Zitat des Tages von David Carradine:
I remember when I did the pilot, and I though no network is going to want to do this. How could that happen? A half Chinese guy walking the old west that doesn't fire one gun and never gets on a horse?
I'm like a renegade and that rubs people wrong.
You know, I've never actually really believed that death is inevitable. I just think it's a rumor.
Well I would never say to anybody that Warren Beatty got fired, but uh, I think he and Quentin fell out of love, and I think Warren told Quentin to hire me for the film.
It was pretty extensive - we worked out 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 3 months, which I think is more than anybody in the Olympics. I thought well I don't need this, the girls need it, but it was a gift.
Quentin and I were constantly finding something new that we had in common and comic books were one of them. I think we were talking about comic books much earlier in our relationship, before I had the part.
My big fight is not in the movie and I don't understand that decision but I know he's right about it, whatever it is. Quentin did not hire me because I'm a kung fu expert; he hired me because he liked to listen to me talk.
I think people are a little surprised sometimes at the level on which I actually talk. I don't talk like Caine. And every once in a while, somebody is surprised because I smoke and I drink. But I don't feel that is a contradiction.
I don't need to convince anybody that I know kung fu, but maybe somebody needs to know that I really can act, without doing a Chinese accent or a funny walk.
Quentin wanted to create this special world in which everybody walks around with a samurai sword, extras in the airport, a special little place in the airplane to stick your samurai sword.
But, Tarantino has seen all of my movies. He's seen my good stuff, he's seen my bad stuff, he's seen the ones I directed, he's read my autobiography. There's an awful lot of things he knows about me, all of which I think had something to do with his casting.
Most of the things that have happened in my life have been pretty arbitrary. I walk into a room, and someone hits me with a two-by-four, and that changes my life. I'm not sure what I've learned from anything.
Most actors spend a lot of time training themselves to be an actor. And I kind of didn't do that. I just started doin' it in front of an audience and had to deliver.
I went to college at San Francisco State and supported myself working the graveyard shift at a brewery and did a little theater. It was great. I'd do Shakespeare and stuff like that.
There's tons of members of the Carradine family. It's more like a clan than it is like a family, and it's rare that we can get a bunch of them together. We do once in a while.
Because you know how you say I've got to really get down and really do some training and then of course, you never do or you do it for a couple of weeks and slough it back off again but I'm being forced to do something that I really want to do and I loved it.
Most actors spend a lot of time training themselves to be an actor. And I kind of didn't do that.
I'm analytical as an actor, and one of the things Quentin did was free me from that.
I was involved in a web cartoon of Kung Fu with WB a few years back.
I like Bill a lot. As Bill is presented, I mean you don't ever see Bill blow her head off? You know? And I think what Quentin has done is he created a monster.
'Born to play? Hmmm. Probably Romeo... or Hamlet, I guess. Also, I'd be a great Alexander the Great.
I've worked with a lot of real heavy hitters, and Quentin is maybe heads and shoulders, at least a forehead, above just about anybody I've ever worked with.
My role in kung fu - in the art of kung fu, not the series - is not as a practitioner. My role is that of an evangelist, which is an entirely different thing.
There's an alternative. There's always a third way, and it's not a combination of the other two ways. It's a different way.
I've always known whether I'm great. Or not.
There was an incident in Argentina when I was making a film called 'The Warrior and the Sorceress.' There were, like, 40, 50 sword fighters and martial artists on the set, and one of the sword fighters challenged me. I said, 'Look, you don't want to fight me. Nobody wants to fight me. You gotta be crazy to want to fight me.'
Quentin Tarantino doesn't beat Hal Ashby, and he's one of my favorite directors. Quentin is incredible.
I did get to hang out with my dad for a little while. I went with him to summer stock. I watched him be a real king of the world. He'd ship out as a star in summer stock. He sometimes directed the shows. I learned a lot from him - not just about acting, but about everything, how to handle a woman.
That's Quentin. He's an absolute master of his own fate. If he agrees with you, he'll change his mind instantly. If he thinks that he's right, there's no way you can get him to change his mind.
I was a truant. And if you're a truant in New York City, the truant officer gets after you, and then you get into the courts, and then things happen which they really shouldn't. But I ended up in a very sweet reform school. It's the place you go to if you've got a really kind judge.
I always knew that all it would take was for the right director to put me in a movie.