RIP Robin Williams

Aw man

http://www.marinsheriff.org/uploads/854.pdf

Someone posted it on Twitter. No confirmation?

oof

from EW
Oscar winner and comedian Robin Williams died this morning at 63. While his publicist wouldn’t confirm that it was a suicide, they did issue this statement. “Robin Williams passed away this morning. He has been battling severe depression of late. This is a tragic and sudden loss. The family respectfully asks for their privacy as they grieve during this very difficult time.”

whoah

he always seemed like a deeply sad guy to me

There was always a desperation and sadness in his funniest roles; it's a shame there were correspondences. RIP.

Rest in peace.

fucking hell

holy shit

:(

i wanna watch mrs doubtfire

RIP

oh i know he made some really bad movies along the way but I always really liked him and this is super sad

yknow, I haven't liked him in much recently but I loved his Theodore Roosevelt in the Night at the Museum movies. I found him v endearing

THE FISHER KING

oh goddamn it

I can't remember him in much but I know I've seen him in plenty. Transcends most of his films. RIP

Fisher King was always my favorite of his

recent Louie season before last was terrific. And Insomnia...

Fisher King is fucking rad, so great

I highly recommend the Marc Maron interview with him from a few years back on his WTF podcast. You'll probably have to pay to listen to it now or steal it but it's really really good. He was v quiet and humble within himself, such a contrast to his big stage persona

Thought he was very good in One Hour Photo and Insomnia, which appeared almost back-to-back. You could see him trying for something different, and indeed, they were two of the politest movie psychotics I can think of.

I had that thing younger folks must have with Bob Saget, where I knew him from TV when I was 8-9 and then heard his raunchy stand-up a year or two later.

The World According To Garp and Mork & Mindy were my childhood faves :(

World According to Garp probably his best role. Sorry to hear he's gone. I agree that he always had a tears-of-a-clown thing about him. His persona was so manic, even without the drugs, that it's easy to intuit a flipside.

Unexpected and sad, although I didn't like his comedy or acting.

x-posts His stand up was so raunchy!

Fisher king is amazing and I love The Birdcage forever and I also like Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets (shut up I was the right age for it at the time) and when he was on he was great.

Moscow on the Hudson is a wonderful picture that I talked up a lot when Mazursky died. He stays in character and uses an accent to better effect than RoboStreep did at the time. His late nineties blockbuster run was horrifying -- a sign that the guy really would've sung "Mammy" if we'd asked.

really couldn't stand any of his Oscar-nominated roles tbh

He singlehandedly made Good Will Hunting for me, he seemed to tap into a real heavy sense of loss...

A family friend ended up at a dinner hosted by Emeril and attended by Williams maybe 10 years ago and I remember her saying that the two of them got shitfaced and just ripped on one another all night and that the entire table was in stitches and that he was genuinely amazingly funny in person. I always kind of wished I could see that.

He was really great in GWH!

to me he gave the most touching performance in The Birdcage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgutlT2X4gM

Ned retweeted this & it cracked me up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35YHvoNXxAA

My faves were always his first two, Popeye and The World According to Garp, though its been years since I've seen either. Scanning IMDb, the only recent-ish things of his I'd seen were the episode of Law & Order: SVU that he did (inspired by the same case that inspired the movie Compliance) and Bobcat Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad. The latter, for anyone who knows it, now feels disquietingly topical.

Kinda expected him to always be around. RIP.

I really liked him in World's Greatest Dad, though the movie itself went off the rails.

he was a really not-very-good mimic from what little I've seen; those who know, how much of a selling point were the wacky voices at the outset?

man. A half dozen of his films were on constant rotation in my childhood. Could never feel any great antipathy to even his worst material due to that + the fact that his missteps were all borne from very good intentions.

yeah i was not wild about 'world's greatest dad' as a whole but his performance was really good.

dude could be so affecting in movies (otm re him in world's greatest dad, esp the first half). he'd been really open about his need to keep busy, and i wondered what he was going to do now that his show got canceled. seriously sad that he couldn't figure out a way to survive.

imo his impressions were more about abandoning himself to the stream of consciousness than the impressions themselves. The madness of a hyperactive thinker.

otm

Damn

JAAAAAACK

;_;

How does Aladdin hold up for you guys? To me it's a decent and fun G-rated synthesis of his standup routine.

watched it within the past year w my daughter - it's okay (a portent of awful things to come in the voiceover industry, but that's not his fault)

this is hitting hard.

way more than anybody who made an album.
i guess it's an age thing, but robin as mork, hit home for me on a scale i had never experienced before and wouldn't again until 'cheers'.
and then, every time, every SINGLE time i saw or heard him interviewed, i felt even more connected.
he never ever came over as a movie star player, but a man with a passion and a love for his art and a need to make an audience laugh.

rip robin, thank you for the good times.

He was very funny stepping out of character during a commercial break on Larry Sanders (after doing manic stuff for a few minutes--I just wasn't a fan of that side of him): "Hey, it's a business, get used to it--blow me."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG1YlnrQAnM

he had a helluva of a nineties run: from Mrs Doubtfire through 2000 the guy was a huge box office star.

I have mixed feelings about him overall - obviously talented, could be funny and moving on occasion (when the material suited him), but there was always this straining desperation about him, and a lot of his stuff was crap (90s blockbusters as noted). He's been a fixture since my childhood (Mork, Garp, standup comedy benefits); I feel like I always wanted to like him more than I actually did, his trying-too-hard-ness often seemed to get in the way.

xp

Don't like Aladdin. Especially now, it feels like it inspired/anticipated much of the Shrek-style obnoxiousness that came to dominate too much animation in recent years. For years, it has been my personal policy to ask anyone who claims to like the film if they've seen the 1940 The Thief of Bagdad.

I have mixed feelings about him overall - obviously talented, could be funny and moving on occasion (when the material suited him), but there was always this straining desperation about him, and a lot of his stuff was crap (90s blockbusters as noted). He's been a fixture since my childhood (Mork, Garp, standup comedy benefits); I feel like I always wanted to like him more than I actually did, his trying-too-hard-ness often seemed to get in the way.

yeah that mawkish note he couldn't resist hitting. He was the textbook example of comedians who think they need Serious Roles

last 3 posts are where I'm at with this guy

didn't like a lot of his work but always dug the guy rip

suicide is devastating and i hope he rests in peace and that his family makes it through this okay. i have very mixed feelings about robin williams -- if it were just about him as a performer, that'd be one thing, but in his stand-up days he stole so many jokes from comedians that they didn't even want to go on stage if they knew he was in the building. that's stealing from the livelihoods of other creative professionals even when you could just fucking HIRE a joke writer = not cool.

i will chalk it up to mental illness.

Just occurred to me: was he the only box office star who didn't mind supporting roles and cameos? I'm thinking of his awesome bit in Dead Again as this foulmouthed doctor.

his missteps were all borne from very good intentions.

well said. he seemed like a wonderful man.

xpost

Bill Murray did quite a few of these too, but yeah, its rare.

RIP - I musta saw Moscow on the Hudson at least 4 times in the theaters - it may have been the movie that put me on the road to loving film. Fisher King is sublime, and his raunchy stand up was in a class of its own. So sad he's not around to get the laugh out of us anymore.

I don't think of Bill Murray as big box office by the mid and late nineties though. Williams just couldn't stop working.

i wanna watch that one episode of louie where they are together in the strip club

That dinner scene in The Birdcage is a masterpiece of sustained comedy ("And a man's wealth is measured by the size of his cock. Excuse me.").

Only dramatic roles I dug of his were Good Will Hunting and Fisher King, but yeah, he struck me as fairly one-note (that one note being a pensive soft-spoken "ohh"). Haven't heard his standup in ages, but I remember finding it hilarious at the time. I also remember it being refreshingly and shockingly (for the time) anti-Reagan/conservative.

shit. RIP

Williams just couldn't stop working.

Kinda like Updike, maybe.

He was the textbook example of comedians who think they need Serious Roles

i have to disagree with this. dude was a classically trained actor, not just somebody who came up through the chuckle-huts and then got pretentious. he had a mawkish side, also had a "i need to be working constantly" side, and between the two there's a lot of dross. but i don't think you get to like Moscow On The Hudson AND look at him as someone who didn't accept his station.

