Via Moe Lane:
Kill Bill and Kung Fu star David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok hotel room.
Thai police told the BBC the 72-year-old was found by a hotel maid sitting in a wardrobe with a rope around his neck and body on Thursday morning.
The US star was in Thailand filming his latest film Stretch, according to his personal manager Chuck Binder.
Erm. I will leave the observations to others.
UPDATE: Moe Lane adds that the original word in the second sentence “was not body–more like ‘genitals’.” I do want to stress, though, that to some people this is a personal tragedy. If commenters can’t see that, I’ll nuke their comments. I admit that it’s hard. It’s seldom that 3 sentences afford one with so many opportunities for punning.
Comment by McGehee on 6/4 @ 9:03 am #
Has anyone seen Uma Thurman? (Sorry.)
Comment by Joe on 6/4 @ 9:04 am #
I loved Kung Fu. It was awesome. DC had a lot of demons. Rest in Peace.
Comment by McGehee on 6/4 @ 9:04 am #
Seriously, though — it does sound as though foul play is a distinct possibility.
Comment by Joe on 6/4 @ 9:05 am #
McGehee, I thought the same thing.
Comment by rickinstl on 6/4 @ 9:05 am #
Sooner or later it really is “time for you to go”.
Comment by Pablo on 6/4 @ 9:05 am #
I didn’t do it.
Comment by Joe on 6/4 @ 9:06 am #
About Thurman. Foul play may be a possibility. But this sounds like suicide or some auto aphyxiation gone bad.
It did happen in Bangkok.
Comment by Matt on 6/4 @ 9:10 am #
WTF. Carradine seemed to be doing pretty well career wise- he was excellent in Kill Bill and I was a long time fan of Kung Fu. You gotta wonder what makes these hollywood people, set for life and can have anything they want, reach such a level of depression that they kill themselves. The drug ODS, I can understand- mistakes happen especially when mixing liquor and drugs but purposeful suicide ?
Also, given the locale, I cannot help but think foul play may have been involved. Bangkok is a dangerous place and its easy to fall in with the wrong crowd, especially if you’re someone well known or have significant income. Anyone know if Carradine was a big gambler ? I’ll be interested to see what the tox screen turns up also.
Really sucks- he’s one of those actors who was iconic to me while I was growing up – I actually took 2 years of kung fu due to the show.
Comment by Matt on 6/4 @ 9:10 am #
Joe beat me to it…
Comment by thegreatsatan on 6/4 @ 9:11 am #
auto erotic asphyxiation takes another life
Comment by Mr. Pink on 6/4 @ 9:17 am #
10
You beat me to it.
Comment by Joe on 6/4 @ 9:19 am #
Althouse on Caradine
Comment by louchette on 6/4 @ 9:25 am #
what joe said. and this news makes me very sad indeed. he was a wonderful actor.
and semi-OT personal note: my japanese pop idol obsession gackt (sort of an asian david bowie) just starred in his first big american film ‘bunraku,’ in which he plays the josh hartnett’s wacky samurai sidekick. the tentative release date is late this summer. i’ve been hoping the film will make him a huge star in the US. and in my daydreams and reveries i’ve also imagined that after the film’s release he would get cast in more films with a martial arts element, and perhaps even get to co-star with carradine and other kung-fuey/kill billish type iconic actors. i guess i need to cross carradine off that fantasy wish list now. =(
anyway, this news makes me melancholy.
Comment by louchette on 6/4 @ 9:26 am #
typos argh. need more coffee, obviously.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/4 @ 9:28 am #
He was an talented actor that continuously struggled with his own personal demons; much like we all do…
Lucky for most of us we never spend so much time in the spotlight as to have our most personal secrets revealed…
May God rest his soul, and grace his family with the strength and comfort they all need during their time of sorrow and immesurable grief…
RIP David Carradine
Comment by sdferr on 6/4 @ 9:30 am #
We’re to take it he wasn’t looking for Narnia in there, I guess?
Comment by SarahW on 6/4 @ 9:31 am #
Yeah, he was my all-time favorite. I’m sad.
Still, Jules Crittendon (via Twitter) managed to crack me up – I wish this would be true – “David Carradine arrives at Pearly Gates. ‘Looky what we got here, Gabriel … Hey, Chinaman, you know how to dance? Haw haw!’”
Comment by easyliving1 on 6/4 @ 9:33 am #
Stretch?
Comment by serr8d on 6/4 @ 9:34 am #
Heh.
Pingback by Tennesseefree.com » David Carradine chooses the noose… on 6/4 @ 9:41 am #
[...] UPDATE: Dan has the…rest…of the story. [...]
