THB #548: Death (Special Guest Star, Donald Sutherland)

The passing of Donald Sutherland hit me hard the morning.

He surely couldn’t pick me out in a line-up, but his life is a bit “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon” for me, all the more ironic as he was the lead in Six Degrees of Separation, the movie of the stage play that brought Will Smith to the movies… for the third time, but the first serious time.

M*A*S*H was Sutherland’s worldwide breakout and the introduction to the world, after a long TV career, of Robert Altman, whose work was singular enough to truly deserve the too frequently used twist of a director’s work, “esque” ad in “Altman-esque.” When the movie came out, I was 5… and the TV series came along when I was 7. It wasn’t until cable landed that I would know and appreciate the movie above and beyond the series.