David Carradine, 1936 - 2009.

By David Hudson on 06/04/2009

[Updated through 6/6]

"Oscar [Golden Globe]-nominated actor David Carradine, best known for his leading role of Kwai Chang Caine on TV's 'Kung Fu' in the 1970s, died Wednesday in Bangkok, where he was shooting a film, his manager confirmed Thursday. The star was 72." Stephen M Silverman reports for People: "According to manager Chuck Binder, the movie's producer went to Carradine's hotel room and found that he had passed away. Binder told Fox News the death is 'shocking and sad. He was full of life, always wanting to work... a great person.'"

Silverman notes that the nomination was "for his role as folksinger Woody Guthrie in 1976's 'Bound for Glory.' Among his later screen roles was in Quentin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill,' in which he played Bill.... As profiled in People in 1992, Carradine was born in Hollywood to the actor John Carradine and his first wife, Ardanelle, and was just 7 when his parents divorced.... Although he was orphaned emotionally, he did become close to the seven stepbrothers and half brothers he would accumulate during Dad's four marriages.... By 1970, Carradine says, 'I had a house in the Hollywood Hills that virtually every brother has lived in. It was like this safe harbor. We all took care of each other.'"

Updates: "Our favorite Carradine performance is his Cole Younger in 'The Long Riders,'" blogs Roy Edroso for the Voice, "that odd Walter Hill movie starring famous movie brothers as famous outlaw brothers. David C struts through most of the thing in a wretched duster, ragged hair and a big old hat, with so much obvious glee at playing Western dress-up that it would be unprofessional if it weren't so agreeable. Not taking things too seriously was his great strength. We hope that, at his death, he had in mind his lyrics to one of the songs he played with his band back in the 70s: 'It's just a great big cosmic joke / You laugh until you choke.'"

"There was still more to like in an eventful career," writes Robert Cashill: "Scorsese's 'Boxcar Bertha' (1972), with his then-girlfriend Barbara Hershey; the driver 'Frankenstein' in Paul Bartel's 'Death Race 2000' (1975); a curious choice for Ingmar Bergman in 'The Serpent's Egg' (1977)..." And more.

Edward Champion posts a clip from "Kung Fu: The Movie" and notes that "Carradine was the master of the silly gesture and the rip-your-guts-out expression, a combination rarely seen in contemporary cinema and, for that matter, rarely seen in the 1970s and the 1980s. But Carradine had the boldness to make it work."

Movieline's Seth Abramovitch recalls one of the most recent moments Carradine appeared on the media's radar and notes that "the entire, surreal, now-legendary showdown was documented by attendee Chris Willman."

Time Out London looks back on five "Carradine classics" and "five lesser known Carradine titles which, if you've seen, we'd love to know what they're like..."

The Guardian's Xan Brooks gathers and annotates a batch of clips.

"The role of Guthrie gave Carradine the chance to escape his period and play a nonconformist agitator-artist of an earlier time, and it's easy to see how he relished that," writes Phil Nugent. "Part of the genius of casting Carradine as a man who'd already been sanctitified in the memories of many was that there was no danger of him sweetening the character and trying to turn him into Mr Nice Guy.... His work as Cole Younger is even better; I think it's one of the most sheerly beautiful performances I've ever seen a man give.... In his ironic distance and almost regretful attitude towards his own macho impulses, he's an image of something that I suspect a lot of men, especially smart Southern men, aspire to long after they begin thinking it's time to outgrow it."

"He's even memorable as a soon-to-be-dead drunk in Scorsese's 'Mean Streets,'" writes Bob Westal, who's got a clip, "a great deleted scene from 'Kill Bill, Volume II' that shows that, even in his late 60s, Carradine still had the badass mofo mojo down and knew how to impress a killer lady, versus no less an opponent than Michael Jai White ('Spawn,' 'Black Dynamite'). I don't want to get spiritual here, but Carradine had long ago achieved B-movie nirvana, at least."

"[W]hen Tarantino, in his show-offy way, cast the underappreciated-except-by-hardcore-film-junkies Carradine in title role of 'Kill Bill,' the match was perfect," writes the L Magazine's Mark Asch. "As Bill, Carradine was granted the time and space to marinate in his own persona - a presence that always seemed equal parts wise and untrustworthy."

"It's a mark of Carradine's ongoing work-ethic that he has appeared in an astounding 37 movies since the second 'Kill Bill,' few of which have received or will receive any respect, all of which paid, and some of which he hopefully enjoyed," writes the Boston Globe's Ty Burr. "If you count 'Stretch,' the film he was working on when he died, Carradine appeared in around 145 movies. That's not even close to the 229 his dad made, but it's still the stuff of a working actor, and I truly hope that gave him more pride than being an A-list star. He was too weird, too ornery, and too tapped into the ghosts of the 1960s and the American West to sit comfortably atop the film industry's complacent heap. That's what made him a keeper."

