David Carradine

[Hurlshort]

http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.ap.org...dead-bangkok-ap

 

 

Apparently he hung himself. I prefer to assume it was an assassin, because that's a weak way to go for Mr. Kung Fu.

[taks]

yeah, cowardly if true, particularly since that means he screwed the folks drawing income from the movie he was filming. assassin it must've been.

 

taks

[Killian Kalthorne]

What the hell? I thought things were looking up for him since Kill Bill. Why would he kill himself?

[Gfted1]

^Because Grasshopper was very sad?

[Diogo Ribeiro]

[Gorgon]

yeah, cowardly if true, particularly since that means he screwed the folks drawing income from the movie he was filming. assassin it must've been.

 

taks

Jesus is everything about money with you.

[taks]

Why would he kill himself?

because he was suicidal?

 

^gorgon: people may have depended upon this to put food on their table, but nooooo, we can't think that because it's about money. heaven forbid we condemn his cowardly act and the potential for people being out of work because it's about money.

 

you're just an ass. is everything about being an ass with you?

 

taks

[Volourn]

I agree that suicide is cowardly. But, newsflash, it's not to him to put food on other people's table outside of his family. If their ability to support themselves is absed on him staying alive and making a movie; those people are a lost cause, anyways. Can't they just find another movie to work on?

 

Anyways, sad news either way. I wonder what would lead someone like him to commit suicide ? Like they say, suicide is almost always 'shocking'...

[Morgoth]

Suicide is not "cowardly". It's a decision the person takes, and no one has the right to call him a coward for that.

[Gorgon]

Why would he kill himself?

because he was suicidal?

 

^gorgon: people may have depended upon this to put food on their table, but nooooo, we can't think that because it's about money. heaven forbid we condemn his cowardly act and the potential for people being out of work because it's about money.

 

you're just an ass. is everything about being an ass with you?

 

taks

Notice how I can belittle your beliefs without calling you names. It's a useful skill to have particularly where you aren't allowed to call people names. It's a mistake to get too drawn in/worked up. I mean it's not life or death, it's just two guys posting their thoughts on a message board. If it were personal or face to face all the usual restraints would be in place, and we would never have reached this place in the first place. Try to remember that.

 

>_

[Volourn]

"Suicide is not "cowardly". It's a decision the person takes, and no one has the right to call him a coward for that."

 

WRONG. People *do* bhave the right to say that even if you disagree with our opinion. Suicide, by defintion, is cowardly. People commit suicide because life has become to hard for them so they give up. That's the veryd efintion of being a coward. Sure, it's ahrsh; but it's also true. I do feel sorry for people who commit suicide just as I feel sorry for those who do other things I dissaprove of; but I call it as I see it. And, yeah, I know it's not PCish. But, the fact remains, suicide is cowardly.

[Morgoth]

"Suicide is not "cowardly". It's a decision the person takes, and no one has the right to call him a coward for that."

 

WRONG. People *do* bhave the right to say that even if you disagree with our opinion. Suicide, by defintion, is cowardly. People commit suicide because life has become to hard for them so they give up. That's the veryd efintion of being a coward. Sure, it's ahrsh; but it's also true. I do feel sorry for people who commit suicide just as I feel sorry for those who do other things I dissaprove of; but I call it as I see it. And, yeah, I know it's not PCish. But, the fact remains, suicide is cowardly.

Nope. Perhaps that's what the Americans/canadians think, but how people handle death is differently in other countries. Suicide is not cowardly. A coward is someone that refuses to help someone in dire need.

[Gorgon]

What's brave about dying slowly and miserably of some wasting disease. Or how about if you are just tired, just plain bored and want to see what's on the other side, we all gotta go sometime and everyone has the right to choose when if they are so inclined.

 

There are plenty of wrong reasons to make the choice, but it's quite evident that they are not all cowardly.

[Hurlshort]

I agree that suicide isn't always cowardly, for centuries Japanese culture considered it an honorable death. I need to know more about Carradine's situation before making too much judgement. He was 72, was he in pain, did he have a disease?

[Gfted1]

A few more details are trickling out:

 

Actor David Carradine found dead in Bangkok

 

Jun 4, 3:05 PM (ET)

 

By GRANT PECK

 

BANGKOK (AP) - Actor David Carradine, a born seeker and cult idol who broke through as the willing student called "grasshopper" in the 1970s TV series "Kung Fu" and decades later as leader of an assassin squad in "Kill Bill," was found dead Thursday in Thailand. Police said he appeared to have hanged himself.

 

The officer responsible for investigating the death, Teerapop Luanseng, said the 72-year-old actor was staying at a suite at the luxury Swissotel Nai Lert Park Hotel.

 

"I can confirm that we found his body, naked, hanging in the closet," Teerapop said. He said police suspected suicide.

 

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, Michael Turner, said the embassy was informed by Thai authorities that Carradine died either late Wednesday or early Thursday, but he could not provide further details out of consideration for his family.

 

Carradine came from an acting family. His father, John, made a career playing creepy, eccentric characters in film and on stage. His brothers Keith, Robert and Bruce also became actors. Actress Martha Plimpton is Keith Carradine's daughter.

 

"My Uncle David was a brilliantly talented, fiercely intelligent and generous man. He was the nexus of our family in so many ways, and drew us together over the years and kept us connected," Plimpton said Thursday.

 

Carradine was in Bangkok shooting the movie "Stretch," said his manager, Chuck Binder.

 

"We're very saddened, he was a wonderful guy," said Lori Binder, a partner in the agency that represented Carradine.

 

"It is shocking to me that he is no longer with us," said Michael Madsen, who played an assassin in "Kill Bill."

