Strange story: Yesterday (Wednesday), for no particular reason, I took a run-down old VHS video that had been sitting on my bookshelf for years and began to convert it to share on my YouTube channel.
It was a cable-access interview I had done with a well-known entertainer when I was living in Vancouver in 1989. Now, VHS takes a while to play out and convert, so I let the gizmo run (a Hauppage WinTV PVR) and walked away with the intention of uploading it as clips today (Thursday).
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So this morning, on the Yahoo Mail news page, I read something that floors me. The guy I had left running on the VHS had been found dead in his hotel room.
It was David Carradine -- dead of an apparent suicide. So why did I plan to upload him last night, after 20 years of sitting on the tape?
(See comments for the long story.)
Here's how we landed him for the show: The interview show was done on a shoestring and I was nobody (Was? - Chimples). Sustained by pogie, I had, in a few short weeks gone from new volunteer laying cables for Rogers Cable Neighbourhood TV to doing thankless "streeter" interviews to manipulating studio cameras (because of my photography "background" -- three years of shooting customers at the Kon Tiki Polynesian restaurant). The guy (a Westmounter, no less) who did the studio interview gig asked me if I wanted to do some research for studio interviews -- that was before the Internet made it easy. To make a long story short, somebody backed out of an interview I had researched (the reputedly gruff billionaire Murray Pezim) and I stood in. (He was charming).
ReplyDeleteAs a reward for a job well done, I was promoted to interviewer. The executive producer, John Richardson, had chutzpah and we went after all kinds of celebrities. When Bird on a Wire started shooting in Vancouver, we invited some of the stars. Bill Duke (a really great guy from nearby Syracuse) had actually approached us after seeing the show on his hotel room TV. Goldie Hawn had also left a good impression, having supported a local jewelery maker. Her people said she would have loved to, but that she was leaving town. Mel Gibson was gone by the time we thought of inviting him.
David Carradine was approached through the production company and he said, "Why not?" But the night before he was due to be interviewed, his wife phones me (Richardson had given her my number) and tries to talk me out of the interview, as David Carradine was on a short break and he had a chance to fly down and see his daughter. I heard the ice clinking in her glass, and figured the whole thing was a get-the-day-off gambit, so I tossed the dice back and told her how our "union shoot" would be expensive to cancel. After a short silence, I was told it would go ahead.
The next day, I went to pick the two of them up at their hotel on Robson Street. They took forever to come down from their room, and when they did, he made a bee-line for the bar. He offered me a drink (we had bourbon on ice), leaving me to chat with his very sweet wife. He was quite silent but not sullen. He had an animal grace.
He played some music on the baby grand, including Tennessee Waltz. I looked at my watch for a while and tried to get the show on the road, as the crew had by now set up the studio and were waiting. It was worth the wait.
Carradine was a bit of a bad boy, sure, but he was big-hearted and a real pro. He insisted on smoking in the studio, despite very clear signs and regulations to the contrary. It was mostly a declaration of independence (you may notice ont he clips that he smokes quite furtively).
He was booked for one half-hour interview, but at the end of it, acting director Richardson asked me (by earplug, in case you were wondering) if I'd invite him to do another. Carradine said, "Sure." I was flattered between interviews when he generously told me, "You're good." (I sort of thought so, too; though my interview seems a bit stretched out and slow today. I think he liked my recall and eye contact -- I did not work with notes. Sadly, his flattering comment, which happened between setups, was clipped. But it still means a lot to me.)
I have fond memories of my day with David Carradine. And it's remarkable that, in his moment of ultimate despair, he might have somehow and suddenly inspired me to post this interview 20 years after the fact.
I'll dig out his tai chi video and do it as a tribute this week-end ...
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