David Carradine

I am deeply saddened by the loss of David Carradine, who was found dead in Thailand this week. As the mystery behind his tragic death (shades of Michael Hutchence?) continues to play out in the media, I find myself reminiscing...

I grew up watching him in the immortal tv series Kung Fu, as did so many others of my generation. I even have an old LP that features some of the great dialogue and philosophy from this show!

"'What endures, Master?' -young Caine

'The sun endures. The moon endures. Life endures.'" -Master Po

And as any fan would be, I was absolutely thrilled to see his more recent turns in Tarantino's Kill Bill saga. Brilliant casting!

But what I'm thinking about the most tonight, is how lucky my husband and I were to have met David in person in 2005.

He was exactly as you would have expected him to be. A bit shy, a bit strange, and a bit enigmatic. He definitely had charisma enough to spare and that made it easier to understand why this intense actor could have won the role of Caine over the incomparable Bruce Lee.

There was a hidden depth, a complexity, to David Carradine that he was perhaps too shy to express in person but that the cameras somehow captured. This is why Kung Fu is such a cult hit even to this day, and why, more recently, Kill Bill blew me away.

And this is why David Carradine will be missed.

"Do not clutch at pain and pain will pass.... In my country we say there is a time for each to die. It is not the death that is so drear but the fear of death. Fear is the darkness.... At the end what remains is not riches, not structures of stone but remembrances of those few people we have joined spirits with."