Alan Alda on bad dentists and fun times on ‘M*A*S*H’
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? (Random House), 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’s Jocelyn McClurg on Facebook Live as part of the #BookmarkThis video series. Here are highlights: Q
You’re a pretty good communicator yourself, starting with your book titles. Before your new book you also wrote two best-selling memoirs, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself. What’s your secret to coming up with catchy titles?
AI
have a kind of illness. I can’t help looking for what’s funny in something. It seemed more fun to say “Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Other Things I’ve Learned” instead of saying “My Life and How Great It Was.” Although that’s not bad. Q You tell a great story in your new book about an experience at the dentist, who told you, “There will be some tethering.” That became a symbol for you of poor communication. AI 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 of 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. Q
Communication has changed so much in your lifetime. Today it’s email and Twitter. You’re on Twitter. A 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. Q What’s your fondest memory from M*A*S*H? AI 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.