Im not one for spiritual journeys where I discover crap inside myself but I know that if I ever went on one, I would want David Carradine with me. Carradine is best known as Caine the star of Kung Fu and more recently as the titular subject of Quentin Tarantinos Kill Bill. For the first time in his 50 year career Carradine decided to keep a journal while working on Kill Bill. He ended up writing a whole book, The Kill Bill Diary: The Making of a Tarantino Classic as Seen Through the Eyes of a Screen Legend. I got a chance to talk with Carradine from his home in California.
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Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
David Carradine: Im putting some stuff together for this art exhibit Im going to have this month in Beverly Hills.
DRE: What are you showing?
DC: My artwork, paintings and drawings.
DRE: When did you start painting?
DC: Ive always painted. This is a new thing for me, though. All of my paintings have just hung around and then I started painting on the computer. As long as you dont do a lot of crashes, those survive and it doesnt take up a lot of space.
DRE: So you draw on a tablet or do you draw stuff and then scan it in?
DC: I do a little bit of drawing stuff and scanning it in but by and large I paint on a tablet. I use a paint and graphics program thats on my Mac.
DRE: Have you ever sold paintings in the past?
DC: I never tried to sell paintings before. I painted a lot years ago but all my paintings and all my sculptures have disappeared. I cant even explain to you where they disappeared to. So then I started this new thing of working on the computer and now Im finally going to get to do a show and it will be my debut.
DRE: Do you get nervous before debuting at something like this?
DC: Not exactly. I wouldnt call it nervous. Theres a lot of work to get ready in time but I cant say that I get nervous. It is not fun getting nervous
DRE: I would imagine that you dont get nervous about much anymore.
DC: Nah, I dont think I ever did. I think the first time I was ever on stage I was pretty nervous. But now I never feel nervous while working. Im nervous before something happens but not this time. This one Im just going straight ahead.
DRE: In terms of the Kill Bill book, do you usually keep a journal when youre working on a film?
DC: No, never.
DRE: What made you feel like doing a journal this time?
DC: Well somebody I know told me that Im a pretty good writer and that if I keep a journal I might get a book sale.
DRE: How did you like the process of keeping a diary on set and trying to remember stuff for a book?
DC: Oh it wasnt a problem because I did it, basically, day by day. I didnt have to remember. After I wrote the book, people would say, God you have a great memory. How did you put it all back together? I said I didnt put it back together, I just did it right then. Pretty much every evening Id be in my trailer with nothing to do so I might as well write down what happened that day. Once in a while Id slip a day or two and then Id have to go, What the hell happened the day before yesterday? But by and large I just wrote it as it happened.
DRE: Did Kill Bill come out the way you expected it to?
DC: Oh yeah. Quentin is constantly writing. Quentin never stops writing. He wrote right up to the very end. Then after we finished shooting, he wrote some new stuff and we came back and did pickups. But it was all progressive. The editing process tends to pull things out but the writing process never really did that. The writing process actually always added to it.
DRE: After reading the book Im amazed that there wasnt more uncontrolled insanity on the set.
DC: Why would you think there would be?
DRE: Just because it was such a complex film to make.
DC: Well the more complex it is the more weve got to hold it together. But the reason I asked why because a lot of people think Quentin is some lunatic and he just isnt. Hes very didactic. He knows exactly what hes doing all the time. But he can also change. Hes very malleable. He is totally in charge and totally working towards the end of the project. There is no insanity involved at all. So of course theres none in the book and I didnt want to make some up.
DRE: Were you surprised that Bill and Bea didnt get to have big drawn out fight at the end of Kill Bill 2?
DC: I think I might have been actually slightly responsible for that. In Quentins original script, there was no big, long, drawn out fight. Then Quentin visited [Kill Bill fight choreographer] Woo-ping [Yuen] in Australia where he was shooting something. Quentin got really excited about using all those techniques. Then before we even started shooting I said, Look I dont want to see a Woo-ping movie. I want to see a Quentin Tarantino movie. We dont go to your movies for the action. We go for the crazy things that people say. Quentin decided to go back to more of his original concept and also in-between I think Quentin had seen Matrix II, which is loaded with that stuff. Its also done by Woo-ping and Quentin hated the movie. I hated it too. I think almost everybody did.
