University of Virginia Library

Director Of 'MASH'

A Talk With Robert Altman

By Jacob Atlas
Special to the Cavalier Daily

—Ed.

Question: "How did a degenerate
like him get into a position of
authority in the Army Medical
Corps?"

Answer: "He was drafted."

Explanation enough for anyone
within car-shot of "M*A*S*H" a
new film comedy that is being
heralded as the finest American
satire in years. It is certainly the
most irreverent. Easily offending
everyone with its blood and its
language, "M*A*S*H" emerges as
one of the fastest, most absorbing
films this year. Made on a shoestring
out at the 20th Century-Fox
ranch in Malibu, California, this
indictment of law and order,
immorality, war, religion, and death
is amassing a cult following among
audiences at a startling rate.

"M*A*S*H" director, Robert
Altman, is being catapulted into the
forefront of everyone's mind. The
picture strives on his direction. A
B-24 pilot in World War II, a free
lance magazine writer, a film
director since 1955, Altman, as
with many other directors of long
screen credits before the one that
cinches his audience-fame (i.e.,
Penn "Bonnie and Clyde," Kubrick
"2001") is now suddenly in that
very enviable position of having an
incredible legend making film to his
credit. Altman, though pleased,
remains nonplussed. "People over
compensate for the film. It isn't
that good."

Complicated to watch, the
machinations of making a movie
"M*A*S*H" style becomes almost
as interesting as the movie itself. An
inadequate discussion with Mr.
Altman gives meager clues.

UCLA Response

Question: You just showed your
film at UCLA, what was the
reaction of the students?

Altman: Well, I don't take
anything too seriously; and students
do. They usually rip you
apart and I find that kind of fun
because they're so serious about
their questions. You know, they're
talking about motivations that I
don't even want to think about.
But this time there weren't any
questions. People were just in awe.
And then there would be questions
which said, "I'd like to say this is
the finest film I've ever seen." The
cold question thing was just a
complete bomb; because they just
didn't know where to begin.

Question: Were you ever
tempted to move the setting of
"M*A*S*H" to the Viet Nam war?

Altman: No, but in another
sense we did. Our whole approach
to the thing was that we felt it was
much easier to get our zing in by
making it the Korean War. They
had four during that war and then
they dropped the whole thing. We
just felt that technically there were
so many things that you could get
funnier with. And I like the idea of
dealing with the period. It really set
up the whole thing. But after we
had established all of our research,
we then let things go. We let the
guys have long sideburns, long hair.
It gives the feeling, I think, that
most people will connect with It as
"war." We made no real effort to
say it was the Korean War.

Casting Techniques

Question: The entire cast was so
extraordinary, how did you go
about casting it, and how was that
rapport between actors established?

Altman: We first agreed that we
didn't want movie stars. Then we
agreed on Sutherland. Then we
went to New York and saw a lot of
unknown people and then to San
Francisco and ACT. We picked up
people from down here. The guys
who are involved with me, we really
work very closely as a whole unit.
We use these offices as a think tank.
Somebody would say, "Hey I know
a guy who's really good and he can
never get a job" and I'd say send
him 'round and we put together a
really good group of actors that
way. We did exactly what we set
out to do. We know the results we
wanted and without being intellectual
about it we knew where we
wanted to go. We knew this picture
wasn't going to accommodate any
movie stars. We wanted the personality
of the whole group rather
than having one star involved. Our
one statement was that when
"M*A*S*H" was finished and the
Academy Awards came around, the
entire cast of "M*A*S*H" would
be nominated for the best Supporting
Actor.

The film did begin to have a life
of its own. Some times I felt like I
was running down the hill behind it
with my arms out. Everybody
really got involved with it. There
was such unity. The actors never
upstaged each other. The technique
that we used, the actors didn't
know who was on camera and most
of them had never been in films
before. We would set up these big
panoramic set-ups and everybody
would be doing their thing and they
didn't have any idea who the
camera was on. They entered into
very real relationships. And I never
said you have to have this character.
I took the position that if I were
captain of a camp. I wouldn't be
able to determine that I wanted this
guy or that guy to come in, I'd just
have to take what I got. So once I
had the actors together, I took that
attitude. Many of them weren't
written, weren't even in the script.
Eight of them were just hired, just
given names. They really came in
with personalities, and I accepted
that the same way I would have in a
real camp.

We tried to work out of sense
memory for this film. We tried to
think what were those old war
movies like. We tried to do all those
things. We were really satirizing
ourselves, satirizing ourselves, satirizing
ourselves. Like with the loud
speaker that became a character
and after having destroyed every
taboo in sight, finally turns on itself
and takes its own life.

Ancient Blurbs

All those movies they announced
in the film were old 20th
Century-Fox films. I went down to
the publicity archives and brought
out posters. I had David Arkin read
them through a bull horn in the
recording room — everybody
thought that was ridiculous — but it
worked. Rock-em, sock-em, kisses
you never got. That was real. We
went to the almanac, the marijuana
announcement came out from the
AMA in 1951. And the Korean War
was voted the number one news
story in 1952. We tried to grab the
real thing rather than be clever. In
fact, every time we got clever, I
think we failed. If it depended on
your having a line, or if it depended
on a reading of a line in a certain
way, we would throw it out.

Question: There was over-lapping
of dialogue, could you talk about
that?

Altman: I didn't over dub one
line in that picture. Some people in
New York said to me, this new
sound thing, where you throw away
lines and everybody talks at once,
how did you come up with this. I
told them I had been getting fired
for doing it for the last fifteen
years. I think when you start
dubbing you destroy all that. When
you walk down the street you hear
only fragments and you fill in the
rest. You automatically fill the
thing out. So we allowed the
audience to do that in M*A*S*H
and that's participation. I think the
biggest problem in film is letting
the audience participate. To become
emotionally involved, they
have to furnish parts of their minds
and in most cases film is too
specific. You see and hear and you
become an object to be talked to.
Film-makers have to learn to hide
things, the audience can add.

Sanity Rituals

Question: The survivors in
M*A*S*H survive through rituals,
through insanity, really. Is that
your view?

Altman: I think that's a good
way to remain sane in an insane
world. In the beginning with the
sergeant and the jeep, they are the
ones' that are insane ... I mean it's
the other people. Its the people
who are trying to go along with an
absolutely ridiculous set of systems
and values. During the Inquisition
in Spain, it was the Inquisitors who
were insane, not the witches. The
witches were all right.

Robert Altman Raps With "M*A*S*H" Cast On Location.