Mum took me to see Popeye when it came out in the theaters, so I was maybe 4 or 5 (underwater octopus scene scared the CRAP out of me). I loved Mork & Mindy from the moment I was old enough to talk, I think. I put this on FB but there's something about the sound of his voice, just hearing him talking is like hearing my childhood. And when he can make me laugh as an adult, it's like revisiting that place. I think that's why I liked his Teddy Roosevelt, corny as it was. It just felt good that he could make me laugh still.

I've always resented The Birdcage for reasons that were not at all the fault of the film: watching a film teeming with flamingly gay caricatures with your parents and the hetero best friend who you were nursing a huge secret crush on was not the most comfortable way for a closeted 15-year-old to spend an evening. I should give it another shot.

i've avoided the birdcage but mostly cuz i hate the visual style of later mike nichols movies

i have to disagree with this. dude was a classically trained actor, not just somebody who came up through the chuckle-huts and then got pretentious. he had a mawkish side, also had a "i need to be working constantly" side, and between the two there's a lot of dross. but i don't think you get to like Moscow On The Hudson AND look at him as someone who didn't accept his station.

well, I meant "Hollywood's idea of a serious role." I know Olivier starred in a few Jacks of his own.

RIP King of the Moon

honestly for the last 20 years i'd rather see him in a "dramatic" role than one that's distinctly "comic".

That dinner scene in The Birdcage is a masterpiece of sustained comedy ("And a man's wealth is measured by the size of his cock. Excuse me.").

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, August 11, 2014 7:43 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That scene is amazing. They're all great. Agador Spartacus! Also, "it looks like they're playing leap frog!".

FUCK THE SOUP

Of all the things Williams worked in, I think it's his Louie episode I'm going to watch tonight.

i'd really forgotten how much i liked him being around. hadn't seen him in anything since one hour photo which i thought was pretty decent.

I remember in 2002 when One Hour Photo and Insomnia came out it already felt like Williams time had past and he needed comebacks when, like, Patch Adams was only four years earlier.

*Williams' time had passed rather

I was fine with his family films like Mrs. Doubtfire and Jumanji. Didn't like him in films for grown-ups, especially his 2000s serial killer run.

I remember being weirded out when I found out he was a big fan of first-person shooter games at the same time I was
http://www.theninhotline.net/meatpers/img/e3.jpg

man...like everybody here it seems, I was conflicted about him - like, deeply talented dude, but also sort of incapable of checking himself at the door, no matter the role - though I thought he really worked hard at that in One Hour Photo. the first guy along with Steve Martin of whose ascent I was aware; in my sixth grade class, recaps of the most recent Mork & Mindy episode were de rigeur and the teacher would sometimes talk about the "deeper" ones - he really thought it was great, worthwhile television, but at the same time, it was just a TV show - watching dude go on to be Mr. Box Office was, like, I remember seeing this guy as a brand new thing, now he's everywhere.

while it's true that a lot of his schtick seemed to spring from some depths it's pretty shocking to me that he got so low -- though I know nothing about his personal life. it is always really troubling to me when somebody who has all the success in the world ends up too deep in the hole to climb back up, anyway. scary to me. hope his family finds some way to cope.

https://twitter.com/sesamestreet/status/498975277331267585

and don't forget "Homicide"

I remember being weirded out when I found out he was a big fan of first-person shooter games at the same time I was
http://www.theninhotline.net/meatpers/img/e3.jpg

God you can just picture him playing one too

^

on MSNBC Chris Hayes just played his first "Tonight" show appearance and mentioned that sense in which the guy wasn't totally sure how far he was going to go in the act of improvising

xps that sesame st pic almost made me cry at a drive through fuck you the internet

the thing i thought of instantly was the first thing i ever saw him in -- as the frog prince in an episode of shelley duvall's 'faerie tale theatre.'

A half dozen of his films were on constant rotation in my childhood. Could never feel any great antipathy to even his worst material due to that + the fact that his missteps were all borne from very good intentions.

― Merdeyeux, Monday, August 11, 2014 6:25 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i probably listened to the good morning vietnam soundtrack like 100000 times as a kid

Mork & Mindy was a beacon of fun in the 3 channel era in the UK. This was a time when the only people I knew who had colour tv's were putting 50p's into a slot meter to rent them and most domestic tv entertainment seemed to be aimed at our shitty parents. It was beautiful at the time.

man...like everybody here it seems, I was conflicted about him - like, deeply talented dude, but also sort of incapable of checking himself at the door, no matter the role

This is the problem I have with him in everything where he's bad, but on the other hand when he did manage to check himself, I think he was capable of conveying tremendous feeling, alongside or through the comedy. He let himself down when he coasted on his own brand or his shtick - "hey, it's Robin Williams, here he is! Laugh now!" type roles, a la A.I., where all you can see is Robin Williams doing Robin Williams. But... we're actually halfway through watching The Birdcage, and while there's a lot about it that really bothers me, Williams is excellent. So much restraint and dignity and anger and nostalgia and love to his character. I was really bowled over by it to be honest, he feels like such a complete, real person, which makes the funny parts funnier. That's real skill there, both for a comedian and an actor.

RIP.

My wife is not taking this well, as I imagine is the case for everyone with depression or bipolar.

the frog prince in an episode of shelley duvall's 'faerie tale theatre.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57kw6I_ULDM

that's what I love about The Birdcage role: on paper it's an, ahem, straight role but the guy is practically coming apart trying to keep the life he's spent decades building from unraveling

jeez, RIP

I had that thing younger folks must have with Bob Saget, where I knew him from TV when I was 8-9 and then heard his raunchy stand-up a year or two later.

― the one where, as balls alludes (Eazy), Monday, August 11, 2014 4:14 PM

yep this is me as well, I remember hearing to "Reality, What A Concept" over at a friends house, whoa!

should also be noted: one of the few stars who seemed totally cool with gay costars (remember Harvey Fierstein) and material.

somehow this doesn't feel like other celebrity deaths. reminds me of when john candy died -- i remember feeling not just sad, but that this was somehow wrong, a rupture in the universe, like hearing that one of the muppets had just died or something.

not taking this well, as I imagine is the case for everyone with depression or bipolar

i dunno

if it were just about him as a performer, that'd be one thing, but in his stand-up days he stole so many jokes from comedians that they didn't even want to go on stage if they knew he was in the building. that's stealing from the livelihoods of other creative professionals even when you could just fucking HIRE a joke writer = not cool.

i will chalk it up to mental illness.

the WTF interview is instructive on this

RIP feels really appropriate to say for this guy who couldn't stop

just cause i don't think it's come up; his podcast interview with marc maron is really good & insightful & charming.
xp!; yeah

Questlove just now:

http://instagram.com/p/rk_yJXwa0K/

Man. The smallest gesture can mean the world to you. Robin Williams made such an impact on me and didn't even know it. He named checked all of us in the elevator during the 2001 Grammys. I know y'all think I do this false modesty/T Swift "gee shucks" thing to the hilt. But yeah sometimes when you put 20 hour days in you do think it's for naught and that it goes thankless. Grammy time is somewhat of a dark time simply because you just walk around asking yourself is it worth it or not: all the sweat and blood. I just felt like (despite winning grammy the year before) no one really cares all that much for us except for a select few. Especially in that environment I'm which people treat you like minions until they discover what you can do for them...if you're not a strong character you run the risk of letting it get to you. This particular Sunday we were walking backstage and had to ride the elevator to the backstage area and we piled inside when suddenly this voice just said "questlove.....black thought....rahzel....the roots from Philadelphia!!!! That's right you walked on this elevator saying to yourself "ain't no way this old white dude knows my entire history and discography"....we laughed so hard. That NEVER happened to is before. Someone a legend acknowledged us and really knew who we were (his son put him on to us) man it was a small 2 min moment in real life but that meant the world to me at the time. Everytime I saw him afterwards he tried to top his trivia knowledge on all things Roots associated. Simply because he knew that meant everything to me. May his family find peace at this sad time. I will miss Robin Williams. #RIP.

maron just tweeted that he's reposting that WTF.

i think i'll mourn williams in a different way than i do candy. with candy there's a sense that there were types of performances we never got to see - would he have been in those christopher guest mockumentaries? a cable series? with williams, his skills and range were on full display, it's just so sad that his accomplishments and success wasn't enough.