Comment by chasingwaterfalls on 6/4 @ 9:47 am #
I have to give a nod to my favorite, guilty pleasure cable show: Wild West Tech w/ the Carradine boys. It’s a straight-on look at the technology that made the west the hard-living, tough justice, dusty, dirty, bloody, wide-open, adventurous, all-American, full of real men and women with balls kind of place. I don’t know what their politics are, but this show would make all the right leftie heads explode – yet not once have I heard the Carradine’s preach. For women (like me) tired of the slim and stylish pantywaist men running this country, it’s like medicine. Just sayin. Yum.
Comment by Maz on 6/4 @ 9:48 am #
wow I am really shocked at this news…this is one actor who I thought had it together but obviouslt not…or he was into that weird sex stuff that killed Michael Hutchence…bit old though
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 6/4 @ 9:50 am #
This sucks. Always loved him as an actor (his brother Keith too). Seemed like he’d be a great guy to get drunk and bullshit with. You just know that he had some crazy good stories. The man did episodes of The Fall Guy AND Airwolf for pete’s sake. We’re talking Colt Seavers and Strinfellow Hawke people.
Godspeed Grasshopper.
Uh…Sonny Chiba is still ok though, right?.
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 6/4 @ 9:58 am #
“or he was into that weird sex stuff that killed Michael Hutchence”…
I still have a INXS concert t-shirt circa 1989 around here somewhere.
Probably boxed up with a really old pair of Girbaud jeans.
Comment by The Sanity Inspector on 6/4 @ 10:08 am #
RIP, & thanks for all the entertaining TV growing up.
Comment by Asymmetric Polyhedron (formerly mojo) on 6/4 @ 10:09 am #
There are probably more embarrassing ways to die than auto-erotic asphyxiation – but I just can’t think of them right now.
Comment by Joe on 6/4 @ 10:14 am #
Asymmetric Polyhedron: Here’s one way.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 6/4 @ 10:19 am #
Damn. He seemed like a good guy, and so very good in “Kill Bill.” I met his brother Keith back in the “Nashville” days.
Comment by Asymmetric Polyhedron (formerly mojo) on 6/4 @ 10:26 am #
Old John was always a good’un, too. The whole family – fine actors.
Comment by Chrees on 6/4 @ 10:26 am #
Will be interesting to see what the final verdict is on cause of death. For someone that cultivated his on-screen persona so carefully (turning down roles because “David Carradine NEVER loses a fight!”), I would have to see it all pissed away at his passing.
Comment by Chrees on 6/4 @ 10:27 am #
hate to see…
Comment by psycho... on 6/4 @ 10:33 am #
I don’t know what, if anything, got the “nuke,” but there’s a lot of assholery left here.
Orgasm-related death at 72 is victory. His.
Not yours? Don’t be shitty.
Comment by Blacque Jacques Shellacque on 6/4 @ 10:58 am #
Wild West Tech. The perfect host.
Comment by steph on 6/4 @ 11:01 am #
Also in the news, Koko Taylor died today. She was 80.
Wang Dang Doodle indeed (no pun intended re Mr Carradine).
Comment by happyfeet on 6/4 @ 11:10 am #
this is weird from that BBC link, no?
I think they’re missing the kid he had with Barbara Hershey.
Comment by Joe on 6/4 @ 11:29 am #
Say what you will about Chuck Norris, he really is considered top notch and a very serious condender in his day in the martial arts world.
It was a lost opportunity for Bruce Lee on the Kung Fu show, but Carradine did manage to make the role work for him.
Comment by Joe on 6/4 @ 11:30 am #
It was also a lost opportunity for us all because I suspect Bruce Lee would have been great as Caine.
Comment by louchette on 6/4 @ 11:42 am #
mojo — there are lots of embarrassing ways to die. (and sorry to link to a copy and not the original essay at ‘the new yorker,’ but i couldn’t find it searching their archives this morning.)
Comment by Herb on 6/4 @ 11:46 am #
I GUESS THAT WASN’T A PEBBLE THEY FOUND IN HIS HAND?
Comment by B Moe on 6/4 @ 11:47 am #
auto erotic asphyxiation takes another life
Or someone forgot to say palimino.
Comment by EvilRedScandi on 6/4 @ 11:55 am #
A dramatization.
Comment by serr8d on 6/4 @ 12:14 pm #
Bruce Lee kicks Chuck Norris’ ass.
There was real anger emanating from this scene. No love lost between those two.
Comment by Vlad the Impala on 6/4 @ 12:32 pm #
Oh Noes, the Gackt!
Seriously though, the movie sounds pretty neat if incomprehensible. “Bunraku” literally means the Japanese puppet theater. Pretty intricate stuff. I’d love to see it for real some time.
Comment by Joe on 6/4 @ 12:36 pm #
Well Sdferr, Bruce yanked a big tuff of chest hairs off Norris, a big hairy kwai lo. His look of disgust in doing so was great.
