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[0:00] Rob Schneider: Even though my name is Rob Schneider, today's episode makes me feel like another SNL alumni. Bill Hader, specifically his character of Stefan, because Broadway Bound's wildest new show is Lone Star Love. It has everything. Shakespeare, gay cowboys, lifetime bans from actors' equity, 2 a.m. vagina pics to the producers. You know, that's when the leading man's wife sends pictures of her vagina to the producers to say she's unhappy with the rewrites. Well, we are ending this season with the saddest tale of all, a tale of a pretty good show, almost 40 years in the making, that got derailed by egos, Ambien, and a cabal of celebrity assassins. Yes, friends, it is Randy Quaid in Lone Star Love on this episode of Broadway Bound, the musicals that never came to Broadway.

[0:59] Rob Schneider: Hi, friends, Rob Schneider here, and we're closing out our third season today with a show that was filled with so much sores that it made news across America. Now, the shows we have explored this season all failed to get their Broadway debut, and in most of those cases that's okay. While this season has been linked by stars, it hasn't been linked by quality per se. Poor material, poor directors, poor casting, but today is a heartbreaker because the material was quite good, as was the director, and even the casting would have succeeded had the star trusted his collaborators. Well, he did trust one collaborator, a woman who had no theatrical resume, a woman whose idea of a note session was photos that, well, okay. Let's look at the 2007 Broadway Bound musical, Lone Star Love, starring Emmy Award winner and Academy Award nominee, Randy Quaid. That's some nice credentials there.

[1:49] Rob Schneider: For our story to properly begin, and imagine this all underscored by a lute, we must travel back in timeth to a timeth where men were men and women were also men, at least to the Globe Theater, which was the home not only of William Shakespeare, but the plot of the Lifetime movie, Hamnet. Do not get me started, please, on that film. I have thoughts. I have opinions about Hamnet that I don't think people want to hear, but that's okay. They all made millions of dollars, and I'm sitting here talking into a mic from Amazon. Thank you. That was acting. Well, it's the 1590s, and Shakespeare has just done a pretty good job with his Henry plays. Who is the biggest fan of the Henry plays? Queen Elizabeth I. She loves it so much, well, not the play, per se, but this character of Sir John Falstaff, an overweight, drunk, good-time guy, bad-boy demeanor who pals around with Henry.

She liked him so much, she asked Bill to write a play all about him, all about Falstaff, and make it a comedy where he's in love. And much like today, to any producer, Shakespeare said, yes, ma'am, and let her keep paying his bills. But it was okay because it was rumored that Falstaff was actually Shakespeare's favorite character, and honestly, can you blame him? He was the funny rogue, a buffoon, but shrewd, and a man with a lust for life.

[3:04] Rob Schneider: So for this lovely queen, Billy Boy wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor, Windsor being Windsor Castle, that area. Now, the plot is pretty simple. Falstaff shows up to town, he's broke, and decides he will woo two married women, Mistress Page and Mistress Ford, and inherit one of their fortunes, and be on Easy Street. Mistress Page and Mistress Ford, yas, mistress. Well, Falstaff, did you like that? Falstaff. Falstaff pisses off his servants, and the servants tell the wives' husbands, and zaniness ensues with disguises, double entendres, and hilarity. Well, as much hilarity as you can get out of Shakespeare. Now, okay, here's my other pet peeve. It's the end of the season. I'm going to let it all go.

My other pet peeve is people laughing, acting like they know what's going on during a Shakespeare play. How many times have you been in a Shakespeare play, and a character goes, oh, well, the knave's cockhorn knobby knees must be a riveth, and the audience goes, oh, this is so funny. You don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Why are you laughing? Calm down. Honestly, Merry Wives is not one of Shakespeare's greater works, and it feels a bit like an assignment, as opposed to art. When it's performed, it's like one of the seven Shakespeare plays that everyone usually can skip, even when Judi Dench did it in 2007, same year as this show. But I digress.