The same year he did voice work for Aladdin, he also voiced this vivisected bat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaTFgY8kZcU

just remembered his bit in the 1999 Oscars doing the "South Park" songs.

Fern Gully is one of those childhood favourites where I realise it's prooobably best I never re-watch.

He was a problematic talent, no doubt. Little random bits of his that stay with me: his cameo in AI, the "undertoad" and "gradual school" from Garp, he and Tracy Ullman competing to be the most manic and Jay Leno caught in the crossfire.

Man the last death that hit me this weird was DFW

Like, people whose outward-facing persona were so different than the demons inhabiting them revealed after the act

Glancing through this thread it seems like he was a part of everybody's childhood no matter the age

I hope he finally found peace

I've already said this elsewhere, but I kinda think the reason that so many of us resented maudlin garbage like Patch Adams so much was that his tendency towards mawkishness in such roles put too fine a point on something that was already there beneath the surface. Regardless of their individual qualities (or lack thereof), films like Popeye, Hook, Toys, Mrs. Doubtfire and The Birdcage, are full of lost children and/or fathers. The melancholy was already there even in some of his lightest entertainments.

Here's that first Tonight Show appearance mentioned above (just scanned the thread, doesn't seem to posted yet).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr1DSLoHni0

https://twitter.com/crushingbort/status/498999523830951936

he obviously didn't 'find peace', merely a cessation of anguish

it is always really troubling to me when somebody who has all the success in the world ends up too deep in the hole to climb back up, anyway. scary to me.

― Now I Am Become Dracula (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, August 11, 2014 5:00 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah

http://twitter.com/warrenellis/status/498968271853330432

He had a lot of interests I intersected with at so many times

I'm 25 and have never planned or attempted but whether it's Robin Williams or DFW reminding me that I might one day get worse is disquieting selfxp

Man I forgot his uncredited bit in Munchausen! He was great in bit parts like that.

comedians are complicated. he certainly favored darker movie projects of late, eg the Bobcat-directed one and The Angriest Man in Brooklyn.

Munchausen bit exemplifies what i disliked most about him.

btw he was a solid actor in Garp and most of all the PBS Bellow film Seize the Day

also I am in about the sixth row on the back sleeve photo of his Live at the Met LP (1986)

wow :)

POST PICTURE

I probably saw more of his movies in the theater than any other actor, and a lot of them were his bad movies (Toys, Patch Adams, August Rush...the REALLY bad ones) and could never bring myself to hate the guy for it. growing up I watched a lot of Mork & Mindy reruns on Nick At Nite and always looked forward to the Comic Relief telethons.

also not everyone starring in a hit sitcom would bring on his childhood idol as a regular, as he did with Jonathan Winters.

I remain a Death to Smoochy fan, but The Fisher King, the horror.

the second and last time I saw him live was as Estragon

http://www.robin-williams.net/images/plays/godot/image01.jpg

^^^ wish i'd seen that. even tho it's not the one w john goodman as pozzo.

this shook me. rip. i think he's unflashily amazing in the birdcage too; alfred otm abt his character's desperate position. stray phrases from a night at the met blow through me every couple weeks and always have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GorgFtCqPEs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IyrqeTDeeQ

Koko was probably all "goddamm, that man was hairy," after he left.

nice remembering deconstructing harry today

DEATH TO SMOOCHY!!!

death to smoochy is great

there was an early special of his where he starts to lose the audience and does this "into the mind of a comedian who's bombing" bit where he's running around inside his own head pulling switches and turning nobs and finally says "ok, we have to do it -- no! we can't do it! -- yes, we must... release, the id!" and he comes crawling out of an invisible box like a horror movie creature. can't find it on youtube.

absolutely grew up on mork reruns.

some of the best fake songs for a movie ever in death to smoochy - "Friends Come in All Sizes," "We'll Get You Off That Smack (Oh Yes We Will)," and my favorite, "My Stepdad's Not Mean (He's Just Adjusting)."

this has really fucked me up.

https://twitter.com/zeldawilliams/status/499045688559165440

I'm honestly bewildered by this, even though everyone knew he was on an emotional rollercoaster. But he always struck me as a generous and compassionate person, and he had me from the second he head-stood the Cunningham sofa in Happy Days.

a true artist who touched our lives <3

This fucked me up, like a sneak-attack. When I first heard, my initial shameful thought was a feeling of "Finally," like the feeling that a depressed person had arrived at his/her inevitable conclusion. On the 99 days that I'm not depressed, suicide seems unconscionable, like a distant memory of a shitty movie, but one that 1 day out of 100, and when I hear about celebs like Williams or Linkous, or people close to me, victims of depression, alcoholism, bipolar disorder, PTSD, all that familiar boulange, there is an aura of inevitability that is really hard to shake. I've been hanging tough, keeping kool in the workplace, but honestly? reading people's Twitter responses destroyed me on a private level. "Call somebody" lol. Support groups, try my medication, etc. Can any of us possibly comprehend what is required of a comedy legend/movie star? where an entire industry is hanging on his vibe, his mood? How dependent his bankability and the income of thousands is on how "on" he could be? I can't possibly comprehend how impossible it must've felt to broach these topics with even his loved ones, let alone his staff, or anybody who would immediately just dismiss any claims toward mental sickness as preposterous, as I'm sure the guy had all the sushi and chocolate he could ask for. Does this make sense? I dunno, any time I've ever tried to say "I feel old/tired/terrible and want to die" the response has consistently been orbiting about the self of the confessor, like "how could you possibly feel this way when you have so much?" How must it have been for Williams? Anyway.

it makes sense

i don't know what to do with myself

Can't even really process at the moment, in some weird way he was the comedian that made me understand what comedians were as a child, which is crazy to think about. Mork. The single handed reason I found out jonathon winters existed, which makes this a better life. A tendency for sweaty overdoneness, but oddly forgivable, as were his comedic missteps in taste which I imagine mortified him the same way they did me when I rewatched his early standup (the San Francisco gay siren joke which knowing his later work seems so cheap and workmanlike and dishonest). The weird heart he had in the middle of terrible movies. The now semi-unwatchable genie bit that was star maintaining and somehow fantastic as a mind-numbingly multi-chemically high asshole college kid in a theater full of children in 1992. The bad years that seemed so easy to say "fucking Robin Williams" but now seem like a dude that just wanted to work, all the time, and seemed to have seen something in those movies that never was there but clearly tried. Seeing the greatness of "worlds greatest dad" and chalking it up to bobcat which was totally unfair, but still thinking "I'll give him another shot" and never doing it. Sorry robin. Sad times.

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/26500000/One-Hour-Photo-robin-williams-26576960-1920-1080.png

The bad years that seemed so easy to say "fucking Robin Williams" but now seem like a dude that just wanted to work, all the time, and seemed to have seen something in those movies that never was there but clearly tried.

otfm

Here's the repost of the WTF episode.

RIP

RIP Robin, wish it hadn't ended this way.

The one comic part of the Maron interview, in the last 10 minutes, is exactly hiw I imagined Williams talking himself off the ledge when having deadly thoughts.

There is this scene in patch adams, when he learns the girl he loved got murder-suicided by a mentally unstable man, that traumatized me as a child and I still think about it a lot.

Don't like Aladdin. Especially now, it feels like it inspired/anticipated much of the Shrek-style obnoxiousness that came to dominate too much animation in recent years. For years, it has been my personal policy to ask anyone who claims to like the film if they've seen the 1940 The Thief of Bagdad.

― You know something? He *did* say "well, yeah" a lot. (cryptosicko), Tuesday, August 12, 2014 12:34 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

keep thinking about someone barking at a six year old "Yeah well have you seen the original Thief Of Bagdad??" and laughing.

RIP Robin Williams, you were pretty damn awesome, and the circumstances of your exit seem impossibly sad to me.

lmao

Via Deadspin: Conan O'Brien Found Out About Robin Williams's Death During His Show. Ugh.

