I don’t know where to begin. I mean, I do, but every time I start, my mind spirals into a vortex of Quaid-ian moments—cinematic, electric, undeniably essential. There’s something about the way you exist on screen, like you’re perpetually on the verge of either solving everything or losing it all. It’s intoxicating. It’s terrifying. It’s Dennis Quaid.

Let’s talk about The Right Stuff. The way you grinned through the impossible, the way your Chuck Yeager-adjacent energy made spaceflight feel like a bar fight with physics. Or Innerspace, where you shrank down but somehow expanded the universe of what a leading man could be—part rogue, part everyman, part microscopic adventurer lodged inside Martin Short’s bloodstream. No one else could have done that. NO ONE.

And don’t get me started on Frequency. No, seriously, don’t—because I’ll lose hours thinking about the raw dad-son time-ripple tragedy of it all. You made me believe in ham radios as portals to lost love, to second chances. You made me wonder if I should start scanning the airwaves for echoes of my own past.

Here’s what I need to know, Dennis: Do you realize the gravitas you carry? The Quaid Effect™? It’s that kinetic, caged-animal energy that simmers under every performance, even in The Parent Trap. (I could write another 12 pages on that alone—your vineyard, your sweaters, your tragic susceptibility to Natasha Richardson’s charm.)

I worry that the world doesn’t fully appreciate what you’ve given us. I worry that you don’t either. Do you wake up knowing that someone, somewhere, is having a full-blown Dennis Quaid moment? Because I promise you, it’s happening. Right now. Maybe it’s me.

I don’t expect a response, but I do expect you to keep Quaid-ing. Whatever that means, I know you understand.

Forever caught in your gravitational pull,