The Kill Bill Diary by David Carradine – Book Review

If you love martial arts, and you love movies and you love martial arts movies, then there is one book, hot off the presses that is definitely for you.  Its called The Kill Bill Diary – The making of a Tarantino classic as seen through the eyes of a screen legend, and it is David Carradine’s diary of his experiences of the making of this awesome film from beginning to end.

The book chronicles everything about the film including all kinds of interesting insight into Tarantino and his working process, how Caradine was approached for the project, the amazing intense training they did and more.  But what I really loved about the book was the unexpected insights that it gives the reader. 

Of course, I have the fandom worship of Caradine, pretty much no matter what he says or does, as I know him from his legendary days as Caine from Kung Fu and for that he has a kind of ‘untouchable’ status.  So in a way I grit my teeth in opening the book, not wanting the aura of my hero to be tainted by any kind of nuttiness or other negative trait.  But I was not only thrilled that this didn’t happen, I was also thrilled that I leaned a lot about what kind of person Carradine was, and much of it is quite different than his Hollywood image.

Unlike his notoriety for being arrogant, Carradine comes off as quite humble.  He is quite humble about his career prior to doing Kill Bill and quite unexpectedly, he is quite humble about his martial arts experience and prowess.  Given his experience with martial arts over the years, and his physicality in dance, I suspect his skill is actually much superior than the way he portrays it.  He is also loyal to those who were loyal to him over the years, which is quite heart warming to those of us who only know him through his character Caine.

In the book, he also discuses acting quite a bit and it is very interesting to hear his thoughts about the craft, which are really very insightful.  And hey!  Did you know that the Superman speech in the movie was actually based on his own observations in a conversation that he had with Tarantino?  His insight, therefore, proves to be quite remarkable. 

This is a book written by a martial arts movie legend, about a legendary movie.  So if you are a fan, this is a great read, both on the level of fun and for a really new and deep look at the legend himself.  Carradine remains a great and remains my hero.  How many people can you say that about after reading their biographies?!

Lorne Gross

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