I find this ineffably sad, kind of like when John Ritter died. Like so many kids of my generation I grew up with the TV on, and Williams was a constant presence, first on Mork & Mindy, then his first HBO special, which my friends and I watched nearly every time it was on. I wish he had avoided some of the bathetic performances his later career veered into, but that's been amply covered by everyone else. When he was on, nobody else could touch him.

Sry Buzzfeed, but wow, did not know about any of this: http://www.buzzfeed.com/lyapalater/the-lifelong-friendship-of-robin-williams-and-christopher-re#btu8zr

the thing that made me finally cry last night was reading about how RW went to visit Reeve after his accident and was the first person to make him laugh

yeah I remember during Reeve's Oscar appearance in the mid nineties that the networks mentioned the two were bros.

A (name-changed) friend just posted his Robin Williams story. I guess my friend Bob was shopping at a toy store one day when Robin Williams and his son came in. Apparently, Robin collected Todd McFarlane figures, just like my friend Bob. Robin was really approachable, really friendly and really funny. My friend reminded him of some "Alladin" promotion that he had worked on, which needed Robin's approval, and Robin politely pretended to remember. They hung in the store a while talking toys and other things. After a bit, Williams bid his adieu and off he went. A bit later, Bob went to a clothing store, like the Gap or something, and there was Robin Williams and son, checking out in front of him. Robin says goodbye to the cashier, turns around, sees Bob, gives him a big smile and just says something like "hey, Bob, how are you?" Then he leaves. The cashier turns to my friend and says "you're friends with Robin Williams?" And as my friend ended his post: "Yeah, I guess I was."

I think it's vital to bring up roles like "Garp" and "Moscow on the Hudson," really strong performances that showed he was no mere comedian turned dramatic actor late in life. He was great in those first two, but also "insomnia," "One Hour Photo," "World's Greatest Dad," "Good Will Hunting," "Dead Poet's Society," "Good Morning, Vietnam," "The Fisher King" and a bunch more, capable more than most of conveying this great empathy that probably came from a real place, given what an apparently generous guy he was, and how much time and energy he spent of various charities.

I remember hearing several months ago that he had checked himself back in rehab not because he had fallen off the wagon but because he sensed he might. Now I wonder if he or anyone knew there was more going on. Really devastating.

RIP

Grew up with him going back to Mork's first appearance on Laverne & Shirley. He was brilliant, surreal, and lovable.

He also went through a run where his roles made me cringe, and this is what makes me wonder : did he, too, cringe? And did this feed his depression ? I have my own "battles with depression" and more than my share of self-cringing, but for a performing artist like RW, the horns of the dilemma must be so much sharper: what makes them endearing must inevitably be turned into shtick at some point, and just as inevitably the cringe-worthiness blooms. And how tenderly painful is that?

I didn't really know him personally, so who knows, but this what I wonder about right now.

Rest in peace, you beautiful man.

first time i've felt emotional about a face from my childhood going. jumanji. hook. flubber. mrs. doubtfire. fuckin, TOYS. a face that made me smile. a face that made me feel safe. good night, vietnam

This has definitely been sad and sobering in a way that many celebrity deaths aren't for me, but hearing Maron break down is the thing that's finally kicking me in the gut.

man after sleeping on this for a night it is still just so sad, especially reading all these sweet stories

I listened to the Maron interview and believe his explanation of unconsciously appropriating other comedians' lines because once, in my swamp of low-level standup, *I* got caught doing that.

I kinda cringe at obit headlines that make him sound like a film actor ("Hollywood legend") pure n' simple, when most of his contributions were live or live-on-TV. I also kinda wonder how a guy with a generational talent could do so much stuff with Billy Crystal. Still as a friend of mine said about resumes w/ lots of dross, "You can only do what you're offered," and I guess he had no aspirations to write/direct/produce films.

Keyframe roundup (he has, uh, SIX movies in the can?):

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-robin-williams-1951-2014

was Maron interviewed today or is it the re-upped podcast we are talking about?

Maron just added some commentary to the beginning and end of the re-upped interview. He sounded like he was right on the verge of full-on sobbing. It's heartbreaking.

It's also heartbreaking, in the interview, to hear Robin Williams talk about rationalizing his way through previous thoughts of suicide. I guess that level of clarity isn't always there when you need it.

Pretty good story, this one.

http://uproxx.com/webculture/2014/08/norm-macdonald-told-a-wonderful-robin-williams-story-on-twitter-that-sums-up-everyones-loss/

so sad about this.

That Norm story is excellent.

When Rik Mayall died a couple of months ago now there was the odd question as to why he never made it in film. Then you look at Robin Williams: lots of comic energy, could hold you for shorter chunks of time on TV yet flagged when anything more dramatic was required.

That there were a few films that could frame that energy for a while is an achievement of sorts.

I think someone upthread may have mentioned it, but the episode of Homicide: Life On The Streets he appeared on is one of his better dramatic performances.

yeah, it's not like Mork and Mindy 'fit' Williams -- you just watched that crap every week to see a few minutes of RW riffing and taking over. xp

surprised at the love upthread for the Birdcage, have always assumed there was no reason to watch taht

Pfft I watched it cos I had a crush on Mindy, thanks xpost

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BuzFzIMIYAAMet_.png

I read "bangarang" as "gangbang" there and for a moment all of history changed around me.

http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/08/12/BostonGlobe.com/Arts/Images/Bu2BWPdIgAAU6nb.jpg

ok now I am getting really sad

One of his standup lines just sounded in my head, re his Juilliard professor John Houseman: "Mistuh Williams, the theatuh needs you; I'm going off to sell Volvos."

(JH was a ubiquitous '70s TV pitchman after winning his unlikely Oscar)

Meanwhil, in Minnesota . . .

the entire front page of imgur today is RW

oh god that Norm story's going to make me cry all over again

It's striking and kinda heartwarming to see all the stories pouring out from comedians at all levels talking about encounters with Williams. Whether it was just hosting a standup night where he showed up, or having a real conversation or just taking a photo with someone. He knew how big he was, celebrity-wise, he knew what it did to people who met him, and somehow he serviced that stardom in just the right way, over and over again. All these stories of 'he didn't have to talk to me, or he didn't have to be nice to me'...like he knew the importance of those moments and without even being calculating, he was just real.

There was a great Inside Comedy with RW and Jonathan Winters last year.

I remember that John Houseman line--he must have used that a lot (it's a great line).

There's no accounting for why someone like Winters was able to negotiate his pain and illness, to live into his mid 80s, and Williams was not. I wonder if Jonathan's passing made him feel that much more alone.

I know I've mentioned before that at the Evening at the Met concert, I had to squeeze past Sean & Madonna making out in the aisle on the way out.

(btw Williams was attached to a proposed Harvey Milk biopic several years before Penn did Van Sant's)

It definitely was on in syndication when I was kid, but I don't remember much about mork & mindy, so I don't think I really appreciated until now that the guy's career breakthrough was playing a SPACE ALIEN IN A DREAM on HAPPY DAYS. The show that gave us "jump the shark" as an example of when a show went off the rails. That he was so good playing a space alien on a slice-of-life sitcom that they retconned him from being a dream character to a real character and gave him a spin-off.

I mean, that's pretty impressive.

There's no accounting for why someone like Winters was able to negotiate his pain and illness, to live into his mid 80s, and Williams was not. I wonder if Jonathan's passing made him feel that much more alone.

You know I was just thinking about this, and somehow had missed that Winters had only passed on last year. I wonder along with you, it seems like he was one of the few people Williams felt got him, profoundly (and perhaps vice versa).

I was pretty young in its heyday but in the post-Star Wars environment it was popular enough for toy makers to create a Mork doll that said "Nanu, Nanu!" when you pulled a string or something; I def remember that.

There's no accounting for why someone like Winters was able to negotiate his pain and illness, to live into his mid 80s, and Williams was not. I wonder if Jonathan's passing made him feel that much more alone.

was just thinking about this while watching this clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NqEKvk9F4I and remembered that Winters only passed just last year

I wonder if Jonathan's passing made him feel that much more alone.

I was thinking this too. They definitely had a deep connection.

if you never read RW's NY Times piece on Winters:

Jonathan Winters R.I.P.

