Inside Texas’s bold takeover of the American film industry
When Dennis Quaid dropped out of the University of Houston to pursue his acting dreams, there was nowhere to go but Hollywood. Coming off a decade of its biggest hits and at the height of critical acclaim for the movies of the 1970s, California dominated the culture of the United States, and therefore the world. “It was a paradise,” Quaid says. “Creativity, community, the greatest films were made there, a vibrancy of the new wave, Bonnie and Clyde, The Conversation, The Right Stuff, it was an incredible place of palm trees and a real atmosphere of creativity and inspiration where we were making great films with great people we knew and loved… and now all that is gone.” ‘California really is insanely expensive. Rarely did we shoot anything there.
