In this episode, Jeff & Ryan discuss the life and career of writer/producer Thad Mumford. Along with his partner, Dan Wilcox, Thad wrote 17 episodes of M*A*S*H, including the award-winning Are You There, Margaret? We also open Radar’s mailbag and answer listeners’ burning questions. Yes! It’s true! We have listeners!
Show Notes:
Thad Mumford – the NY Times obituary
Here’s a wonderful interview with Thad Mumford on the Archive of American Television
Ken Levine’s tribute to Thad Mumford
In other news…
Loretta Swit takes the flight of a lifetime.
Gary Burghoff cements his status as a theatrical legend.
An appreciation of Larry Linville on what would have been his 79th birthday.
Connect with Jeff & Ryan
Visit the podcast’s website: www.mashmatterspodcast.com
Like MASH MATTERS on Facebook.
Follow M*A*S*H MATTERS on Twitter.
Email questions, comments, show ideas, and more to MashMattersPodcast@gmail.com
Call and leave a voicemail at 513-436-4077
Subscribe to M*A*S*H MATTERS on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
TRANSCRIPT: MASH Matters #002 – Remembering Thad Mumford
Attention all personnel, incoming podcast! This is MASH Matters.
RYAN: Well I think we’ve been renewed Jeff. We’re back for episode two.
JEFF: Wow, this is so exciting. It’s incredible we got a second episode.
RYAN: And they said it would never last.
JEFF: Yeah really. I mean those naysayers them guys. Whatever they were.
RYAN: Hey, I don’t know about you, Jeff, but the buzz and the encouraging notes and just the awesome feedback I’ve received has been absolutely wonderful for this podcast. And are you getting the love as well?
JEFF: Yes, I heard from people that I’ve kind of – not forgotten, but sort of, you know, on the surface forgotten. And so it’s amazing to hear from people that you, you know, that you don’t see or talk about every day. And suddenly there they are saying very nice things about you and to you. So that’s been very, very gratifying. I thank you all for showing up and for doing that. I’m sure some people that I don’t want to have show up may, but that’s okay too.
RYAN: The good news is, is that podcasting brings absolutely no money in. So it’s not like people are going to be coming out of the woodwork asking for a loan. At least you have that.
JEFF: So you didn’t get the cheque? I got my cheque. I’m sure. Ooh. Well, nevermind. Well, anyway.
RYAN: You got paid?
JEFF: Moving right along.
RYAN: Well, we’ll discuss this away from the microphone, but we’re gonna start this episode off with some MASH news.
[Audio from the show]:
“My nose for news thinks it smells a story here.
Here it comes. Okay, all right.
We’re patched into Armed Forces radio for a special broadcast! It sounds big, folks!
Really? Oh, well that’s news to me”
RYAN: It happened on September 6th, the sad news that writer and producer Thad Mumford had passed away at the age of 67. Thad Mumford is a name that, of course, MASH fans would probably be very familiar with, because I see it in the opening credits of many episodes that he and his partner Dan Wilcox wrote, but I didn’t know much about him until he passed away. And then I really got into reading up on him and learning his story. And my goodness, what an interesting career he had. For one, and this is kind of nice, I did not realize that he was African-American.
JEFF: He was what? What?
RYAN: [laughs] I didn’t know if you knew this or not, Jeff, but yeah, he was African-American and at a time when most writing rooms in Hollywood were pure blinding white, he kind of broke through and was able to write for not just MASH, but a long list of great shows, and I’ll run down a list of some of those shows here in a moment. But Jeff, I just want to kind of toss it to you and ask what were your memories of Thad Mumford?
