Quentin Tarantino discusses “one of the great mad geniuses of the acting community”
When it comes to selecting actors for his movies, Quentin Tarantino is incredibly meticulous. He often works with the same actors, casting them in different films of his, knowing that they’ll work well under his direction. From Samuel L. Jackson to Uma Thurman, Tarantino has routinely built a strong rapport with many stars in Hollywood.
Tarantino has a specific way of working, such as banning sleeping on set and preventing the use of mobile phones. Additionally, he needs actors to understand his wide breadth of influences and to be able to master the balance between comedy and drama within his work. Thus, when he finds an actor he really admires and thinks will fit right into his cinematic world, he’ll do anything to try and get them on board.
For example, he managed to get Pam Grier, the star of many 1970s blaxploitation classics such as Coffy and Foxy Brown, to play the titular character in his ‘90s homage, Jackie Brown. Then, when he made Django Unchained, he even secured a cameo from the original Django, Franco Nero. Evidently, due to his coveted place within the film industry, Tarantino can easily work with actors he’s loved and been inspired by for years.
When he made Kill Bill during the early 2000s, Tarantino had to choose the perfect man to play Bill, who is only heard in Volume One. Originally written for Warren Beatty, Tarantino soon realised he wanted to give Bill a large chunk of screen time in the second instalment, which Beatty was not available for. Thus, he had to pick someone else, initially considering Bruce Willis, with whom he worked on Pulp Fiction.
However, Beatty had a suggestion for who could replace him: David Carradine. Tarantino told Playboy, “I’d thought of Carradine after reading his autobiography but never told anybody. Warren suggested him out of the blue, and I laughed. The minute he said that, that kind of became the deal.”
Carradine is incredible as Bill, with critics praising his appearance as the complicated character who appears in flashbacks and the present day. Tarantino was a long-time fan of Carradine, who starred in the martial arts drama Kung Fu in the ‘70s. Thus, as a lover of martial arts media, it’s unsurprising that Tarantino wanted to cast him.
“I’m a huge fan of his,” the director revealed. To the filmmaker, Carradine had a captivating and unique quality that he was attracted to. “Along with a few actors such as Jack Nicholson and Christopher Walken, David is one of the great mad geniuses of the acting community,” he explained.
Tarantino also stated that by including Carradine, he felt like he was paying homage to the genre that significantly influenced Kill Bill: “There is also the aspect of having Gordon Liu [Pai Mei], representing Hong Kong, Sonny Chiba [Hattori Hanzo], representing Japan, and David Carradine, star of Kung Fu, representing America — a literal roundup of the three countries that made martial arts the genre that it is.”
Carradine died in 2009, and Tarantino paid tribute to him in an interview with Larry King. “He was a dream. He was a fantastic actor,” he concluded. “You have these wild men actors, and he was one of them. It was just a pleasure to work with him.”
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