I won’t go into details of my relationship with Robin because I’ve spelled them out many times already on this blog, but I was in improv classes with him. And after class would get something to eat with him and others in the group. Later I had a movie idea I thought he’d be great for and he invited me up to his ranch in Northern California to discuss it, but the timing never worked out -- he went off to do some other project, and I was involved with something else.
The thing I always said about Robin (and they touch briefly on this) was that he had an on-and-off switch. During class he was the zany brilliant Robin we all know, but later in the restaurant he was quiet as a church mouse. Funny but at the time I almost felt a little cheated. It’s like if you were hanging with Frank Sinatra in the ‘50s (and he couldn’t get you girls) you’d at least want to hear him sing.
But after watching the documentary I got a new perspective. Looking back, I’m now somewhat thankful he wasn’t “on.” Because my reaction to the two-hour profile was that it was exhausting. Robin was truly a force of nature and it seems almost tragically inevitable that a light that bright would burn itself out, but it was comforting to see he had quiet moments along the way and that his life wasn’t just one super intense fever dream.
The end of course is so sad. For the extraordinary gift that he was bestowed it came with a very steep price. This documentary is filled with rare footage (even stuff with my improv classmates Andy Goldberg, Wendy Cutler, Paul Willson, and Susan Elliott), and even revelations. Like everyone else, I always assumed Robin left his first wife for his son’s nanny, but it turns out he and his wife had been separated for a year before he began a relationship with the nanny.
If you love Robin Williams (and who doesn’t), treat yourself to this profile of a once-in-a-lifetime entertainer.
28 comments :
I don't have HBO, but just last week I finished the biography "Robin." Shortly after that, I was inspired to find old Mork & Mindy episodes on YouTube to introduce to my children (he's the voice of the genie!!). They are hooked.
We saw Mrs. Doubtfire shortly afterwards. After this, the number of quality kid friendly Robin Williams material starts to wane, but they will have a lifetime to watch some of his more adult material that still has me in stitches.
I was devastated when he died, but as time went on and we learned more about what was going on with him, I realized what a gift it was that he ended it. How awful it would have been for him to go through the decline and not be as he once was.
He was a once in a life time talent and we were so incredibly lucky to have seen it as it happened.
Pam, St. Louis
The incurable and cruel Lewy Body Dementia that afflicted Robin Williams robbed the world of a genius for whom suicide was understandably the only option in facing a bleak future that would have just seen him continue to deteriorate. Of all the people in the world to get such a horrible disease, it's perverse that such a beautiful soul got it.
I wish he was with us and making genius jokes about Trump and Sean Spicer and the rest of the ghouls. I wish he'd got to make more movies and seen his kids get married and have their own kids.
As the world endures the manbaby in the White House, if only we had Robin Williams to make us laugh and give us hope until the day that asshole is no longer president.
This is perhaps the first time that I disagree with you about a film/show.
Obviously the clips of Robin are wonderful and it's worth watching the documentary for that alone, but I felt that the project lacked a clear story arc and left a lot of facts just hanging there. I didn't feel as drawn in as I should have.
Then again, I'm now holding every documentary up to Won't You Be My Neighbor....
I saw Robin Williams at Massey Hall (in Toronto) about thirty-odd years ago, just as his career was taking off. His opening act was Bobby McFerrin, and (since the audience was primed for Robin) when he came on stage, and commenced his vocalese, his unique style was not going over well. He continued, but the audience was restless (and rude, I thought), when Robin wandered on stage, and gently chastised the crowd for not giving Bobby a chance. He and Bobby riffed off one another for a bit, and then Robin left, and, for the rest of his set, Bobby had the audience in his hand. I thought it was wonderfully kind of Robin Williams to support his friend that way.
I will be interested to see if it has any comments from Pam Dauber. I heard he was quite mean to her. That was maybe the cocaine talking.
He was a national treasure in any case.
I only wish only more attention could be brought to Lewy Body Dementia. Estelle Getty of the GOLDEN GIRLS also died from the disease.
Apparently as it progressed with her, her former costars would visit but she would not remember them or even remember appearing on the series at all.
This entire area of disease... Parkinson's, ALS, Lewy Body, and Alzheimer's all need more work to fight and eliminate. So sad.
I like Robin Williams. Wished you had the chance to make that movie with him.