JEFF: Well, you know, in my particular situation, I will be very honest and transparent. Obviously Private Igor was not one of the main characters. I wasn’t Hawkeye. So I had less direct contact with most of the writers than folks like Alan Alda did. Though I had some relationships with them, I was not directly involved in some of the creative issues that went on with MASH that some of the other folks were. So I didn’t have a strong connection with any of the writers. Funny, other than Larry Gelbart, Larry was on the set a lot and I was able to establish a friendship with him and he’s a wonderful guy. He was an incredible human being, incredible genius and a wonderful person at the same time. I did have fleeting moments with Thad Mumford and Dan Wilcox. Interestingly enough, I now have a kind of a renewed relationship with Dan for various reasons and strangely enough, after many many years of working on the show and many years after the show ended, I was contacted by Loretta Swit and she suggested that Thad Mumford wanted to speak with me and I thought “wow, that’s interesting”. So she said “here’s his telephone number, he’d like you to call him”. Which I did and we had a very nice, very warm, fun, pleasant conversation. He was a very funny guy. Some writers aren’t particularly funny other than when they write it down, but he was. He had a great performance kind of side to him. He used to be an actor, so he was really a fun guy to talk to, a very colorful kind of fellow to speak with. So that was a very wonderful experience, after all those years, to kind of renew a friendship with him, which made the shock of his passing, which was literally about five days later, even more significant. I was really stunned. I kept, you know, I, somebody sent me an email, told me and I was really out of my mind. I couldn’t believe it. I said, wait a minute, I just talked to him. He was fine. We had a great time. He was laughing and having a good time. So it was quite a shock. And I’ve just, I was actually contacted by Dan saying that Dan is trying to set up kind of a memorial for him in the next couple of weeks which hopefully everybody will, or at least everybody who’s in town will be able to attend. He was a favorite guy. People loved him. Very interesting fella and as you say had a great interesting background and just, you know, a really great guy. It’s hard to lose people and I think I said this in an email to you that it’s, you know, when you’re working on a television show that has the longevity that MASH did, you become a family. The good part of the family and a bad part of the family, but you become a family and very attached to everybody. So losing people like we kind of are now, because time marches on and it happens, is kind of stunning and is kind of painful. So unfortunately, that’s kind of the atmosphere of where the MASH family is right now because of this kind of suffering and feeling that loss.
RYAN: Yeah.
JEFF: Hey, isn’t this a fun podcast? And now the funny stuff.
RYAN: Well, I just want to briefly touch on a few things about Thad Mumford that I found fascinating. One, I knew that he was a big baseball fan, lifelong Yankees fan. He was actually one of the ball boys for the Yankees when he was younger. His writing career, I read this in one of the stories, that it actually began when he was an NBC page and he worked at the studios around the Tonight Show and he pestered, basically pestered to death, the head writer of the Tonight Show to pitch some jokes to Johnny Carson. And eventually the head writer did and Johnny used some of them, which I can’t imagine that feeling. Eventually Thad Mumford became a regular contributor to Johnny Carson, the Tonight Show, which just absolutely blows my mind.
JEFF: Yeah.
RYAN: He went on to write – here’s just a few of the shows he wrote for: Good Times, Maude, What’s Happening, Roots: The Next Generations, Alice, The Cosby Show, Alf, A Different World, Coach, Home Improvement, NYPD Blue, The Electric Company, Blue’s Clues, and Sesame Street. So that is just a few of the shows that he wrote for, Thad Mumford. And for MASH perspective, these are the episodes that he and Dan Wilcox wrote: the first episode they wrote together was Are You Now, Margaret, then Nurse Doctor, Captain’s Outrageous, Bottle Fatigue, Goodbye Cruel World, Back Pay, Death Takes a Holiday, and one of my all time favorite episodes: A War for All Seasons.
[Audio from the show]:
MULCAHY: Where’s the corn?
IGOR: You’re looking at it, the mushy stuff.
MULCAHY: You, you creamed it. You, you ninny!
IGOR: I was just trying to be helpful! Next Fourth of July you can eat it on the cob for all I care!
RYAN: Also, Depressing News, Bless You Hawkeye, Identity Crisis, Wheelers and Dealers, Heroes, Bombshells, Settling Debts, the penultimate episode: As Time Goes By, which was actually the last episode that was filmed, and then he was one of the many writers who helped to write the finale, Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen. So what a great career and thoughts and prayers go out to the entire MASH family and to Thad’s family as well.
JEFF: Thank you, absolutely. And you know, he did write, as you said, he wrote, Are You Now, Margaret, that episode, which I believe they won the Writers Guild Award for in 1980. But it’s interesting that that show is very, very timely. And I don’t wanna go on to the whole story about the show, but anybody who has everything on tape or on a DVD should look at, Are You Now Margaret? Because it is a, it relates quite interestingly to what is going on in 2018.
RYAN: Yes. It was then centered around Senator McCarthy and his witch hunt.
JEFF: Yes.
RYAN: And now, as they say, everything old is new again.
JEFF: Yep. Sure is. Yeah.