[4:13] Rob Schneider: Well, I'm not the biggest fan of the Merry Wives of Windsor, which now has three Ds in it, if you were curious, was a gentleman by the name of John Haber. Now, who is John Haber, you ask? Well, in 1973, Haber was a director living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, when he was asked to direct Henry IV, part one, Falstaff as a character, for a local theater troupe with a guy named Tommy Thompson playing Falstaff. Now, Tommy Thompson, the year before, was bottom in Midsummer, and he crushed it, so why not put him in Shakespeare? Plus, he was a musician. He was part of a band called the Red Clay Ramblers. Now, Haber thought that this intense drama, the Henry drama, was not the best use of these amateur actors, so he switched plays to Merry Wives of Windsor, and like many directors that are forced, granted the gift to direct Shakespeare, he set it in a different time, post-Civil War, in Windsor, Texas.

Now, it kind of works because the play is really the only Shakespeare play about common people, so Windsor, Texas fits this vibe. Plus, after the Civil War, the cattle industry was emerging, which would parallel the emerging aristocracy in the original play. This is all working out perfectly, and it was a hoot. Old West, cowboy, shoot him up. The Ramblers played throughout the show, and the curtain call had the cast singing Happy Trails. Let me tell you something, in 1973, high on dope, this sounds amazing.

[5:32] Rob Schneider: Now, let's flash forward again, shall we, to the mid-1980s, when the Red Clay Ramblers became the Red Clay Ramblers. Now, who are the Red Clay Ramblers? Well, they are a string band. They mostly play Appalachian music, but they weave that throughout jazz, and R&B, and Celtic, and all these different genres. They never were household names, but they were respected, and they really popularized the sound that we know as Americana. Now, we got Tommy Thompson on banjo, Jim Watson on guitar, Bill Kix on fiddle, and Mike Craver on the keys. Now, in addition to concerts, they had some theatrical acumen as well. They wrote a Jesse James musical, Diamond Studs, in 1975, played off-Broadway, and they even wrote music for Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind and Bill Irwin's Fool Moon.

So, it seemed natural that theaters would ask them if they had ideas for a musical, and when the Alley Theater in Texas asked, they answered, we do, a musical version of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Now, the first Merry Wives, the one back in '73, that was just Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, but it wasn't the musical. So, Haber and the Ramblers created a full musical score and new book for The Merry Wives of Windsor, Texas, and off it went in Houston in 1988 to great reviews, then Stages St. Louis, and all over, and it seemed people were really enjoying this new take on Shakespeare, especially since the Ramblers were in it as Colonel Falstaff's posse, and they were wreaking havoc in Yeehaw.

[7:00] Rob Schneider: Now, musicalizing Billy Shakes is always a daunting task. It's safe to say that we've had tons of Shakespeare shows turned into musicals because if one thing is successful, there'll be imitators trying to get in on the action. So, some actually can crack the code, like Boys from Syracuse or West Side Story. Then, some miss the mark like Music Is or Rockabye, Hamlet. So, if done well, the Merry Wives of Windsor musical could be Broadway's next smash hit. The issue, though, that most people run into is the idea that Shakespeare's most potent plays, the ones that you would think are ripe for musicalization, those have been done, and they've been done really well. Musicals need characters that you feel for, emotionally feel for, and Romeo and Juliet is that.

Shakespeare's best characters are intellectually stimulating, but to me, not emotionally gripping. So, the material or the source material is always on shaky ground, at best. Now, I'm sure there are many people who disagree, and that's fine. Go get your own podcast.

[7:59] Rob Schneider: So, about 10 years later, 1996 or so, after Windsor was performed at a few more regional theaters to great reviews, it was time for the all-important workshop phase. Now, this season, every show we discussed did not really workshop, but just went out on the road, ironing out its kinks in full view of every show queen in Boston, New Haven, and Philly. But the workshop process allows people to work in a cone of silence, so audiences actually get to see a musical that's been worked on for quite some time and was, by this point, hopefully, good. They were seeing the fruits of the labor, not the labor itself. Now, I actually miss the old way of doing things, but I understand all of this economically.

