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Robin Williams, RIP
Like a lot of comedy writers my age, we remember the astonishing moment we saw Robin Williams, playing the alien life-form Mork from the planet Ork on ABC-TV’s hit comedy Mork & Mindy, drink from a glass using his finger. It was like someone opened up a musty room and let the fresh air in. The planet Ork was, apparently, sort of egg-based — Mork’s spaceship was an egg-looking thing — so when Mork encounters, for the first time, an egg carton, he reacts with horror.
“Fly!” he cries at the assembled eggs in the carton. ”Be free!”
He throws them in the air. And of course they fall and crack on the counter. It was a lightbulb moment for me. I remember everything about that moment — the way he looked when he saw them in the carton, the cheerleading “Fly! Be free!”, then the arc of the eggs, and finally the way he looked when he saw them go splat on the counter.
I suspect a lot of comedy writers around my age remember that exact scene.
And we remember the way we’d stay up to watch him on Johnny Carson — watch him riff hilariously, just this side of the censor, on all sorts of topics like a demon-possessed madman.
Some of us listened to his first comedy album, Reality….What a Concept over and over and over again, trying to capture his weird blend of hippie nerd comedy — smart, unstructured, improvised, and even sweetly sentimental.
Robin Williams, when he appeared on our TV screens — and for most of us, that’s where he appeared first — redefined what a television comedy could be. He made the tightly-scripted, highly-supervised television sitcom seem, for the first time, like it could be something weirder and funnier and more dangerous. He went on, as we all know, to superstardom in the movies — but for me, he’ll always be the guy who pushed the edges of the television screen out past where they’d ever been. And he didn’t do it with language or sexual situations or whatever counts as “edgy” today. He did it, instead, with genius. Genius that was contained (barely) by the limits of the half-hour form.
Genius, it turns out, that was also contained by great personal pain. Robin Williams committed suicide this morning, and the next few days will probably be a nauseating — but maybe useful — parade of shrinks and other experts talking about depression and suicide — but what I will choose to remember is that I saw him on television and he drank with his finger and threw eggs in the air and called out “Fly! Be free!” And I will be wishing that he, too, could have figured out a way, despite his pain and depression and demons and whatever else it was, to fly and be free without coming crashing to the ground.
Robin Williams, RIP.
http://youtu.be/v9g1yRXF8I8
Published in General
So many of our greatest artists are tormented souls. They bring so much joy, but have so little themselves. My two favorite portrayals he did in film were, What Dreams May Come and Bicentennial Man. Neither film was a success, but he was in both films that incredibly sensitive caring person, a romantic and deeply human. I loved his comedy, loved watching him on stage. Though I am deeply sorry for his passing, I am glad to have shared the world during his life time.
If there is one word that encapsulates Robin Williams brand of humor it is surprise. Be it drinking water via a finger or setting eggs to fly free only to watch them fail, surprise and the outrageous was his hallmark. Even in ending his life he has managed to surprise his audience. I can’t help but think that somewhere in someway he has once again managed to get the last laugh. Time will tell.
The scary thing about depression driven suicide is that trying to find a “why” or a “reason” never leads to a satisfactory answer. Judging from many interviews with the survivors of depression influenced suicide, it’s often a single irrational moment.
For example – http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/13/jumpers
Even if someone suffering from depression knows it’s absurd to feel that way, the knowledge often adds to the depression. Every failure adds up, including the failure to not pull yourself out of it.
The deeper the depression, the worse the decision making becomes. Which leads to worse life circumstances, which leads to greater depression. And unfortunately, too often, people give in to that one single, terrible decision.
And it doesn’t make sense to those around the depressed person, because true clinical depression doesn’t make sense.
My favorite Robin Williams role is POPEYE.
It was a movie full of creative talent that deserved a much better director than Robert Altman (he’s the worst and you’ll never convince me otherwise). In my opinion the movie is made watchable by the performances and music, but mostly because of Robin Williams.
Popeye seems like an impossible role to play, yet Williams is superb in it. He infuses Popeye with warmth and dimension, and still keeps him undeniably… Popeye.
Agree completely, he was undeniably Popeye.
Two other redeeming qualities about that movie:
As a mental health professional, there is so much I could say about this sad story. As a mental health professional, I prefer not to.
My Robin Williams anecdotes. Holy City Zoo comedy club in San Francisco, 1983. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_City_Zoo The Zoo was a very small club (78 people per Wikipedia though that seem generous…) where Robin Williams did lot of his early work. One night when I was there with my sister and some friends from college (Santa Clara U) Robin Williams walked in. We were in the front row which was about 1 ft. away from the stage. It was the manager’s birthday and Robin came to help her celebrate. He did a very funny set, and made fun of me in my horizontal striped shirt saying he thought it made me look like Charlie Brown. He also did a bit on misunderstood music lyrics and enjoyed my sister’s comment that she thought the song “Do you like Pina Colada’s” was “Do you like bean enchiladas” and he asked if he could use that in his act. Anyway, great set and funny man. And we did get to witness him enjoying some cocaine in the back room (had to pass through to bathroom). In a more recent note, I manage a park that adjoins his Sonoma / Napa estate (not where he killed himself) — currently on the market for $29 MM. The day he died, I suggested to two different groups of tourist that they do the hike to “Robin Williams Estate Overlook” our unofficial name for a picnic spot. Bad timing…. Loved his work and his quick mind, but always felt he had a desperate need for the limelight. Very sad day.
Rereading William styron’s Darkness Visible, a haunting memoir of depression.
He will always be Mork from Ork for me too. Just sooooo damn funny. RIP
I was saddened when I heard. He was a genius but above all he seemed to have a really good heart. His comedy was not one of tearing people or things or institutions down but of a sudden enlightment. There was a gentleness in his comedy. I thought I had read somewhere he had some depression problems, but I had not heard about his alcohol and drug use and his finacial problems. Whenever I come across someone who commits suicide from a despair, either stemming from a clinical depression or from just giving up, I get the wish to have hugged them and tell them beforehand that whatever the problem it can be addressed and fixed. No problem is that great to end one’s life. May he now rest in peace.
My wife and I watched it a while back. It was strange, disturbing, and I thought “Why did he make this movie?”
I adored “What Dreams May Come”. The concept of Heaven as a place of art was interesting and the rendition was gorgeous, while the power of love to redeem us, even from despair, was a beautiful message.
If I understand correctly, Catholic doctrine has it that the only unforgiveable sin is despair, because it rejects God and denies God’s power to redeem us. And so it was in the movie’s depiction of Hell – all those hopeless, self-absorbed souls lost in the swamp of despair. When the protagonist decided to remain with his wife there if he couldn’t get her to leave, it ignited the last spark of love in her soul, and broke her preoccupation with her own despair long enough for the two of them to escape. There was dark, disturbing imagery, but it was essential to the story.
How sad it is that Williams despaired so as to take his own life. We will all miss him. I believe that God understands mental illness, however, and can forgive us our despair, knowing where it comes from. May Robin Williams live forever in the light of God.
I also suspect that Robin Williams felt like a colossal f***up. During his career he made mountains of money, and frittered so much of it away. I don’t think that it was having to work for a paycheck that depressed him as much as the perception of how badly he had ruined things for himself.