RYAN: Unfortunately. By the way, there is a great interview with Thad Mumford online with the Archive of American Television. I will include the link in the show notes that you can find at mashmatterspodcast.com. But one of the things in the interview, the interviewer asks him, how do you want to be remembered? And he said,
[Audio clip of Thad Mumford]:
I’d like to be remembered as somebody who, who did good work and work that is lasting and meaningful.
JEFF: Wow.
RYAN: And he did just that.
JEFF: Yeah, he won, didn’t he?
RYAN: Yes, he did. Yes, he did.
JEFF: And I know that Dan and he were very, very close and was very helpful to him when he did have some health issues in the past. So he’s really – he’s taking it pretty hard so I send all my good wishes to Dan Wilcox as well.
RYAN: Absolutely. Alright, well, there’s no easy way to transition from that into, you know, jocularity, jocularity. So –
JEFF: Well, I’m removing my pants. I just think that helps a little bit. It’s a segue way. It’s a segue way physically, emotionally
RYAN: But officer! It’s a Segway!
JEFF: Isn’t that a thing you ride? Is it Segway or sedgeway? What is that thing? Is it sedgeway?
RYAN: It’s a Segway, yeah. You can ride the Segway, but they prefer that you wear pants while you’re riding on the Segway.
JEFF: While you’re riding, yeah. Otherwise you skin things that are not good to skin.
RYAN: That’s right. So we put the call out for people to email us any questions or comments they had, and we have, believe it or not Jeff, people are actually listening to this podcast.
[Audio from the show]:
Hey, mail call!
Yes, yes, yes, I’ll write you a long letter right away.
We got a letter written in Mumbo.
Sirs and everybody, I’ve got a whole bunch of letters here and they’re all on stationery from the Pierre Hotel. Hey!
JEFF: I have them right here
[sound of crumpling paper]
RYAN: Man, email is noisy.
JEFF: I’m gonna say the names, just some of the names, because I think people like to hear their names. So before we get into the questions, we’ll get into them individually. But we heard wonderful things from Steve Bennett, Chris Kennedy, Lisa Fetsko, Jason Snyder, Nicole and Russ, who didn’t want to give their last names, I don’t blame ‘em, and Travis Cook and, oh, that’s all. I mean, so far. But, so thank you all those people. That’s really nice of you to have shown up and done that. I hope you, you know, hear your names and send more.
RYAN: Absolutely. We want to hear from you so you can hop on the website, which is mashmatterspodcast.com. You’ll find the email address on there. You’ll also find a phone number where you can leave us a voicemail. We don’t have any voicemails yet, but I’m still waiting for that first voicemail to come in. You can do that by calling 513-436-4077. So we were going to take a few of these questions. We’re going to save a few of these questions for some other episodes too, but we wanted to go ahead and tackle some of these. The first is from Chris Kennedy, and he says: Guys, I love the idea of this podcast and I love MASH. One question I have has to do with the one-line jokes, whether in the middle of a show or in the last scene, some of the actor’s reactions like laughter.
JEFF: [laughs]
RYAN: Wait, I thought I turned the laugh track off on this. Hold on one moment. So some of the reaction to the other’s actor’s lines or jokes look like it’s the first time they’re hearing it. For example, Hawkeye, did he know that the soot would come out of the pole in the swamp and get all over Henry’s face? If he or they did, then it shows the skill of the performance. So I guess he’s asking, were these ad-libs? Were these lines that were just thrown in to get genuine reactions or were they just really scripted and amazing actors?
JEFF: Chris, don’t ever write us again, please. That’s one of the stupidest questions I’ve ever heard. Next. No, no, okay, I’m sorry, Chris. Let’s – I will reveal the truth. And I’ve had a similar question before, not to diminish the power of your question, Chris, but people who said, oh gosh, did you guys ad-lib? And the answer is absolutely positively no. Nobody on that show ever ad-libbed while they were shooting anything. There were table reads where everybody sat around the table and read the script, which was the first time that they’d seen the script and were able to read it, talking with all the other actors. And in those times, at that moment, somebody might say, well, gee, could I say “duck” instead of “mallard”? And then the writers would huddle and go, I don’t know, can he say duck instead of mallard? I don’t know. I’ll say mallard? duck? What’s funnier? I don’t know. I’m not sure. And then they would make a decision and that would be it. So from that point on, “duck” was in, “mallard” was out, and nobody ever questioned that again. And especially when you’re shooting something, nobody can start playing around and ad-libbing. When you’re on a movie and you have kind of unlimited budgets and you can spend lots and shoot lots of film and spend lots of time with crews eating up billions of dollars a minute, you could probably do that. And there are actors and there are directors who allow that to happen. But on MASH, where it was written by incredibly brilliant, talented writers, they wrote those words for specific reasons. And it was incumbent on the actor and their responsibility to stay true to those words, no matter what. So no, those things were not surprises. He knew that was gonna happen. It is a tribute and a talent, like you say, very nicely, Chris, about it shows the skill of the performance it was. People who react that way are highly trained people and very talented and they can react that way 52 times if they have to. So nope, he knew it was going to happen and it was just their talent and nobody ad-libs. Unlike what we do [laughs]
RYAN: [laughs] Right. We are completely unscripted and I think it shows.
