DAVID CARRADINE PORTRAIT
His eyes pierce your brain, carefully analysing each and every word you utter, calculating a response like an alligator waiting to snap its jaws. He possesses a brooding demeanour, craggy face, wispy long grey hair and gunslinger walk. His gravitas is undeniable, style impeccable. If this man’s notch was turned one louder, it could have been an encounter with a psychopathic killer rather than an actor, writer, director and musician. Though moody persona may belie a desert-dry wit and mischievousness, when David Carradine tells you his eponymous, snake-charming Kill Bill character is entirely him except killing, you believe without question. Certainly, you wouldn’t want to pick a fight with the guy.
Particularly surprising then, when over dinner a spectacled solicitor-type sauntered over to the martial arts expert of forty years and accused him of rudeness for chain-smoking American Spirit cigarettes in a restaurant. It was almost the story of Pai Mai and the massacre at the Shaolin Temple all over again.
“Why didn’t you move to another table? There’s an ashtray here. So we’re smoking. Get the fuck out of here!” murmured Carradine as the surrounding tables fell silent.
“Just because you are a celebrity, doesn’t mean you should have any special treatment,” he meekly replied, rubbing his sweating brow.
The son of legendary horror and western actor John Carradine paused. The dust settled and he gave the solicitor a look that would turn black hair white.
“Just fuck off,” he slowly enunciated with hands twitching in his chair. “Get the fuck out of here!”
Sat beside him was manager Jay Habakangas and Dawn Of The Dead actor Ken Foree, who quietly laid down their cutlery. At this point, Tarantino would cut to an extreme close-up of Carradine’s cold, twitching eyes. The solicitor muttered something unintelligible and imagining the potential newspaper headlines of the following day, his friend grabbed his squealing companion by the arm and speedily dragged him to the nearest exit.
“Man, I’m glad he didn’t make me have to stand up,” grinned the guru-like personality to the rest of the table.
The unlikely location for our showdown was Swindon, where Carradine had just finished a frenetic five-hour signing session at Infinitely Better, a mightily impressive autograph and memorabilia store bringing world-class guests to the West Country. The double vodkas had been knocked back all day and I joined his entourage in a stretched white limousine for a champagne-heavy interview that rolled into the wee small hours of the morning at the hotel bar. Between unprintable dirty jokes, conversations about the best cheeses from around the globe and debates over the health benefits from drinking your own urine – apparently it “teaches the body how to clean itself”- we somehow managed to also talk about his career in the entertainment industry.
Carradine was always something of a wild child it seems, growing up on the tough streets of Manhattan, working as a labourer, and openly experimenting with a wide variety of psychedelic drugs. While studying music theory at college, he discovered his own passion for the stage, joining a Shakespearean repertory company, leading to his eventual casting in a short-lived western TV series of Shane (1966), based on the Alan Ladd movie. So began his association with anti-establishment drifter-type characters.
A starring role in Martin Scorcese’s Boxcar Bertha (1972) as tough union worker during the American depression later became a cult success, but it was not until his performance of Caine in the phenomenal television series Kung Fu (ABC, 1972-5) that he became internationally famous. It was a performance that sparked a spiritual journey with Eastern philosophy, leading to his writing of books on the subject and presenting videos on Chi Energy. As for films, “People always ask me about the trashy ‘b’ movies. Nobody wants to know about Bound For Glory or Ingmar Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg,” he complains, though still talks admiringly about his genre work.
Talking of eggs, one trashy fan favorite was with maverick exploitation director Larry Cohen in Q – The Winged Serpent (1982), where Carradine plays a surly policeman attempting to solve a series of bizarre killings. The perpetrator is a giant, flying reptilian Aztecan bird called Quetzalcoatl who builds a giant nest atop the Chrysler Building and dispatches victims in a variety of gruesome and gory ways.
“I’d always wanted to do a detective film. Q was good, but it could have been a great movie if it wasn’t for the damned bird. The relationship between the characters worked so well.”
He had previously worked in another ultra-violent cult classic with madcap, sex-crazed director Paul Bartel on Deathrace 2000 (1975). The film presents a satirical view of the ‘future’ millennium where a fascist world president entertains the masses by a murderous inter-continental road race. Carradine is Frankenstein, the scarred cyborg hero of the people, clad head to foot in black leather. When he reveals his face to show he’s not hideously deformed at all but just simply David Carradine in a mask he says, “What do you expect, another pretty face?”
“After I first read that line, I put down the script, called my agent and told him I’d do it,” he chuckled.
Gruff anti-heroes and conscientious killers are perhaps his trademark, exemplified by his recent casting in Tarantino’s kung-fu masterpiece Kill Bill that pulled him from a recent straight-to-video limbo. But Carradine was probably unconcerned, quite happily following his own path of exploration. As he mused while sipping on his vodka, “I’m an iconoclast. I walk my own way, someone who makes their own journey.”
Trust these words of David Carradine, for his face will no doubt be drifting onto cinema screens very soon. In the meantime, if one day he passes you on a street and glances in your direction, make sure you return the generosity. You really don’t want to piss this guy off.
Many thanks to Jay Habakangas and Steve from Infinitely Better.
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