Randy said.”
• “Meanwhile, Evi says it was Meg Ryan who was jealous of her — ‘She was always copying my style,’ she told me, ‘my clothes, my furniture, or just things I would do.’ (Meg Ryan declined to comment.)”
• “Sometime in 2006, when their high-powered neighbor threw a party — a star-studded affair with Calvin Klein and Barbra Streisand in attendance — Randy and Evi blasted music from the animated movie Home on the Range (2004) from speakers lodged in their trees.”
• “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.’”
• “She also sent several people on the production a photograph of herself lying naked on a bed holding a pistol, which Herrick referred to as ‘The Naked Gun E-mail.’ ‘I also sent the half-naked cop photo of me by Helmut Newton with the words “Eat me,”’ said Evi.”
The Quaid Conspiracy [VF]
The Most Outrageous Passages From Vanity Fair’s Randy and Edi Quaid ProfilencG1vNJzZmivp6x7t8HLrayrnV6YvK57kWloaWdhZ3yzrc2dsJiZnpmspsLImKiumZmZe6nAzKU%3D