Reliving bad dentists and the good times on M.A.S.H set
Alan Alda, the Emmy-award winning
actor ( M.A.S.H, The West Wing, Horace and Pete), is also an author. His
new book If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? is a guide to how we all can communicate better.
It’s based on the art of improvisation and his work with doctors and scientists at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University.
Alda, 81, spoke with USA Today. Here are the highlights:
You tell a great story in your new book about an experience at the dentist, who you told you, “There will be some tethering.” This incident became a symbol for you of poor communication.
I was too timid. I was over the age of 50, so I should have had the wherewithal to say, “Put the knife down, let’s talk about this, help me understand what you’re going to do to my face.” I didn’t and he cut this little tissue, the frenum, in between your gum and your upper lip. I was making a movie a couple weeks later and I was trying to smile and the cameraman said, “Why are you sneering?” . . . I still don’t know what tethering means. (The dentist) gave me a smile-ectomy in a way.
Communication has changed so much in your lifetime. Today it’s email and Twitter . . . You’re on Twitter.
I’m really curious about everything, including the changes in our lives in communication. We have to adapt to them. I love reading a book on paper and I love reading the newspaper on paper. But I also keep all of my books on an iPad because they’re easier to carry around. I hope paper books always are around. But when I think about that sometimes I think, I sound like somebody 2,000 years ago who would have said, “Boy, I hope they never stop writing on scrolls!” But we gotta adapt, that’s life.
What’s your fondest memory from M.A.S.H?
I have so many fond memories. Sitting around with the other people in between shots. Usually actors go back to their dressing room between shots; you have sometimes an hour while they’re lighting a set. And we mostly didn’t do that. We sat in a circle and made fun of each other, and laughed. And that connection we had, person to person, became useful when they called us to the set. As we were walking to the set, we were still laughing and kidding. And when we played the scene a second later, we had the same connection going, only now with the lines of dialogue written for the scene.
So that connection we had in the chairs became an important part of the performance.
And that’s when I learned something that I use all the time now as much as I can when I’m acting with other actors before a performance: I see if we can have that thing going between us where we laugh. Because when you’re laughing, you’re vulnerable. You’re letting the other person in.