EDITORIAL ROUTTNG 2-2-93

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ENTERTAINMENT
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The kicking habit

David Carradine returns in 'Kung Fu'

By Frank Lovece
Like many things '70s, "Kung Fu" has returned. Think of it as Master "When you snatch the pebble from mv hand, Grasshopper, it will be time for you to launch a sequel." The fondly remembered "Kung Fu"
(ABC, 1972-75) was unique among TV Western about dramas - a mystical Shaolin priest in the a half-Chinese Old West who preached non-violence

I
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Walne hard while shooting one of the

Duke's last movies. "I would be inclined,"

what had happenedl They were still

paying me per diem for'Bird' in Van-

Po meets master programmer:

Carradine states. "to listen to the man that died than to the American Medical Association. I don't want to quit smok-

couverl" These days. he and Gail are ensconced on the other side of Canada, where he shoots his new series. Being housesat is their 34-acre ranch

but defended himself with martial

arts. Kung fu similar to karate but emphasizing -circular rather than linear movement virtually un- was States heard of in the United up to that time. And though "Kung Fu" was never among the top 25 in the rat-

'lt's a mission. I've heen working putting this thing together for
14 years.'

in Sun Valley. Calif., where they usually live with Carradine's 15-year-old daughter. Kansas (from his second marriage, to Linda McGuinn, ex of Byrds' bandleader Roger McGuinn).

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Carradine also has a 28-year-old

daughter, Calista, from his marriage to high-school sweetheart Donna Brecht, and a 20-year-old son, Tom, with his one-time companion Barbara
Hershey.

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ln

ings,

it

was a major cult hit that

what he hopes is the long haul

ing. I love smoking. It's funl That's the point of it tunl" - it's That could be Carradine's motto.
Scion of the acting clan begun by his late

As for his other baby, "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues," he's in it for
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mains - first as a 1986 TV-movie sequel (out on video next month), and
now as a syndicated series, "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues." (Check local listings.)
avorvs David Carradine, 56, who played the drifter-priest Kwai Chang Caine in the original series, and Caine's adult grandson and namesake in the current one, lvhich is set in

helped launch a martial-arts craze. The fad is over. but ''Kung Fu" re-

unlike the original. "I promised 'em when I took the first series I rvas gonna do it for (only) three years," he recalls. "They handed me a contract for five years. I kept handing it back to them. and

"lt's a mission."

father, John Carradine, David was

maverick rvell before his stardom on the original "Kung Fu." famously exploring, for instance, psi'chedelic drugs years before they hit the hippie mainstream.

the present day. "l've been working putting this thing together for what
is it? could it be? - 14 )'ears." In that time through artistic highs Iike "Bound for Glory" (i976) and countless lou'budget cult flicks like "Warlords" (1988) and "Future Zone" (1990) Carradine and Caine became intertu.'ined. Though never a martial artist himself, Carradine becanre a student and vocal proponent of kung fu's metaphysical underpinnings, even publishing a 1991 booki "spirit of Shaolin: A Kung Fu Philosophy." Still, now, as he sits in an Irish restaurant in New York City. drinhng a vodka, smoking an unfiltered English Oval cigarette, and dousing a very rare chopped

"l'd love to still take psychedelic drugs," he declares. "l just don't have
time for it an).'more. If you take a

psy'-

we'll have to talk to the network about that.' And I said, 'Look at the contract'- and there wasn't one! I never signed a contract. I was free
to walk at any time. "I felt rve were losing our specialness, and becoming ordinar5r," he goes on. "I didn't wanna do that, and I wanted a feature movie career. And I was an angry man. But I made sort of a sacred vorv about this one: The
only way you can get me to leave this is if nobody rvants to watch it anymore. I said I'll run this sucker to the

came around to it and I said, 'OK. we're shutting the thing down at the end of the season,' they said, 'Well,

they finally gave up. And when it

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chedelic drug, then you kinda have to go away for 12 hours, I don't have 12 hours in my lil'e to go arvay to." When he's not spending some 16 hours a day, he says, on the Toronto set of "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues," he's working on trvo unfinished books or on any number of his and his wifeimanager Gail's count less projects. lndeed, he stays almost as busv as did

steak with 41 sauce, you have to

wonder.

"That's not been proven," Carradine insists of the smoking-cancer connection. "John Wa;'ne with his last gasp said it was not the Camels that killed him, it was Henry Hathaway, the director," who reportedly rode the sicldy

his father. whose film appearances probably numbered in the hundreds, "l spent almost five months," Carradine remembers. "shooting 'Bird on a Wire' (1990, in rvhich he played the heaq' opposite Mel Gibson). In the middle of shooting was a three-week section where they guaranteed me I would not be working, because they'd
be on location on an island the-v could

ground."
i-.I993 NE\YSPAI'ER ENTERPRISE ASSN-

STAR VIEW

only get at that time. I went to Alabama, made 'Future Zone,' starred in it - Gail co-starred with me - I came back, and they didn't even know