RIP David Carradine

Whenever I see David Carradine's name I'm reminded of a great story from my friend Caroline.

Several years ago when Caroline and I were living together in Austin, she and I decided to forgo our sensible life paths and work on movies instead (she quit a job at Public Strategies, I quit a PhD program in Psychology). Our first movie jobs were as unpaid PAs on an indie feature called Natural Selection. It was written by two friends of ours, and starred David Carradine and Michael Bowen.

My job was working in the production office, but Caroline got to drive all the actors to and from set. One of my favorite stories from the shoot was when Caroline was driving David Carradine around. He was eating some fast food in the car, and when he finished eating, he simply wadded up all his trash, silently rolled down the window, and threw all his trash out the window. Caroline was horrified but said nothing. When she told me later, I couldn't believe it. Who throws trash out a window?

Since I moved to LA, I found out the answer: it's people in LA! I can't tell you how many people in LA I've seen chuck trash on the ground. All types of people. I saw a guy in a BMW in West Hollywood chuck a bag of trash out of his car. I saw some guy in Eagle Rock just casually throw a bag of trash on the ground as he was walking down the street. The sidewalk outside our apartment is constantly littered with Styrofoam containers, half-eaten hamburgers, and soda cups from the dumb-ass middle school kids walking by our place who think the floor is their trash can.

We don't play that in Texas, people. We throw trash in a trash can. If you're not from Texas, you might think the slogan "Don't Mess With Texas" is some stupid George Bush thing, but it's actually from a really awesome anti-littering campaign from the '80s. And it worked! We don't throw trash on the ground! Wise up, LA!

In Memoriam