M*A*S*H (film)/Trivia

• Creator Backlash: Despite winning the film's only Academy Award, screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr. later disowned the film since quite little of his script was used in the final film. On the DVD commentary for the film, Robert Altman said it upset him that Lardner hated the film so much - the reason the film had the feel that it did, as opposed to the racist, sexist, homophobic book, was because of his script. Essentially, Altman claimed the final film was a distillation of Lardner's script.
• Dueling Movies: Released the same year as that other anti-war satire, Catch-22.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fans are often surprised to see Odo as Father "Dago Red" Mulcahy. Private Boone is Harold. Also, the infelicitously-named "Spearchucker" will survive the war, but meet his doom in a titty bar in Mexico.
  • Duke later went on to command a space mining ship and train Navy fighter pilots.
• Memetic Mutation: "We're the Pros from Dover." This line, carried over from the novel, was simply a smart-ass remark in which Hawkeye and Duke compared themselves to golf pros when showing up for an operation with their clubs. Movie-goers thought it was some kind of reference or code-phrase they didn't understand, and started using it to refer to any outside specialists brought in to handle an important job. Today, people use the phrase in this way without ever realizing it came from the movie.
• Throw It In: During the opening credits a medic stumbles and falls on his ass while carrying a wounded soldier from the chopper pad. This was a real, unscripted accident during filming and was something that likely happened a lot in real life due to the inhospitable terrain where mobile hospitals had to be set up.