David Carradine's Kung Fu series

chrisisall

Any fans of that old series hereabouts? I think you'd have to be of a certain age to have seen it... :-?
I was a little kid when it was on, but I have super-fond memories of the show, it was right at the beginning of the martial arts craze in America.
Anyway, a couple of years back I bought the entire series on DVD and ploughed my way through it, and I was genuinely surprised by something; the first & second seasons of the show were WAY better than I remembered (I remember them being slow, with not-so-amazing fight scenes- this was my kid memory- in reality the shows were well written, and the kung fu was REAL, not flashy nonsense), and the third & final season was WAY worse than I remembered (I remember them being fun- in reality, they were pretty dopey as a rule, lots of supernatural junk & flashy martial moves).

Interesting facts: Ed Spielman (the series' creator) had friends in New York's Chinatown, some taking Kung Fu from teachers straight from China, and they related the stories of the Shaolin Temple to him, which fascinated him, so he researched it and wrote a screenplay, and about that time was when Bruce Lee was pushing his western "Warrior" idea. Warner, I take it, liked Lee's idea enough to bandy it about, but Lee was not yet a superstar, so it stalled long enough for the execs to spot Spielman's script, and saw it as the way to go on such a project. So Lee deserves credit for getting the general idea of a 'kung fu western' noticed. Also, In China, the kung fu craze was gaining momentum, and Warner wanted to cash in on this coming trend somehow.
When Lee got the 'no' on his Warrior idea (1970-71) he bolted for China to make movies. In late '71 The Big Boss was released in China as Carradine was filming the Kung Fu TV movie/pilot.

Thoughts on this classic series?

bondsum

You might be interested to know that Bill Paxton (Aliens) was hired last summer by Legendary to do Kung Fu, based on the old Warner Brothers television show with David Caradine. He said, "I was working the script all Fall with my writer, and we turned that in in late January. [The studio] had gone down a few different roads with a few writers. What happens a lot when people go back to redo a TV show to do a movie, a lot of times they don't pay a respect to the original thing - asking why was it successful in the first place. The fighting is important, but people remember the Shaolin teachings, that he would take so much and then start wailing. We went back, John McLaughlin [writer of Black Swan, Making Of Psycho] and myself, and we watched the original three seasons."

"We're pretty much following the story - the "A" story is Caine as a young man, in the American West of the 1870s looking for his birth father. While you're following him there, you fill in with the "B" story, what his background was, how he ended up being orphaned, how he ended up at the monastery, how he was raised to be a Shaolin priest, and then how he had to leave under adverse circumstances."

"We have the Cherry Blossom festival when he runs into Master Po and the Emperor's nephew - we've got back to a lot of that stuff, but we've really enriched it in a way in thematic terms, there's a great theme of redemption through this thing."

"The original series was shot so cheap and so low budget. They used the old Camelot set on the redressed back lot of Warner Brothers. They'd be shooting a railway camp and there might be 15 extras, and we're going to have 10,000 men on a hill building a trellis. We're going to be bringing a scale and a grandeur that the story should have always had, but because of budget and time they were unable to."

"To take that a step further, I think the character of Caine, whoever this actor this is, and we're going to have to do a big search, he has to be Chinese-something... Chinese-Irish, Chinese-Israeli, Chinese-American, Chinese-Canadian... He's probably going to have to be a pretty skilled martial artist.

"This is going to be more of a Western, with violence, sort of like what True Grit was, as opposed to a lot of wire work. To me to do a big martial arts film - God, there are so many great ones, and believe me the Chinese do great ones, to me it makes more sense to make it a Western with martial arts."

"What's interesting about Caine is because he's a product of both worlds is that even though he's raised in China he comes to the West, by the time he goes back to China in the third act he's picked up a bit of a Western thing. We've found some clever ways for East to meet West, and to resonate with the audience."

http://twitchfilm.com/2012/03/the-epic-unexpurgated-paxtonpalooza-interview.html

DrNo

I am an immense fan of Kung Fu. It's one of the main inspirations for my own novel series, Merakabah Rider. My favorite episode of all time is The Soul Is The Warrior. It's SO well written. 26:40-29:40 is one of my favorite exchanges in the whole series...



Joe Lansdale, who is friends with Paxton, also told me that Brent Hanley, the writer of Frailty is working on the movie along with Paxton.

chrisisall

DrNo wrote:

I am an immense fan of Kung Fu. It's one of the main inspirations for my own novel series, Merakabah Rider. My favorite episode of all time is The Soul Is The Warrior. It's SO well written. 26:40-29:40 is one of my favorite exchanges in the whole series...

"It shines... somewhere..."
I saw that when I was 12 and it always stayed with me. It actually planted the seed of my future delving more deeply into Buddhism.

Man, I still love that series.

chrisisall

My Son and I are watching the series now, so I thought I'd resurrect this thread for possible discussion.
We just finished season one. He's mighty impressed with this show, and as for me, well it just gets better with age. My main concern is what to do after we finish season two (it's months away at this rate)... Season three just went off the rails IMO. Should I purchase it & just show him the four part finale for the closure, or simply tell him how it ends so the series stays pristine in his memory?

Oh, and he asked me where he'd seen Carradine before, and I said "Remember Kill Bill?" His eyes widened and his mouth opened, but no words came out. ;)

vzok

Awesome main theme.

stag

I used to love that show and watched it at every opportunity. I can't remember much about it after all this time though.

chrisisall

stag wrote: »

I used to love that show and watched it at every opportunity. I can't remember much about it after all this time though.

Sounds like a perfect time to get the 1st season on DVD- it can be had for about $15...