DRE: Who didnt hate it?
DC: Yeah. Quentin said I think this shit is over. He basically said to me that he didnt want me on wires. I had become a real expert at the wire. I was eager to do it just for the fun of it. But he said that he said he wanted people to really see that I was doing it. Even in that fight with Michael Jai White, which is not in the movie but is in the extras on the DVD, is quite a fight. But there are no special effects in it at all. In the whole movie, theres very little of that wirework that transcends what you think a human body could do. There is one sequence where Bea and the leader of the Crazy 88s run up a wall. Quentin used the wire just to make somebody a little bit more athletic, except for Pai Mei of course. But Pai Mei is a fantasy character so when Pai Mei stands on her sword, we like that. One of the great talents that Quentin has is knowing what the audience is going to like. He seems to really have that down. The other thing hes got down is never letting the audience know what is going to happen next. Whatever happens next is always going to be something of a surprise. But I can say I was a little disappointed that the fight with Michael Jai White didnt get in the picture. I wasnt really disappointed that I didnt get to do the wirework because I think he was right about it. I think that Matrix II and Matrix III and Charlie Angels II had really worn that out to where I dont think people would have been really happy about seeing another circus exposition, is that the right word? Probably not.
DRE: Well it is like a three ring circus of violence, thats the closest.
DC: Well my kung-fu master, Rob Moses, who was with me during the training, calls it a kung-fu circus. Thats never what we did back in the old days on the Kung Fu series or our movies in America. We showed people standing on their own feet and kicking and punching and jumping and dancing, as they could. Then the Chinese came in and overwhelmed us with Crouching Tiger. Then there was the Matrix and all the Jet Li stuff. Thats not the way that we made the stuff popular in the United States. We made it popular with Chinese people that are actually doing things. Matrix I certainly was an epiphany. We all went Wow this is hot. You cant just go do it over and over again and expect people to be amazed by it.
DRE: I was a little surprised that you suspected that Woo-ping didnt like you.
DC: I dont think that he was totally responsible for that, I dont like him very much either. Hes very stand-offish. It was very difficult to talk to him. He pretended throughout the entire time that he couldnt speak English. I realized that it was a pose of his after a couple of months. I was not impressed about the attitude everyone else had toward him. They all called him the Master. Ive known some masters. Ive had interviews with the abbot of the Shaolin monastery a few times. Hes a very humble, simple person. Woo-ping has too much arrogance for me to classify him as a master. Hes a businessman. I would not want to run into him in a dark alley and have to fight my way past him. Im sure hes very capable, hes a great choreographer. But thats what he is, hes a choreographer. Myself Im a dancer, Im a kung-fu artist, I am an actor. I got my own way to go and he can help me if he wants to. But he cant rule me.
DRE: Its interesting that you said he wasnt humble since it seems that humbleness is what martial arts are really all about.
DC: Not everybody does it that way. Bruce Lee did not do it that way, for sure. Woo-ping does not do it that way, he is an absolute autocrat. His people dont dare do anything that he doesnt want. He wants everything to be his own way. Remember that sword draw that I did where I throw it up in the air and catch it in the fight with Michael Jai White?
DRE: Yeah, its fantastic.
DC: I had been practicing that for three months. Whenever I had nothing else to do in training I would practice trying to see if I could do that. On the day of the fight suddenly Quentin said I want you to do that sword draw. Woo-ping said No, no, no, no. I finally said, Look, thats the draw Im going to do. Thats all there is to it. Its not just me saying it, the director said it. I didnt say this but I could have, Who the fuck are you? Telling me what Im going to do and what Im not going to do. Ive been in this business for 50 years. Im one of the people who made martial arts a famous thing in the world and I practiced this thing for three months. This is what Im going to do. Then there was a whole protocol thing going on. I walked away and Quentin came over and he had already talked to Woo-ping. I said, I thought it was wonderful the way you dealt with him so diplomatically. Quentin goes Theres this protocol problem we got. I said Look, I dont want to fuck with Woo-ping but on the other hand I really want to fuck with Woo-ping. Quentin laughed and said, Okay. We went back and we continued with his version. Quentin gets what he wants without ruffling anybodys feathers. Since everyone was setting this guy up as such a master I figured I had to shoot him down.