JEFF: We are ad and lib. Together we’re having a great time.
RYAN: Now I have to ask though, in your opinion, which is funnier, duck or mallard?
JEFF: I, you know, let me huddle with the writers. Guys, what do you think? We’ll get back to you on that.
RYAN: Okay. Alright. So next, Lisa Fetsko, she actually sent us quite a few questions and she apologized for sending them. And I said, absolutely don’t apologize. Thank you. We really appreciate it. I don’t know that we’re going to answer all of them, but one of the questions she asks is about the actors who did the voice of the PA announcers and there were actually two, there was Sal Viscuso and Todd Susman. She said, did the cast actually know those guys? Were they also on set as extras? Or was all of their work done in a recording studio in a separate location from the cast? Now she does point out that Todd Susman did play a soldier who had the nose job. The question is, did the cast know those guys? Were they around on set? Or did they do their stuff away from the set?
JEFF: Lisa, thank you for that question. It’s very interesting, but it is none of your business so let’s move on. I mean, really, I mean, this is too personal.
RYAN: You know, I can just imagine after hearing these answers that new questions are just going to start flooding in.
JEFF: Alright, I’ll answer the question. Okay. First of all, I have to say Todd Susman and I knew each other. Todd was a terrific actor. I think he still is a terrific actor. He and I would run into each other on commercial auditions because I did a bunch of commercials as well. And we were kind of the same type, sorta looking kind of people.
RYAN: You mean dazzlingly handsome?
JEFF: Yes, both of us were. And so did everybody know them? No, because usually those things were done in a soundstage. The recording for the PA announcements were not done on the stage. So they would just have called Sal in or Todd in and say, here, you’re sitting in kind of a sound booth and here is a script, read that and thank you very much and get a donut and get out of here. So that’s what they did. Now, Todd did play that role. I think Sal also played something in some show, which I don’t know, but I think he was.
RYAN: He did. He was the soldier who actually told Father Mulcahy the location of the stolen penicillin that the black marketers had stolen. So that was – MASH fans will know which episode I’m talking about. Yeah. So he was actually on screen too. Both of them made on-screen appearances. as well as their voices. You heard just about every episode throughout the entire series.
JEFF: Very nice guy. I did not know Sal Viscuso very well at all, but I did know Todd and he’s a good guy. Still is, I hope. Lisa also asked two questions. One actually kind of goes back to that soundbooth kind of thing that we just talked about, but she said about the scene when Radar plays the bugle and Frank orders Igor to fire the salute and then Igor says “but sir, the angle!” Who’s that – I said that so well.. Boy, 12 years in acting school, “but sir, the angle!” $30,000! So, the question is did Gary Burghoff really play the bugle in that scene or was it a sound effect added later? He did – you know, here’s an interesting answer: I’m not sure, I don’t remember. I doubt very much that the bugle sound that you heard was played live. I think that was added afterwards, like the PA announcements, because they’d have to do that. But I think he may have blown the thing to make a noise so we could all kind of look at it and react to it. So he probably made – going *imitates noise* but that wasn’t exactly what you heard.
RYAN: The only thing that would cause me to think that maybe he did play it is that it was kind of well known that Radar was not a talented bugler by any means. So if he was actually playing it, maybe it wasn’t being done very well. So either way he was blowing and there was noise coming out of the bugle probably.
