To MASH and Back by Gary Burghoff

Author:Gary Burghoff [Burghoff, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781629330297
Amazon: 1629330299
Publisher: BearManor Media
Published: 2009-06-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

While shooting Steven Hilliard Stern’s independent film, B.S. I Love You, a man lost his life.

The charming little film about the hypocrisy of Madison Avenue advertising agencies was destined to receive excellent reviews in L.A. and New York and flop at the box office. I was hired to co-star with Peter Kastner, a talented but discouraged young actor who longed to be a history teacher. Halfway through the shooting, Steven and the producers had to ask him to stop badmouthing the film around town. Peter was a great guy, but he was one of those rare actors who wished he could be something else (Usually, almost always, it was the other way around). The script called for a scene in which Peter’s character imagines committing suicide by jumping off San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Steven and the guys, excellent at visual effect techniques, had devised a way, through correct camera angles, to safely simulate the jump. But, a stuntman hadn’t been hired yet. Word got out about the scene and an independent stuntman, hungry for work, took his own film crew to San Francisco and actually jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge! He planned to present the footage to our company believing that, having already filmed the jump, we would surely pay him. He had filmed his own death.

A similar tragedy had nearly occurred in the making of M*A*S*H a year earlier. You know the scene in the film where two helicopters, with wounded strapped to the outer landing gear, fly from over the mountain eventually landing on the pad in the M.A.S.H. compound? Altman had me and several other actors running in between them as they landed. It was a windy day at the Fox Ranch. We had no idea who the chopper pilots were. They had just suddenly flown in an hour earlier. The cast had no idea where they had come from, what the pilots’ experience was, or even if the antiquated Korean War period choppers were in good operating condition. We also had no idea Bob Altman would ask his actors to run in between the blades as they landed. There was only a few feet of clearance between them!

Now when you’re working on a film, there is a trust factor that comes into play. You assume your director and producer have carefully given extensive thought to your safety. So, for the first attempt at the shot, I went along. But when Altman called “Action!” and I ran across that very windy pad toward those noisy and unstable-looking contraptions, one of the propeller blades came so close it knocked my helmet liner off my head! The shot was unsuccessful. I turned and saw Altman and the camera crew safe in a trench they had dug for themselves about forty feet away. Bob was giving orders to prepare the choppers to take off again, fly over to the distant mountains and repeat the shot. I walked over to him and said, “Bob, I’m not doing this again.

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