DRE: I am really shocked that you didnt get the amount of respect you deserve.
DC: I think Woo-ping respected me. I just dont think he quite knew what to do with me. I think he was reticent to try to teach me his stuff because he had that respect. Thats one of the things that came up early on. I said, Theyre not using me. Quentin said, Well, theyre afraid of you. I said, Look, Im here. Im working out eight hours a day, five days a week. Whats the point of it if they dont lean on me and make me better. The trainers got that. I really dont know whether Woo-ping got that or not because, like I said, hes sort of inaccessible. He doesnt talk to you. I look a little askance at people that would allow people to treat them that way.
DRE: I love the story in the book where Harry Knowles doesnt want to get out of range of you throwing a knife. Did you find that there are a lot of people like that?
DC: Harry Knowles is really special. Theres only one of him.
DRE: You also wrote in the book that you were hoping that this film would cause a resurgence for you like Pulp Fiction did for John Travolta, do you feel like thats happened?
DC: Oh yeah. Ive made a few movies since then that maybe wouldnt have happened without Kill Bill. People called me as their first choice for some great parts. I did three or four of them last year. You havent seen them yet, but theyll be out soon.
Theres nothing more fun than being the central character in a film. Particularly being a force that changes the shape of the film or controls the shape of the film. Ive done that a lot in my own television series and most of the movies have been one man shows. Thats the highest position there is to be in and if youre the villain you may be very important but youre not the primary artist in the project. Its a lot more fun to be the primary artist. People say that the villains are the best parts. Maybe theyve never been in that other position. I dont know. Maybe theyre just trying to speak well about what it is they do. But I dont really enjoy playing villains much. I havent played many villains, really. Maybe it is that I dont see them as villains. In real life people dont think theyre villains. I dont think Lucky Luciano thought he was a villain. You see a lot of movies where people play the bad guy and are joyful about being a villain. I dont think thats the truth in real life. Even serial killers think they are heroes. Thats a movie thing and Ive never cottoned to it. When I play a bad guy I always refused to stick to the conventions like The Leer. Where youre smiling, leering villain enjoying tearing people apart and shooting the shit out of every village. I dont think thats true. I think those people are serious about it. I dont think theyre grinning. Theyre not having fun. I think most of them think theyre doing Gods work. So I try not to think of these guys as villains. I think of them as people who misguided themselves into a dark place and think its the place to be.
DRE: I got to interview Roger Corman last year and he said that hes proud and still has affection for all his films that he has made. Of course hes not really in his films.
DC: Hes not an actor.
DRE: Are there films that you wish you never did or do you feel that its all part of the deal?
DC: I dont think there are films that I wish I never did. There are films I dont like. But most of the time when I was making a film, I thought it was going to be a good film. Ive made a 120 feature movies and I dont know how much television and once in a while you do something that you initially felt was beneath you. Sometimes it turns out you found some way to make it up to your standards or above them. Sometimes youre making a film that you think is going to be a great movie or a great performance or something and then you see the film and you go, Well that didnt work, did it? Im not proud of every film but Im not ashamed enough of anything to want to run away from it.
DRE: Corman sold the remake rights to Death Race 2000. If they remade it would you be interested in being involved?
DC: I dont think they are thinking about me. Im not going to be a charming courtier and try to campaign for the part. I think Warner Bros purchased the rights to do it from Roger and theyve been talking about Tom Cruise playing a part. I dont even want to get into that with Warners. Ive never had an easy time with Warners. I made my all of my Kung Fu series with Warner and even though I probably made hundreds of millions of dollars for them. But they dont come to me. I dont know what theyre pissed off about [laughs], maybe it is because I walked off the first series.
DRE: Do you have good memories of making Death Race 2000?
