david carradine dead at 72

i guess this is a kind of day of the dead, at least here on the blog. three deaths. one a true genius, one an excellent poet, & the last, an actor, who actually bends us back towards the genius in a way. w/all his mannerisms, carradine was fully aware of what a method might be.

i loved kung fu when i was a kid, tho i was actually 16yo when it first came out. i remember trying to get lynn to watch it over at the carastro's. she seemed to feel about it the same way she felt about sports: totally dismissive. anyway, the show seemed exotic & different & it had cool fight sequences. in fact, the stories were mostly standard issue & the fight sequences relied a lot on slo-mo for their effectiveness.

every now & then they'd cut from the main story line & give us something different. scenes of monastic life, fight training, words & actions of "deep" meaning:
" Master Po: Close your eyes. What do you hear?
Young Caine: I hear the water, I hear the birds.
Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?
Caine: No.
Po: Do you hear the grasshopper that is at your feet?
Caine: Old man, how is it that you hear these things?
Po: Young man, how is it that you do not?"

these cuts were usually telegraphed by key words, or sounds, or images. again, pretty stardard movie technique but it wasn't being used that much on tv in 1971. oddly, this ended up being one of the things that began to grow old quick. by the third season, i'm not sure i bothered to get lynn to watch. i'm not quite sure i bothered to watch.

i didn't really care for carradine in tarrantino's kill bill. it felt like he was playing carradine playing caine playing bill. i'm glad it gave his career a late boost. of course, i can't say if that late boost is what caused him to slip the noose around his own neck. it's not like we haven't heard that story before.

his father, john, was hilarious in woody allen's everything you wanted to know about sex...
& his brother, keith, was great in altman's nashville. david had his time in the spotlight too, more than once & that's more than most get. zaijian grasshopper.