I…so…um…
Just whoa, you guys. You’ve gotta go read these. Folie a deux, table for two.
Actor Randy Quaid and his wife Evi are still in Canada seeking asylum from a conspiracy of “Star Whackers,” who stalk, harrass and ultimately kill Hollywood stars in fake suicide scenarios (like Heath Ledger and David Carradine) in order to steal the star’s money and insurance payments. They feel “safe” outside the U.S., in Canada (for some reason the fact that Carradine died in Thailand doesn’t seem to phase them), and are eager to tell the media their story about the Whackers and any and all other persecution they’ve suffered. So they’ve given not one, but TWO incredibly detailed interviews with Esquire and Vanity Fair this month.
This dark, vast cabal of faceless evil apparently involves lawyers, accountants, estate planners, talent agents, crooked cops, the mob, the FBI, the Screen Actors Guild, Actors Equity, City National Bank and RadarOnline. Oh, and a Dairy Queen in Marfa, Texas.
“They called the Dairy Queen in Marfa, Texas, to spread rumors about us when we lived there,” Evi tells Esquire. “Everything came out of the Dairy Queen.”
That’s about as much exposition and background as I can give you before the whole story goes even further off the rails, in a dozen directions simultaneously. Both Evi and Randy insist that they are sane, and that the other is sane, and seem frustrated that their story is met with the assumption that one or both of them is on drugs or mentally ill, because it all seems so OBVIOUS to them. (Especially considering much of Evi’s “detective work” seems to involve simply plucking things out of context on Google Images.) They admit to taking too much Ambien at one point, and Evi says she snorts crushed-up Demoral for migraines and readily admits to some very nasty behavior towards the cast and crew of the play Lone Star Love, but still fails to see why anyone would side with anyone but her. She’s right because she is.
They’ve alienated themselves from nearly all of their friends and family (including Randy’s brother Dennis), yet most of them insist the Quaids were, at one time, a sweet couple who have since turned unpredictable, unreachable and more than a bit terrifying. Particularly Evi. There are lawsuits aplenty and a reality show pitch, extortion and Nazi plots and both are convinced that they will be killed, and have even mapped out the likely scenarios:
She has interrupted the killers practicing. “Staging scenarios,” she calls them. Dry runs, rehearsals, blocking for a gruesome play.
Their most likely end, the Quaids believe, will involve knives. Randy will be drugged in his sleep — “They know he has sleep apnea,” she says — and Evi will be stabbed to death. Then they will put the knife in his hand. He will wake up and be locked away forever. Or he will kill himself in his terror and grief. The Star Whackers have stolen some of his songs — he writes sad, introspective songs on more crumpled sheets of paper — and the killers will lay one out on the nightstand or the kitchen counter. “Randy’s songs read like suicide notes,” Evi says. “That’s how the cops will read them.”
The Quaids’ California lawsuit — in which they planned to take down the major players in the Star Whacker conspiracy once and for all — was dropped after their check for $905 in court fees bounced. They are still wanted on several outstanding warrants and for failing to appear in court multiple times. Their Canadian immigration case has been put on hold until late December-ish — it was revealed that Evi’s father was born in Canada and thus she didn’t really NEED refugee status after all, and plans to file for citizenship. (Somehow she missed this fact in all her “research.”) Randy still needs the courts’ permission and must prove that extradition will indeed put him in danger, though at one point in the Vanity Fair piece, his immigration lawyer tries to convince him to go deal with his legal problems in California first. He seems okay with that idea; Evi promptly loses her shit.
Vanity Fair then ends their interview with quotes from Randy — spoken seemingly during the only time Evi left the room, and his side. This whole thing, predictably, seems to have begun with money, and a moderately successful movie star who made quite a bit and doesn’t seem to understand where it all went.
“I just always wanted to be left alone to go into a creative space,” said Quaid. “I had to go there a lot because I was working a lot, and I didn’t have the interest of sitting in my trailer in between scenes and going over my bank statements. My main concern was putting a good performance on the screen. But at the same time it was always like I was never able to get ahead, and that felt weird. I just thought, Well, are we spending that much money?
“My accountant, he sent me a letter behind Evi’s back. He said, Your wife is spending so much money—she’s gonna drag you into the poorhouse! They were trying to separate us, divide us, and it really affected me. Like I started looking at Evi sideways, like, This bitch. Yeah, Evi was going into Hermès; she was going into all the stores, Chanel—the whole deal—but now I know if you total up the bills they’re just a little fraction of what I was capable of paying for. I was making enough money for me to comfortably support Evi and her shopping.
“They wanted to separate us,” said Quaid, “because Evi is very intuitive and very smart. She’s the smartest person I know. You can call her crazy, you can call her whatever you want, but she is my lifeline, and if she wasn’t with me, I don’t know where I’d be.”
He stared off into the distance, waiting for her to come back.
Top photo of the Quaids in their hotel room in British Columbia by Sam Jones for Vanity Fair
About Amy Corbett Storch
