AVC: Does being that well-known, or having that distinctive a voice, come in handy? There's a story that you tell in your new memoir about calling up the Hershey Company and having them send over candy bars for the firefighters at Ground Zero in New York. Presumably the people at Hershey didn't say "You're kidding, you aren't Alan Alda. You don't sound like Alan Alda."
AA: Well, there's no question that it seems to be distinctive. A couple of times, I've called 411 for information and they've given it to me and said "There you go, Mr. Alda." [Laughs.] Which was kind of shocking. But it certainly helped in getting the candy bars, because I was able to get through to the right person pretty quickly. And if I have to put two people together, to help a philanthropy project or something like that, I'm grateful for it. Shortens the time it takes. There are some upsides to it.
AVC: People who grew up on M*A*S*H still think of you as Hawkeye Pierce—it's the signature role that comes up in every piece about you. And since then, you've played a lot of hard-ass, villainous, snarky, or sexual roles, as though you're playing against type. But you've said that you don't really think about your career, you think about each particular role. You never consider continuity, or your image?
AA: No, I never thought about my image. It interests me that there are people who do, that they seem to be methodical about it. Maybe things would have gone differently for me in some ways if I had. Maybe there were a couple of times when I got sick of hearing that I was such a nice guy, I might have done one or two parts thinking "Ah, this will fix that." But it never does. I mean, the thing is, if people see you a certain way, they'll see you that way, maybe forever. What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer. Not as somebody with a particular idea to sell, or something like that.
AVC: At this point, M*A*S*H was more than 20 years ago. No doubt you have fans who've never seen it.
AA: Yeah, and there are also people who come up to me and tell me that they watch it all the time, though they weren't born when we went off the air. It's amazing.
AVC: Is it at all liberating to have fans who only know you from The West Wing, or ER, or Woody Allen films?
AA: Mmm, no, no. I mean, I did all those things. It's just interesting—when I go to France, I'm known mainly from the Woody Allen movies. And it amazes me that people come up to me and recognize me from only having seen two or three of his movies. It's so interesting how movies register on people. If I had been in two or three episodes of a television show, I'd have been seen by more people. But it wouldn't have registered in the same way. You know, there's something about the big screen, in the dark, I think, that does something to our brains.
AVC: Your memoirs are more philosophical than autobiographical—you mostly talk about what was going on in your head or your heart during various periods of your life, so you often don't talk about many of the roles or shows you're most known for. Did you ever have any interest in writing just about what it was like to make M*A*S*H, or The West Wing?
AA: No. No, that's exactly the kind of thing I didn't want to do. I didn't want to do an illustrated résumé. It doesn't interest me. This thing of, "I did this, then I did that." It's like songwriters onstage: "And then I wrote a little song that goes like this." At best, it's self-aggrandizing. I wanted to write something that people would enjoy reading, that they'd have a reading experience of some kind. I wanted to do a piece of writing. I didn't want to just talk about myself. [Laughs.] I mean, I talked plenty about myself, of course, but that was because those were the stories I had to tell. There was, I thought, an interesting overall story I had to tell, which was, in the first book, how this guy turns into a person, or tries to become a person.
AVC: Do you see those two shows as career high points?
AA: On The West Wing, doing that live debate was one of the most exciting moments of my professional life. I loved that. Of course, M*A*S*H changed my life completely, and I talk more about M*A*S*H in my second book. If you put them together, I talk plenty about it, I think. There probably would be some interest on the part of many people in hearing me tell endless anecdotes about what it was like on the set, but that wasn't what I was writing about. It wasn't like I was trying to avoid anything. It's an easy thing to go to. "You know me as this, so I'll write about that." I'd rather write about something that you don't think you know about me. I don't have to write about me, I just have to write about something that I understand.
AVC: You also talk in that first book about how you're baffled about the way people care about celebrity lives.
AA: I talk a lot about that in the second book, too. There's a whole chapter on it there. I think it's interesting. I don't think we all quite get it. In the second book, I talk about how I discussed that in front of an audience of psychiatrists, and I really had the impression that they were thinking of some aspects of that for the first time. As much as they had explored how the mind works, it seems to me they hadn't given a great deal of thought to this special response people have to others who are well-known.