DC: Yeah I have good memories. It all went very fast. We shot it in three weeks and it was raining all the time. You cant see it because of my black vinyl costume. It was difficult to shoot because of that. We couldnt spend as much time shooting as we wanted to because sometimes we had to change things because of the rain. I had no idea it was going to be something that would last forever. I believe it is the highest grossing film in the entire history of Roger Corman which meant a lot of money for me. I had a big piece of it but it never occurred to me that piece was going to amount to much. It was a little movie I made in three weeks and that movie just keeps going on. Now that theyve sold it to Warner Bros, I get a piece of that too. If they want me to be in the picture, I would be in the picture, but when they remake these things they very rarely use the people who were in them the first time around. They always recast them. I know theres talk at Warner Bros about doing a feature version of Kung Fu and theyre talking about going back and telling the original pilot movie story over again with a young actor. It would have to be a young actor because hes studying up at the monastery. He starts out as child and a teenager. Im 70 years old so I couldnt play that part. But I think theyre making a mistake because itll be like Wild Wild West. For the movie they recast it and unless you are a geek TV fan, no one remembers who originally played the parts. But Kung Fu is a little bit different. I cant imagine how they can expect to get a huge audience with somebody else playing Kwai Chang Caine because Im entirely too identified with it. I ought to know because I have to live with it. But the sensible thing that they should do is a sequel where we see what the hell happened to this guy. Whats he like in 1906? Years ago I got tired of trying to convince Warner Bros of my opinions about things. I got other things to do. If they want me involved in any of these projects I would certainly think about it. But Ive got so much on my plate, I dont need it and I am getting tired of talking about it.
DRE: Have you ever seen David Carradine related tattoo on somebody?
DC: I dont think a lot of people show me their tattoos. But I have a lot of tattoos myself. I dont have them on my arms so I dont show them a lot on the road. When I originally started getting tattoos I started putting them in places where I didnt think they would get in the way of my movie career. That was before we knew there were ways to cover them up. I have one on my forearm. It looks like a seagull but its actually a flying tern and it covers a V shaped scar. I got tired of the scar there so I made it look like a seagull but as I said its a blind tern. Because thats a pun.
DRE: [laughs] What was the last one you got?
DC: The last one I got was a pretty big dragon on my left thigh and its still not finished. I always wanted a dragon there and I was about to do Kill Bill and I was on my way to China. I thought, I should have this dragon before I go there. So I got a hold of this guy that came to my house and I spent an entire weekend, about 20 hours of tattooing, to get the dragon on. It still isnt finished. I dont think I will ever finish it because whos got the time. People ask me how many tattoos I have and I say one because I do think of them as one entire painting or theme. I dont know if it is true or not but thats the way I think about it.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
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Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
David Carradine: Im putting some stuff together for this art exhibit Im going to have this month in Beverly Hills.
DRE: What are you showing?
DC: My artwork, paintings and drawings.
DRE: When did you start painting?
DC: Ive always painted. This is a new thing for me, though. All of my paintings have just hung around and then I started painting on the computer. As long as you dont do a lot of crashes, those survive and it doesnt take up a lot of space.
DRE: So you draw on a tablet or do you draw stuff and then scan it in?
DC: I do a little bit of drawing stuff and scanning it in but by and large I paint on a tablet. I use a paint and graphics program thats on my Mac.
DRE: Have you ever sold paintings in the past?
DC: I never tried to sell paintings before. I painted a lot years ago but all my paintings and all my sculptures have disappeared. I cant even explain to you where they disappeared to. So then I started this new thing of working on the computer and now Im finally going to get to do a show and it will be my debut.
DRE: Do you get nervous before debuting at something like this?
DC: Not exactly. I wouldnt call it nervous. Theres a lot of work to get ready in time but I cant say that I get nervous. It is not fun getting nervous
DRE: I would imagine that you dont get nervous about much anymore.
DC: Nah, I dont think I ever did. I think the first time I was ever on stage I was pretty nervous. But now I never feel nervous while working. Im nervous before something happens but not this time. This one Im just going straight ahead.
DRE: In terms of the Kill Bill book, do you usually keep a journal when youre working on a film?
DC: No, never.
DRE: What made you feel like doing a journal this time?
DC: Well somebody I know told me that Im a pretty good writer and that if I keep a journal I might get a book sale.
DRE: How did you like the process of keeping a diary on set and trying to remember stuff for a book?
DC: Oh it wasnt a problem because I did it, basically, day by day. I didnt have to remember. After I wrote the book, people would say, God you have a great memory. How did you put it all back together? I said I didnt put it back together, I just did it right then. Pretty much every evening Id be in my trailer with nothing to do so I might as well write down what happened that day. Once in a while Id slip a day or two and then Id have to go, What the hell happened the day before yesterday? But by and large I just wrote it as it happened.
