The trouble with MASH
Like most people, I watched most of the TV series first. Unlike most, I read the book second, then watched the movie third.
The TV series went the right way. They seemed to sense, if not know, what the trouble with the book and the movie was.
The trouble was "veracity". The movie had none. The book had little. The movie took the most biased parts of the book to produce.
The book wasn't bad. It was written in an easy to read way. It also gave good descriptions.
However, the descriptions gave the appearance of sore head, angry at someone. In this case it was whomever the true model for the Major Frank Burns was.
And then it went into overkill. To become a major, Burns either had to have merit or popularity. Obviously, he had no merit, and we can believe that. However, the idea that he was hated would have meant he never would have become major, not in any era.
The movie is disjointed, and even after reading the book, it is impossible to understand one thing going on in the movie. Altman spends so much time giving us mud, that he forgets to give us story. That would be okay if it's "slice of life" over and over, but he fails to do that. It isn't even events. It's just words lumped together.
The book looks like it was written by someone with nothing but hate, a person who has no qualms about saying whatever suits him. That's because of the "overkill" factor on Burns. Burns, like Larry Linville said, does not exist. He couldn't exist. He's a Hollywood myth, but the most cherished of Hollywood myths. The hypocrite. There will always be an audience who wants to believe anyone who reads a bible is a hypocrite. However, this is almost never the case.
If the author of the book, whose name is not worth noting, would tell me who the best doctor in a unit was, I would never believe him. The guy is too divisive. I wouldn't believe one word he would say, even if it was about the weather. I've known too many psychos like him. All have the same traits. And no one who isn't a psycho demonstrates these traits.
It's sad that they made a movie out of this. What's sadder is that Altman took the most dishonest parts to put on screen for an agenda that fed his hate mongering audience. These extremists were just as dangerous as the war hawks of the extreme right. In fact, they are the same personalities, just on different sides.
Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time