Now, it was clear that Falstaff was the starring role. It needed someone who was big, boisterous, and could lead a company. Think like John Goodman. And if you can't get John Goodman, who else could you get? Well, what about Jim Belushi? Of course, John Belushi's great brother who went on to his own impressive career in TVs and movies. Well, in their last workshop, they got Jim Belushi, and he was great, and the show was great, and it looked like the show could move with him starring in it. But, as often happens, TV money lured Jim Belushi away from the project, and Lone Star Love, which it was now being called, was put on the back burner like a plate of ham hocks after a Memorial Day picnic in the middle of June. I'm not going to do it anymore.

[9:17] Rob Schneider: Now, luckily, the off-off Broadway theater company, Amas, came knocking on the barn door, or should I say the barred door, oh, God, of the Red Clay Ramblers, and offered to do an immersive production in New York, which is, I think, close to New York. The audience would be fed barbecue. Musicians wandered and played with the audience, and the John Hausman Theater was alive with some pretty good tunes, and a great cast, including J. O. Sanders as Falstaff, and Beth Leavel as Mistress Ford, with direction by Shakespeare expert Michael Bogdanoff, and choreography by 42nd Street's very own Randy Skinner. Starting on December 8, 2004, Lone Star Love played to good crowds and okay reviews. Charles Isherwood at the time said, quote, It would be wise not to overindulge in starchy foods, since corn and sugar also turn out to be essential ingredients in this sweet-tempered, cheerfully hokey production.

With the musical score and its book proceeding on parallel tracks, the show tends to dawdle when it should sprint. The cast certainly can't be faulted for a lack of energy. With accents as broad as the Rio Grande, they romp, stomp, sashay, sneer, or snarl with an exuberance that skirts caricature or embraces it. Lone Star Love is the kind of pleasant, competent, thoroughly innocuous show that somehow leaves you with an itch for the offensively bad. But he liked, actually, a lot of the score, including this number called Count on My Love, sung by the characters of Fenton and Mistress Page.

[10:36] Rob Schneider: Count on my love for you Always believe it's true As the tall pine grows True as the wind blows We're two hearts as one That time can't undo Count on my love for you Count on my love for you Measure what I've been through With fortunes of shamble Through many a ramble Prairie skies were always a sorrowful blue So count on my love for you Lonely all day.

[11:32] Rob Schneider: Lone Star Love ended up getting a cast recording, tons of nominations, and an extension. Now, Amas was not in this alone. The lead producer was a guy named Bob Boyette, and you might know that name if you're a fan of television. He was one of the producers behind Family Matters, Perfect Strangers, Full House. But somewhat recently, he was getting into theater and began looking for new projects. Lone Star Love intrigued him, but he was also looking for a partner, and he got a guy named Ed Burke, a retired businessman from North Carolina who had never produced before. But Ed had just sold his business, had cash, and he wanted to play. So, play he did. Boyette and Burke became the lead producers of Lone Star Love, Broadway's next new musical hit.

Now, they knew that the Amas production was good, but it needed to be better, more musical, more Broadway. They would replace Bogdanoff with Urinetown's John Rando as a creative advisor. They would keep Randy Skinner on for choreography and direction, and to freshen the book would be a television writer who wrote for such shows as Living Single and Designing Women, a guy by the name of Robert Horne. Sadly, by the 2000s, it was clear if you wanted to succeed on Broadway, you had to be a good.

[12:36] Robert W. Schneider: You really needed a star somewhere in the show, and that star role had to be Colonel John Falstaff.

[12:42] Robert W. Schneider: J.O. Sanders is as talented as can be, but he doesn't sell tickets. He wasn't a marquee name.

[12:48] Robert W. Schneider: They looked at John Goodman, Bo Bridges, and then they remembered an actor who could bring the vivacity and joy to Colonel Falstaff, an actor whose career had been anything but conventional, and yet no matter what he did, he was brilliant. He had also been offered the role, I think, before Belushi had turned it down, and that was Randy Quaid. Today, when we think of Randy Quaid, we probably think of deadbeat yet joyful Cousin Eddie from the Vacation franchise, the leisure suit-wearing, chronically broke, heart-of-tarnish-gold Cousin Eddie whose most iconic line in the movie franchise is in Christmas Vacation when he exclaims, "'Shitter's full!' shouted with such glee as he cheerily dumps his RV's waste system on his neighbor's lawn."

