Portrait of the Martial Artist

The exploitation and martial arts classics that inform and inspire Quentin Tarantino are no strangers to Kill Bill star David Carradine. As an actor he’s worked with such legendary directors as Martin Scorsese, Hal Ashby and Ingmar Bergman, while also garnering a reputation as a Renaissance man who writes, composes, sculpts and paints. And yet the 68-year-old has never been sniffy about genre pictures. For every quality project he’s clambered aboard, there are at least a dozen – and that’s a conservative estimate – forgettable straight-to-video romps.

So despite appearances with arthouse mistress Liv Ullman in The Serpent’s Egg and his riding to glory in Walter Hill’s 1980 Western The Long Riders (alongside his real life siblings Keith and Robert), Carradine gets creamed by Chuck Norris in Lone Wolf McQuaid, is stickily dispatched in Wheels Of Fire and finds himself washed up on a desert island with Hallmark TV queen Jane Seymour in The New Swiss Family Robinson.
Carradine isn’t all that bothered by this apparent gap between his cerebral, thoughtful personality and his less-than-intellectual output.
“That stuff is all part of being a Renaissance man,” explained the actor on a recent visit to Dublin for the Kill Bill Vol. 2 premiere, “You do it all. People think because I’m a classically trained musician and so on that I’m uppity, but I’ve had Harleys. I’ve been rich, I’ve been poor. I keep my feet on the ground. And I clean up the dog-shit!”
Predictably all those dutiful years at the B-movie coalface and canine rear-ends are still eclipsed by Carradine’s role as Kwai Chang Caine, the renegade Shaolin monk who wandered the old West in ’70s TV phenomena Kung Fu.
Arriving slap-bang in the middle of an oriental craze that saw Bruce Lee breaking big in America and Carl Douglas climbing the charts, Kung Fu made Carradine a huge international star, changed the use of the word ‘grasshopper’ forever, and inspired an entire generation to hit karate classes.
As someone who remains passionate about martial arts (indeed he continues to make instructional videos in Chi Kung and Tai Chi) that’s particularly gratifying for Carradine.
“It still amazes me. Every bloody day – and I never tire of this – somebody comes up to me and says, ‘You changed my life. I took up martial arts because of your show’. And once in a while you actually get people saying ‘You saved my life’. Well, you can’t ask for much more than that. I got to make an impact on people in a good way and that’s remarkable.”
Legend has it that Kung Fu was originally developed as a vehicle for Bruce Lee until Warner Brothers balked at the prospect of a Chinese lead. This is said to have cleared the way for Carradine who proved an exceptional choice for the show’s central Taoist peacenik. Goodness knows, he even lent gravitas to the most fortune-cookie derived dialogue.
Unfortunately, the erroneous Lee rejection account has cast David in a less than favourable light among Bruce Lee die-hards, despite the fact that the Hong Kong actor was never actually attached to the project. Changing cultural times have brought further criticism for Carradine’s ‘yellowing-up’ in the tradition of Boris Karloff as Mr. Wong or Sean Connery in You Only Live Twice. Is this kind of revisionism upsetting?
“It wasn’t at the time,” he admits, “but it does annoy me a little that the story never went away. It’s just not what happened. He was never actually up for the part. I’m as big a fan of Bruce Lee as you’ll find anywhere, and I guess if that’s what the fans choose to believe to complete the legend, then I guess they can have it.”
Despite the Lee acolytes, Caine quickly transcended his televisual origins to become a folk hero, and the show is still watched by 150 million people worldwide. At what point did David realise this was no ordinary schedule filler?
“Well, I always knew it was a great part and a great show and perfect for me,” says David fiddling with the harp badge he’s wearing in honour of his Cork ancestry, “but the explosion of popularity was entirely beyond my expectations. And not just the martial arts, but the sudden popularity of Chinese philosophy and medicine. That was amazing.”
Of course, the unprecedented levels of fame that Kung Fu bestowed on David took their toll. In accordance with the time-honoured trappings of stardom, he clocked-up four ex-wives, including Barbara Hershey, though for a time they were Hollywood’s premiere psychedelic couple. (Just to prove the point, Hershey changed her name to ‘Seagull’ during this time after accidentally killing a bird). There were also inevitable problems with drugs and alcohol in Kung Fu’s immediate aftermath, though thankfully the star has been flying right since beating the booze in 1996.
Given this personal rehabilitation and Tarantino’s documented love for Carradine’s philosophical TV icon Caine, it was almost inevitable that the pair would end up working together. The director has long had a Midas touch with pop-culture’s forgotten heroes, dragging many such fading stars (John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, Pam Grier in Jackie Brown) into ascendancy once more. Oddly though, Kill Bill’s eponymous villain was all set to be played by Warren Beatty despite being written with David Carradine in mind.
“Well, he wrote it about me, but that didn’t mean he was going to hire me,” David smiles. “But Warren eventually got sick of hearing Quentin saying ‘Be like David Carradine’ and he said – ‘Listen, you should get David and just let me out of here!’.”
So he was as much of a muse as Uma then?
“Wow, I never thought of that. That’s wonderful. And Quentin’s not even gay.”
“It’s so crazy. I knew something was coming and then four days after Quentin called me, Richard Donner got in touch, and then Tom Cruise called asking me if I could speak Japanese for The Last Samurai. So I had a choice – go to Richard Donner at the very centre of Hollywood or go work with this eccentric outsider. It was no contest really.”
Unquestionably, Kill Bill was a good call for the actor – a dream-part beautifully tailored to fit, and featuring plenty of Tarantino’s astute pop-culture monologues, including one fantastically expansive rant about Superman.
“His writing is something else,” gushes David, “and he’s just constantly getting flashes of inspiration. Like that Superman monologue – we were just talking in a Chinese cigar room one night, and next time I look at the script – there it is! He’s just full of ideas – he never sleeps.”
And how did it feel getting to kick-ass again?
“It was just like old times,” he laughs, “just like always.”

David Carradine's Favourite Battling Babes
‘Well, I’m really into comic books. I love Electra. And I love vampire girls, especially Vampirella. She’s really sexy. I’m big on vampire girls. They’re so erotic. And then there’s Frank Miller’s new comic The Dark Knight Strikes Back in which it’s revealed that Wonder Woman has been having an affair with Superman for years. So now they have a secret daughter combining both their powers. She’s Kryptonian and Amazon so she can kick everyone’s ass. I love her.
But really there’s only one screen goddess for me. When I was six years old my grandmother used to bring me on the trolley into Hollywood and I’d watch the Saturday kids’ matinee. And they used to show this serial called The Black Whip. She was a cowgirl – a prim girl – and her boyfriend is kind of a greenhorn. Now whenever something bad happens – and that would usually involve the boyfriend getting tied up – she would ride out into the desert and get dressed up in black leather and go rescue him with a whip and a stallion. What they were doing showing this to six year olds, I will never know. But I’m still real glad they did.’