I’m not sure if David Carradine will be getting a role in a future Quentin Tarantino movie after a post screening Q&A at LA’s Aero Theater, where the actor said QT is ‘a big cocaine freak.’ But in the best possible way, seemingly defending Hal Ashby’s coke use.
Yeah, it’s nuts. The screening was Bound for Glory, Ashby’s biopic of Woody Guthrie (sadly, considering how much I love Ashby AND Guthrie, I really don’t particularly like the film), and Carradine, who played Guthrie in the film, got up on stage and duked it out with legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler in a verbal melee that is sure to go down in Hollywood history.
The troubles started during the screening, when Carradine himself began doing a Mystery Science Theater-style commentary on the movie (most patrons, not knowing it was Carradine, tried to hush the troublemaker) and got much worse once the actual Q&A started and Carradine, in a most un-Woody manner, trash talked unions. And also trashed Wexler’s work on the movie. Wexler, who won the Oscar for Bound for Glory, was sitting right there on stage.
Chris Willman was in the audience and he wrote a very comprehensive wrap up of the fiasco. Here’s a glimpse at where Carradine started shitting on Wexler’s work:
He uses the line–which he repeats at least two or three more
times–about how Wexler “got an Academy Award for ruining my movie.”
You can feel the audience sort of collectively holding its breath as
Carradine says the film “looks like it was shot through a glass of
milk.” When he explains what he wished the look of the film had been,
which is grittier, again, it’s a lucid point, but the way he’s making
it is either tone-deaf or just evil.
Then he tells the story of how Ashby, the director, hated the look
of the film, too, and was insisting on firing Wexler during the making
of the film. I’m pretty sure I hear gasps go up at this point.
Carradine says he talked Ashby out of firing him, “because if you fire
somebody, they just go out in the parking lot and steal your hubcaps.”
I’m pretty sure that’s a metaphor, but the audience doesn’t know what
to do with this image other than to nervously titter. There will be a
lot more of that–oh, yes, there will.
Willman has a lot more goodness, including an MP3 of Carradine talking about coke, on his Facebook page. Since nobody but his friends can read that stuff, Jeff Wells has reprinted it on his site.
Click here for the entire rundown.
Thanks to Kim Morgan for alerting me that this amazingness existed.