You watch him and think, oh, he must be a Second City guy. He's not. He's just a damn good actor. He grew up in Texas, a distant cousin of Gene Autry. See, look how perfect this is for Falstaff. He made his debut in The Last Picture Show when he showed up on a whim to audition. Then two years later, this unknown gets nominated for the Oscar, the BAFTA, and the Golden Globe for his role as sailor-turned-prisoner Larry Meadows in The Last Detail, starring Jack Nicholson.

[13:54] Robert W. Schneider: The movie roles came in quick succession, and in between, he won an Emmy for playing Lyndon Johnson in a biopic. Bonus points. Who played Lady Bird? Who played Lady Bird? Comedy, drama, movies, TV, SNL, Dead Serious, Dead Funny, Randy Quaid was the everyman who, if you saw him in a movie like Independence Day or Kingpin or Frankenstein, you knew the movie was going to be good. 2005 was a really big year for Quaid. He got the Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for playing Colonel Tom Parker in an Elvis biopic. He was in the movie that everybody was seeing, Brokeback Mountain, and the year before, he conquered theater with a new Sam Shepard play. He was living on top of the world. He had just never done a musical before, but he could do everything, so why not ask him again and see if maybe he had changed his mind?

[14:41] Robert W. Schneider: In that same incredible year, John Rando and Robert Horne met with Quaid about the project, and he was now enthused. He loved Falstaff, understood the character could sing and dance, always wanted to do a musical, and he would sell tickets. This is Randy Quaid. He said, quote, "It's a real honor, you know, to play a character that is so well known, you know, throughout the history of literature, and then to put him in a setting of Texas, and I'm from Texas, so I felt like, well, if I'm going to do Broadway for the first time and a musical for the first time, Texas is really something I'm familiar with." Okay, full steam ahead, boys. The show would rehearse in New York in the summer of 2007, head to Seattle's Fifth Avenue Theater for a tryout, same place that housed Hairspray, open September 19th, and be on Broadway by December 3rd, 2007, at the Belasco Theater, and joining Quaid would be a very strong foundation of Broadway stalwarts, Bob Cuccioli, Lauren Kennedy, they'd be the Fords, Dee Hody as Mama Paige, and a newbie, Kara Lindsay as her daughter. Kara got one of my favorite songs in the show, and here she is talking about Lone Star Love and singing that song from a concert that I produced at 54 Below.

[15:46] Kara Lindsay: Oh, Lone Star Love, I got my equity card doing Lone Star Love, and it was such an unfortunate ending to the show. I don't know if any of you know the story, but the marquee actually was up at the Belasco, and we had an out-of-town tryout at the Fifth Avenue Theater in Seattle, and we were all planning to come in, it was very exciting, it was like dreams come true, it was a great show, it was really funny, it was based on the Merry Wives of Windsor, and the Red Clay Ramblers wrote the music to it, so it was all country, and it was beautiful, and yeah, so then Randy Quaid did some nasty things, and we actually kicked him out of the union, which this is my first ever professional job, I was like, is this what it's like?

I don't know, equity court? Okay, there's the thing, and I went there, but, and unfortunately, because of all that, the show ended, but it's so great to be able to sing this song again, it just was such a great show, and it was so sad to see it go, and I reached out to Jack Herrick, who wrote the song, and I just told him I was doing this, so I'm doing it for him.

[17:06] Kara Lindsay: Tell me, prairie blue, is there someone out riding on the prairie tonight?

[17:17] Kara Lindsay: Is he lonesome and blue, or does he shine just like you? Will he ever find me out here in your moonlight?

[17:30] Kara Lindsay: Won't you tell him, prairie moon, that I'm waiting, just hoping he needs a gal, that's true.

[17:43] Kara Lindsay: Won't you tell me that you know he's riding here soon, you big beautiful prairie moon?