JEFF: Yeah, I don’t remember. This was 300 years ago, but I think he may have made the noise. If they wanted him to actually make the sound with that funny bugle, they probably recorded it separately, not in the context of that scene, because it’s just too hard in terms of technically to record it while he’s standing there and all this other stuff is happening. So very possibly they shot the scene, he made the funny noise, but then they went back and said, okay, Gary, blow into the mic now, and he made it, and then they recorded that, maybe that’s the sound they used. I don’t really know.
RYAN: Gotcha
JEFF: But I doubt very much that the master scene that you saw with him blowing the thing is the noise that he was actually making. And then the other question she says, was the “ping” of whatever that was supposedly hit the bugle something physically thrown at it, or was that a sound effect? No Lisa, nobody threw things or punished any of the actors very severely. So no, that “ping” was a sound effect. That wasn’t actually a bullet or anything else.
RYAN: So you were not instructed in reality to shoot Gary Burghoff.
JEFF: I was not, no.
RYAN: Let the record show.
JEFF: Let the record show, ladies and gentlemen. One more thing. She asked one more and I’ll answer this because this is something I’ve been asked before. There’s a scene where somebody says, what’s your name, soldier? And I say, Maxwell, sir.
[Audio from the show]:
FRANK BURNS: This spillage is wasteful, soldier.
IGOR: Yes, sir.
FRANK BURNS: You’re losing half your applesauce. Apples don’t grow on trees, you know.
IGOR: No, sir.
FRANK BURNS: What’s your name, fella?
IGOR: Maxwell, sir.
FRANK BURNS: Well, you’re going on KP, Maxwell.
IGOR: I am on KP, sir.
FRANK BURNS: Well, the minute you come off, you’re going on.
JEFF: And of course, that’s my name, actually. And they kind of said, oh, gosh, did you forget and just say your name instead of saying Straminsky or some other thing? And I said, the reality is, no, I didn’t forget. They wrote it that way. So in the early days, somebody wrote in Maxwell, and then later on they started giving me the name Straminsky, so that Straminsky came later. But the first time that they wanted me to say my last name, it was Maxwell. So nobody screwed up. It was written that way.
RYAN: I’ve always wondered that as well, but you know, there’s a theory out there, and I can’t remember where I heard it, but there is a theory out there that maybe Maxwell was Igor’s real first name. That’s a fan theory that’s circling out there on the interwebs I wanted you to be aware of.
JEFF: Is this the dark interwebs or what kind of thing is that? I don’t know what that means. Igor? Maxwell Igor, what? Maxwell, I’m confused.
RYAN: Yes, but your name is actually Maxwell Straminsky and your nickname was Igor. So when Frank Burns asks Igor “what’s your name”, he replied with his first name: Maxwell. Again, I’m not saying that it’s right. Obviously it’s not, but that is a fan theory that I have heard.
JEFF: No, that’s not true.
RYAN: Okay [laughs]
JEFF: [laughs] I don’t care what the fan theory is. They can come over to my house right now and I will show them why. Well, I can’t show them why, I don’t have my pants on.
RYAN: Right [laughs]
JEFF: But it’s not true. No, it was my name. They wrote it in and I said the words. Otherwise, I would have been fired and dragged out and thrown in the street. So you have to say every word that’s in that script and that’s what I did diligently and responsibly. You have the names and numbers of those fan people? I gotta call them.
RYAN: I don’t.
JEFF: They’re not right in the head or something.
RYAN: But it’s canon now. It’s out there. You have set the record straight.
JEFF: I’ve set the record straight. No more of this dark fandom theory stuff. No, no, no. You can’t do that. You have to – if you have that sort of problem, write in or leave a message and we’ll get back to you.
RYAN: You know there’s things like fanfiction out there. There’s like MASH fanfiction. I have not read any of it, but I can only imagine that Igor has, somebody out there at some point has written some Igor Straminsky fanfiction. Maybe we’ll have to get our hands on some of that.
JEFF: I have – I was communicating for a while with a fellow who is making documentaries in Australia. And he’s also a big MASH fan. And he actually wrote an episode that was sort of totally featured around Igor. And I was thrilled that he did it. Somebody during the 11 years of the show should have done it. But, it’s okay. It’s okay, I’m all right.
RYAN: You’re not bitter.
JEFF: I’m not bitter. But he wrote the thing and it was really kind of good. You know, I was really surprised. He kind of captured the character of Igor and everybody else. I was kind of impressed. So that happens. So anybody wants to do that, that’s fine.
