NEW YORK - Attention, attention: It's been 40 years -- yes, 40 years -- since Robert Altman's "MASH," the comedy that used the Korean War as a vehicle to satirize the Vietnam War, hit theaters.
Elliott Gould, 72, who starred as Trapper John McIntyre (along with Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce) as physicians in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, spoke recently about his reflections on "MASH," his work with Altman and his legendary facial hair.
Q. After 40 years, do you ever get tired of talking about "MASH"?
A. No, I couldn't. I was so grateful for the opportunities to work with Robert Altman, and "MASH" was the first opportunity, as well as the most popular thing that I've ever been involved with.
I've watched it quite a few times this past year, and I always see something new and fresh, or hear something that I hadn't heard before. It's like I'm here, I'm looking out over the ocean and I can't imagine being bored or tired of that.
Q. What have you noticed in recent viewings that you didn't see before?
A. Well, originally, I didn't get it, you know, and I didn't get Bob. And "MASH" was a film that a lot of people had turned down.
At the time, "Catch-22" was going to be the major antiwar film, and in its own way, it's a flawed masterpiece. But Bob's view was life taking its course. When Fox sneaked the picture in San Francisco with "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," I didn't quite get it, and it's taken quite some time, but I've understood for some time now what a fabulous work that it is, and how it endures, it's so full of life.
Q. There's a lot of camaraderie and clowning around that comes through in the film. Did you do anything special to build those relationships while you were making the movie?
A. What Bob did is he had Donald (Sutherland) and me separated, so Donald and I became very close, and everybody else hung with Bob. Where I came from, when we got work, we were very hard-working people, and I didn't want to fall in love with anything or be deluded at how things would be, but Donald and I loved one another.
Q. We live in a time of war now, and yet you don't see people making war comedies. What was it about that era that permitted a film like "MASH"?
A. It was Robert Altman. We've got enormous problems here in America. We got lost in our success, and this is something that Bob could see and always knew in most if not all of his work. Other than the audience that got it, it wasn't the popular or the usual point of view. To be able to make fun of yourself in such a serious time, especially with serious-minded technicians -- the doctors who are working like that -- it's defiant.
Q. I can see why you appreciated Altman -- what do you think he saw in you, that he worked with you on so many films?
A. He'd said that I'm very honest. Also, different in some ways. I need to really muse over things, because I'm very sensitive and I don't want any of this to be self-serving. I know that he called me his enemy, and he had told me that sometimes he just couldn't keep his eyes off what I was doing, and I said to him: "Then don't look at me. I'm always in character. Don't look at me, and look at it on screen. You'll see that I'm in concert with everything else that's going on." By the time we got to do "California Split," I knew him and I knew where he was at. In a way, he was like my father.
Q. Was it a sad day for you when you finally had to shave your Trapper John mustache?
A. I kept it on for a bit because the picture I did right after "MASH" was a picture called "Getting Straight," and it was great to have been able to use that. I do believe that we should adapt to nature and not ask nature to adapt to us. I just want to continue to learn to live with what I am,to adapt and evolve.
Q. That facial hair seemed crucial to your celebrity at the time.
A. I want you to know that my take on celebrity is simply that some of us have to make a bigger fool of ourselves than others. That's all. Joe Namath wore a mustache too. Being that I had several films in that era that were very popular and successful, they put me -- I guess I had to allow them to put me on the cover of Time magazine, and they used that. I played Socrates in a film several years ago, and I wore the beard. But now it comes in pretty white.
Q. What's different about being a leading man now than in the era when you broke through?
A. With new generations, and especially now with all the software and technology and the immediacy of YouTube, and people being able to transmit thought and information -- it's more than spontaneously, it's immediately -- that can take away some of the romance and some of the imagination.
Q. You feel as if you were given a little more privacy -- you were allowed to have your personal space if you wanted it?
A. Well, here I went to Long Island Rail Road. It's the first time I've done that, so I got to Penn. Station really early, so I could ask directions. Some of the policemen recognized me. I sat in the waiting room with a lot of people, and occasionally somebody recognized me.
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