[17:57] Kara Lindsay: Shadows get turned into dreams, way out here in your light. Don't you shine on other places, mysteries that fly on bright wings through the blue of the night. Can't you see their faces?

[18:29] Kara Lindsay: Won't you tell him, prairie moon, I'm still waiting, keep on shining, but how do I know what to do?

[18:39] Kara Lindsay: Won't you tell me that you know he's riding here soon, you big beautiful prairie moon?

[18:52] Kara Lindsay: Oh, beautiful prairie moon.

[19:06] Robert W. Schneider: Rehearsals begin, and Quaid is great. He's off book from day one. He's ready to work. He's kind and gracious. In fact, here's some footage of the Lone Star Love cast on their press day rehearsal.

[19:22] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, so many dimensions to Falstaff. You know, Shakespeare wrote him in a couple of the Henry plays, and then Queen Elizabeth, so the story goes, wanted, loved the character of Falstaff so much, he asked Shakespeare to write a play for him, where he falls in love, and that became Merry Wives of Windsor.

[20:18] Robert W. Schneider: Carol.

[20:30] Robert W. Schneider: When you're playing a character like Falstaff that is so famous, and has been played so many times in history, you want to start with those acting chops, and Randy's an amazing actor. He's really just a kind of a larger than life force and energy, but he's also incredibly down to earth, and just like really generous and really giving. Now, this is where we need to mention that Randy Quaid did not come alone to Lone Star Love and the Lone Star Love rehearsals. Please welcome to the stage, Evie Quaid, Randy Quaid's wife of 18 years. Now, how does one describe Evie? This is the LA Times recounting how Randy and Evie met. It was 5 a.m. when actor Randy Quaid entered his hotel lobby to meet the driver who would take him to the set.

All he saw was a beautiful woman asleep on a chair. He woke her. She apologized. She'd been out late the night before. He laughed and got her some coffee. She drove for an hour, then announced they were lost. He laughed again and pointed her toward New Jersey, where he and Madonna were filming The Bloodhounds of Broadway. She reached a toll booth and realized she didn't have a cent. Could she borrow some money? He laughed yet again and paid. He did not laugh when a film executive said the driver was fired for taking so long to get him to work. If she goes, I'm off this picture, Quaid announced. Thus, their love story began. They were engaged at the wrap party and will marry in the spring. She has a new job now. Always an avid fashion fan, she's Quaid's wardrobe supervisor in real life and says she's starting to do his wardrobe for films.

[21:59] Robert W. Schneider: Well, Evie was more than his wardrobe supervisor. She seemed to be his creative supervisor as well. She came to rehearsals. She filmed them, offered notes and thoughts openly, refusing for rehearsals to continue until her voice and thoughts were heard. Now, the cast was getting upset. The crew was getting upset, and some said that even Randy was getting upset. She had ideas about Randy's character, lines, scenes, costumes, and the production team did not know what to do. The stage manager even saved her number as Do Not Answer. So, they devised a scheme. For Falstaff's first entrance in the musical, they wanted it to be a silent movie in which Falstaff gets bucked off of a Bronco and he crashes through the screen onto the stage.

It's actually a pretty smart entrance. They asked Evie if she would be willing to film that and edit it, and that got her out of the rehearsals so the team could finish the show uninterrupted. The cast even said without her, everyone just started to bond and enjoy the process, especially Randy.

[23:01] Robert W. Schneider: But then, Seattle. Then came Seattle, the only tryout before Broadway. And at $6.5 million, it was going to be really important that this show get into shape for Broadway, where it was going to join such musicals that season as In the Heights, Xanadu, Crybaby, Passing Strange, The Little Mermaid, Young Frankenstein. Now, word on the street at the time was that Xanadu and Mermaid and Crybaby were a little rough, and Frankenstein was clearly not the producers. Passing Strange was a little too esoteric, and In the Heights was really the only proven contender, according to the Broadway Cognizante. Cognizante. God bless you. If Lone Star Love got into shape, it could be a pretty big contender, but that was not to be.

