In memory of David Carradine

David Carradine’s death is very poignant to me at this time, not only because I had the pleasure of meeting him on a few occasions while I was in Los Angeles, but because the manner in which he died is becoming all too prevalent lately. I had a co-worker take his life last week, and will be meeting this week with an old friend of mine who is the Sarasota Suncoast Chapter Director for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Shortly after I arrived in LA for the first time, I met Kansas Carradine, David’s daughter, on the set of a television pilot we were both working on. We never became close, but I was invited to his house for her birthday party, and we went to a couple of shows together.

I was so excited the first time meeting him. I had just hitchhiked across country, and to meet the man who played Caine seemed remarkable. He was friendly, but had a foreboding presence about him, and I never was sure how to bring up our similarity. I mean, this was the Kung Fu master, the guy who made Tai Chi a household word. How do you start a conversation with a guy like that?

I sat next to him at Genghis Cohen one night when his brother Keith was performing. And though I was truly blown away by the amount of talent in the family, I found it puzzling that a man who seemed to be such a spiritual giant could smell so strongly of cigarettes. After the show, he went outside and lit up a Marlboro red, and I remember thinking that he was pretty hard core as I rolled up a Drum.

We smoked in silence as I worked up the courage to talk to him about anything, but he seemed to be deep in his own head, and I hesitated interrupting whatever conversation was going on up there. So someone else stepped in, and I kept smoking.

Oddly enough, a few months later, when I was working on another television show, one of my coworkers, when he saw me with a cigarette, marveled that I was a smoker considering that I seemed like such a spiritual person. I immediately thought of David.

To this day, it still seems that I find occasion to kill myself with tobacco. Does one ever become so spiritual that he can overcome such a simple habit? Does one ever become so spiritual that he doesn’t get depressed and contemplate suicide?

I can’t possibly know what was going through his mind when he took his own life. All I know is that we shared a similar weakness. And I for one, want to be stronger.