DRE: Did Kill Bill come out the way you expected it to?
DC: Oh yeah. Quentin is constantly writing. Quentin never stops writing. He wrote right up to the very end. Then after we finished shooting, he wrote some new stuff and we came back and did pickups. But it was all progressive. The editing process tends to pull things out but the writing process never really did that. The writing process actually always added to it.
DRE: After reading the book Im amazed that there wasnt more uncontrolled insanity on the set.
DC: Why would you think there would be?
DRE: Just because it was such a complex film to make.
DC: Well the more complex it is the more weve got to hold it together. But the reason I asked why because a lot of people think Quentin is some lunatic and he just isnt. Hes very didactic. He knows exactly what hes doing all the time. But he can also change. Hes very malleable. He is totally in charge and totally working towards the end of the project. There is no insanity involved at all. So of course theres none in the book and I didnt want to make some up.
DRE: Were you surprised that Bill and Bea didnt get to have big drawn out fight at the end of Kill Bill 2?
DC: I think I might have been actually slightly responsible for that. In Quentins original script, there was no big, long, drawn out fight. Then Quentin visited [Kill Bill fight choreographer] Woo-ping [Yuen] in Australia where he was shooting something. Quentin got really excited about using all those techniques. Then before we even started shooting I said, Look I dont want to see a Woo-ping movie. I want to see a Quentin Tarantino movie. We dont go to your movies for the action. We go for the crazy things that people say. Quentin decided to go back to more of his original concept and also in-between I think Quentin had seen Matrix II, which is loaded with that stuff. Its also done by Woo-ping and Quentin hated the movie. I hated it too. I think almost everybody did.
DRE: Who didnt hate it?
DC: Yeah. Quentin said I think this shit is over. He basically said to me that he didnt want me on wires. I had become a real expert at the wire. I was eager to do it just for the fun of it. But he said that he said he wanted people to really see that I was doing it. Even in that fight with Michael Jai White, which is not in the movie but is in the extras on the DVD, is quite a fight. But there are no special effects in it at all. In the whole movie, theres very little of that wirework that transcends what you think a human body could do. There is one sequence where Bea and the leader of the Crazy 88s run up a wall. Quentin used the wire just to make somebody a little bit more athletic, except for Pai Mei of course. But Pai Mei is a fantasy character so when Pai Mei stands on her sword, we like that. One of the great talents that Quentin has is knowing what the audience is going to like. He seems to really have that down. The other thing hes got down is never letting the audience know what is going to happen next. Whatever happens next is always going to be something of a surprise. But I can say I was a little disappointed that the fight with Michael Jai White didnt get in the picture. I wasnt really disappointed that I didnt get to do the wirework because I think he was right about it. I think that Matrix II and Matrix III and Charlie Angels II had really worn that out to where I dont think people would have been really happy about seeing another circus exposition, is that the right word? Probably not.
DRE: Well it is like a three ring circus of violence, thats the closest.
DC: Well my kung-fu master, Rob Moses, who was with me during the training, calls it a kung-fu circus. Thats never what we did back in the old days on the Kung Fu series or our movies in America. We showed people standing on their own feet and kicking and punching and jumping and dancing, as they could. Then the Chinese came in and overwhelmed us with Crouching Tiger. Then there was the Matrix and all the Jet Li stuff. Thats not the way that we made the stuff popular in the United States. We made it popular with Chinese people that are actually doing things. Matrix I certainly was an epiphany. We all went Wow this is hot. You cant just go do it over and over again and expect people to be amazed by it.
DRE: I was a little surprised that you suspected that Woo-ping didnt like you.
DC: I dont think that he was totally responsible for that, I dont like him very much either. Hes very stand-offish. It was very difficult to talk to him. He pretended throughout the entire time that he couldnt speak English. I realized that it was a pose of his after a couple of months. I was not impressed about the attitude everyone else had toward him. They all called him the Master. Ive known some masters. Ive had interviews with the abbot of the Shaolin monastery a few times. Hes a very humble, simple person. Woo-ping has too much arrogance for me to classify him as a master. Hes a businessman. I would not want to run into him in a dark alley and have to fight my way past him. Im sure hes very capable, hes a great choreographer. But thats what he is, hes a choreographer. Myself Im a dancer, Im a kung-fu artist, I am an actor. I got my own way to go and he can help me if he wants to. But he cant rule me.