[23:44] Robert W. Schneider: Something had changed when Randy and now Evie came into rehearsals in Seattle. The first big issue arose in what is now called the fat suit incident. If there is one thing people know about Falstaff, it's that he is fat. He's just that. He's fat. There was even a song about it. It was actually his first song. Let's hear it.

[24:24] Robert W. Schneider: But when Quaid saw that they wanted him to wear a fat suit, he refused. Actually, Evie refused. No star of the show should look fat, Evie reasoned, and the whole team was like, he's supposed to be fat. What made it even more difficult is that Quaid was now in excellent shape, and he wanted to show off his new physique more so, so he would do scenes shirtless, and the audience couldn't figure out why he was fat, John Falstaff, unless you spelled fat P-H-A-T.

[24:50] Robert W. Schneider: Then there came the codpiece incident. Evie and Randy thought it would be funny if Falstaff wore a codpiece, a big codpiece, like a Benny Hill-size, ha-ha, codpiece. They were told, nope, that's the wrong tone for this show, and Randy understood. Of course he didn't understand. One night during a performance, he comes out in his long johns with a massive codpiece.

[25:11] Robert W. Schneider: Like he had stuffed a honey-baked ham in his pants, just like Lanny Kazan. So this is where I think we can see what the issue is. And actually, when you look at it, it makes sense. Quaid wanted a Falstaff that was sexual, virile, and lecherous. The team wanted a musical comedy funny guy. Both are legitimate approaches. The problem is you needed someone to win this argument, and it's usually the director. And that's when the producers realized something. The producers were so desperate to have Randy Quaid play this role, they just kind of agreed to everything that was in his contract. And they agreed to some pretty interesting things. First, no changes to the script or score without Randy Quaid's approval.

Randy Quaid's approval over his costume, his hair, and his makeup. Randy Quaid's ability to veto an actor continuing in the production if he didn't like them. And finally, Randy Quaid would be guaranteed to be the only person to take the role of Falstaff to Broadway. They were at his mercy.

[26:14] Robert W. Schneider: Lone Star Love was a benign, fun, we-got-dancing-cowboys-type show. It was part of the escapist fare that was running Broadway in this era. Trouble is the Quaids did not want that anymore. Quaid said, quote, how do you take a fornicator, an adulterer, an alcoholic, and an identity thief and make a family show around him? Once the previews began, the gloves really came off. The Quaids saw Lone Star Love as a raunchy, dark, indie movie with twisted sexual desires. Evie said, quote, quite frankly, we did want to take it in a more surreal direction. This is Shakespeare. It's not supposed to be whitewashed. It's not supposed to be The Little Mermaid, which is where Broadway seems to be going. Okay, a valid opinion.

You just need to say that before you sign on. Perhaps they could give Randy notes, but even that upset Evie. They refused to take the notes, and Randy hired a bodyguard outside his dressing room so nobody could get in to give him notes. He even stopped showing up to rehearsals so he didn't have to hear producer Ed Burke telling him to tone down his performance. Then Evie would tell the press, quote, Ed is more concerned with his personal taste than he is with what's right for the show. That personal taste runs more to Disney and Six Flags than it does to Shakespeare, which is odd because Evie had a few non-Shakespearean ideas, like adding lines referencing the movies Randy Quaid was in and having two gay cowboys do a ballet in one scene to highlight Brokeback Mountain.

[27:30] Robert W. Schneider: During the show, Randy really began to go off script, literally. His own lines, his own staging, adding props, each night a different hair color until he settled on magenta. Sometimes he would say lines that would eliminate characters, repeatedly referring to an actress's musical instruments as her, quote, gynecological instruments, telling an actor that if he made direct eye contact with them, he would be fired, and the worst, taking off the hat of Chris, the Red Clay Rambler guitarist. He ripped off Chris's hat and beat him with it in an improvised bit of business. Hit him about four times. Chris tripped, fell off his guitar. Stage manager said, Randy, no more, and Randy allegedly did it again.

Robert Horne, a voice of calm and reason, was sent to speak to Randy about some line changes, and in the hotel room, as Randy apparently kindly listened, Evie yelled in the other room to Randy to not listen because Robert Horne was a liar, like all of them. She then came in and started screaming at Randy and hitting Randy, and then Randy started screaming and hitting her, and Robert apparently did an army crawl out of the hotel room.