I was pretty young in its heyday but in the post-Star Wars environment it was popular enough for toy makers to create a Mork doll that said "Nanu, Nanu!" when you pulled a string or something; I def remember that.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 12, 2014 12:05 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A friend of mine had one of these:

http://www.toynerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/mork3.jpg

de la planète Ork

dans son ouef de l'espace

I had one of those too! I remember picking it up at a garage sale for like a dime.

I've idly thought for years about buying all of the Robin Williams action figures (Mork, Peter Pan, Genie, Jumanji dude, One Hour Photo IIRC, etc.). Because I think he might have the most.

Good grief, the Mork action figure. I remember that now. I had the 1981 Mork & Mindy annual, but that was it.

i have the jumanji board game

would play (with some apprehension)

understandale, didn't work out well for Kirsten Dunst

did the studio merchandise Popeye? Has to stand alone in the Altman oeuvre if so.

it was actually a pretty shitty game -- we had to change the rules to make it more fun/more challenging

what? you don't have the full line of Macfarlane Nashville figures? got my Bill, Mary and Tom right here on my desk! (xpost)

sometimes i have mine fight with my OC and Stiggs action figures

and the little breakaway bottle Marty Augustine uses on his gf

(sorry)

very guilty lols

i've got a chris penn 'short cuts' action figure, complete with a bloody rock in hand

JUMANJI JUMANJI JUMANJI

Wow that the last photo of RW is at a Dairy Queen in lindstrom. My folks had a crappy little cabin on South Center Lake when I was a kid and Lindstrom was the nearest town. Unless that's a new Dairy Queen I've probably been there a million times. I remember passing hazelden in the car and having a weird vague kids understanding of what people did there.

xpost I'll trade you my extra squirt-action Huey Lewis figure.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller board game

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dq8nXLYEtQ0/hqdefault.jpg

I have this. I remember thinking, even at age seven or whatever - that's supposed to be Robin Williams???

I have never talked about my own thoughts of cutting my own life short, and it's hard to even type this given how far away they feel now. But hearing about RW's suicide, especially after having heard the Maron interview a few months ago, have really really knocked me for a loop by reminding me of just how dark things can be, and sad for him for the hell he must have endured.

I hope he has found peace, whatever that might mean for him.

First time I was in Keene, NH I noticed a large plaque or mural or something on the side of a building commemorating the fact that some of Jumanji had been filmed there.

I still have bottles of Griffin Mill water.

BLAM that is brave of you to post
i had a similar spell after seeing a picture of myself at age 5 clutching my popeye record
it's overwhelming
this is not "a celebrity death" to me, this is a high profile suicide and that's always a very jarring ghost

otm

yup

givin u a hug BLAM

Yeah the inner voice of depression is just so persuasive and convincing and authoritative and when someone commits suicide it is v chilling to me, like this is what i am running from and have been running from for more than half my life and may always be running from and if you stop running and let it hit you maybe something amazing happens but otoh maybe THIS happens.

i don't have much to add except that even in his terrible, saccharine films (and maybe especially in them), he seemed to convey this real desperation at being decent and being himself while surrounded by people who were disconnected from him and often acted cold towards him, like often his characters seemed to be very alone and singular in their world, and they used humor to cover up their sadness at that disconnect. and when he wasn't being a crazy clown or a goofy teacher or mrs doubtfire, in all those roles when the veil fell he had this really incredible sadness about him. like the courtroom scenes in 'mrs doubtfire', his panic at losing his kids was palpable. i don't know if he chose those roles because of that aspect or if it was something natural he conveyed. a little of both i imagine.

Comedian friend of mine R. Buscemi posted this on FB--video is only a minute but amazing.

Six years ago at Beth Stelling's and the Puterbaugh Sisterz's absolutely perfect weekly "Entertaining Julia" show in a Chicago dive bar, Robin Williams sauntered in wearing a sleek little black summer fedora (I believe Jena Friedman had befriended him the night before over at the Lake Shore Theater and told him to come over). He looked great, and we all tried mostly successfully to act normal. The bartender Julia told me later that he gave her a nice sum to keep his glass full of Coke all night, since he was fresh out of rehab and not drinking, and didn't want to be sent drinks. He joined Julia in the photo booth for pix and watched maybe a dozen of us comics file across stage for upwards of two hours as the pub gradually filled to bursting as people texted friends to hustle over. I said hi, as did lots of comics, and he couldn't have been nicer or more complimentary of the city and of people's sets. Then he took the stage and performed for ... well over an hour, I believe. It was late by that time. I couldn't repeat a single joke he told, but I can say this: I've never seen someone wreck a room that hard in my life. It wasn't just that he was famous -- he rode waves of laughter and his own imagination like an astronaut surfing the Milky Way, just a shortish, charming guy with a powerful build ripping laughs like taking a knife to a feather bed, like a downed power line showering sparks and writhing like a snake. I'll never forget it. So ... you know, peace. G'night, Robin. We're sad for you. I am anyway.

http://vimeo.com/977976

I think "Robin Williams sucks" has been prevalent in my circles since the movies got really oppressive, to the point where i defended theEvening at the Met show frequently as "the last time he was funny." The last occasion when I did, to someone with institutional hipster cred maybe a year or two ago, he kinda made a head-whirly gesture and blurted a mock-scared "OK!"

I guess Smoochy, Aristocrats, World's Greatest Dad sort of rehabilitated his chops in my eyes; I skipped all those kids' films he did, and anything where the trailers looked bad. One-Hour Photo was entirely mediocre but I thought the performance was credible.

The guy called his last standup album Weapons of Self-Destruction.

his comic and saccharine bits were already curdling (jack, father's day) but his post-oscar stretch of leading roles - What Dreams May Come, Patch Adams, Jakob The Liar, Bicentennial Man...no wonder he was exiled from coolness

What Dreams May Come

I've never seen it, but in the last 18 hours I've seen it held up as some people's favorite role of his and also an example of the worst of his worst.

mentioned yesterday they were hits without realizing that people saw them. Our office manager, a 29-year-old guy, said What Dreams May Come was one of his favorite movies; Jumanji too.

Did anyone else see "The Night Listener"? I remember liking it.

Been curious to see What Dreams... just bc it is Vincent ward and he is kind of a weirdo.

Siskel & Ebert loved What Dreams May Come.

that's another role of his where the sadness is palpable even when mixed in with all the wacky afterworld stuff

I saw What Dreams May Come and "personal favorite/worst of his worst" sums it up pretty well. It's such a ball-tripping absurdity - imagine Orpheus & Eurydice meets The Notebook - but Robin makes it stick despite itself

grand visions of heaven where you get to take any form you want and ride old-timey bicycles around pools

more like wet dreams may cum

man the plot synopsis of that one

i meant to say I saw What Dreams May Come in the theater. Can't remember why my friends wanted to see that

Chris awakens in Heaven, and learns that his immediate surroundings can be controlled by his imagination. He meets a man (Cuba Gooding Jr.) he recognizes as Albert, his friend and mentor from his medical residency, and the presence from his time as a "ghost" on Earth. Albert will guide and help in this new afterlife. Albert teaches Chris about his existence in Heaven, and how to shape his little corner, and to travel to others' "dreams". They are surprised when a Blue Jacaranda tree appears unbidden in Chris' surroundings, matching a tree in a new painting by Annie, inspired by Annie's belief that she can communicate with Chris in the afterlife. Albert explains that this is a sign that the couple are truly soul mates. Annie decides that Chris cannot "see" the painting, however, and destroys it. At the same time, Chris sees his version of the tree disintegrate before his eyes.

that movie had a budget of 85m in '98 dollars

I don't think anyone has mentioned Mime Jerry yet.

http://www.robin-williams.net/images/films/shakes/image07.jpg

Sounds dreadful, but I may watch it anyway.

"Even so, as far as most people today are concerned, his disruptive TV stardom in a piece of disposable Me Decade shlock is a mere prologue to a big-screen career that lasted over 30 years, earned him three Best Actor nominations as well as a Best Supporting Actor Oscar (for Good Will Hunting), and included its fair share of hits. While those stats make it counter-intuitive and then some to say Williams's Hollywood career was ultimately a failure, that's unquestionably what it was—by every criterion except raw numbers, a yardstick that sometimes mattered to him a lot and that he nonetheless had too much helpless acuity to trust as a be-all and end-all. Even when he had good parts, they never added up to a whole—and a version of Robin Williams that somehow incorporated everything under the 20th-century sun was his defining passion, after all."

http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-feed/2014/08/remembering-robin-williams.html

xpost WDMC has a suicide plot iirc

Never saw his Bill Forsyth film--very poor reviews at the time.

