| Collector's Corner August 2005
 M*A*S*HStarring: Donald Sutherland,
Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall,
Roger Bowen, Rene Auberjonois, David Arkin, Jo Ann Pflug,
Gary Burghoff, Fred Williamson, Michael Murphy, Bobby Troup,
Bud Cort, John Schuck
Directed by: Robert Altman
Theatrical release: 1970
DVD release: 2001
Video: Widescreen
Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo
Released by: 20th Century Fox Home
Entertainment
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.
-- the outro to M*A*S*H
In the history of black comedy, few
films can match M*A*S*H’s hard-hitting combination of bedlam and anarchy
played out against a backdrop of graphic blood and guts, all focused to a dizzying clarity
by the droll cleverness of a group of medical misfits. That the film made it to the
screen relatively intact and still reflecting the director’s vision is a miracle of
good fortune. Almost everything went right.
When M*A*S*H came out in 1970, Hollywood was in a
double bind. Many of the left-leaning liberals on the artistic side were looking
for ways to condemn the Vietnam War, but most of the old studio bosses were WWII veterans
who felt that if we were in a war, we must be on the right side. Like the rest of
the country, Hollywood faced vicious conflicts between the pro- and anti-war contingents.
Richard Zanuck had just replaced his father as president of 20th Century Fox. Trying
to tap the youth market, the 33-year-old studio chief gave rookie Robert Altman a chance
to make a countercultural film about war.
Then as now, Hollywood still found a way to make sure it
made money, no matter the prevailing political winds. The studio was covering all
its bases that year. Tora Tora Tora was for the "my country right or
wrong" brigade. Patton was the thinking person’s look at the complex and
knotty issue of war in a time of great brutality. M*A*S*H was for the marchers -- a
sly wink of a film ostensibly about the Korean War, though everyone knew it was about
Vietnam.
Altman, then 44, had done mostly TV work, with Bonanza
being his biggest client. (People with TiVo should do a search on Altman’s
name, then watch some of his early TV work, in which he already showed signs of genius in
working with acting ensembles.) He fell in love with the idea of a crew of medical
personnel just minutes from the front lines, who used rapier-like sarcasm, casual sex, and
mountains of mind-altering substances to cope with the mayhem they saw every day in the
Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. M*A*S*H’s black humor poked perfect
countercultural fun at the Vietnam War at a time when sentiment against the war was
gaining steam among the very people who would love a thinly veiled satire mocking war,
discipline, and racism.
Altman began by casting a number of actors whose previous
experience was solely in the theater. Watch the opening credits and you’ll see
a cascade of "Introducing" credits: Gary Burghoff, who will forever be
known as Radar; Fred Williamson, who went on to become one of the top
"blaxploitation" stars and producers; John Schuck, who has played everything
from Klingon ambassadors to Daddy Warbucks on Broadway; and, most notably, Bud Cort, owner
of one of Hollywood’s most bizarre careers, including his spot-on star turn a year
later in Harold and Maude.
Even the stars were relatively unknown. Top-billed
Donald Sutherland already had 13 feature films to his credit, yet the only one anyone had
seen was his take on a psychotic misfit in The Dirty Dozen. Elliott Gould
had Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, out about the same time, but little else. Robert
Duvall had the best résumé, but he wasn’t even listed as one of the stars.
The script, based on Richard Hooker’s novel, came from
the biggest iconoclast of the bunch -- Ring Lardner, Jr. One of the original
"Hollywood Ten" blacklisted in the 1950s by the House Un-American Activities
Committee, Lardner had even spent time in jail for refusing to name names.
Altman pulled together his cast and headed out to
Fox’s back lot, where the actors worked up improvisations based on Lardner’s
script, getting some assistance from a doctor in how to talk and act like a trauma-room
staff. Altman’s goal was to have the kind of give and take among a group of coworkers
that would occur in the crazy world of a combat zone, the kind that he thought
couldn’t be scripted.
What he ended up with is something wonderfully organic and
alive; you never have the sense that anyone is reading a script. And remember this
adage: When one actor is great, you have great acting; when all the actors are great, you
have great directing. In M*A*S*H, all the acting is of the highest standard.
The multidimensional dialogue that Altman captured rivals
Howard Hawks’ brilliant work with Charles Lederer, William Faulkner, and Ben Hecht.
Compare the pressroom scenes in His Girl Friday
to the operating-room scenes in M*A*S*H -- in both, the wealths of wit are
overwhelming. Sutherland and Gould, especially, exchange clever zingers as sharp as
their scalpels.
Occasionally, the ad-libbing got a little out of hand. In
the football game, "Painless" leans down into the offensive line, stares at his
foe, and says, "Your fucking head is coming right off, pal." Nice line, with one
problem: Before M*A*S*H, no one had ever said fuck onscreen in
anything other than a porno movie. Altman didn’t even notice it until he was
looking at the filming for the day. Deciding to keep it was a brave move: In the
context of what happens next in that scene (chapter 34), it’s hilarious.
When filming was over, the cast and crew were invited to
see the final cut. Altman invited his two best friends, Ted Knight (who later
played anchorman Ted Baxter in The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and Johnny Williams (now
known as John Williams, the occasionally notable composer of film scores). At the
end, Knight had tears in his eyes, and both told Altman he had made a great film.
One person wasn’t so happy. Ring Lardner, Jr.
wanted to know what had happened to all of his carefully shaped dialogue. The cast
had improvised so much that little of Lardner’s script had made it into the film. He
would have to live with it.
