U need to introduce you to my friend Dr. Dan.
He helped my on my way up Mt. Everest in 08′!!
He also can work via phone too.

Greg

You did get it right, IMHO, about Gould being the far superior Trapper John and Sutherland and Gould together being dynamite. But to talk about M*A*S*H without the incredible performance by Robert Duvall as the hypocritical Frank Burns is sad.

Most sad though is the bizarre love the American people have for the misbegotten, mismanaged abomination that was the TV show (and, ironically, the book). The TV show was nothing but a mishMASH of watered down, too-little-too-late platitudes with nothing but the admittedly well-delivered wisecracking style of Alda and the inimitable Radar O’Reilly. In short, the TV MASH is to the movie MASH what the sappy Happy Days was to the delightful American Graffiti — a pathetic, treacly bit of blancmange aimed at middle American Christians.

The TV show has none of the bite and take-no-prisoners attitude of Altman’s masterpiece. The movie takes on mainstream Christianity with a vengeance, from the masterful title theme (“Suicide is painless”–portraying Christ’s death as a suicide which causes no pain to someone who is actually God, using the graphic metaphors of the Last Supper tableau and “Painless,” the best equipped dentist in the army who arises the next day like Jesus…feeling no pain) to the incessant prayerful mumblings of Frank Burns who spouts Christianity while blaming an orderly for the death of his patient and carrying on with the head nurse. (no pun intended).

The movie, meanwhile, also takes on the senselessness of war while mocking the “regular army” mentality and the idea that there can be such a thing as “good military medicine.” The movie’s ultra-graphic operating room scenes are gory on purpose to awaken a lively sense of the horrors of wartime medicine.

The TV show? Well at best it takes on military bumbling and some day to day hypocrisies of upper management. The TV show brought nothing to the table but “those wacky wisecracking military cut-ups with little patience for management incompetence.”

As for the trademark Altman sound-on-sound technique, it’s an tremendously innovative technique that captures, for the most part successfully (IMHO), the welter and buzz of real life, denying the theatrical convention that dialogue takes place with one person talking and then another person responding — with some overlap (when skillfully directed). I’m not sure I want all my movies to have that as a basic cinematic format but in the hands of the then-seasoned Altman, it’s a cinematic coup.

And the sound design of the movie synchs wonderfully with Altman’s often dizzying overhead camera movements portraying Camp Swampy as a true jury-rigged outpost of a temporary hospital town.

After MASH the movie we could never look at wartime medicine or wartime Christianity the same.

“How do you want your eggs?” and “Send us at least one nurse who can work in close without getting her tits in the way.” “You can’t really savor a martini without an olive, otherwise it just doesn’t quite make it.”