. While those stats make it counter-intuitive and then some to say Williams's Hollywood career was ultimately a failure, that's unquestionably what it was

man fuck that. dude's batting average was rough but his best was amazing. If his goal was to entertain, make people bust guts and feel something, it was ultimately a resounding success.

yep

I liked it, but I never disliked a Forsyth film

xxp

loved the Shakes mime bit

why is it every time i read a polite-but-firm dismissal of a legend's multi-decade career the author mentions a novel he wrote

that the author of the dismissal wrote, i mean.

i'm kinda with tom carson. i can't think of anyone (other than richard pryor who didn't do it as long) who was so naturally gifted and who made as much terrible stuff. Hook is one of the worst movies ever made and that's not even the worst robin williams movie. but i'll always like him cuz duh i grew up with him.

i'm surprised he never made a stab at Shakespeare aside from standup pastiche and a cameo in Branagh's Hamlet

(althouh deniro and pacino are obviously trying to beat some record for bad movies....)

i was already finding robin williams corny by the end of elementary school, but to look at what he accomplished and say "yes but he did a lot of crap, what a failure" jesus try looking back at your life's work in quarterly periods.

in the '80s I saw a handful of legendary comics in 'big rooms' (Pryor and Cosby in Radio City Music Hall; never Carlin unfortunately) and Williams led in bringing rock star energy to that format in a way I expect few did. (Pryor was more mellow by the Here & Now period, I'm sure in the '70s it was a different story judging by the concert films.)

the guy was certainly not a failure from the fan pov. All that chatter in the nineties about Tom Hanks as world's biggest star is kinda bullshit if you compared their nineties box office

Thanks, LaL and Morbs. Thankfully, at this point, it's like seeing a really bad apartment that I know I never ever have to live in again, but recalling with perfect clarity the absolute hell of living there and feeling complete sympathy/sorrow for someone who apparently never made it out.

As for his career, the scene I keep coming back to is the one early in Good Will Hunting where he bites at Will's bait of mocking his dead wife, and forearm in throat, threatens to end him if he does it again.

There's so much sadness and strength and loss conveyed so perfectly to me in that scene. The pure physicality of it just makes it more so.

yeah, i don't think he was a failure as an entertainer. he just made a lot of horrible movies and a lot of the stuff he did didn't play to his strengths. like carson says, anyone could have played those straight man/dead poet roles.

Hook is one of the worst movies ever made and that's not even the worst robin williams movie.

i've never quite understood why ppl hate this movie so much -- it's definitely uneven and has some really lame bits but RW is great in it. would definitely take it over most of the big-event 'kid' pictures from the early 90s.

i just wish he had made more insane black comedies written/directed by funny/talented people. but obviously HE had a big jerry lewis maudlin streak or he wouldn't have kept making the deadly stuff.

i get saying something re comedy/drama like chris rock's "i know a lot of people who could make The Truman Show work, but only one guy who could pull Dumb & Dumber off" but when people say "anyone could have done dead poet's society" its never someone i believe could.

All that chatter in the nineties about Tom Hanks as world's biggest star is kinda bullshit if you compared their nineties box office

ehhh toy story 1 & 2 beats aladdin, forrest gump beats mrs doubtfire, apollo 13 and saving private ryan bigger than the birdcage and hook, etc

man, i am not going back to Hook to see what i hated about it. i never want to see it again. it offended me in some way. i felt like it was really dishonest and manipulative. the worst spielberg/williams impulses. would rather watch jumanji again.

Jumanji holds up a lot better than Hook

kevin kline could have done dead poets. daniel day lewis. liam neeson! that would have been cool.

hmmmm, "anyone" could play those roles is a bit harsh. I can see through the artificiality of Dead Poets and Good Will, but also RW's aura of empathy that led him to be cast in them. xxxxxp

obv both the Oscar-winning "It's not your fault" GWH scene and Robert Sean Leonard's arc in DPS have a terrible extratextual connotation now.

I wasn't much of a fan of most of Williams's career, which makes things awkward.

if you're determined to talk about it, and the time he said he liked your novel, a day after he dies, yes

yeah, i don't think he was a failure as an entertainer. he just made a lot of horrible movies and a lot of the stuff he did didn't play to his strengths. like carson says, anyone could have played those straight man/dead poet roles.

To say that no one else could have played the teacher in DPS isn't a defense of that movie. I think by that point he'd become an Ovitz-fueled commodity around whom "Robin Williams vehicles" were being produced

kevin kline could have done dead poets.

he kinda did in In and Out!

maybe if you combine robin williams and whoopi goldberg into one person you have some competition for 90s tom hanks

Kline's energy would have been cruel and almost psycho, which, yeah, might have made a more satisfying movie aesthetically but not what the screenwriters and producers wanted.

Whoopi's nineties hits are Ghost and Sister Act.

RW got to explore the full range of his talent in more projects for larger audiences and more money than most performers could even dream of. And the flipside of staying that busy for that long is that it can't all be great and you're not going to stay cool for very long. We can hem and haw about some hypothetical perfect role missing from his filmography, but it seems like he got to do everything he could do, the kind of career you just wonder if Belushi or whoever could've had and didn't so we get to idealize and lionize those other guys more.

i thought she was everywhere. she gives me a robin williams vibe for some reason. xp

otm xpost

whoopi had a ton of movies but only one truly huge leading role in the 90s

his Harvey Milk would've been intriguing, tho he seemed way too goyish

His white-hot standup period featured a few too easy lisping-swish laughs, so I wonder if he purposefully went for the Cage aux Folles remake after the H Milk movie fell through (if my chronology is right).

What are these few films in the can we have yet to see? I know one of them is an xmas movie, but I don't know about the others. Starring roles? Cameos?

whoopi and robin were arguably equals if you were a kid looking for pg to pg-13 comedies at blockbuster in the 90s

(that is, took a gay role maybe a little out of guilt -- based in SF for much of his adult life, I think he was kind of consciously a homophile) xxxp

The sheriff's office is providing details now. He was discovered by his personal assistant.

yeah like I said yesterday Williams seemed one of the few stars of his magnitude immune to gay panic and able to spoof himself

XPS I remember it kind of being a big deal when Goldberg had a vehicle (Theodore Rex maybe) that went DIRECT TO VHS and how the mighty had fallen.

whoopi and robin were arguably equals if you were a kid looking for pg to pg-13 comedies at blockbuster in the 90s

― da croupier, Tuesday, August 12, 2014 12:25 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha, me to a t

xp to me Oh good, one of them is another sequel to Night at the Museum. I love his Teddy Roosevelt.

Herb Caen in the SF Chronicle, 1995:

THE IRREPRESSIBLE one: In the April issue of the gay magazine, OUT, Greg Louganis says on the subject of a possible new mate: "This is extremely quirky, but I think Robin Williams is extremely sexy. He's intelligent. He's got a quick wit. Funny. Hairy chest. I do like that" . . . Louganis, the Olympic diving champ whose new book, "Breaking the Surface," is the No. 1 nonfiction best-seller in the country, was at A Different Light bookstore on Castro Tuesday evening. Some 2,000 people showed up -- including Robin Williams, who ran to the head of the line, hugged the AIDS-diagnosed Louganis and teased, "Here I am, your dream lover!" Then he scampered off without buying a book.

Thankfully, at this point, it's like seeing a really bad apartment that I know I never ever have to live in again, but recalling with perfect clarity the absolute hell of living there and feeling complete sympathy/sorrow for someone who apparently never made it out.

This...this is an absolutely perfect description.

It might be strange to see an ep of M&M now where he says "Let me take that back" and does the backwards-talking thing, and the audience goes nuts. Actors weren't doing that on sitcoms then. Manic comedy on TV had been mostly stupid for a decade-plus, after the decline of the Sid Caesar generation, and he seemed to bring high-energy zaniness back to respectability. (The political and lit references were not the kind of thing you'd have gotten from Jerry Lewis in the '60s.)

http://www.vulture.com/2014/08/what-it-was-like-to-do-improv-with-robin-williams.html

"Mork & Mindy: In Mork We Trust (#1.21)" (1979)

Orson: The report, Mork.