RYAN: Yes
JEFF: And if you know anybody at CBS who isn’t fired or –
RYAN: Well, you know, the thing nowadays is to revive all these old shows. So I think maybe Igor could have his own show, you know, come back and do a revival.
JEFF: No, they’re going to revive it and put it in Alaska and call it MUSH. But anyway, we’ll be right back.
RYAN: [laughs] Hey, and two quick comments. One from Travis Cook, who’s actually a friend of mine, but he emailed in and said, hey Jeff and Ryan. Just subscribed to the podcast. Listened to the pilot episode. I used to watch MASH at my grandparents house when I was a kid. Never really considered myself a fan, but I did enjoy it from time to time. Have to say I would consider myself a fan of the podcast though. Hey hey!
JEFF: Whoa.
RYAN: Says the chemistry between you guys is neat to hear, both very funny, very entertaining people with fascinating perspectives on what MASH was and why it became such a phenomenon. Can’t wait to hear more. A MASH Matters fan. That’s from my friend Travis. And just so you know, Jeff, I did not pay him to say that.
JEFF: Why not? I mean, that’s pretty good.
RYAN: Well, I’m going to pay him now.
JEFF: Oh yeah, you’re gonna pay him now.
RYAN: I’m gonna put him on a hefty payment plan now.
JEFF: That’s very sweet. No, we really appreciate that. That’s very, very nice. It is very difficult to know – you know, when you do a television show, you can see the show 11 weeks later and people will laugh and you can kind of get it because you’re watching it and with other people and you see whether it’s any good or not. You know Ryan and I are sitting, you know, well I have no pants on. Ryan could have some on. I don’t know.
RYAN: I have shorts on.
JEFF: Okay. We don’t know, you know, what’s really going on. So we’re kind of in an isolated situation. So hearing that kind of response is really helpful and really appreciated. I personally appreciate it very, very much and I’m sure you do as well.
RYAN: I do. And another comment from Jason Snyder, another person who I know, and I’m also going to have to start paying. He says MASH was something my dad and I would watch as I was growing up. We tried to tape every episode on VCR tapes and to this day, we still have those VCR tapes. Now I own all the seasons on DVD and still watch them on a regular basis. MASH was in my opinion, a show that you could connect with more than just one character. I know people like Hawkeye, BJ, Winchester, Klinger, and yes, even Igor. I am looking forward to hearing many more podcasts. So thank you, Jason. We’re looking forward to bringing you many more podcasts as well.
JEFF: I think that’s gonna be the title of my next book: Even Igor. I like that. I have to answer one more question here because this has been asked before and I wanna clear the air. I mean, this is episode two. Let’s clear the air. Let’s let everybody know we are telling the truth and clearing the air. The question is was Wayne Rogers a diva as rumor has it? No.
RYAN: Okay.
JEFF: Okay, no, Wayne Rogers was not. There wasn’t a diva on the set of MASH and it’s also been reported kind of that Gary Burghoff might have been difficult or a diva.
RYAN: Yes.
JEFF: Abso-positively not. Nobody was a diva. Everybody at one time or another could say, hey, well, gosh, what about this? And gee, I’m feeling a little like that. And as I said, you don’t go through a family, an 11 years worth of a family, and not have disagreements or problems or conflicts. So it’s natural to have people disagreeing with other people and disagreeing about a direction of something, but by no stretch of the imagination was anybody a diva. These were all very highly intelligent, very sort of, I don’t want to say developed, but sort of developed emotionally, folks. There wasn’t kind of a kid/child goofball in the bunch. As I say, not without problems, not without disagreements. But nothing that wasn’t solvable and unreasonable in terms of what was happening at the time. So no, he wasn’t a diva, nobody was a diva. That kind of disappoints some people because I think it’s kind of fun to say, oh, wow, he was a jerk, oh, he was an idiot. Ain’t true, never happened, didn’t work that way. And as a matter of fact, what was fun about Wayne Rogers, he was a great financial genius. And so he would shoot a scene and then walk over to the telephone and be on the phone saying, buy! Sell! Buy! Sell! Buy! Sell! And I would hang around listening and you know, gee, what is he buying and selling? I want to know. So he was very helpful to a lot of people in terms of their own finances. He actually represented a bunch of actors and helped them develop themselves financially so he wasn’t a diva. Great guy. He left the show for reasons that I think were valid for him as an actor. He felt that the character just wasn’t being developed in the way that he felt it might be and could have been. But that didn’t create any bad blood between anybody. Nobody likes to lose an actor like him, but nobody hated him. He didn’t hate anybody. It was just kind of an adult decision that he had to work through and struggle with, but he did it and he did it fairly and honestly and sincerely and nobody hated him. So no. Good guy.
