Alan Alda is on the promotion trail for his new book.
The topic of this publication might surprise you though.
Rather than the normal celeb autobiography he has written a book on communication. It is described as a sharp and informative guide to communication.
Following his roles in film and TV it seems Alda found a passion for science. He even founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science in 2009 which trains science professional to talk to the public clearer.
The title does sound like Alda. Called If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? sounds like a line from his character Captain Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H.
The actor admits he learned his communication skills from being an actor. Talking to The Washingtonian he said he didn’t even know he was learning about it at the time.
“You can stand there and say lines to the other person, but unless you’re open to what the other person is going through, they’re not making you say the lines, you’re just saying them because they’re in the script,” Alda said. “It’s dead, it looks like acting, it doesn’t look like life. And life isn’t like life when all you’re doing is waiting for the other person to finish talking. This turns out to apply to everybody. Almost every situation involves communication.”
It was the relationship with other actors on the set of M*A*S*H that helped.
“We knew we had to be close as characters and yet none of us had ever met before. We started immediately spending time with each other every minute we could on the set. And whereas most actors go back to their dressing rooms and read or study their lines between shots, we would sit in a circle and make fun of one another and make each other laugh. That brought us together in a way that was unusual, in a way I had never seen before. It was carried over into the performances in front of the camera. When I work on a play, I try to do the same thing now. If we can sit together laughing for an hour before a performance, that’s the best preparation.”
This is not the first of Alda’s books to be published. Other titles include Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, and Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself.