FILM DIRECTOR MASHES TV SHOW

Robert Altman directed the movie "M*A*S*H" but was never a fan of the television show. "I've never seen an episode all the way through," Altman said in an interview for NBC's "Later with Bob Costas." "I run across it occasionally. I don't like it, I don't like it all." Altman says his problem with the TV version is a difference in philosophy. "We were trying to get a laugh out of you and then make you pay for that laugh." Altman says he learned after the fact that the movie's stars, Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould, had gone to studio officials and tried to get him fired because they feared the movie was going to bomb. "They said I was ruining their careers," he said. "Had I know that, I probably would have cried and gone home and not finished it."