Mork: This week I discovered a terrible disease called loneliness.

Orson: Do many people on Earth suffer from this disease?

Mork: Oh yes sir, and how they suffer. One man I know suffers so much he has to take a medication called bourbon, even that doesn't help very much because then he can hear paint dry.

Orson: Does bed rest help?

Mork: No because I've heard that sleeping alone is part of the problem. You see, Orson, loneliness is a disease of the spirit. People who have it think that no one cares about them.

Orson: Do you have any idea why?

Mork: Yes sir you can count on me. You see, when children are young, they're told not to talk to strangers. When they go to school, they're told not to talk to the person next to them. Finally when they're very old, they're told not to talk to themselves, who's left?

Orson: Are you saying Earthlings make each other lonely?

Mork: No sir I'm saying just the opposite. They make themeslves lonely, they're so busy looking out for number one that there's not enough room for two.

Orson: It's too bad everybody down there can't get together and find a cure.

Mork: Here's the paradox sir because if they did get together, they wouldn't need one.

Thinking about GWH, all his sessions with Damon aside, I think my favorite scene of Williams's is when he's in the bar with Stellan Skarsgaard and has to explain to him just exactly what's what with Will and his friends.

Glenn Kenny on Moscow on the Hudson:

It’s a lovely, loose, unselfconscious, limb-swinging performance so uninhibited, who can forget the sight of him, hairy as a bear from pretty much the neck down, lounging in that big tub with Maria Conchita Alonso? What amazes about his best screen-acting is the combination of discipline—he was Juilliard-trained, after all—and an exhilarating sense of him being present in every moment, ready for anything, always prepared to improvise the most alive response to his environment.

http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/2014/08/robin-williams-obituary

I have a store credit at used dvd store near work...gonna swing by at lunchtime & see if I can pick up the Fisher King, or Garp, or Moscow on the Hudson.

glad this EW roundup of his lesser known films stans for The Best of Times and Club Paradise; the latter was a staple of late eighties cable

and a thousand xxposts by now but BLAM thank you so much for sharing those thoughts, and idk...i hope it gets better? xo

It has. And thanks.

some of his star vehicles seem oop on dvd?

The Fisher King is on Sony Movies later. I haven't seen it in years either.

Fisher King is on netflix too i think?

http://www.vulture.com/2014/08/what-it-was-like-to-do-improv-with-robin-williams.html

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, August 12, 2014 12:40 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is amazing, damn

The sad parts are confusing, and we talk about the Beastie Boys during them.

It's interesting to compare RW's reaction to improv-audience idiot suggesting "Flubber" to, say, Lou Reed stalking out when the local bakery is playing "Sunday Morning."

David Edelstein suggests that for a best-of we intersperse bits of talk show appearances with clips from "Popeye, The Survivors, The Best of Times, Seize the Day, Moscow on the Hudson, Cadillac Man, The Fisher King, Insomnia, The Birdcage, his appearance in Homicide: Life on the Street, and even Good Will Hunting (and a bit of his voice in Aladdin, of course)."

the only recent-ish things of his I'd seen were the episode of Law & Order: SVU that he did (inspired by the same case that inspired the movie Compliance)

wha

did he play the caller?

even Good Will Hunting

It's uncool to say you like that movie now?

well it isn't very good so

need Smoochy and Garp xxxxp

Can't for the life of me remember the small part in Dead Again, which I generally found terrible.

GWH always seemed like a mundane fairytale, made by a good director.

even Good Will Hunting

It's uncool to say you like that movie now?

― everyday sheeple (Michael B),

it's not your fault

man I still haven't seen Garp! Should I? It seems like boring eighties Oscar bait.

At least GWH isn't responsible for "You're the man now, dog!"

man I still haven't seen Garp! Should I? It seems like boring eighties Oscar bait.

dude waht you should totally see this movie

apparently he did a "Firing Line" spoof too:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/385253/our-robin-williams-tim-cavanaugh

"stonewall_61" ain't having it:

Stonewall_61 • 2 hours ago
Okay, I wasn't going to say anything, but with all of this wall-to-wall praise of Williams, I can keep quiet no longer.

Mork and Mindy was a stupid show that had been spun off from another stupid show that had in turn been spun off from a show that started well but ended very badly.

After that, some of Williams' stand-up comedy could be quite good. But then he spent the entire 80's decade taking cheap shots at Ronald Reagan. Long, drawn out diatribes that could last 20 minutes or more, characterizing Reagan as an old, senile, incompetent buffoon who slept all of the time.

Then he made a whole string of incredibly stupid movies that were nearly indistinguishable from each other, in most of which he wore clown shoes.

Then toward the end, he did a respectable job in a few serious roles.

Robin, I am sorry you had such a rough time of it, and that you felt you had to off yourself. That is very sad. I hope you found happiness in a better place, even though my religion tells me that is very unlikely considering you committed suicide. But I cannot say that I will miss you all that much. If there is any Karma in the universe, you will spend eternity having to listen to Ronald Reagan repeating all of his speeches while he wears clown shoes. RIP

haven't seen Garp in maybe 20 years, but God knows it's better than the book. Also deservedly kicked Close and Lithgow into a higher realm.

(Glenn Close was also at that Met gig... Williams shouted "hi Mom" to her before an encore.)

the Reagan stuff did wear after a while, but "Disney's last wish: Make a president" had a beauty to it

that WFB, Jr. impression is good

you should totally totally see garp

characterizing Reagan as an old, senile, incompetent buffoon who slept all of the time.

this is unfair how?

glad edelstein brought up the survivors, highly recommended for folks who want to see him running on all cylinders outside of a live special

omg at that WFB impression lol never seen that before

btw Martin Short's wicked impression of him was indeed killer

of Williams, that is. Speed was often his worst enemy.

kevin kline could have done dead poets.

he kinda did in In and Out!

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 12, 2014 2:21 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no, he did it in the emperor's club!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_Club#mediaviewer/File:The_Emperor%27s_Club_Poster.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/58/The_Emperor%27s_Club_Poster.jpg

Has this Gottfried piece been posted?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/12/opinion/gottfried-robin-williams/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter

To see Robin perform was an experience. He was more than a comedian. He was a comedy force of nature. I remember hearing that Robin was once doing a press junket in Germany. One of the reporters asked him, "Why is it that Germany is not known for comedy?" Robin answered, "Well, you killed all your funny people." I laughed out loud when I heard that. I thought, how sick and how wonderfully truthful.

From SFGate, something from Mort Sahl:

Legendary news-based comedian Mort Sahl, who moved to Mill Valley five years ago, says he and Williams "were very close friends, via Lucy Mercer at 142 Throckmorton," where Sahl performs every Thursday. He first met Williams "17 years ago in Los Angeles. He was most extraordinary. We were very very close, on a humor basis. ... But what he did was a long way from what I did."

Sahl observes that "whatever the audience got, Williams was an actor, a classically trained actor. He had a great respect for individuality, and he was a very gentle soul. He cut up to un-inhibit the audience, but that was not him."

The two comics would meet in downtown Mill Valley. Most recently, they most often "met at my place," said Sahl. "He gave me an espresso machine, so we could have a conversation and we didn't have to go out ... and watch all those people in Tiburon reading the Wall Street Journal while they had coffee."

He is still grateful for Lucy Mercer having introducedthem. "A person like Lucy could only exist up here," says Sahl, "and Robin trusted her implicitly. She's on the side of the living, which is definitely a minority."

burst out laughing at my desk at the fox clip

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-news-backs-robin-williams-death-report-with-fake-mrs-doubtfire-footage/

http://www.clickhole.com/article/7-robin-williams-gifs-imperfectly-sum-his-life-and-742

It's interesting to compare RW's reaction to improv-audience idiot suggesting "Flubber" to, say, Lou Reed stalking out when the local bakery is playing "Sunday Morning."

tbf, Robin Williams presumably wanted to stay onstage and Lou Reed could easily find a good bagel elsewhere

well I don't know about that in the contemporary West Village

when I think of The Fisher King I remember Bridges, Ruehl, and Plummer, not Williams.