At the SpoutBlog, Christopher Campbell gathers many, many more tributes - and not one of them has been mentioned here yet, so do go see those.

"His best work greatly overshadowed his worst projects," writes Joe Leydon. "And besides: It's easy to forgive an icon almost anything. Especially one who walked the earth like Caine in Kung Fu."

Updates, 6/5: Harry Knowles recalls, among other things, his ten-day visit to the set of "Kill Bill": "After our experience in China - David would sporadically email and occassionally call to chat - to get permission to reprint my Set Reports and each time he was just a very cool cat. I'm in a funk about this passing. David is a particular brand of cool that there just aren't many people that can project. He had a calm cool that was infused with the knowledge that at any moment... he could be kicking asses all around you."

"Who," wonders Damon Smith, "will dare to recall his bizarre turn opposite Paul L Smith and Brad Dourif in Robert Martin Carroll's twisted family satire 'Sonny Boy' (1989), a John Waters-grade farce spiked with extra doses of malice?"

"In an interview with the New York Times after 'Kung Fu' became a hit, Mr Carradine said that no one was more surprised than he," writes Bruce Weber. "'Man, I read that pilot script and flipped!' he said. 'But I never believed it would get on TV. I mean, a Chinese western, about a half-Chinese half-American Buddhist monk who wanders the gold rush country but doesn't care about gold, and defends the oppressed but won't carry a gun, and won't even step on an ant because he values all life, and hardly ever speaks? No way!'"

The BBC gathers tributes from many who've worked with Carradine.

"Quentin already had called him and told him he had the role," recalls "Kill Bill" producer Lawrence Bender at the Huffington Post. "So here's David having to come to meet the producers, after the director had given him the job. To say he was coming there with trepidation would be an understatement. He was very defensive and, honestly, I didn't blame him. But the second he looked at us with that David Carradine look that he gave, Harvey and I looked at each other and laughed and said, 'This is Bill!'"

"Rest in peace Grasshopper." Adrian Curry collects a few posters featuring Carradine for The Auteurs' Notebook.

"Truth be told, he was never one of my favorite actors and I often shook my head in sadness at certain offscreen antics that my contemporaries and colleagues found so amusing," writes Richard Harland Smith. "Yet David Carradine was in my life for most of my life, on my radar from about 1969 or so, and now his sudden and rather unexpected death in a Bangkok hotel room has left a hole. I've been casting sidelong glances at that hole since I heard the news yesterday morning - via Facebook status updates, which ranged from vague, haiku-like allusions ('Rock on, Grasshopper') to out-and-out statements of dismay ('David Carradine dead? WTF?') - and seeing there scenes from his movies and his life, flickering, reminding me of past times and days gone by and things that were and never will be again."

Nick Dawson, author of "Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel," posts two extracts from the book on "Bound for Glory" at FilmInFocus.

Updates, 6/6: "When we talk about an actor being 'hip,' it's often subjective: He or she embodies what we're not but on some level long to be." New York's David Edelstein: "To me, David Carradine was the apogee of hipness: not my favorite actor, not even in the top 50, but my existential hero, and a man who looked like he got laid a lot - a sort of B-movie Jack Nicholson.... I don't have the expertise to speculate about David Carradine's death - whether it was suicide, murder, or autoeroticism gone disastrously wrong.... No matter how it turns out, I'll try to think of David Carradine going out like Bill in 'Kill Bill': quietly accepting the absurdity of his fate, making himself presentable, getting centered, and walking tall into he knows not what."

For Dennis Cozzalio, two performances "will always define Carradine the actor in my mind. First, the unmovably cynical Frankenstein in 'Death Race 2000' (1975), carrying out a covert political revolution while literally playing the establishment game of televised road rage, was a nice twist on the Zen-infused Caine persona and a chance for the actor to play a little looser (all things being relative) with his acting style. But most important for me is Carradine's contribution to the century-and-a-half-old work-in-progress that is the legend of Jesse James, as Cole Younger in Walter Hill's elegiac, muscular and lyrical western 'The Long Riders' (1980)."

"He loved movies, acting in movies, making movies, and he was always extremely generous." That's Martin Scorsese, as quoted by Scott Marks, who adds, "When the news first hit, my mind immediately went to two 1973 films released back to back: 'The Long Goodbye' and 'Mean Streets.' For Altman, Carradine played Marlowe's cell mate, happily stoned and sprawled out in the upper bunk playing with a roll of toilet paper and rambling incoherently about being arrested for 'possession of noses.'... I still remember being startled that Carradine, by 1973 a household name thanks to 'Kung Fu,' would accept such tiny roles. Marty was right. He really did love making movies."

Online viewing tip. Ambrose Heron has a 9-minute clip from a Larry King Live show on Carradine. Guests: Quentin Tarantino, Chuck Binder, Rob Schneider and Michael Madsen.

[Photo: David Carradine]

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