When I said at the beginning that almost everything
went right, I was referring to something that Altman discovered only after M*A*S*H
had been released and was garnering huge critical kudos. Elliott Gould confessed to
Altman that he and Donald Sutherland had gone to the studio and tried to get Altman fired.
They felt that Altman was spending too much time on the minor actors and not giving
the stars enough face time on camera. Gould apologized and owned up, but Altman
never heard anything from Sutherland. Gould went on to star in more Altman films,
but the director never again worked with Sutherland.
Bud Cort made Harold and Maude,
and Robert Duvall went on to create a career of lasting importance with roles in such
films as The Godfather, Apocalypse
Now, The Great Santini, Tender Mercies, and dozens more. But most of
the rest of the actors never surpassed what they did in M*A*S*H.
Alas, Robert Altman has never given us anything better,
either.Like thousands of others, I rush to each new Altman film, hoping for the
best.He’s delivered some high-quality films, such as Gosford Park, The Long
Goodbye, and Nashville. But for every good one there’s been at
least one stinker, such as Beyond Therapy, Prêt-à-Porter, or Dr.
T and the Women. We can all hope for the future, but for the last 35 years,
none of his work has surpassed M*A*S*H.
Part of what made M*A*S*H resonate with the
audiences of 1970 still works today -- the need for us to see people with real power, such
as doctors, who could and would thumb their noses at the toy Napoleons of the world. When
we have to face a petty bureaucrat, whether it’s on the job or over the counter of
some state department, we’d all like to spit in their eye, as Hawkeye and Duke and
Trapper John do. It would be even better if we could be hilarious while we were doing it.
Wait, how about hilarious and altruistic? Oh, let’s just go all the way. We
could be hilarious, altruistic, anti-authoritarian, antiwar, and seemingly drink
day and night and never have a hangover. You see the point. Altman presented
a black comedy full of irony and satire and still left us wanting to be just like the
protagonists. That’s a neat trick, and a special piece of directing.
So how would you feel if everyone thought that the best
work you had ever done was something inferior done by someone else but using the same
name? Robert Altman is still angry that, for most of the world, M*A*S*H means 251
episodes of Alan Alda doing a Mr. Rogers imitation in a neighborhood only slightly zanier
than what you find afternoons on PBS.
In the TV series ostensibly based on the film, CBS
didn’t just emasculate the movie, they did a full orchiectomy. Everything that
made M*A*S*H great is gone, and in its place are people who have the same names as
the movie characters but none of the sass, intelligence, or bluster. Did the movie
require a laugh track to let people know when it was funny? We should have known something
was wrong during the opening credits, when CBS allowed only an instrumental version of the
film’s famous theme song, "Suicide is Painless." I guess the lyrics of a
14-year-old boy frightened even the studio execs.
That’s right -- the song’s lyrics were written by
Robert Altman’s 14-year-old son, Mike. He took the song to producer Ingo
Preminger, who loved it. All Mike wanted in return was a guitar, but Preminger insisted on
giving the boy a proper contract. The result: Mike Altman has made a lot more money
from M*A*S*H than his father ever did. Seems all those TV shows, with their
huge audiences and syndicated reruns, have made the boy (now 49) wealthy.
Robert Altman had been offered a percentage of the
film’s profits, but, being the irascible fellow he was, he ended up in an argument
with a Fox exec and the offer was rescinded. When M*A*S*H was released and
showed signs of being a hit, Altman’s agent went back and asked for the percentage
again. The Fox execs were on the verge of saying yes when a magazine article came
out quoting Altman as saying he hated working for Fox. Altman ended up getting a
straight salary for directing M*A*S*H: $75,000.
M*A*S*H* was nominated for five Academy Awards: Best
Picture, Director, Film Editing, Actress in a Supporting Role (for "Hot Lips"
Sally Kellerman), and Screenplay. That last nomination went to Ring Lardner, Jr., who, if
you remember, was furious that they’d used so little of his dialogue. He was the only
person involved with M*A*S*H to win an Oscar.
In recent years, M*A*S*H’s reputation has only
increased. In 1996, the National Film Preservation Board selected M*A*S*H
for safeguarding. The American Film Institute lists it as number 56 on its list of
the 100 Greatest Movies, and number seven on their 100 Funniest Movies list.
As befits one of the more prestigious films in their
library, Fox has gone to some trouble to make the DVD release of M*A*S*H special.
It’s available in two editions. In both, the mastering is from a complete
restoration and is probably as good a picture as anyone has seen since the film had its
debut on January 25, 1970. The same goes for the Dolby Digital 2.0 sound, which is
a model of clarity -- something you need with all the overlapping dialogue. There’s
also a very leisurely commentary by Altman, who obviously believes that brevity is the
soul of wit; minutes go by and he says not a word. However, when he does have
something to say, it’s usually fascinating.
Opt for the two-DVD set and you also get: a making-of
documentary that includes interviews with Altman, Preminger, Lardner, and Zanuck; a
feature about life in a M*A*S*H unit during the Korean War; a feature on how the
restoration was done, including side-by-side frames to show you how much better the film
looks post-restoration; and a cast reunion (minus Sutherland -- old wounds heal slow, I
guess) that’s rich in insider details.
Either way, M*A*S*H is a film to treasure. Next time
you feel like dashing into your boss’s office like Hot Lips screaming "This
isn’t a hospital -- it’s an insane asylum!," do that little Hawkeye
whistle, then go home and watch M*A*S*H instead. In 2005 as in 1970, its
zany anarchy remains one of the best balms for our lives.
...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com |