DRE: Its interesting that you said he wasnt humble since it seems that humbleness is what martial arts are really all about.
DC: Not everybody does it that way. Bruce Lee did not do it that way, for sure. Woo-ping does not do it that way, he is an absolute autocrat. His people dont dare do anything that he doesnt want. He wants everything to be his own way. Remember that sword draw that I did where I throw it up in the air and catch it in the fight with Michael Jai White?
DRE: Yeah, its fantastic.
DC: I had been practicing that for three months. Whenever I had nothing else to do in training I would practice trying to see if I could do that. On the day of the fight suddenly Quentin said I want you to do that sword draw. Woo-ping said No, no, no, no. I finally said, Look, thats the draw Im going to do. Thats all there is to it. Its not just me saying it, the director said it. I didnt say this but I could have, Who the fuck are you? Telling me what Im going to do and what Im not going to do. Ive been in this business for 50 years. Im one of the people who made martial arts a famous thing in the world and I practiced this thing for three months. This is what Im going to do. Then there was a whole protocol thing going on. I walked away and Quentin came over and he had already talked to Woo-ping. I said, I thought it was wonderful the way you dealt with him so diplomatically. Quentin goes Theres this protocol problem we got. I said Look, I dont want to fuck with Woo-ping but on the other hand I really want to fuck with Woo-ping. Quentin laughed and said, Okay. We went back and we continued with his version. Quentin gets what he wants without ruffling anybodys feathers. Since everyone was setting this guy up as such a master I figured I had to shoot him down.
DRE: I am really shocked that you didnt get the amount of respect you deserve.
DC: I think Woo-ping respected me. I just dont think he quite knew what to do with me. I think he was reticent to try to teach me his stuff because he had that respect. Thats one of the things that came up early on. I said, Theyre not using me. Quentin said, Well, theyre afraid of you. I said, Look, Im here. Im working out eight hours a day, five days a week. Whats the point of it if they dont lean on me and make me better. The trainers got that. I really dont know whether Woo-ping got that or not because, like I said, hes sort of inaccessible. He doesnt talk to you. I look a little askance at people that would allow people to treat them that way.
DRE: I love the story in the book where Harry Knowles doesnt want to get out of range of you throwing a knife. Did you find that there are a lot of people like that?
DC: Harry Knowles is really special. Theres only one of him.
DRE: You also wrote in the book that you were hoping that this film would cause a resurgence for you like Pulp Fiction did for John Travolta, do you feel like thats happened?
DC: Oh yeah. Ive made a few movies since then that maybe wouldnt have happened without Kill Bill. People called me as their first choice for some great parts. I did three or four of them last year. You havent seen them yet, but theyll be out soon.
Theres nothing more fun than being the central character in a film. Particularly being a force that changes the shape of the film or controls the shape of the film. Ive done that a lot in my own television series and most of the movies have been one man shows. Thats the highest position there is to be in and if youre the villain you may be very important but youre not the primary artist in the project. Its a lot more fun to be the primary artist. People say that the villains are the best parts. Maybe theyve never been in that other position. I dont know. Maybe theyre just trying to speak well about what it is they do. But I dont really enjoy playing villains much. I havent played many villains, really. Maybe it is that I dont see them as villains. In real life people dont think theyre villains. I dont think Lucky Luciano thought he was a villain. You see a lot of movies where people play the bad guy and are joyful about being a villain. I dont think thats the truth in real life. Even serial killers think they are heroes. Thats a movie thing and Ive never cottoned to it. When I play a bad guy I always refused to stick to the conventions like The Leer. Where youre smiling, leering villain enjoying tearing people apart and shooting the shit out of every village. I dont think thats true. I think those people are serious about it. I dont think theyre grinning. Theyre not having fun. I think most of them think theyre doing Gods work. So I try not to think of these guys as villains. I think of them as people who misguided themselves into a dark place and think its the place to be.
