Over the years, I’ve learned a profound lesson about human interaction. Let me give you the bottom line and save you 20 or so years of experience:

People usually respond on the same level on which they’re approached.

So my interactions with David Carradine didn’t involve discussions of acid trips, body piercings, auto-eroticism, or any of the other things that have dominated the news cycle since his death in Thailand, which will probably mean David will enter pop culture as a chapter in “Hollywood Babylon 5.”

Over the last 12 or so years we spoke on the phone a few times and had one face to face meeting, all in the service of information about either my John Ford book, or the DeMille book.

The face-to-face meeting was particularly interesting. It was eight or nine years ago, and I was hosting a John Ford symposium at the Director’s Guild. I believe it was the last public appearance for Anna Lee, and Maureen O’Hara, Rod Taylor, Peter Bogdanovich, Dan Ford were there, among others.

Before the event, the DGA had video monitors going in the lobby showing clips of Ford films, and I noticed Carradine sitting there, quietly enjoying the scenes, one of which was showing his father’s extraordinary, almost expressionist performance in “The Grapes of Wrath.”

He was smaller than he appeared on screen, a trait he had in common with most actors.
I introduced myself, asked David if he wanted to sit on the panel, and contribute some stories about his dad’s work for Ford, but he demurred. He hadn’t worked for Ford, so it would be presumptuous, he said – not his exact words, just the sense of what he said.

I had known his father, whom he plainly adored, although they were completely different personalities. His father was very much the Master Thespian, a grand, gallant old trouper; David was more analytical, about acting and everything else, and he was also more obviously egocentric than his father. And David always had a quality of stillness as an actor, which his father lacked. David could be interesting without doing anything.

But he was proud of his father, and proud of being his father’s son, and very concerned with historical truth. He was always happy to help out regarding his father’s or his own career. “You’ve got my number,” he would say. “Call me anytime if you need something.”

It seems important to me to point out this aspect of David Carradine at a time when the most intimate details of his death are being spread around for public consumption, up to and including autopsy photographs – bread and circuses for the age of digital brutality.