I known 'Family Guy' ridicules everyone, but they went extra lengths to be nasty about Robin Williams and to some extent Tom Cruise.
Some said few writers on the show hated him, some said Seth hated him. So they took every chance to take a shot at him.
Jealous, I guess.
I hate that he's gone, but I understand why he didn't want to live out his days in a wheelchair like Richard Pryor. And I'm so envious that you knew him, Ken.
Nick Alexander, your kids would probably love POPEYE. It got bad reviews but I liked it a lot, and Harry Nilsson's songs are charming.
@Nick Alexander. Check out an animated film called "Everyone's Hero" (2006). It was produced and co-directed by Christopher Reeve, and Robin gives his vocal talents - without credit - to help his friend's project that was ultimately released after Christopher's death. As most of you probably know, Robin & Chrs were roommates at Williams College back in the day.
I guess I'm the opposite of Ken in this story. I know a few people who rarely use their off=switch, and I always feel sorry for them that they can't let go of the act long enough to be human when they're offstage and hanging out with people - and a bit cheated that I don't have the opportunity to get to know the real person.
wg
Agreed. But sadly, as cliched as it sounds, governments of the world spend more money on things that kill people than on research to cure people. The fact that we still haven't got cures for most cancers and for diseases like Parkinson's but have ever more powerful ways to kill on an industrial scale is an indictment against the human race.
I was a fan of R.W., but through the years his act did get kind of old and repetitive. Almost like a form letter. He'd use the same riffs every time; just insert different nouns. I suppose FAMILY GUY could have gone a little easier on Robin, but I feel they did an excellent job of deconstructing his act and exposing his patterns.
M.B.
Approximately 1 billion dollars a year is spent on Medical Research for Alzheimer’s Disease in the US. There are over 500 open trials going on. Some diseases have no cure, unfortunately. When asked if science will ever find a cure, the head of AD Research at Mayo Clinic said he wasn’t betting on it. It is much the same for LB Dementia. Thank goodness most people who get AD are quite old.
@blinky: Actually, Pam Dawber is very prominently featured in the documentary, but she has nothing but kind words to say, and in her final clip, she just tears up when talking about his death, and can't continue. She mentions that she did a guest appearance on his last TV show, The Crazy Ones, and noticed immediately that something was wrong, that he looked like a "wax figure" at times. She also provides an eyewitness account of how shook Robin was after John Belushi died, because Belushi seemed indestructible, and how that scared Robin sober for a long time.
@Mike Bloodworth: I felt sort of the same way about his comedy. When he first hit it big, I thought he was hilarious, but re-watching those old specials, I find that it's less funny than it is exhausting. I think his greater legacy will be as an actor, because he was terrific when challenged to be. His performance in One Hour Photo, for example, was legitimately unnerving.
He had his moments for me but by and large I found him unfunny and borderline annoying.
Content and energy are both crucial to comedy. There may be no "right" answer for the correct ratio, but Williams was too often 95 energy and 5 content. Offstage, he seemed like a very sweet person who was properly beloved by those who knew him.
I saw it and felt the pain of a genius who everybody, like you, always wanted to be on. It had to be draining, as the documentary showed time after time. His exchanges with Jonathan Winters, his idol and the one guy who could make his dad laugh, were always a treat for me. I wished he could have had a longer life like Winters, who had his own demons to fight but came to grips with them and found a new creative outlet in painting, and realized a new chapter in his career. Given his medical prognosis, he saw no other way to end his pain (emotional and physical). It was interesting the second wife, the nanny, wasn't interviewed.
@MikeKPa: the second wife was busy with the Professor.
I loved Mork and Mindy (though it got stupid toward the end) but I so enjoyed the other actors corpsing because Robin Williams went off on some tangent. To me that was just so brilliant. He was so clever.
I will have to try to find this documentary, as I don't get HBO
Nick, if you get it, I believe MORK AND MINDY runs on Antenna TV. At least it used to. It's worth checking out to get perhaps a better viewing experience than what you might get on YouTube.
On the subject of documentaries, run (don't walk) to see Three Identical Strangers. It's not the film you think it's going to be, and it's VERY well done!