[28:35] Robert W. Schneider: Well, this team gathered at a cheesecake factory, Seattle Sardi's Cheesecake Factory, and looked at the contract, which sometimes could be the cheesecake menu, and realized they were screwed. They were screwed. The show has been hijacked by the star and his wife. They were going to freeze the show, which meant the Quaids couldn't make more suggestions or changes. The show was frozen. Well, this did not sit well with Evie that Randy's contract was making the rounds and at a cheesecake factory, and she sent emails to everyone cast and staff that said, quote, with all the deceit going on and lack of paying key creative elements for the production, Randy's contract being unethically passed around.

He has no trust in the working process. He does not agree to any changes. He no longer trusts the creative team's agenda or to honor his contractual rights in this production. He is not willing to make changes in the script. There they were in out-of-town tryout and being told no changes could occur, but it was frozen, done. What else could happen? Well, the next morning, the entire staff woke up to an email from Evie, and there was a picture she sent to them all. A picture of her vagina with the words eat me scrawled on it.

[29:49] Robert W. Schneider: They just had to get to the opening, which they did, and the reviews, much like New York soft Broadway reviews, were mixed. The greatest review is, quote, Quaid is an interesting choice as Falstaff. The actor has a kind of outsized presence and lousy appeal that's undeniably fun to watch. In his delightfully silly introductory song Fat Man Jump, he boogies around the stage with surprising grace, but he seems to be performing in a vacuum. His sidekicks, played by three members of the onstage band, are terrific musicians, but not the kind of actors who can feed energy back to a loose, spontaneous performer like Quaid. The rest of the cast, led by the able Robert Cuccioli, Lauren Kennedy, Dan Sharkey, Dee Hody, seem to exist in another, more traditional musical theater world.

They're breathing the air of one planet, and Quaid's eating air on another. They just don't seem to mesh. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer called the show dull, quote, this pokey, moseying production more an old-fashioned operetta than a contemporary musical is not right for a $110-a-ticket Manhattan. And after the first week, Randy Quaid got sick, cough, cough, and stopped showing up, leaving his understudy, Tony Lawson, to do the last two weeks. A doctor called the theater every day to keep vouching for Quaid being sick, while Evie stood outside with a camcorder recording patrons leaving, asking them about how sad they were Randy Quaid was not in the show.

[31:11] Robert W. Schneider: The producers knew that this was not going to Broadway. The Quaids hijacked the show, and the show wasn't strong enough to withstand not having been approved in Seattle. At the closing performance, David Armstrong, the great David Armstrong, the artistic director of Fifth Avenue Theater, thanked the company who had been to hell and back and said that he wanted to acknowledge the company, who was a class act. They were a class act. They worked very hard under very, very difficult conditions. In most cases, pre-Broadway runs help the show's creators assess whether the book, music, or lyrics need work. And he said what we really needed was a different star, not due to a lack of talent, but someone with a different personality and a sense of professionalism.

You would think that closing in Seattle would be it, but it was not. The 26 members of the show were fed up with Quaid and, during the tech, wanted him brought up on charges to Actors' Equity—the physical abuse, the sexual inappropriateness. Everybody signed this petition, and then the petition had to be given to Randy Quaid so he could see the charges being brought against him. That's fair. Allegedly, Evie took the signatures from that petition and layered on a fake statement on top of it that said those who had signed were actually saying that Quaid had done nothing wrong.

[32:16] Robert W. Schneider: So things are falling apart. It's getting a little tricky over there. A hearing date was set in early 2008, and it got even more bonkers. The feeling was that Quaid would have to pay fines, probably about $81,000, to the cast of the show for two weeks of work that he really prevented from occurring. And before the tribunal even met, he resigned saying, quote, the union tolerates racism and mounts McCarthy-era witch hunts. But they said to him, yeah, that's okay, you can leave, but you were a member when you had all these charges brought against you, so you're still on the hook for this $81,000. Well, before the equity hearing board, five members even met, things got crazier. I know, right? Evie began emailing the cast to say she would sue them unless they dropped the charges against her husband, quote, you have one last chance to stop this onerous campaign or else you will be drawn into a legal quagmire.

