Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist (Hardcover)

by Mike Farrell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In this honest autobiography, Farrell, who played B.J. Hunnicutt in the TV series M*A*S*H, provides intimate accounts of growing up working-class in the shadows of wealthy Hollywood, overcoming personal demons as he starts his acting career and finding happiness in the popular sitcom and what he describes as a supportive and cohesive cast and crew. Throughout the series, Farrell also began to pursue an interest in politics and human rights that took him to Cambodia, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador, and his passionate descriptions of the human rights abuses in those countries show why Farrell currently is considered one of Hollywood's most prominent activists. He moves easily between diarylike descriptions (which sometimes are dry) of his further travels as an activist after M*A*S*H* ended in 1983, and a look at his present-day career as both an actor and producer. Best of all, his chapter on his involvement in the film Patch Adams is one of the best looks at "game-playing, duplicity, ineptitude, wasted money, manipulation and ass-covering" behind the production of a major Hollywood film. (Mar.)
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UPI
Mike Farrell - raw, tenacious, principled

Comment: SpiritLinks

I thought I had a sense of M*A*S*H co-star Mike Farrell, actor, director, activist, but reading Chapter 4. The House, in his autobiography "Just Call Me Mike," was like clawing my way out of the belly of a crocodile.

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Book Review: Just Call Me Mike: a journey to actor and activist by Mike Farrell, Akashic Books/RDV Books; 2007; 368 pages

The range of accolades for "Just Call Me Mike": from Governor Mario Cuomo; Rabbi Leonard I Beerman; Ambassador Robert E White; Bill O'Reilly; Sister Helen Prejean; and numerous others piques one's curiosity beyond resistance. Comments are explicit and precise, yet it's hard to imagine so many good qualities in one person. At the end of Alan Alda's glowing list, he adds, "He's really kind of irritating."

So is it as Julian Bond says, "sometimes funny but always serious development of a committed artist's life? Or, as Donald Spoto says, "an exciting page-turner, a modern spiritual odyssey ... an account of one man's courageous battle against injustice in all its nefarious forms?" Of course, it is all that and surprisingly more.

The story, also rich in American social history, flows from beginning to end with emotion, spirit, intellect, and wisdom. Ambassador Joseph Wilson calls it "a riveting tale of personal, professional, and civic growth from sallow California kid to mature citizen committed to a more just social order."

The first thing we learn about Mike is that he does not want to be categorized. "Pigeonholing does the public's thinking for them, and insults them in the process.... I'd rather not start off with a label that sets someone's teeth on edge."

"Say I'm a 'liberal' and some think they know my views on everything. They start dialing the phone or writing an angry letter without even knowing what I'll say. Or others think we agree, when we might not."

"I've been around the block a few times now, and I think I've learned some things. A lot of these things have surprised me, and many have been painful, but mostly I've learned how lucky I am. This is some world we live in. I've been privileged to see a fair amount of it, and the more I experience, the more I realize the special place we inhabit in it."

Mike sees the big picture as, "what we aspire to and yearn for and what we owe to each other. It's about making the invisible visible, about salvaging those thought disposable, about recognizing and reassuring those who think they don't count, or perhaps fear the don't actually exist."

That said and elaborated upon in The Preface, Mike leads us by word into West Hollywood, according to the address of his childhood. Mike lived in a "nice" home, but in what his mother called the "shanty Irish" as opposed to the "lace-curtain Irish." Clothes for Mike, his brother and two sisters were bought at "The Old Store," aka Goodwill.

Mike was a shy child who pined for his dad's acceptance. "I was afraid I didn't exist without his approval. He simply terrified me. I hated living in fear all the time, but the awareness that pain awaited any misstep--not necessarily physical pain, but certainly humiliation and rejection--hung like a shroud over everything, and it took years to recognize the rage it produced. It has much to do, I know, with the degree to which I simply cannot tolerate injustice."

With traditional Irish Catholic rigidity, flared temper and unspoken expectations, beer was his father's chosen therapy. "I understand now that working himself sick to put food on the table and a roof over our heads was his way of showing he loved us. ... I get that now, after years of struggling and thinking and working and therapizing and fuming and weeping over it."

The void was not filled by Mike's mother. She "showed up," often humming, and she cried "notoriously" easily, but she offered her children no loving words or pats or hugs or touches. "God it was lonely."

Mike's ambition to be an actor came out of a desire to fill the hole. "Sneaking peeks at [his sister] Sally's movie magazines in hopes of seeing an ad for bras or girdle exposed me, pun intended, to another fantasy world. People became famous for being actors, some of them young people. And with fame, it was clear from those slick pages, came attention--lots of it--and what must certainly be love."

"Well, hell, went my secret thoughts, I can probably do that."

Mike skims fast through his childhood but provides us with some juicy details. He had a crush on Nataha Gurdin, better known as Natalie Wood, and reveals how painfully shy he was in their one encounter. When he finally asks out another girl, somehow I read in permission (forgive me, Mike) to set aside compassion, and laugh through tears at his first date--as much of it as has not "receded into the mists of memory."

In the early chapters, Mike's story breaks and simultaneously heals my heart as he emerges triumphantly into himself. I have never read an account so emotionally revealing, honest, insightful and beautiful.

But cast out your assumptions that Mike is just soft, he was also Series Honor Man in the Marine Corp - the one man in boot camp promoted to Private First Class. Those who have served in the military will empathize with the misery and team spirit. Those who have not served will rejoice in their escape.

Chapter 4. The House, is central to the rest of Mike's life. Officially called the Manhattan Project, the basic premise of the therapy-oriented self-help program is that we each need the same things: love, attention and respect. Mike