AVC: In the same sense, you tell a story in the new book about how when the husband of a friend of yours hurt himself, she wanted to call you for help because she associates you with doctors. Which is sort of reminiscent of Leonard Nimoy's book, I Am Not Spock, where fans write to him and ask him to use his alien powers on their behalf. Do you get that kind of transference often?
AA: Well, I got those people sending me suicide notes when M*A*S*H was on the air. I suppose that had something to do with the fact that I was playing a doctor. I mostly don't get people coming to me with their gall-bladder problems. But there is the idea, still, that because Hawkeye was so compassionate and wanted to save people's lives, some of that sort of slopped over onto me in people's minds.
AVC: What about with The West Wing? Do people expect you to be a Republican?
AA: No. I got a lot of people saying, "I'm a Democrat, but I would have voted for you." I went to hear a lecture that a friend of mine was giving in Washington to Congressional committees. When I walked in the door, there were a lot of young Congressional aides standing in the front, chatting, and when they saw me, it was a little bit like I was a rock star to them. Here was an imaginary politician who'd been prominent on television, and they really responded to that. Understandably—they write these stories so they'll be emotionally engaging, so the audience is bound to integrate that character as an emotional experience. They have a response to the actor who's playing it. It's hard not to assume that he doesn't have some of those qualities. I'm watching some of The Sopranos now, catching up on the season, a couple of hours a night. To some extent, I think I'm watching real people, too, and I know that it's an illusion.
AVC: You talk in the new book about how one of the ways you look for meaning is by doing things that terrify you. What kind of things terrify you these days?
AA: Well, getting up in front of a lot of people to talk about something that I don't seem qualified to talk about, or that I'm not qualified to talk about, is scary. [Laughs.] It makes me research it carefully, and it makes me choose my words and images carefully, and choose the point of view that I'm going to come in on carefully, so that I'm not arrogant or pretentious, but finding something to say that brings some of my experience to bear on it, to see if I can understand it better, and to say something that's worth listening to. That's just fun, it's a fun problem to solve. It's scary, and it wouldn't be as much fun if it wasn't scary. It's the way I have of knowing I'm alive.
AVC: You once considered running for public office. What stopped you?
AA: Well, I never really thought about it. I was able to decide not to do it within milliseconds. I was asked to do it a couple of times, while I was on M*A*S*H. It seemed like the only qualification that they seemed to think I had was that I was so well-known, I could get elected. That seemed like a tragic picture of politics in America, maybe in the world.
AVC: Well, because of your roles, you come across as compassionate and intelligent, two things people don't necessarily see in politicians these days.
AA: There is something weird, isn't there, that by the time they finish running, no matter how much they start out possessing those things, they don't have them any more by the time they're ready to go into the office. [Laughs.] They've been diluted so thoroughly.
AVC: You've won most of the major entertainment awards, but you tend to talk in interviews about how none of them matter as much as honing your craft.
AA: Yeah, I think that's true.
AVC: How do you keep your personal perspective on your progress in your craft when you're a celebrity in an industry that survives on flattery and ego-stroking?
AA: Well, I don't judge my progress by what people tell me, I judge it by what I see. When I see it onscreen, or I experience it on the stage, I know if I can do certain kinds of things that I couldn't do a few years ago. Things I could do, I can do better. My concentration is much deeper and richer than it was when I began. So I see myself improving every year or so.
AVC: What are you proudest of accomplishing, personally?
AA: You know, I really don't think I get proud of things. I think I enjoy them. There are moments that I've enjoyed… I laugh at this, sometimes, to myself. When I think back to what are the moments I've enjoyed the most, they're things you might not have thought of, or would even know about. There were moments in Glengarry Glen Ross on the stage that were just terrific, that I really enjoyed. There are a couple of moments in the movie I just did, in Rod Lurie's picture. There was a time when I was a guest actor in a show called The Play What I Wrote, which was two British comedians that came to Broadway. I did the show with them about 20 times, just walking in and staying onstage for most of the second act. It was stupid comedy, really dumb-ass comedy, and I had the best time. I really enjoyed it. To say that was a highlight in my acting career sounds odd, because you don't even know what it was, but I love it. I did a small play in a theatre that holds about 400 people. A two-character play with a lovely young woman. I had one of the best times ever. It usually comes in moments. It's just that moment where that happened, where you're sailing. You're flying. I think I say in the second book that there's an ecstasy to that. You go through this whole life, hoping to get that ecstatic moment a few times.
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