Comment by peter jackson on 6/4 @ 12:37 pm #
Kung Fu was the coolest show of the ’70s, and Carradine was largely responsible for that. I guess now he and Bill Bixby can argue how close The Magician came in second place. I’m glad he went out on top.
Comment by Joe on 6/4 @ 12:44 pm #
Acutally Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris were friends who trained together. The fact Lee asked Norris to be the nemisis in his movie is a sign of respect. Lee was an exceptional talent. Personally Lee really did do things in martial arts no one else did before and Lee had a habit of making enemies (because he wasn’t afraid to say he was the best and was very argogant under any standards let alone Asian ones), but Chuck Norris is a rather humble guy (who was and remains very accomplished in martial arts) and I do not see those two personalities clashing that much.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/4 @ 12:47 pm #
Chuck Norris is a weirdo what has inappropriate fantasies about Mike Huckabee.
Comment by LTC John on 6/4 @ 12:57 pm #
“Bruce Lee didn’t die – Chuck Norris kicked him so hard he split in two – one half grew up to be Jet Li, the other half grew up to be Jackie Chan”
Seen in a latrine at Phoenix Academy, outside Baghdad
Comment by louchette on 6/4 @ 12:58 pm #
vlad — i’ve seen a real bunraku performance once, here in new york maybe 10 years ago or so. and it was genuinely amazing. and i once saw a visiting Sarumawashi (monkey theater) troupe performance too, again here, in central park. also very intriguing and totally delightful. and i love most jidaigeki and chambara too. so gackt being in a film that combines bunraku and chambara elements is pretty damn exciting, for me.
anyway, this news sucks. no more bill, grasshopper. and i have enormous sympathy for carradine’s family and friends. it’s painful enough to lose someone you love, and more difficult still when they die in some icky, tabloidy way and the survivors have to deal with everyone’s prurient questions about the circumstances.
Comment by Ella on 6/4 @ 1:45 pm #
I took criminal investigation as an elective in college, and my professor (a former state homicide investigator) said that cops fairly often would stumble on autoerotic asphyxiation cases. If the family was Catholic, his advice was to tell them the truth; for everyone else, he recommended strongly to write it up as suicide because that was easier on the families.
Just saying, even a decision of “suicide” doesn’t necessarily mean that that is what happened; it could depend on the sensibilities of the investigating officer.
Comment by Joe on 6/4 @ 2:15 pm #
LTC John: That is an awesome Chuck Norris graffiti.
Why Chuck supported Huckabee is beyond me, but he did. My guess he will do so again, but might support Palin and maybe even Romney if Huckabee does not make it in the primaries. Frankly I am not sure any of those three will be the nominee, 2012 is a long way from now and lots of this depends on how bad things are then.
Comment by Joe on 6/4 @ 2:20 pm #
I am sorry that David Carradine had to die, especially under questionable circumstances.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/4 @ 2:23 pm #
My girl and I, way back when, would get stoned out of our minds and then watch Kung Fu.
It actually made sense.
Comment by JD on 6/4 @ 2:33 pm #
I miss Hong Kong Fuey
Comment by victor on 6/4 @ 2:43 pm #
this gentilman was my hero,this truly is a sad day, may his soul rest in peace.
Comment by BuddyPC on 6/4 @ 3:32 pm #
One night in Bangkok/makes a strong man humble.
Goodbye, Pearl.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTmkSM7-LqA
This Dave is Bound for Woody.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTypzOJfuAY
Comment by lydia lomonosv on 6/4 @ 7:06 pm #
d====================I attended alot of the same functions as David you just never knew what mood he would be in once for no reason someone was petting his dog and he told the guy to fuck off ,he was always nice to me ,I think he knew I wouldnt put up with that but he was high most of the time. sorry to hear about his death I have a large picture of us togeather and he signed his name on it with his speacil note to me. gee Im sorry for his death .==================================
Trackback by Asian Sweetheart 2.0 on 6/8 @ 7:22 am #
Dr. Pornthip comments on David Carradine…
I just watched the evening news and saw Dr. Khunying Pornthip make some comments about David Carradine’s death. You might recall she is the famous Thai forensics expert with the wild hair. She played a big role in identifying the tsunami victims…
Comment by grasshopper on 6/9 @ 12:09 am #
so many Kung Fu fans (such as myself) wanted to grow up to be like David Carradine
Comment by karena on 6/9 @ 12:35 pm #
There’s only one legitimate place I’ve found to see the real photo and a video of it, the rest seem like scams :-/ You can see it over here though:
vostuuDOTcomSLASHcarradineDOTjpg (replace “DOT” with a . and SLASH with a /)
They make you do a little survey but after that it’s good to go :)