The Playwright, the Warlord and ‘The Beast’

William Mastrosimone traveled to Afghanistan and wrote a classic film

by MATTHEW GAULT

In 1981, an American writer sneaked into Afghanistan following a dream. He survived—barely—and wrote a play that eventually became a movie. The Beast, which debuted in 1988, is about a Soviet tank crew that finds itself all alone in hostile Afghanistan.

It’s a masterpiece—one inspired by a terrible, terrible war.

The Soviet Union invaded landlocked Afghanistan in 1979. The campaign would last eight years and kill nearly 15,000 Russians … and more than 80,000 Afghans.

At the time of the invasion, New Jersey native William Mastrosimone was 34 years old and a playwright. He had graduated from Rutgers University a few years before. He didn’t know much about Afghanistan.

In 1980, a New York City theater staged his first play. The Woolgatherer is a dark comedy about two desperate people searching for love in South Philadelphia. Critics and audiences loved it.

“It was the first time I made a living as a writer,” Mastrosimone tells War Is Boring.

One day during rehearsal, Mastrosimone grew restless. “I got to walking around and reading The New York Times,” he says. He noticed a picture of an Afghan tribal leader and read the accompanying interview.

“‘We’re going to fight to the last man, to the last bullet,’” Mastrisomine quotes from the interview. “‘Right now, my men are eating tree bark to stay alive.’”

The playwright saw something in the mujaheddin leader. “It just reminded me so much, of the men who followed [George] Washington,” he explains. “I was really keyed into the psyche of that leader.”

His interest became an obsession. “It wasn’t too long after that that I became less interested in [The Woolgatherer] and rehearsal than I became in Afghanistan.”

The obsession affected his sleep. “When I’m really hooked on something—on an idea or a script or a story—I dream about it,” he says.

One night, he awoke from a dream and scribbled a drawing on the back of a yellow legal pad.

“In the center of it was a very simple tank,” he says. “It’s surrounded by stick figures throwing spears and shooting arrows at it. I woke up in the morning and I had no memory of doing this.”

“And I just knew I was going [to Afghanistan]. I felt like I had to witness this fight between a superpower and a 12th-century power.”

One problem, Mastrosimone had no idea how to get there.