#Mash tv theme song movie#

'Since Painless commits suicide with a pill, that would be a good title,' he said. Bob said, 'We've got one guy in the shot who can sing and there's another guy who knows three chords on the guitar so we can't use an orchestra.' Bob also said the song had to be called Suicide Is Painless. JW: But if I recall, the scene features just a guy singing with an acoustic guitar. It's that Last Supper scene, after the guy says he'd going to do himself with a pill because his life is over, because couldn't get it up with the WAC the night before.' I said, 'A song for that?' He said, 'Yeah, that Last Supper scene where the guy climbs into the casket and everybody walks around the box dropping in things like scotch, Playboy and other stuff to see him into the next world. Bob said to me, 'You know, I need a song for the film. So Bob and I were sitting around getting rather ripped one night. In most cases, you're the Mash last one in the line to see the film when scoring it.

#Mash tv theme song movie#

JM: I was brought in before the movie was even shot, which was highly unusual.

Via JazzWax: JW: How did you work on the project? Mandel told JazzWax, after his father tried writing them himself but decided, 'I can't write anything nearly as stupid as what we need.' wrote the words for 'Suicide Is Painless,' Mr. 'Mike Altman, the teenage son of Robert Altman, the director of M*A*S*H. 'Johnny Mandel, who composed and arranged for some of the leading big bands of the 1940s and '50s before establishing himself as a writer of memorable movie scores and themes like 'The Shadow of Your Smile,' 'Emily' and 'Suicide Is Painless,' died on Monday at his home in Ojai, Calif.