Discussing books on movies … almost as good as watching them, and without the sticky floors!

Quite some time ago I came to the conclusion that the one thing I wanted from any famous person’s autobiography was at least one moment where I got the sense that I could feasibly spend a second or two in a room with them. That’s not to say that I would expect it to be an interesting or particularly enlightening moment, but rather just one that briefly proved to me that this iconic personage was in fact a real, living breathing human being.

I remember that when I read Bob Dylan’s recent book, CHRONICLES: VOLUME ONE, I despaired that no such moment would ever occur. Here was a book by a man so guarded and protective of his privacy that not only did he barely mention his family life, but he couldn’t even be bothered to tell us his wife’s name. All he was willing to give us was the side of him everyone already knew, and I thought the book suffered because of it. But then, near the book’s end, he included a brief unnecessary detail in one of his descriptions that gave me the moment I was looking for and proved that the world’s most loved and hated singer/songwriter was just as mortal as the rest of us.

It happened in a passage where he was describing the sights and sounds of a New Orleans street while he was taking a break from recording the album many believe marked his eventual comeback from ’80s mediocrity, OH MERCY. As he talked about what he experienced as he strode through the streets, he recalled hearing a Paula Abdul song playing from a nearby car stereo (he doesn’t mention which one, but I like to believe it was “Straight Up”) and that was all it took for me to be satisfied. Not only did Bob Dylan exist in the same universe as Paula Abdul, but he himself knew it and could recognize and remember one of her terrible pop songs if he heard it playing in the background of one of his memories. He was human after all.

David Carradine is not Bob Dylan, but that does not mean he is free of the baggage of being an icon. He first achieved international fame as Kwai Chang Caine, the stoic Chinese Buddhist monk whose peaceful ways were tested each episode by the outlaws and racist townsfolk who populated the Western landscape of the ’70s cult TV hit KUNG FU. It was the kind of career-defining role that few actors are able to escape from, but for a time, it seemed like Carradine might.

Following the cancellation of the series, he alternated between starring in low-budget Roger Corman movies (including the B-movie masterpiece that is DEATH RACE 2000) and more serious arthouse films. Of the latter, his biggest success came in 1976 with his brilliant performance as Woody Guthrie in Hal Ashby’s depression era biopic BOUND FOR GLORY. It was the kind of role that could have put him in the same league as De Niro, Pacino and Hoffman, had he not so whole-heartedly embraced the excesses of the period.

Rather than find material that would make him one of the most important actors of his generation, he instead followed in the footsteps of his famous father, John Carradine, who had gone from appearing in classics like STAGECOACH and THE GRAPES OF WRATH to earning quick paychecks playing evil butlers in Al Adamson movies like BLOOD OF DRACULA’S CASTLE. Both of them found their professional lives greatly affected by the turbulence of their personal lives, as they left behind a series of ex-wives and families in their wake and lost the ability to turn down any acting job, no matter how awful the project.

During the ’80s and ’90s, all of the credibility Carradine had earned in the ’70s was gone; he had become something of a joke. While many still remembered him as Caine, most knew him only as a has-been who earned a living appearing in the kind of direct-to-video dreck brought to the world by folks like Gregory Dark (ANIMAL INSTINCTS, NIGHT RHYTHMS), David A. Prior (FUTURE FORCE, FUTURE ZONE) and Fred Olen Ray (ARMED RESPONSE, WARLORDS and at least one other unfortunate film).

By 2002, even those roles had started to dry up for Carradine, and his primary source of income came from selling his signature on 8×10 glossies taken from his KUNG FU days at autograph conventions. Having just recently married his fifth wife — a beautiful brunette named Annie who brought with her a house full of young children — the then-65-year-old actor was worried about how he would be able to support them in the twilight of both his life and career. Then, like a miracle, came the answer to all of his problems. He got the call every once-great actor in Hollywood spends their days dreaming about: Quentin Tarantino wanted him to play the title character in his next movie.

If I seem to be a bit rough in my description of Carradine’s life prior to his being cast in the KILL BILL duology, I am at least no more brutal than he himself is in the opening entries of his recently published THE KILL BILL DIARY, a book that is far more about his own professional resurrection than it is about the actual production of Q & U’s glorious cinematic brainchild.

It is for that reason that hardcore fans of the movie and/or just Tarantino in general probably will be disappointed in the book, as it contains little in the way of startling behind-the-scenes revelations (which is understandable when you consider that Carradine was only on set for a relatively short part of the film’s unusually long shoot), but for anyone interested in delving into the mind of an aging actor who’s making the most of his one last chance for greatness, this is a must-read.

This is largely due to the fact that, unlike Dylan, Carradine doesn’t make you wait until the book is almost over to show us the man behind the grasshopper. As is appropriate for a work that bills itself as a diary, there is not a moment of pretense to be found in these pages—as you read the book you not only get a sense of what it would be like to be in the room with the man, but what he would be feeling and thinking if and when such a meeting would actually occur.

The two aspects of Carradine’s entries that I found the most surprising and interesting were their honesty and enthusiasm. Having lived the life that he has, it would be hard to fault Carradine if he came across as bitter and cynical, but rather than coming across as a jaded old-timer, he instead reacts to the events that unfold in the book with an almost childlike sense of glee. This is most evident near the beginning of the book when he receives the news that he’s up for a part in KILL BILL, back when Warren Beatty was still widely believed to have been cast in the titular role. “I’m going to be in a Warren Beatty movie!” he jumps around giddily, unaware that the meeting he’s just set up with Tarantino will prove even more fortuitous than he could have ever hoped.

It’s also a lot of fun to discover just what an old-school geek Carradine turns out to be. Not only do we discover that his Superman monologue in KILL BILL (one of the chief highlights of the second movie) came about as a result of an idle conversation he had with Tarantino about the merits of Christopher Reeve’s portrayal of the superhero, but he also starts an entry talking about how much he is enjoying reading Frank Miller’s critically reviled THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN and expresses an almost fanboy-ish thrill at the idea of being able to kill a Jedi thanks to Samuel L. Jackson’s brief cameo in KILL BILL: VOLUME 2.

That’s not to say that the book is perfect. Carradine can be a bit repetitive (we get it, Uma’s really beautiful, let’s move on) and at times his entries read too much like a travelogue for their own good. I also wished he hadn’t included three long passages written by Harry Knowles for Ain’t It Cool News, describing the web guru’s set visit in China. Not only was I familiar with them from their original appearances on the website, but they add little to the text beyond a slightly bumped-up page count.

Still, the book’s pleasures outweigh its faults and it really is cool to discover that for someone who has appeared in not one but two Barbarian Brothers movies (THINK BIG and DOUBLE TROUBLE), David Carradine has not only managed to stay humble, but retain his dignity as well.

I doubt Jan Michael-Vincent could have done the same. –Allan Mott

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