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ANOIHER EVENING WIA DAVID CARRADINE
A complex Hollywood personality seen through the eyes of his director and friend.
By Paul Bartel
Tonight I was supposed to have dinner with David Carradine. It has been a long time since we spent an evening together. David has recently returned from Israel where he shot The Silent Flute. Now he is busy doing re-takes and pick-ups for both that and an earlier film, Death Sport, as well as preparing for his next one. He is on a tight schedule, but he has found some time in it for an old friend and director who is planning to write a piece on him.
There has been, however, a complication. The re-takes are going badly. They are mostly fight scenes, about which David is a perfectionist. He has broken his nose twice on The Silent Flute (God knows what has happened to the other actors). Just now he has called to say that they’re running late and won’t break until after nine. It will be too late for dinner since David has a long drive from the studio out to the house in Malibu where he and his wife Linda are
living. Linda is pregnant and David likes to get home as early as possible. Still, my place is on his way to the beach. He promises to stop by for a quick chat.
I wander around, making a few notes on things I want to talk to him about, wishing I had the makings of a roast beef sandwich, but afraid to go out for fear of missing him. About 9:30 the doorbell rings. It is David looking worn and tired, but happy. There is much hugging and kissing. David is the only actor I permit to kiss me on the lips, indeed the only one who has shown any inclination to do so. He is a very warm and affectionate person. He seems as glad to see me as I am to see him, but he emphasizes that he cannot stay long; his car and driver are waiting outside.
He glances smilingly, familiarly around my little Hollywood apartment with its green walls (a disastrous miscalculation) redeemed by a flock of dynamite Polish film posters (JACK NICHOLSON i CANDICE BERGEN w POROZMAWIAJMY O KOBIETACH). He notices the subtle changes.
Since he was last here I have given in and bought a TV (A 17-inch Sony.) He smiles his approval, but does not mention the Betamax which I bought so that I would not have to watch the television. He asks about several large reels of film lying about on the couch and I explain that I am in the process of compiling a complete history of New World Pictures in trailers. He asks if the films we made together are included. I assure him that they are. David collapses in a chair.
As we talk, I study his amazing face. Howard Hawks had a theory that the only way an actor could be any good was if the camera liked him. The camera *‘likes’’ David Carradine. It takes kindly to his craggy, sunken cheeks and his great sincere eyes, what Vince Canby calls a ‘‘fine, sensitive-tough’’ face. I am reminded of how his father looked in The Grapes of Wrath. David’s is a plain, honest, American face. And his personality, underneath all the actor bullshit, is cut from the same cloth. David likes to see himself in a loin cloth, flailing away
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