Keith David

I enjoyed working with Keith David a lot. He was a very funny guy, and I used to go home at night and relay jokes told that day on set by Keith David.

They kept putting us together in gunfight-spectating crowds and in the saloon. Since he was dressed as an ex-Yankee soldier and I as an ex-Confederate, we developed a "piece of business" between ourselves. We would pass one another (with cameras rolling, of course) and give each other sidelong glances, as if we didn't completely trust one another. This was fun, although it never really came out in the movie.

A couple of months after the completion of filming on The Quick and the Dead, my wife and I popped in the videotape of one of our favorite movies, John Carpenter's The Thing. If you're familiar with it, you know that, at the end of the movie, only two characters are left alive, MacReady and Childs. When the closing credits came up, I saw "MacReady - Kurt Russell.....Childs - Keith David"!! I had NO idea that the guy I had been sharing jokes with for 3 months had played Childs in The Thing! I wished I had realized it. There were some really classic lines in that film. But then, Childs looked nothing like Sgt. Cantrell.


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