M*A*S*H

Robert Altman made M*A*S*H in 1970 to resemble Vietnam in all ways possible. The studio however, made him preface the film with quotes from Douglas MacArthur and Eisenhower, dating the film to the Korean War. In fact, the studio made him do a lot of things for this movie. Altman is quoted as saying that the film "was not released, it escaped." He experienced troubles akin to those Orson Welles had with Touch of Evil. 20th Century Fox was coming off some serious losses in the late 60's (Cleopatra anyone?) and was not going to take a chance on finicky artists: they had an iron grip on everything coming out of their studio. Despite all of this, M*A*S*H was the first major studio movie to use a certain profanity that rhymes with "duck."

Emily: I really liked this movie even though I was initially skeptical about watching it. Kamala has seen it about 10 times. Donald Sutherland is amazing and it's a shame Robert Altman didn't cast him in any subsequent movies.

Kamala: Apparently Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland had some complaints about Altman, and only Gould apologized. Robert Altman cast him in The Long Goodbye; thankfully, because that movie is really good, but Altman never worked with Donald Sutherland again.

Emily: I thought the film was an entirely realistic slice of life type portrayal of a few months (I never figured out exactly how long it was...) in the lives of surgeons in the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. Robert Altman has this technique where he doesn't just focus in on two or three characters reciting a script one after the other, the camera sort of just observes often large groups of people with two or three layered conversations going on at the same time. For instance, in the operating room there would be three separate quiet conversations that a constantly moving camera would switch between. I really liked his style as a director.

Kamala: IMDB movie trivia says that 80% of the dialogue was improvised, which helped to make it seem more realistic. Each actor really was his or her character. Altman also trolled small time improvisational clubs for actors, wanting normal looking unknowns, making for the incredibly long list of "introducing so and so"'s in the credits.