"Brokeback Mountain" actor Randy Quaid is suing the producers of the cowboy romance for $10 million, because according to him, he was underpaid for his supporting role as rancher Joe Aguirre.
Randy filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging producers James Schamus and David Linde, through Focus Features and Del Mar Productions, convinced him to drop his normal rates by misrepresenting the film as a low-budget film.
"Brokeback Mountain" was made on an estimated budget of $14 million, which by Hollywood standards, is not low-budget.
The popular movie that stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as two cowboys who fall in love, has raked in roughly $158 million at the international box office and won the Best Director Oscar for Ang Lee.
The suit says, "Randy Quaid is an instantly recognizable household name and much-admired actor on the world's stage with a worldwide box office total of nearly $2 billion.
"Defendants were engaging in a 'movie laundering' scheme designed to obtain the services of talent ... for a picture that, in reality, had studio backing and would be exploited using traditional studio marketing and distribution techniques."
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