 

"I had been thinking about calling him for the last several days. ... I have so many great memories of David that I wouldn't even know where to begin . He has a very special place in my heart."

 

The Web site of the Thai newspaper The Nation said Carradine could not be contacted after he failed to appear for a meal with the rest of the film crew on Wednesday, and that his body was found by a hotel maid Thursday morning. It said a preliminary police investigation found that he had hanged himself with a cord used with the suite's curtains. It cited police as saying there was no sign that he had been assaulted.

 

Police said Carradine's body was taken to a hospital for an autopsy that would be done Friday.

 

Carradine appeared in more than 100 feature films with such directors as Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman and Hal Ashby. One of his early film roles was as folk singer Woody Guthrie in Ashby's 1976 biopic, "Bound for Glory."

 

But he was best known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin priest traveling the 1800s American frontier West in the TV series "Kung Fu," which aired in 1972-75.

 

"I wasn't like a TV star in those days, I was like a rock 'n' roll star," Carradine said in an interview with Associated Press Radio in 1996. "It was a phenomenon kind of thing. ... It was very special."

 

Actor Rainn Wilson, star of TV's "The Office," tweeted about Carradine's death on Twitter: "R.I.P. David Carradine. You were a true hero to so many of us children of the 70s. We'll miss you, Kwai Chang Caine."

 

Carradine reprised the role in a mid-1980s TV movie and played Caine's grandson in the 1990s syndicated series "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues."

 

He returned to the top in recent years as the title character in Quentin Tarantino's two-part saga "Kill Bill." Bill, the worldly father figure of a pack of crack assassins, was a shadowy presence in 2003's "Kill Bill - Vol. 1." In that film, one of Bill's former assassins (Uma Thurman) begins a vengeful rampage against her old associates, including Bill.

 

In "Kill Bill - Vol. 2," released in 2004, Thurman's character catches up to Bill. The role brought Carradine a Golden Globe nomination as best supporting actor.

 

Bill was a complete contrast to Caine, the soft-spoken refugee from a Shaolin monastery, serenely spreading wisdom and battling bad guys in the Old West. He left after three seasons, saying the show had started to repeat itself.

 

"David's always been kind of a seeker of knowledge and of wisdom in his own inimitable way," his brother, actor Keith Carradine, said in a 1995 interview.

 

After "Kung Fu," Carradine starred in the 1975 cult flick "Death Race 2000." He starred with Liv Ullmann in Bergman's "The Serpent's Egg" in 1977 and with his brothers in the 1980 Western "The Long Riders."

 

But after the early 1980s, he spent two decades doing mostly low-budget films. Tarantino's films changed that.

 

"All I've ever needed since I more or less retired from studio films a couple of decades ago ... is just to be in one," Carradine told The Associated Press in 2004.

 

"There isn't anything that Anthony Hopkins or Clint Eastwood or Sean Connery or any of those old guys are doing that I couldn't do," he said. "All that was ever required was somebody with Quentin's courage to take and put me in the spotlight."

 

One thing remained a constant after "Kung Fu": Carradine's interest in Asian herbs, exercise and philosophy. He wrote a personal memoir called "Spirit of Shaolin" and continued to make instructional videos on tai chi and other martial arts.

 

In the 2004 interview, Carradine talked candidly about his past boozing and narcotics use, but said he had put all that behind him and stuck to coffee and cigarettes.

 

"I didn't like the way I looked, for one thing. You're kind of out of control emotionally when you drink that much. I was quicker to anger."

 

"You're probably witnessing the last time I will ever answer those questions," Carradine said. "Because this is a regeneration. It is a renaissance. It is the start of a new career for me.

 

"It's time to do nothing but look forward."

 

Gah, what a slow painful way to go. Not like a real hanging that instantly breaks your neck but a slow painful suffocation. I wonder, in the last seconds when your primal mind takes over, if he tried to claw the noose away.

 

EDIT: Bolded part mine.

Edited June 4, 2009 by Gfted1

[Meshugger]

R.I.P.

[Kor Qel Droma]

That's too bad. Honestly, I was never really impressed with Kung Fu. Kinda wished Bruce Lee would have gotten that role instead.

 

He was good in the Kill Bill series, although he's pretty much played every character the same, hasn't he?

[Gorgon]

Who the hell would kill himself because of not getting to be a hollywood superstar.

[LadyCrimson]

I've read other articles claiming there were cords wound around other areas of his body.

Maybe a sexual kink gone awry vs. suicide?

 

...regardless of cause, it's still sad, and he was an icon of my youth. I will miss him.

 

edit: typo

Edited June 4, 2009 by LadyCrimson

[LadyCrimson]

But, the fact remains, suicide is cowardly.

That's not fact...it's cultural perception.

There have been cultures and times when it was considered noble/honorable. *shrug*

[Killian Kalthorne]

It all depends onthe motivation of the act, as with most things.

 

However, in cases of suicide there are usually some telltale signs leading up to it or a note left behind explaining the reasons for such an act. Has any of that been found out yet?

[wesley2]

I agree with Crimson, no matter what the circumstances are it's still sad to see the guy died.

[Asol]

An accomplished 72 year old desides to call it, for whatever reasons and circumstance of his own and he is a coward?

It's barely worth pointing out spitting on a dead man is some pretty thin bluster.

 

Honestly though the first thing I thought was that the 'he was there for a movie' was a made up niceity, and there is other speculation around the nature of the event. I haven't had a chance to gather it up...

Edited June 4, 2009 by Asol

[Gorgon]

What happens in Bangkok stays in Bankok

[Hiro Protagonist]

Rest in Peace Grasshopper.