From H-Town to happy dust
Dennis Quaid blows the lid off Hollywood's cocaine secret: Houston native getsinto his "Favorite Mistake"
Are you sitting down? I hope so, because Houston native Dennis Quaid and Newsweek have a scoop for you.
In the 1970s and 80s, Dennis Quaid and other people in Hollywood used cocaine.
"WHAT?!" you're probably thinking. "Not the Dennis Quaid in Jaws 3-D. No. Never. This must be a mistake."
But it's true. In the '70s, and '80s some in Hollywood were not afraid to use illegal drugs — thankfully we've got that problem cleaned up now!
"Cocaine was even in the budgets of movies, thinly disguised. It was petty cash, you know? It was supplied, basically, on movie sets because everyone was doing it. People would make deals. Instead of having a cocktail, you’d have a line," Quaid writes in an essay titled "My Favorite Mistake."
It's hard to believe the kind of people who would use drugs could be making movies like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but we don't think Quaid — who studied drama at the University of Houston — would make up such a charge.
There is one piece of the story that's hard to believe, though. According to Quaid, he made hits like The Right Stuff and The Big Easy while in the throes of addiction, but he filmed Wilder Napalm sober after completing rehab. Seriously.
"You think, 'Well, if I do the right thing and clean up my life, it’ll get better.' No, it got worse! In 1990 I did Wilder Napalm, which came out and went down the tubes. But that time in my life — those years in the ’90s recovering — actually chiseled me into a person," Quaid writes.
What's next? Finding out Warren Beatty was a ladies' man?