David Carradine

I first met Kam while we were shooting the pilot movie Kung Fu: The Way of The Dragon. There was a sequence in which we were to show a demonstration of each of the six animal forms. We scoured the country for practitioners of each one. The men we found were venerable old masters, absolute legends, though they meant very little to me or the boys at Warner Brothers at the time. 27 year-old Kam Yuen was recommended to us as the obvious choice for The Praying Mantis Form. We were told simply that he was The Praying Mantis of North America.

With a shaved head and a little silver beard, we were all struck by how much he looked like Master Po. So, he stayed on to double Key Luke, and briefly, me as well; though, because of the marked differences in our physiques, his work for me was pretty much limited to shots of his feet. We instantly became friends. His youth and vitality, combined with his modern education (he was making his living as an engineer at NASA at the time) gave him an accessibility that most kung fu masters would not have for me.

In the third segment of the series, Blood Brother, Kam was cast as a fellow student at The Shaolin Temple. Standing by and watching him play the scene where he bids a sad farewell to the Temple forever, I was so impressed with the simple humility of his performance, that I determined to base my portrayal of Caine on it from then on.

When, in the second season, I began studying with him, the bond, of course, became deeper. Then, in the third year, when I chose him to replace David Chow as the kung fu coordinator, his influence on the show and on me became huge. There were some wonderful and sometimes hilarious moments during those days, like the time when he issued a formal challenge to the rulers of Warner Brothers. Yes, it wasn’t that hard to get Kam’s dander up in those days. That was one of the things I loved about him. With all his knowledge and depth, he was still sort of a punk, like me.

I remember his sense of fun, too. One time I watched him playfully take on six of his favorite students in a friendly roughhouse, using a rolled up copy of the first issue of Inside Kung Fu as his only defense, lightly turning aside their moves and bopping their heads with Curtis Wong’s stories and pictures, his eyes twinkling with good humor.

I was quite a proponent of nutritional disciplines in those days, still am, actually. I imparted some of that to Kam, while he in turn taught me the moves. Kam seized the ideas and ran with them, for awhile having his own line of vitamins, called Natural Source, until he went beyond all that to a belief that none of those mechanical systems mattered in the long run, a very Taoist attitude.

After the series was over, I studied at his Kwoon, even living there for awhile, sleeping in a little room in the back. I realized that Kam had seized on me as the instrument to fulfill the obligation his master had laid on him: to spread The Art to all the world. I took it on.

We went on being friends, traveling together to movie locations and film festivals, working out every chance we got, in parks and on sound stages, and were even in business together from time to time. At one point, he gave his five schools into the care of his students and went back to college, getting a degree as a Chiropractor, and then serving his apprenticeship. When he came back to his schools, his students had lost all but one of them through mismanagement. He rebuilt the schools, and this time, included a healing center. We got permission from The Shaolin Monastery in China to call ourselves “Shaolin West”!!

He accompanied me to Germany for the Ingmar Bergman film, The Serpent’s Egg, and to Israel where he provided the choreography for The Silent Flute. (I always have a hard time calling it “Circle of Iron”) Once, when I was cast in an action film, Project Eliminator, I recommended Kam to play the “enforcer” of the gang of bad guys. He would “kill” several people in the film. What he did for his assassinations was to give each of his victims a Chiropractic neck adjustment.

He stepped in to coordinate the moves for the Kung Fu and Tai Chi instructional videos I made with David Nakahara. The moment when he demonstrates Chi strength by breaking a stack of concrete bricks with a sort of love-pat is a classic. Those tapes, made way back in ’86, are still a hot seller, and is about to be released on DVD. Look for a box with a picture of a bunch of ladies in kimonos cavorting in front of a TV set.

Today, he travels all over the world, to China, and even Japan, giving out his wisdom in seminars. He has certainly proven that this stuff works. And he himself is a shining example of health and longevity. He doesn’t look much older than the day we met, and is in great shape. Well, he works out daily at Gold’s Gym.

There’s no way I can express the enormity of the debt I owe him, and, through me he has fulfilled a mission of his own by getting the message out to the whole world.

Thanks, Sifu. It’s been a great ride. And it’s far from over.