Killed Bill

David Carradine, of Kung Fu and Kill Bill fame, appears to've committed suicide in Bangkok:

BANGKOK – Actor David Carradine, star of the 1970s TV series "Kung Fu" who also had a wide-ranging career in the movies, has been found dead in the Thai capital, Bangkok. A news report said he was found hanged in his hotel room and was believed to have committed suicide.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, Michael Turner, confirmed the death of the 72-year-old actor. He said the embassy was informed by Thai authorities that Carradine died either late Wednesday or early Thursday, but he could not provide further details out of consideration for his family.

The Web site of the Thai newspaper The Nation cited unidentified police sources as saying Carradine was found Thursday hanged in his luxury hotel room.

It said Carradine was in Bangkok to shoot a movie and had been staying at the hotel since Tuesday.

The newspaper said Carradine could not be contacted after he failed to appear for a meal with the rest of the film crew on Wednesday, and that his body was found by a hotel maid at 10 a.m. Thursday morning. The name of the movie was not immediately available.

It said a preliminary police investigation found that he had hanged himself with a cord used with the room's curtains. It cited police as saying he had been dead at least 12 hours and there was no sign that he had been assaulted.

Sad news; I wonder what precipitated it. Just watched Kill Bill vol. I again the other night while the family was out of town (watch DVD's while folding laundry, that's how I party). And my lunch box in 1st grade featured Kung Fu, and thus Carradine's shaven head.

I hadn't realized that Ingmar Bergman cast him in a movie.

... Onion AV Club interview here.

What [Tarantino] does is, when he wants to write a character, he'll take somebody he knows a lot about, and he'll pattern the character after them. He'll say, "This character is a lot like David Carradine," so he'll make the character as much like David Carradine as he can. There wasn't any research for me to do, you know? "I'd like you to study your own movies, David." What's he going to do?

... It appears that Carradine may have been a victim of, ah, recreational hanging. The so-called Tyler Durden has a pertinent observation:

If you’re trusting that the 15-year-old prostitute you picked up in a foreign land can undo your life-threatening knots while her tiny hands are covered in Astroglide and semen, it’s possible you didn’t really think this plan all the way through.

The man has a point there.