Last night on Johnny Carson, Antenna TV, Robin was his only guest. He was there to promote The World According to Garp, so that was 1982. Was a wonderful 20+ minutes with RW & JC playing off one another. A wonderous and brilliant comedy mind!
When I realized in 2014 that Williams had a Twitter account, I followed it in hope of seeing what funny stuff he would put out there. Instead, it was rather tame, mostly mentions of upcoming projects, birthday wishes to loved ones, etc. The only one that played on his career was wishing the US soccer team good luck in their World Cup playoff game: he posted a picture of him playing Teddy Roosevelt in "A Night at the Museum" next to a picture of Teddy "Goalsevelt" (a US fan who dresses like Teddy at games). Looking back, I wonder if that was from his "off" switch activated, or from his disease taking hold.
I think if he just did serious drama movies he still would've had a fine career. But he was at his best in interviews; while watching YouTube clips of him doing the late night circuit, one host (Fallon?) called him "The World's Greatest Talk Show Guest". Yep.
"blinky said...
I will be interested to see if it has any comments from Pam Dauber. I heard he was quite mean to her. That was maybe the cocaine talking."
Pam is a talking head throughout the documentary, and speaks of Robin only with love. Don't believe rumors.
Robin and I were friends. I never thought of him having an "On" and "Off" switch. Rather, I thought of Robin as a sponge. He had two settings: "Squeeze" and "Absorb." When Robin was "Off" he was on "absorb." He shut up and listened intently! I was at many parties with Robin (And did a lot of drugs with him; it's amazing either of us lived to 35) and Robin was never the life of the party. Rather, he'd find the oddest person there, sit with them, get them talking, and sit and listen with rapt attention. He was absorbing what they said, who they were and how they behaved.
Onstage, he hit "Squeeze" and it all came shooting out of him.
The Robin I knew was kind and generous, never full of himself, never a star complex. I loved him. And I thought the documentary was excellent. (There was a far less excellent one on REELZ, called Robin Williams: Behind Closed Doors which I hang onto merely because there are two photos of Robin and I in the film.)
I just wish Robin had been in better movies late in his career. I guess the Night At The Museum movies were successful but I thought, this is what he's reduced to doing? Supporting roles? He also made some awful family films like RV and at least one of his final films went direct to video. His wife once remarked that she wished Robin had only made half the films he did make but she wouldn't say which ones she thought were stinkers.
Special mention should also be given to Good Morning, Vietnam and Dead Poets Society, which was produced by Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas, who usually did TV.
When it comes to animation, if a performer and a character come together with the artists in a truly great Disney feature, it's likely to last forever. Lots of great actors, famous and not-as-well-known, voiced characters, but only a few are inextricably connected, one to another. A few examples are Phil Harris as Baloo and Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter.
Only Robin Williams can ever be the Genie (though there were and will be very fine sound alikes) and that role combined everything he did in one performance, switched on and off. Yes, most of us know about the conflicts that came about concerning backstage finances at the time, but all of that ultimately fades and a classic film and performance lives longer than any of us. How the artist and the audience connect is emotionally charged. It's hard to watch Aladdin without getting a little verklempt.
Recently, I was rearranging some shelves full of my childhood books, and realized that I still have the copy of "The Robin Williams Scrapbook" that I bought from Scholastic Book Services in late '79/early '80 (which fact gives my age away more? Don't answer that!). It's a slim paperback volume with large type and no words past 6th grade level, if ya gets my drifts. There's a big section of B&W photos in the center, including one of Robin, Christopher Reeve (sweet mother of Bowie, WHAT a gorgeous man), and John Ritter, on stage doing improv at Catch a Rising Star. They looked so young and happy, my eyes welled up... must've been the dust... can't be how hard I crushed on three of them...
Then I turned to some pictures of him and his first wife Valerie on the beach in Malibu. He's wearing a Speedo and-- no shade, no read, all love-- but holy cats, was he ever hairy, Mary! Not that it was a bad thing; I love me some fur on a man, but like my old drag/costume mentor used to say, "Darling, it's like he's the Wolf Man, and it's a quarter to twelve."
I hope he is truly at peace, because as wonderful as he was, it always seemed to me (even as a kid) that it must've been exhausting to be him all the time. Those of you that actually knew him must feel his loss even more than we strangers that still miss him, and I wish you strength.
Cheers, thanks a lot,
Storm
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