Needless to say, nobody dropped anything. For two months, Evie would call the equity building and harass and chew out the staff. On January 23rd, she and Randy showed up to the LA offices demanding to see paperwork that nobody actually had. And of course, she filmed it all. The office staff got a restraining order against her and hired security. They said they were in fear of their life. Two days later, she showed up again, called one staff member a Nazi bitch, and then she allegedly assaulted the 76-year-old receptionist before the police came. Evie, in return, fired a restraining order saying that they broke her finger in the conflagration.

[33:49] Robert W. Schneider: Well, eventually, they get the equity hearing, and during the six and a half hour meeting to decide on what to do, Evie yelled at the panel that they were all part of a Nazi plot to get Randy Quaid. He received a lifetime ban from Actors' Equity and was forced to pay $81,000 for two weeks to the cast. That producer, Ed Burke, he's the one who ended up paying it because he thought the cast would never get it if Randy Quaid was in charge of paying it. In response to the five-member equity hearing board's decision, Quaid said, quote, I'm guilty of only one thing, giving a performance that elicited a response so deeply felt by the actors and producers with little experience of my creative process that they actually think I am false death.

With that, Lone Star Love came to an end. No Broadway, no Tony nominations, just a 40-year-old dream deferred. Quaid and his wife didn't stay out of the news, though, for long. In 2009, they were arrested for allegedly defrauding an innkeeper. Then the next year, alleged burglary, outstanding warrants, and then they claimed they were targets of a secret cult that killed celebrities like Heath Ledger and Chris Penn and were asking Canada to house and protect them. Yeah, they were returned to the United States, where Quaid and his wife lay pretty low, except Quaid uses social media now to drum up support for Donald Trump.

[35:05] Robert W. Schneider: Had Lone Star Love come in, I'm sure it would have received a best musical and best score nomination in a kind of weak season. I think probably, I'm so sorry, Crybaby would have probably been knocked off the list, and I feel that Quaid would have gotten a nomination for best actor, and I think that probably would have knocked Tom Wopat off the list, and I love Tom Wopat and I love Crybaby. This season, we have seen the fragility of stars, each with an ego, each with an opinion, each trying to figure out how best to present their essence to a live audience, often at the disservice of the story. Some, like Bea Arthur and Angela Lansbury, were given material that was too ahead of its time. Others, like Ginger Rogers and Anthony Newley, had material that was past its prime.

Some were miscast, like Robert Preston or Gene Barry. People like Barbara Cook and Jerry Lewis had to fail on Broadway to begin their second acts, and some, like Bette Davis and Randy Quaid, realized that collaboration was not in their wheelhouse. Well, we talked so much about William Shakespeare on this episode. This season reminds me of another Shakespeare play, Julius Caesar, you know, the one that says, The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. And this season makes me think we could rewrite it, so it could say, The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stories, but in our stars.

[36:28] Robert W. Schneider: Till next time. Thanks for season three. Bye-bye.

[36:39] Robert W. Schneider: Hi, friends. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Broadway Bound, the musicals that never came to Broadway. Just a reminder that it takes a lot of research and assistance to get these episodes produced, and any financial assistance is always appreciated. If you like what we are doing, please head over to robwschneider.com, that's R-O-B-W-S-C-H-N-E-I-D-E-R.com. Click the tab that says AMTA, that stands for the American Musical Theater Archives, and make a tax-deductible donation to keep shows like this one on the air. Oh, my gosh, I sound so much like PBS right now. I'm so sorry. And sadly, I can't even send you a tote bag, but I can wave energetically if I see you on the street.

And isn't that worth the price of a donation alone? Actually, donate to PBS. That way, they can send you a tote bag. You can put it over your head so nobody sees me waving at you if you're really ashamed and embarrassed of my vociferous energy. Once again, robwschneider.com. Click AMTA, make a tax-deductible donation, and I will be forever grateful.