By Patrick Macias
 

Q: How exactly did you come to play the role of Bill?  Did Tarantino have to sell you on the idea at all? 

David Carradine: Well, I don't think you could call it "selling." I mean, he gave it to me, and I took it. It wasn't that hard. But actually, I met Tarantino at the Toronto Film Festival in 1996 and we agreed right then that we were going to work together. And I was just waiting around for him to write something for me. I don't care what he would have written, I would have done it. It didn't have to be Bill.   

Q: Bill is a very mysterious character. Some viewers might think that he's Caine from the Kung Fu TV (1972-1975, ABC Television) show, years later, gone evil somehow. What kind of back story did you and Quentin come up with for him? 

DC: You've seen the movie? 

Q: Yeah. 

DC: You still think it has something to do with Caine (puzzled and slightly offended)? I don't think Quentin thinks that at all. He was thinking about writing something for me, and I think he thought about writing something for Uma. And he had this idea of writing a revenge movie about a woman who is shot in the head by her lover on the day before her wedding and comes out of a coma and decides to revenge herself. I think it may have been when he started using me as the character that he started thinking about Samurai swords and the various genres that go along with that. Otherwise, I think it would have been more like a modern day Western, which is sort of is as well.  

Q: The only reason I brought up Kung Fu is because that show was a mix of Asian martial arts in an Old West setting, much like this film.  

DC: You know, the guy that I'm playing in this movie...he's more like who I really am. I mean, I don't go around killing people with Samurai swords. I guess Bill doesn't share my philosophy, but he shares my literacy, and my hipness, and my modernity, and he's a very Western kind of person, like I am. Quentin has seen most of my work. He's a big fan of Kung Fu. He's also a big fan of the studio pictures I've done and all the independent movies. And I think he's also a big fan of the press that I've gotten... you know, the iconoclastic reputation that I've developed. And I think he tried to put all that into this guy. It made it real easy for me, because all I had to do is walk in, and memorize the words.  

Q: Bill has a kind of supreme control over many of the characters in this film, most of them women. If some of Bill is based on David Carradine, what's the secret of your technique? 

DC: Well, as David Carradine, I don't like to control people. I don't like anybody telling me what to do, and I don't particularly want to tell anybody else what to do. But I am capable of making people do what I want them to do. Without them even knowing that I'm making them do it. I don't know how Quentin hooked into that at all. But let's just talk about Bill here.... he's a snake charmer. He's able to talk people into doing things they normally wouldn't do. And I think he likes hanging around women. But I think what he's done with these particular women is that, he's taken them in when they‚re very young.  He hauled them in and trained them, and in the process bonded them to him. I think the only holdout to his charm is Bud, his brother. But we don't get into what makes Bud that way. It's clear that Bill would be quite willing to talk to Bud about anything and be friends with him, and he loves him and all that. And it's real clear that Bud loves Bill, but that he doesn't want anything to do with him ever again. And the only thing that I can come up with about this - and I've talked to Quentin about it, and Quentin doesn't answer- is that there's is no way that this kind of thing could have happened between me and Bud except over a woman. So women are a big thing in this picture. I can't remember a picture like this before where it's all about female killers, a whole pile of 'em.  

Q: I'm curious if you had any more thoughts on the similarities between your martial arts roles and Western ones.  

DC: Sure. I think there's a great deal of similarity between my character Caine and the Shane character that I did on a TV series a few years before that (1966, ABC-TV, a spin off of the classic 1953 George Stevens film). They are both fighters who would prefer not to fight. And who actually won't fight, unless it is for someone else's benefit. They're both everymen, wanderers, outlaws.  And they're guys who move on and never look back, who try not to attach themselves to anything permanently. One of the things that I've found fascinating about this movie, and I think it becomes clear in the movie... I mean, yeah, I'm there, and so is my imagery as a martial artist. I'm doing all these photos with me holding a Samurai sword or doing a "Kung-Fu" pose. But you realize that Quentin did not hire me to do any of that in this movie. He hired me to play this guy. And I like that. I like the fact that he's after me as an actor rather than me as an athlete. I can do that in some other movie. But that's his statement I think. He wants to see me do my stuff as a actor.  

Q: Still, there are some major fight scenes you did for this film that are missing from the final cut. 

DC: Well, I think you'll see them on the DVD. I'm not sure, but you might even see them in the Japanese version. It's possible. I think part of that is the fact that, when the movie got split in two - which didn't happen until we finished shooting it - Quentin made what could be called an arbitrary decision about where the first movie was going to end. That left him with a lot of space for the first movie. I think the first movie ends somewhere around page 52 of a 200 page script. So then he‚s faced with a huge amount of material that he has to put in the second movie, which still has to be a reasonable length. So a lot of stuff got cut out. And a lot of stuff got abbreviated. On the first movie, even though it's a juggernaut that's always moving forward, there's a lot of air in it, a lot of long pauses. And there's very little of that in Vol. 2. The cutting here is like that (snaps his fingers several times). And it keeps moving ahead. I think he was under the gun with an enormous amount of material. 

Q: I'm aware that you‚ve been seriously studying martial arts for decades. 

DC: Yeah, 40 years now.  

Q: But I'm not sure if everyone is familiar with the extent of your knowledge.   

DC: Well, I think people in Japan know about the series (Kung Fu). I mean, its popular all over the world, every place except in China, and that's only because they don't have TV sets. I started training when I got the part. It was not necessary for me to train. You know, I'm a dancer, a gymnast. I had embraced many disciplines that were martial arts, only not Oriental martial arts. I'm pretty good with a rifle, because I was in the Army. I'm not bad with a pistol either. I'm a fast draw expert and a horseback rider and a fencer and a little bit of a boxer. And I've done a lot of movie fights before that. In other words, I could have just taken the choreography given to me and performed it. But I got interested in it. And it turned out it never left me. And since the series, I continued to study. I've written books on the subject, and I've done instructional videos, and I do an occasional seminar. It just goes on and on. I can't seem to walk away from it.  

