The Quaid Curse An Essay by Dr. Daniel     All right, listen up. I have a proposition for you. Call it a bar bet, if you will. The next time you're sitting around with your buddies, and I mean this especially for a co-ed crowd, propose a game. You're going to name a movie star, and they have to name good movies that the particular actor stars in. Easy enough, right? Now, add this twist. Any title they name has to be defended as to quality, i.e., what made it good. Okay? Got the rules? Offer this up as bait. You'll go first every round, naming a title for an actor.     Sounds like a breeze, huh? Okay, start off simple. Jimmy Stewart. Katharine Hepburn. Cary Grant. Everybody's catching on, got some nice discussion starters, all well and good. Now, change the rules a bit. Everybody put a dollar in as an ante, and you'll name actors that nobody can connect to a quality movie. If they name one, they get the money. Nobody does it, you get the cash. Don't be frightened now, 'cause I'm gonna tell you The Name to use to make sure you have a fistful of dollars when you leave. Ready? Dennis Quaid.     Collect your bucks, but ponder this: The guy has talent to spare. He's good looking, well-connected, charismatic. But he's snake-bit -- cursed to a career rife with film flops. Can't find a great film to be in. More often than not, he acts circles around his co-stars, and yet the flicks still come off as boring, or worse yet, downright dumb. His films never make money, or they perform well beneath expectations. Listen to this run of money-losin' films: Suspect, D.O.A., Undercover Blues, Postcards from the Edge, Come See the Paradise, Something to Talk About. The closest he's ever come to a hit was the break-even success of Innerspace, and he was playing second fiddle to Martin Short for most of that, back when Short himself wasn't box-office poison. He pulled a few heartstrings in The Big Easy, when, there for a minute or two, he was considered a sex symbol. (I still firmly believe that the "sex symbol" status came solely from the scene where he does something to Ellen Barkin up under her skirt while they are stretched out on a bed. But exactly what was he doing? You could tell his arm was moving, and you could see Barkin's response, but what was he doing? It became a topic of debate for some, and, thanks to HBO's playing it every day for six months, everybody saw him doing it at least twice, but the mystery remained. It was like the old "Venus Butterfly" thing on "L.A. Law.")     But it ends there. If those two movies are the sole arguments for quality, well, forget it. You're doomed. As is, Dennis Quaid, evidently.     And, folks, we're not talking about some recluse who only makes a couple of films every ten years. Do you people realize that Dennis has made 39 films? Over three decades? Now, try remembering a memorable scene or something earth-shattering from his moments on screen. As good as he is, he's as forgettable as a dance number on the Academy Awards show. And, that, dear friends, is the tragic curse of Dennis Quaid.     Personally, I have a few favorite Quaid movies. They're guilty pleasures -- films I wouldn't necessarily recommend -- but, for some reason, I'll watch 'em on occasion. I think Enemy Mine is kinda cool, perhaps because of the acting job Lou Gossett does as the lizard guy, perhaps because it's a sci-fi remake of the WWII movie Hell in the Pacific. One of the all-time funky premises in movies is seen in Wilder Napalm, a comedy, of sorts, about two pyrokinetic brothers feuding over the same girl. I dig Flesh and Bone, 'cause it did to me what Blood Simple did: creeped me out and made me laugh. And I have no earthly idea why, but I'll watch The Right Stuff at the drop of a hat. Maybe because a fast forward button does what should've been done in an editing room. But even these movies are, shall we say, less than stellar.     Has Dennis starred in a great movie? He's in two great movies, but, he's not the star of either one. In fact, he's deep man on the totem pole in both of them, almost an afterthought. In Breaking Away, he was one of the Cutters, the crew of townies that hung around with Dennis Christopher. He was Mike, the constantly-pissed-off guy who stayed ticked that his hometown was taken over by college students. The other movie was The Long Riders, one of the few great Westerns to be made after 1974. He was part of an interesting gimmick that cast three groups of brothers, the Quaids, the Carradines, and the Keaches, as a real gang of thieves made up of three groups of brothers, the Youngers, the James boys, and the Millers. Dennis was Ed Miller, one of the little-known members of the gang who ended up dead. In neither film does he shine as a star, but the movies themselves are great.     It's really a shame. This guy will do whatever it takes for the part. He worked out at a football training camp for two months for Everybody's All-American. It stiffed. He bleached his hair and learned to play the piano for Great Balls of Fire. It stiffed. He lost 70 pounds for Wyatt Earp, nearly killing himself. It stiffed.     So, where does that leave Dennis Quaid now? His latest, Switchback, has already faded into the woodwork of the dollar movie houses. His next movie is going to be a remake of the Disney classic The Parent Trap. Not a good sign.     I do have an idea, though. I think he should become a personal advisor to the stars. If I were an actor up for two parts, I'd love to show him the scripts and say, "Okay, Dennis. Which movie would you make?" Then, which ever one he picked, I'd do the other one. Get reel soon, Dr. V. B. "Doc" Daniel