David Carradine

Uma Thurman, who brought along her ten-week old baby, and nursed him between sets. Lucy Liu, straight off of “Charlie’s Angels II”, definitely was a little ahead of the game. Daryl Hanna, whose acrobatic moves in “Blade runner” had made no use of wires or computer enhancements. Vivica A. Fox, who is just tough. A great lady, who is a natural Streetfighter. And me, of course, the only male in the bunch. Michael Madsen, who would play my brother, was excused as his weapon of choice was to be a 12-gauge shotgun.

From 8:30 AM, or so, until 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday, we practiced.kung fu, or wu shu, actually (That’s what you’re really seeing in films like “Crouching Tiger”), and Samurai sword techniques, along with wire practice, weight training and cardiovascular activities; you know; treadmills and those bicycles that don’t go anywhere. Eight hours of that every day. Well, seven. We did get lunch. Hey, Olympics athletes don’t train that hard.

We did this for three solid months. Before we started, I had no illusions about what kind of shape I was in. I knew it would be rough. I was certain, though, that my thirty years of hanging around the edges of a loose kind of mastery of kung fu would give me enough of a head start to keep ahead of the ladies.

Not exactly the case, I’m afraid. Girls can kick! For the first week or so, my main concern was to pace myself carefully enough to keep from passing out in the middle of a drill. Then, after I got my “sea-legs”, it was trying to avoid disgracing myself and totally blow any image I had of being good at this stuff. It didn’t help that wu shu techniques are just different from anything I’d been taught. “Point your toe,” they’d say.“ Not so hard(!!)” they’d say. Not so hard? In American movie fights, you go for it! And you miss! These wu shu guys, make contact, but delicately, giving the impression of power with a lot of body english. “That kick is ugly,” Melissa Tong, the Cantonese interpreter said to me once, translating for my personal trainer, Yaki Hi.

Well, yes, I was ahead in some ways. You don’t have to teach me how to execute a crescent kick, or a flying, double front kick, but I never had a good roundhouse. That was the “ugly” one. Well, I have one now.

Each of us had our own trainer. Yaki Hi, the one assigned to me, was a little pit-bull of a guy, who could broad jump almost ten feet from a standing start. All of these guys could do remarkable acrobatic things, particularly adept at flipping and flying, but I would bet on Hi against any two of the others in a real combat situation.

Rob Moses, my teacher and partner for the last twenty years, trained alongside me, and was he handy to have around. He showed me ways to look busy with a minimum of fatigue, playing with staffs and whip chains, and walking through the basic 12, which are like meditation for me after all these years. Rob was also a source of merriment in the midst of all the sweat. Every once in awhile he’d let loose and something would go flying. There was one of those big rubber ‘men’ standing off to one side. Rob had always wanted to punch one of those. So, one morning, about a month in, we all heard a resounding whack, like a rifle shot. All eyes went to Rob, who was standing sheepishly looking at the rubber man, who was DOWN! The water that was supposed to keep him weighted upright leaking out all over the gym floor. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do that before. The whole point of these rubber men is they’re supposed to be able to take a punch, and Rob had KO’d it with an outside roundhouse, maybe the weakest kick in kung fu. He went and got a bunch of towels to mop up the mess, looking embarrassed about the whole thing, but we were impressed. Well, Rob’s modesty is massive.

Then there was the Samurai training. I really went for that. Seems I’m a natural. I wish I’d gotten into it years ago, but, as Kwai Chang, they never let me use any weapons. Empty hands were the things. That was the whole point of Caine’s fights, wasn’t it? An unarmed little oriental guy knocking the crap out of big cowboys coming at him with guns and knives, and, in Bill Smith’s case, a nine-foot chain. Well, yeah, I know, I’m six feet tall and not Chinese, but Bill is really big, and I fought with my knees bent. And Mike Westmore had a couple of neat tricks to add a slant to these squinty Irish eyes.

The wirework was a joy. Painful, yes. The scars on my back from the harness could be permanent, but who cares. I was flying through the air, swinging a sword. I can’t tell you how much fun that was.

Okay, three months of that in a gym the company built for us in L.A. Then we moved the feast to China. Beijing in June is not a sauna: it’s a steam bath. Humidity hovers around 90, the mean temperature at least that number, every day. The ice in my Chinese Coke would disappear before I could get halfway through it. Air conditioning was not available. To make it just a taste more difficult, Beijing’s air is reportedly the worst of any city on the planet. Plus, there was this brown cloud over most of Asia right then, the result, I’m told, of not fossil-fuel, but wood…and dung smoke. The upside of it all was that I found that washboard stomach I’d always known was in there somewhere.

Quentin was training right alongside us. He was determined to play Pai Mei, the evil Master who is supposed to have trained The deadly Viper Squad. When we started out, he was soft, BIG and soft. Quentin towers over you. He was slow, and had no kick at all, though I wouldn’t have wanted to get in the way of a right cross from that softball sized fist. Quentin is an amateur boxer. At the end of the four months, though, he was slim and cut, and moved like lightning.

Uma lost all her ‘baby fat’, becoming more radiantly beautiful every day, and eventually dispelled any illusion I may have had that women are weak. She also towers over you. As does Daryl Hanna, whose six-foot-plus frame is mostly legs. She can land a kick on you from across the room. In the ring, you’d never be out of her reach. Viveca A. was born to do these moves. She is hot!

Lucy Liu was a whole different story. The rest of us just got down and sweated, but she dressed up every morning in a kimono, a Samurai sword tucked into her Obi, and acted out all day her role of an arrogant Japanese Samurai warrior princess, moving in little bitty formal steps, and shifting her body with sudden, square-cut moves. I didn’t find out ‘till after the movie was over what a sweetie she really is.

I tell you, it was a gift from heaven to be ogling these ladies, superior beings, all of them, while they developed. Hot! Sexy doesn’t come near describing it. My only problem was keeping up with them.

NEXT: THE SHOOT. STAY TUNED. IT GETS BETTER.