Mike Farrell: M*A*S*H Star Takes on Cause to Stop the Death Penalty

Most people remember him as the mild-mannered and loyal Captain B.J. Hunnicutt from the television series M*A*S*H, but in real life actor Mike Farrell is a deeply committed activist and outspoken advocate for human rights and the abolition of the death penalty. His memoir Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist was released in February by Akashic Books.

I caught up with him, Farrell was recuperating from an ankle injury he sustained following a 7,000-mile motorcycle trip (another one of his passions) and preparing for a cameo on the show Desperate Housewives. He was also trying hard to finance a movie about the Terri Schiavo case, a project he says has so far met with considerable resistance from the right wing.

Christopher Moraff: You were in the service during the early 1960s. Tell me about that experience.

Mike Farrell: I joined the Marines because I bought into all that stuff about John Wayne and America and if you read the book you know there was some psychological stuff about my father - that I was trying to prove myself to him even though he had already died a year earlier. And I was in the situation of being in a working class family having graduated from High School having no plans on going to college and I knew I was going to be drafted.

So for me it was a confluence of a lot of pressures and thoughts and events and probably the most motivating one was to demonstrate to myself and the ones around me that I was a man and learning how to be one. So I joined and immediately regretted it. It was a hideous dispiriting experience to be part of this machine that was really anti-human on most levels. Although I didn't see it that way I just knew that it hurt and was miserable and where they were just digging us down in every way they could and I finally came to see what the process was about, how they operate, why they do what they do and what their rationale was for it; but still it was a pretty lousy experience.

After being in San Diego and advanced infantry training at Pendleton I was sent to Okinawa with the 3rd Marines, so I got to see what an occupying force that doesn't identify itself as an occupying force, what impact it has on the local community and I was then sent to Japan for a while where I saw a little less distinct version of the same thing.

CM: So you weren't in Vietnam?

MF: No I was in the Marines between Korea and Vietnam I was very fortunate in that. When we were on the ship on the way to Okinawa, we were told that we were changing course to go into Indochina as it was then known, and if in fact those orders were to be followed we were to prop up a friendly regime in that country so it would have been one of the earliest deployments of U.S. troops in Vietnam at the time, but fortunately for me they changed the orders.

CM: What do you think of the current occupation of Iraq and what would you say to those who never served in the military but seem happy to send others to fight the war?

MF: Well that's a well put question. I opposed the war from the beginning. I formed a group called Artists United to Win without War (co-founded with Robert Greenwald) to question the Bush administration and the media's slavish repetition of all the Bush propaganda and I'm firmly an antiwar person. I'd like to make clear I don't consider myself a pacifist because as I indicated I joined the service, I would defend my country if it came to that. I have high regard for pacifists, many of whom are some of my closest friends but it's not a view that I can personally adopt... But I think the attack on Afghanistan was done incorrectly and inappropriately and I thought the invasion of Iraq was a hideous demonstration of the kind of desire for empire and the kind of bullying behavior that the United States has been known for in recent years.