{"id":18418,"date":"2013-05-10T14:16:07","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T18:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=18418"},"modified":"2013-05-10T14:16:07","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T18:16:07","slug":"the-mash-theme-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=18418","title":{"rendered":"The M*A*S*H Theme Song"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Movie director <a href='http:\/\/m.npr.org\/story\/125020948'>Robert Altman hired Johnny Mandel<\/a> to score his 1970 satire M*A*S*H. The first scene up was a fake funeral, and Altman needed a song for it.<\/p>\n<p>\" 'It should be the stupidest song ever written,' \" Mandel recalls Altman saying. \"I said, 'Well, I can do stupid.' He says, 'The song should be called 'Suicide Is Painless.' \"<\/p>\n<p>Altman took a stab at writing the lyrics, but it just wasn't stupid enough.<\/p>\n<p>\"[Altman] said, 'Ah, but all is not lost. I've got a 15-year-old kid who's a gibbering idiot. He's got a guitar. He'll run through this thing like a dose of salts,' \" Mandel recalls Altman saying.<\/p>\n<p>Mandel went home and wrote the melody. And the director's young son, Mike Altman, wrote the lyrics.<\/p>\n<p>A brave man once requested me \/ to answer questions that are key \/ 'Is it to be or not to be' \/ And I replied, 'Oh, why ask me?' \u2014 \"Suicide Is Painless\"<\/p>\n<p>Robert Altman later said his son made more than $1 million from the song, whereas he got just $70,000 for directing the movie. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And now you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Movie director Robert Altman hired Johnny Mandel to score his 1970 satire M*A*S*H. The first scene up was a fake funeral, and Altman needed a song for it. \" 'It should be the stupidest song ever written,' \" Mandel recalls Altman saying. \"I said, 'Well, I can do stupid.' He says, 'The song should be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}