Q: Are there any particular forms or styles you've devoted yourself to? I know you‚ve co-written a book on Tai-Chi (David Carradine's Tai Chi, by David Carradine and Dan Nakahara, Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 1994, currently out of print). 

DC: Well, Tai-Chi is one of the 118 styles of Kung Fu, one of the internal styles, and the most popular internal style. If you are going to have an internal style - which everybody should do - then you're probably going to go for Tai-Chi. And I've done a little Bagua, which is an even more inner and esoteric style. But mainly, what I've studied is Northern Shaolin, and some Southern styles. I worked with a while with a master who taught me Hun Gar and Tiger Crane. I don‚t know if you know these styles, but those are the Southern styles. Northern styles tend to have height and to be low down to the ground with a lot of circular stuff and a lot of kicking. In the Southern styles, you tend to stay in one place and work straight ahead. You don't have all that freedom, and they tend to be harder and more brutal techniques.  

Q:  Who have you studied under? 

DC: With Northern Shaolin, I've been with Sifu Kam Yuen (co-star of the 1987 video "David Carradine's Kung Fu Workout"). I also work with Rob Moses who is kind of an unsung master (he also played "Master Khan" from the syndicated follow-up series Kung-Fu: The Legend Continues, 1993-1997). Rob was originally a student of Kam Yuen. He became one of his instructors and eventually took over his school. I still us him as my trainer, actually. And we've been together now for 20 years. For Southern style, I worked out with Silver Gordon. I can‚t say too much more about him. For Wing Chung, I worked with Leo Wang who is a remarkable exponent of it. These people are not just people who know how to make the moves, but they're also doctors. Kam Yuen doesn't even teach the moves anymore. He's busy healing people. And I've kind of gone down the road with him these years. I've taught him stuff, and he's taught me stuff. 

Q: What was it like being on location in Beijing, and training with Yuen Woo Ping? 

DC: We began training with Woo Ping for two and a half months here in Los Angeles, and we continued to train. By the time we got to Beijing, I didn't see much of him. We had our own personal trainers, though we tended to all work together. How was it? It was the greatest. Eight hours a day, five days a week of this very intense work out. I had never done Wu Shu, so this was new stuff for me. Wu Shu is not a fighting art. It was made for theatrical performance. You do things differently than we do things for martial arts in American movies. One of the big differences is, here you move as hard as you can move, and you miss. Its very important to miss. In Wu Shu, you move very softly and you make contact. That‚s because it came from the stage. With a camera, you can hide things. But on stage you have to make contact to see get an impact. You make very light contact, and you make an impression of force by using the rest of your body to give that sense of power. I remember when I was working out, the trainers would say (in mildly offensive fake Chinese accent) "not so hard! Not so hard!" and I'd go "what? Nobody ever said that to me before!" And then we did wire work, which is just amazing stuff. And also training with Samurai swords. I started working out with that, and I just fell in love with it. 

Q: I'm really curious about your feelings about Bruce Lee (Lee was originally to have played the role of Caine in Kung Fu before the part went to Carradine. Lee was also prepping to film Circle of Iron, aka The Silent Flute, before his untimely death. When the film finally made it to cinemas in 1978, Carradine again played a part intended for Lee)  

DC: Well, Bruce Lee was sort of a James Dean kind of thing. I think he was bigger than just martial arts. He captivated the world from his corner in movies while I was doing it on TV. I guess I was kind of the Yin of it, and he was kind of the Yang of it. He was explosive and charismatic and theatrical. On our end, we were playing everything down as much as possible. We were very much interested in the philosophy of it. The whole other side of it. And then at the moment I discovered Bruce Lee, he‚s suddenly dead, which is very James Dead like. I did get to know his son, but that was years and years later (In the 1986 television pilot Kung Fu: the Movie, Brandon Lee made his acting debut as an assassin out to kill Caine. The big surprise comes when the character is revealed to be Caine‚s illegitimate son. Lee continued the role in the unsuccessful 1987 pilot Kung Fu: The Next Generation) 

Q: One more person I'm curious about is Claudia Jennings (Carradine‚s co-star in Deathsport, Roger Corman‚s 1978 follow-up to Death Race 2000. She died October 3, 1979 at the age of 29).  

DC: She was a great lady. I really loved Claudia. She was an incredibly good sport. And she was one of the most beautiful people probably ever to walk down...well, my road anyway. It really hit people who knew her very hard when she died. It just seemed unnecessary. And no one's really figured it out. I mean, it was nine o‚clock in the morning. It was very unlikely that she was drunk or stoned or anything like that. But for some reason, she crossed the meridian on the Pacific Coast Highway where the speed limit is 45. Probably a lot of people have done that and not gotten hurt very badly. It was kind of like a Jayne Mansfield kind of ending.  

Q: Thanks for your time. I'm looking forward to eventually seeing your fight scenes.  

DC: I think the fight scene that I still have in this film is totally unexpected. I know everybody was expecting us to square off formally, and bow, and then fight for ten minutes.  

Q: Isn't that what was in the original script? 

DC: Well, that's what was in the second draft. The first draft is more like what we wound up doing did, and then once Quentin met Woo Ping he got this idea of having a big fight scene. And then he went back to his original concept. And I didn‚t even know that this was going to happen – I don‚t even think he did – about a week before we shot it. But its such a surprise. Its one of Quentin's wonderful jokes, the way he does that.

 

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