pre-SXSW: Dennis Quaid at Jester

Friday, 4 pm: Waterloo Ice House, Sixth and Lamar.
As part of my class at UT, we had a special class today to make up for having next week off for Spring Break. The speakers were George Freeman, an agent for William Morris who represents lots of actors and directors whose names I recognized, and Dennis Quaid. I couldn’t resist, even though the class was at 2 pm on a Friday and I had lots to do at the office.
The class was held in an auditorium at Jester Center. Jester is a huge-ass dorm on the UT campus. When I lived in the basement there for one year, it was rumored that at the time, Jester was the biggest dorm in the US. It was also rumored that the building plans had been based on a prison. The lobby/public area does look rather grim (and it hasn’t changed in 12 years … make that 13 years, damn). The auditorium made the studio where we usually meet in CMB (the rusty building) look cozy.
Still, it was a pleasure to look down at the front of the room and see Dennis Quaid, and I will now be very shallow and tell you that I don’t know how old that man is, but he looks hot. (IMdb says he’s 50. Okay.) I watched him walk up to the stage in some rather ratty-looking jeans, noticed that he had all kinds of things crammed in the back pockets, wondered what else a man would stick in his back pocket besides his wallet, then realized that during all this wondering, I had been fixated on his ass for waaay too long. He turned around and I noticed that his front jeans pockets were also crammed with stuff, and then I told myself rather sharply to look over at George Freeman or the clock or something before I got improperly fixated on anything inappropriate.

Mr. Quaid and Mr. Freeman talked about actor-agent relationships, how they select scripts and roles, how they ended up where they are today … standard topics, in general. They mentioned Breaking Away, one of my all-time favorite movies, and I was sorry to see that only three of us in the auditorium had seen the film. (Not very surprised, but sorry.)
The audience was mostly undergraduates, and when they asked for a show of hands on who wanted to be an actor, a director, a writer, and so forth, the most hands were raised for writing. The questions from the audience were sometimes a bit lame and frivolous, but there were some good questions in there. (One guy asked them to be in his student film, and then tossed a Frisbee onto the stage with his business card attached. Cute.)
It was an interesting 75 minutes or so, but it wasn’t as good as the classes we usually have for UT Master Class. I have felt inspired and motivated by some of the speakers—my boyfriend bought me a digital audio recorder after I came home and prattled for hours about audio production and radio and what I could do in that medium, after hearing Ginger Miles. The chairs set up in the studio make everything seem informal, and people like Polly Platt have really opened up and shared some insightful and fascinating things. In those classes, the speaker usually shows clips from the movies they have worked on or are currently working on, and I think that helps keep things moving nicely.
This was obviously a session geared towards undergraduates, which makes sense because the class is really meant to be for them, but I felt like I’d heard so much of it before. I would say that I have heard speakers tell me “Believe in yourself” and “make sure you really love your work” one too many times, but considering the progression of my career, perhaps I should be listening harder.
I’m not at all sorry I went, but it did turn out to be more of a stargazing experience and less of a learning experience for me personally. I wish my little brother had been there, though; he is an aspiring—you know, I don’t know what exactly he’s aspiring to do these days, but he’s an undergrad in theater who is also apprenticing in a dance company and is trying to learn to use his digital video camera for future filmmaking projects—anyway, I think he would have enjoyed it a whole lot. This is exactly why I wish he would move somewhere like Austin.
Mr. Quaid did mention his next project, which I would have liked to have heard more about: a remake of the movie Yours, Mine and Ours (I may have been the only person in the audience who saw the original). It makes sense to me that this movie would be remade, considering that Cheaper by the Dozen was remade recently. (Checking IMDb, I see that the two remakes share a producer, Robert Simonds.) When I was growing up, we loved those movies, which featured these huge families with kids of all ages. (We used to hang out with a family that had 10 kids.) I’m not sure I could stand seeing Yours, Mine and Ours now, particularly the scene where the kids get Lucille Ball drunk. Ugh. I hope they leave that out of the remake.
A lot of people rushed up to the stage afterwards to talk to Dennis Quaid. I didn’t join them. I have no idea what I would say to the man other than “Hi, I love Breaking Away a whole lot. Also, I confess I got a big kick out of Great Balls of Fire.” Or I could have told him he has a nice ass. But the time was running out on my parking meter, so I left Jester Center … the place even smells the same. I hope I don’t have nightmares about it now.
I stopped here at Waterloo because I was pretty sure they’d have wireless and I could park the car in their lot for free. Also, their onion rings are very tasty. I didn’t want to drive home and then have to haul ass back here in a couple of hours through rush-hour traffic. Rush-hour traffic on a day when students are leaving town for Spring Break. Yes, Waterloo is a very fine alternative.
As I finished paying for my onion rings and walked away from the counter, I heard a guy from the kitchen call out to the counter guy, “So how was Dennis Quaid?” Apparently he’d been there too. Austin is that kind of town, I guess.