RYAN: Well, thank you, Nicole and Russ for submitting that question to us. And you know, you say that he wasn’t a diva and nobody was a diva. You know, there’s that old saying about poker, that if you’re sitting at a poker table and you don’t see the sucker, then it’s you. So I’m just saying, could it be possible that since you’re saying that nobody was a diva, could it be possible that you, Jeff Maxwell, were the diva of the MASH set?
JEFF: Thanks very much for listening, everybody. And next week, we’re going to be talking in more detail about how to wear your underwear when you’re doing your podcast.
RYAN: And riding your segway.
JEFF: Should we stream that? Maybe we stream that. What is that? You can do it on your phone and you stream yourself.
RYAN: Oh yes. We can stream. We can streak. You can streak while you’re streaming, I guess.
JEFF: You know, I’d like to bring up the fact also that this is an amazing technological wonder that we’re doing this podcast. And just to me – maybe to somebody else, to an eleven-year-old, it’s not. To me, it is. Because the knowledge is, and the truth is, that you, Ryan, are in Illinois and I, Jeff, am in California. And we are talking to each other just like we’re sitting next to each other. Is that not amazing or what?
RYAN: It’s pretty cool. It’s pretty cool.
JEFF: It is pretty cool, and I owe it to your great technical expertise and your brilliant putting-together of this amazing technology and being able to bring it to everybody and because I wouldn’t have known what the heck to do or how to do it. So I thank you, Ryan, for doing that. And as I say, for doing the heavy lifting to get this thing up and running. This was all Ryan’s idea in the first place and I just hogged in on it as best I could because that’s basically all I know how to do.
RYAN: [laughs] And you do it well. You really do it well.
JEFF: Really? Thanks. Thank you.
RYAN: Again, I am thrilled that you’re a part of this. So thank you so much.
JEFF: And I’m thrilled that you’re a part of this because I would not have done this with anybody else other than you. People have said, oh, let’s do this, let’s do that, and I have not, but I wouldn’t have done it with anybody else other than you because you not only have a tremendous radio background and history, so you know what you’re doing in front of a microphone, but you’re a really cool guy and you’re also an actor. And I think sometime we ought to talk about that because you’re a very accomplished actor with a long list of wonderful plays that you’ve been in. And that also is something that I responded to because I think we can relate to each other on that level as well. And not only friends, but kind of with a history of that kind of background. So congratulations to you for putting all this together and congratulations for me just for just getting out of bed and showing up.
RYAN: See now I’ve got to put you on a payment plan as well. This is getting very expensive.
JEFF: Yeah, it’s gonna be. Yeah, well.
RYAN: Hey, if you have questions we want to hear from you, go to mashmatterspodcast.com, email us through the website or call and leave a voicemail: 513-436-4077. We’re on Twitter @mashmatters. And if you’re on Apple podcasts, the iTunes thing, please subscribe and leave a 5 star review. We do have more questions and comments that have come in and we will get to those in future episodes, so please keep them coming in. And here’s the other thing people have asked me, how often are we going to be putting out episodes.
JEFF: Hey Ryan!
RYAN: Yes, Jeff?
JEFF: How often are we going to be putting out episodes, do you think? Just off the top of your head? Hands waving in the air, what do you think?
RYAN: Great question! The answer is we are going to hopefully put out episodes the 1st and 15th of every month, so that’s our plan at least.
JEFF: That sounds reasonable.
RYAN: Yeah, I think so.
JEFF: I think we can handle that.
RYAN: That means you have to talk to me every other week, which is about what my wife does. So it works out.
JEFF: [laughs] We’re here all week, ladies and gentlemen, have the veal.
RYAN: All right. So until next time, uh, please –
JEFF: So is that it? We’re not going to talk anymore?
RYAN: That’s it. We’re done.
JEFF: I’ll put my pants back on and go somewhere.
RYAN: Well, yeah, in that order, please. Yeah.
JEFF: As always, Mr. Patrick, a pleasure.
RYAN: And as always, Mr. Maxwell, the very same.
JEFF: Thank you all for listening and hope you continue to do it.
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