If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.
David Carradine
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.
Quentin Tarantino doesn't beat Hal Ashby, and he's one of my favorite directors. Quentin is incredible.
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.
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?
Quentin is very organic; there was no way that he was going to put someone else's hand in there and anyway, my hands are kind of famous. It seemed right.
I've never been in prison. I've been in jail a lot. But I've never actually been sentenced to anything.
'Kung Fu' was never cancelled; I just left. I decided I had enough of it, and I thought I should do a movie right away, because I think when you leave a television series, it's important that you establish the fact that you're a movie actor really quickly, or you might never get that chance.
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.
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.
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 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.'
Kung fu: You've got to spend your whole life at it before you're kung fu.
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'm like a renegade and that rubs people wrong.
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.
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.
You know, I've never actually really believed that death is inevitable. I just think it's a rumor.
With my father, there was one baseball game, one football game, one fishing trip. You got one of everything. And that was all you got. It was enough, though, and I adored him. He was a god to me.
I've known Daryl Hannah for 20 years. She's kind of a friend of the family. Anyway, I've been hot for her ever since 'Blade Runner.'
I studied music formally. I was probably less formal about my study of acting than anything.
The one thing about doing all those movies and all that television is I know what I'm doing. And I can do what Sean Connery can do. I can do what Clint can do. People even say I look a little like Clint. But that's just because I'm skinny and tall and old. With a receding hairline.
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.
'Born to play? Hmmm. Probably Romeo... or Hamlet, I guess. Also, I'd be a great Alexander the Great.
I've always known whether I'm great. Or not.
Why would you be afraid of death? It would be an inconvenience. I have a lot of undone things and it's bound to get in the way. But, no, it doesn't scare me at all.
Tarantino is the coolest damn guy; he's just so much fun to work with. He might be the best director I've ever worked with. He just seems to know how to do it and he knows how to make you feel good about it. He's having so much fun you start having fun. You can't help it.
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.
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.
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.
In the second installment, I pretty much dominate the show. Somehow or another, though, I manage to apparently dominate the first show pretty well with just my voice and my hands and a shot of my boots kicking cartridges out of the way.
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.
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.
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.
There are wonderful films that become studio films, but they're conceived independently. That's where the action is. 'Being John Malkovich' is a great example of a picture you wouldn't think the studios would want, and it turns out to be a movie that touches everybody's heart.
I'm analytical as an actor, and one of the things Quentin did was free me from that.
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 went to 17 different schools when I was a kid. Every time I went to school, no matter what I talked like, it was always from the wrong place.
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.
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.
The first important role was a Broadway lead I did called 'The Royal Hunt Of The Sun' by Peter Shaffer, the guy who did 'Equus' and 'Amadeus.' Many of the important roles that I got later on were because the guy who was going to hire me was in that audience and had his mind blown. I tend to do that. I blow people's minds with my performances.
I always knew that all it would take was for the right director to put me in a movie.
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.
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.
It's weird, because everywhere I go, people yell, 'Grasshopper!' or 'Bill!' but down there in Mexico or Colombia or anywhere in South America or most of Europe, people will yell, 'Serpent's Egg!' And I'll go, 'Wow, man, these people are really hip.'