DRE: I got to interview Roger Corman last year and he said that hes proud and still has affection for all his films that he has made. Of course hes not really in his films.
DC: Hes not an actor.
DRE: Are there films that you wish you never did or do you feel that its all part of the deal?
DC: I dont think there are films that I wish I never did. There are films I dont like. But most of the time when I was making a film, I thought it was going to be a good film. Ive made a 120 feature movies and I dont know how much television and once in a while you do something that you initially felt was beneath you. Sometimes it turns out you found some way to make it up to your standards or above them. Sometimes youre making a film that you think is going to be a great movie or a great performance or something and then you see the film and you go, Well that didnt work, did it? Im not proud of every film but Im not ashamed enough of anything to want to run away from it.
DRE: Corman sold the remake rights to Death Race 2000. If they remade it would you be interested in being involved?
DC: I dont think they are thinking about me. Im not going to be a charming courtier and try to campaign for the part. I think Warner Bros purchased the rights to do it from Roger and theyve been talking about Tom Cruise playing a part. I dont even want to get into that with Warners. Ive never had an easy time with Warners. I made my all of my Kung Fu series with Warner and even though I probably made hundreds of millions of dollars for them. But they dont come to me. I dont know what theyre pissed off about [laughs], maybe it is because I walked off the first series.
DRE: Do you have good memories of making Death Race 2000?
DC: Yeah I have good memories. It all went very fast. We shot it in three weeks and it was raining all the time. You cant see it because of my black vinyl costume. It was difficult to shoot because of that. We couldnt spend as much time shooting as we wanted to because sometimes we had to change things because of the rain. I had no idea it was going to be something that would last forever. I believe it is the highest grossing film in the entire history of Roger Corman which meant a lot of money for me. I had a big piece of it but it never occurred to me that piece was going to amount to much. It was a little movie I made in three weeks and that movie just keeps going on. Now that theyve sold it to Warner Bros, I get a piece of that too. If they want me to be in the picture, I would be in the picture, but when they remake these things they very rarely use the people who were in them the first time around. They always recast them. I know theres talk at Warner Bros about doing a feature version of Kung Fu and theyre talking about going back and telling the original pilot movie story over again with a young actor. It would have to be a young actor because hes studying up at the monastery. He starts out as child and a teenager. Im 70 years old so I couldnt play that part. But I think theyre making a mistake because itll be like Wild Wild West. For the movie they recast it and unless you are a geek TV fan, no one remembers who originally played the parts. But Kung Fu is a little bit different. I cant imagine how they can expect to get a huge audience with somebody else playing Kwai Chang Caine because Im entirely too identified with it. I ought to know because I have to live with it. But the sensible thing that they should do is a sequel where we see what the hell happened to this guy. Whats he like in 1906? Years ago I got tired of trying to convince Warner Bros of my opinions about things. I got other things to do. If they want me involved in any of these projects I would certainly think about it. But Ive got so much on my plate, I dont need it and I am getting tired of talking about it.
DRE: Have you ever seen David Carradine related tattoo on somebody?
DC: I dont think a lot of people show me their tattoos. But I have a lot of tattoos myself. I dont have them on my arms so I dont show them a lot on the road. When I originally started getting tattoos I started putting them in places where I didnt think they would get in the way of my movie career. That was before we knew there were ways to cover them up. I have one on my forearm. It looks like a seagull but its actually a flying tern and it covers a V shaped scar. I got tired of the scar there so I made it look like a seagull but as I said its a blind tern. Because thats a pun.
DRE: [laughs] What was the last one you got?
DC: The last one I got was a pretty big dragon on my left thigh and its still not finished. I always wanted a dragon there and I was about to do Kill Bill and I was on my way to China. I thought, I should have this dragon before I go there. So I got a hold of this guy that came to my house and I spent an entire weekend, about 20 hours of tattooing, to get the dragon on. It still isnt finished. I dont think I will ever finish it because whos got the time. People ask me how many tattoos I have and I say one because I do think of them as one entire painting or theme. I dont know if it is true or not but thats the way I think about it.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
dr_pwnage:
Sayonara baby...RIP.
melx:
Cool interview. I loved watching him when I was little.