M*A*S*H

I'm reading a biography of Robert Altman, which inspired me to pop in my DVD of his best and most popular film (and the only Altman film I own), M*A*S*H. I've seen it perhaps a dozen times over the years, and it still gives me great pleasure. This year marks its fortieth anniversary.

I came to M*A*S*H early, because it is one of my father's favorite films. We still quote lines from it too each other, such as when Col. Blake, preparing the football team for the big game, says to Spearchucker, "I think we should have some plays." Spearchucker hands him some, and Blakes asks, "What are these arrows?"

The first few times I saw the film were badly censored versions on television. I remember, in those days when VCRs were not yet cheap and plentiful, taking my tape recorder, sitting in front of the TV, and taping it off the late show. Many of the words were obliterated. The story that Trapper John (Elliot Gould) tells about Man of War ends with a word that was completely erased. For years I wondered what the words were. Turns out they were "raving queen."

It's hard to separate the film from the colossally popular TV show that was based on it, and which Altman loathed. To be sure, the show captured the black humor of the film in its first few seasons, but as the show ended up lasting five times the actual length of the Korean War, it became a platform for the creative team's warm and fuzzy liberalism.

Of course, Altman was really making a film about Vietnam. The book on which it was based was a slight thing, the kind sold in bus stations, and was apolitical. Altman removed almost all references to Korea (paying attention this time, the word "Korea" appears only once, and there are a few references to the country's president, Syngman Rhee). The intention was to erase the distinction between Korea and Vietnam. The only film that had been made about the Vietnam conflict at the time was the jingoistic The Green Berets, and no studio was ready to make a controversial film about the current war. So the studio made sure that we knew it was Korea by inserting supertitles at the beginning stating that's exactly where it was.

As Altman tells it, the studio, Fox, was making two other high-profile war films at the same time, Patton and Tora, Tora, Tora, so he figured if he kept his nose clean they would pay no attention to him. He came in under time and under budget, though he did have problems during the shoot. His stars, Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould, thought he didn't know what he was doing, and tried to get him fired. Altman had no inkling of it--had he known, he would have resigned, he said. The two actors eventually realized that Altman's style of organized chaos was exactly what the picture needed.

Altman got the job after fifteen other directors turned it down. He had made a few small films before but was better known as a TV director. M*A*S*H would vault him to exalted status in Hollywood, where he would go on to battle executives and make his own type of films for the next forty-plus years. He didn't make much money on M*A*S*H, though. His fifteen-year-old son, Mike, who wrote the lyrics for the song "Suicide is Painless," ended up making far more money from it than his dad did.

The film introduces many of the Altmanesque traits that would he would become known for. It starts with overlapping dialogue in the very first scene, when Blake (Roger Bowen) and Radar O'Reilly (Gary Burghoff) talk over each other. This was quite an innovation, and it drove many established movie people batty, but went a long way in giving his films authenticity. Secondly, Altman was incredibly generous with his actors, and allowed them great freedom. Almost all of the film is improvised, and he asked for any and all ideas from the cast. Sally Kellerman, as Hot Lips Houlihan, was disappointed that she was out of the film after her shower humiliation scene. Altman asked her for alternative ideas, and she ended up staying in the film, sort of joining the other side, literally being a cheerleader. As such, she's really the only character that has any kind of arc. Changing the script did not please the credited writer, Ring Larder Jr., who was dismayed after a screening, and told Altman that he had ruined his movie. He didn't seem too upset when he ended up accepting an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.

Third, Altman was always a director who wasn't interested in story, seeing film as closer to painting than to literature. M*A*S*H really doesn't have a story--it's a series of vignettes about a group of people trying to keep sane during the insanity of war. That's really the only through-line: using humor to try to avoid the horrors of war. The scenes in the operating room, which were quite gruesome for the time, were a counterpoint to the humor, which was in many ways elemental: slapstick, and a kind of juvenile wink-nudge bathroom humor (such as when Gould calls to Sutherland when he's being attacked by Frank Burns, (Rober Duvall) "Don't let him grab your goodies").

This was a completely new idea in 1970, and audiences ate it up. Fox wasn't even going to release it, but a wild reception at a screening in San Francisco changed their minds, and the film made 80 million.

The film has many pleasures, and even upon viewing it yesterday I laughed out loud several times. I think my favorite segment is the Painless Pole's "suicide," which includes the Man of War story, and Walt Waldowski (John Schuck) telling Hawkeye (Sutherland) that he was going to be faithful to the three girls he's engaged to back home. This segment also includes the memorable Last Supper shot, in which the gowned medical staff sits at a table exactly mimicking the Leonardo painting. Gould and Sutherland have great chemistry, and make as memorable a team as any in film history, and this is best exemplified by the "pros from Dover" segment, when they go to Japan to operate on a congressman's son. Their dialogue in this scene, such as when they are cornered by MPs and Sutherland asks Gould, "Where did we fail?" Gould: (referring to a nurse) "I think it was the woman." Sutherland: "She was the one in Tangiers."

The film ends, almost anticlimactily, with the football game, like something out of Lardner's father's sports stories. It has the first use of the word "fuck" in a major studio release, and features cameos by many pro football players, most memorably Ben Davidson.

Altman needed something to tie all these vignettes together, and hit upon the use of loudspeaker announcements, a trick that the TV series continued. All of those were inserted into the film post-production, and have the cheesy bureaucratic ambiance of the military. The last announcement ends up giving a summation of what we've just seen: "Tonight's movie has been M*A*S*H. Follow the zany antics of our combat surgeons as they cut and stitch their way along the front lines, operating as bombs and bullets burst around them; snatching laughs and love between amputations and penicillin."

Some trivia: Burghoff was the only actor to appear in both the film and the series. And the two actors who played Lt. Col. Henry Blake, Roger Bowen McLean Stevenson, died within one day of each other.