Lou Reed could easily find a good bagel egg cream elsewhere

fixed

when I think of the Fisher King I remember that a huge chunk of the middle of the film is devoted to a subplot that goes nowhere

welp used dvd store gave me no love. out of desperation I bought Hook but more for nostalgia than need.

so I went on Amazon & bought The Fisher King. I really fucking love that movie.

when I think of The Fisher King I remember Bridges, Ruehl, and Plummer, not Williams.

Really? For me that movie is all about Williams and Michael Jeter.

For me, the movie is all about SNAP!

wtf there were ONE HOUR PHOTO action figures??? xpost

the Fisher King is all about New York in June

i think these were only action figures from one hour photo:
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llostrfPC01qc39oy.png

What?!? They had Eva figures!??

hahaha yes saw that on fb today, forgot about that, so good

oh yeah i had a bunch of eva figures

I remember The Fisher King itself far less than I remember the experience of watching it with my mom (who liked it) and my grandparents who were just WTF the whole time.

As for What Dreams May Come, Owen Gleiberman said it best in that EW bit posted above: "Heaven looks like nothing so much as a baroque series of progressive-rock album covers."

my Mom rented Fisher King when I was in high school, she loved Jeff Bridges & Williams, and she roped me into watching it. She liked it but thought it was a bit 'arty' and a little 'quirky', but I loved it & made all my friends watch it afterwards

I'm watching it now and what starts as a narrative about a dickish Spalding Gray-like deejay getting smug about America gets diverted into this Williams section that's lit and shot and acted like Snow White's Scary Adventures.

JUST WATCH IT OKAY IT'S REALLY GOOD

don't post, watch *guitar solo*

Morbs, thanks for all your contributions to this thread, they have been excellent.

And god yeah alfred see garp yesterday. one of the first 'adult' movies i got to watch on vhs with my parents, really did a number on me, in the best way.

it's maybe the first film I saw where gender/sexuality politics were front and center in a frank and disarming way

yeah the fisher king was a family favorite of ours.

very sad, don't know what else to say.

genuinely surprised that Gottfried penned an obit rather than a bunch of tasteless mean-spirited jokes

xxp

what starts as a narrative about a dickish Spalding Gray-like deejay getting smug about America

yeah, that's what i liked in tFK, the first 10 minutes.

Hanging. Such a gruesome method.

WTF Buzzfeed http://bzfd.it/Vh4svZ

Describing Garp as Oscarbait is technically true, I guess, since it was nominated for Oscars, but its still one weird ass movie.

http://davidsimon.com/robin-williams-a-brief-encounter/

I was hoping that Buzzfeed thing would just be some garbage from a community contributor, but it was a staff article. Blech.

recently rewatched that homicide episode (revisiting the show for the first time since it aired has been a trip), and you can definitely see the written-for-robin "pyrotechnics" simon would be chafed by

Matt Belknap:

When I was 10 years old, my parents took me to a 10,000 seat arena to see a stand-up comedy show. It was the first time I had ever seen stand-up in person, and the comedian was Robin Williams.

A few memories of that night have stuck with me for three decades. I remember how much Robin sweat. I remember Bobby McFerrin, then unknown, opening the show, and not really knowing if what he was doing was comedy, music, or both.

Before introducing Robin, a local DJ explained that he had been instructed to go to a toy store and fill a box with a bunch of toys. That box was brought out on stage, and during his set Robin riffed on the contents of it. Beyond being hilarious, this seemed like a magic trick to me. Hungry for more props, Robin later took a camera from a woman in the front row, stuck it down his pants and snapped a picture. At the time this was the funniest thing I had ever seen in my life.

What I remember most: in the car on the way home, I noticed that my mouth hurt. The sides of my mouth, my throat, even my neck hurt, having been stretched and flexed all night from laughing. I didn't know that was possible. I'm not sure it's ever happened to me again, actually. And I've seen a lot more comedy shows since then.

20-odd years later, I had the dumb luck to be booking a weekly comedy show at the UCB that Robin dropped in on. I will reiterate what every single person who ever met him is saying tonight: he was incredibly humble, friendly, kind, and generous with his time, talking to the other comedians outside the show afterwards about their sets or whatever.

But the highlight for me was, during the show, Robin stood next to me, off to the side, watching the other comics. And he was completely enthralled, laughing at every joke, nudging me every few seconds, uttering, "Oh shit!" when a line caught him off guard... And generally just acting like a 10-year-old kid seeing stand-up comedy for the first time. It was surreal.

I thought about telling him the story of how I saw him as a kid, but in the situation I was caught up in keeping my cool, and treating him like a human being instead of being a fan with a trite personal anecdote. But the truth is, I might not have been booking that show, and I might not be producing comedy albums and podcasts, making a living in this world today, if I hadn't been introduced to live comedy by one of the most wildly gifted and infectiously joyous performers to ever practice the craft. It is staggering to consider the lives he touched with his talent.

Dana Gould posted this on Instagram, v moving

http://instagram.com/p/rlk76Rqbe0/?modal=true

Two years ago, I was performing at The Punchline in San Francisco, and Robin came to the show with our mutual friend, Dan Spencer. This particular batch of material was the first time I had touched upon my then still-fresh divorce wounds, and big chunks of it were pretty dark. The next day, I got a text from a number I didn't recognize. Whoever it was had obviously been to the show and knew my number, so I figured they would reveal themselves at some point and save me the embarrassment of asking who they were. The Mystery Texter asked how I was REALLY doing. "You can't fool me. Some of those 'jokes' aren't 'jokes." By now I knew that whoever this was had been through what I was enduring, as no one else would know to ask, "What time of day is the hardest?" He wanted to know how my kids were handling it, all the while assuring me that the storm, as bleak as it was, would one day pass and that I was not, as I was then convinced, a terrible father for visiting a broken home upon my children. I am not rewriting this story in retrospect to make it dramatic. I did not know who I was texting with. Finally, my phone blipped, and I saw, in a little green square, "Okay, pal. You got my number. Call me. I've been there. You're going to be okay. - Robin." That is what you call a human being.

A friend of mine wrote this nice piece about what it was like to watch Robin the stand-up at his best:

http://www.thebolditalic.com/articles/5587-theres-nothing-lonelier-than-a-mic-and-a-stage

http://gawker.com/robin-williams-daughter-pens-heartbreaking-goodbye-to-h-1620566070

:(

the Marc Maron podcast was very interesting and very funny and very very sad

This one making the rounds:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t1.0-9/10583982_10152354168518995_8506274608323222161_n.jpg

Before introducing Robin, a local DJ explained that he had been instructed to go to a toy store and fill a box with a bunch of toys.

From a friend:

Robin Williams did a couple concerts at the Park West in the 80's. I worked there, and they needed someone to go prop-shopping at Uncle Fun, for stuff that would be in a trunk Robin would occasionally go to onstage. They told me to go to him, to check if he wanted to see anything pre-show. He told me 'No, I'd rather see it for the first time during the show.' That made me so nervous that my choices better be comically inspiring! All went well first show; he saw me and asked if any critics were there. My impression was how serious he seemed. What a contrast to the whirling dervish of his performance! Actually, a memory just came to me from earlier in the day during sound check. (I must've been there all day) He was going to the dressing room and had to pass a huge Skrebneski print that decorated the Park West lobby. Skrebneski was known for overtly sexual images of gorgeous models. Robin said something I couldn't hear, backed up and ran toward the giant print of the half naked model, throwing his body up against it in a typical Robin-the-comic move. What was funny was ... he was by himself at the moment. I was the only one in a position to see him, from the ticket window, but I don't think he knew I was there!

that unfaltering compulsion to perform, especially in comics with a tendency for melancholy or depression is super interesting to me

The Joan Rivers documentary covered compulsion-to-perform really well. With her, it was like she was working through the depression of her husband, although she's had many ups and downs herself since his death.

Williams says it straight in that podcast, it often stems from the insecurity and neediness of so many who go into stand-up comedy

new york daily news memo

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bu7K2sQIQAAHpz2.png

What do they mean by "robot talk"? I get the general gist of gaming Google's engine but...

if anything you'd think "buzzy search words like 'death'" is a classic example of media professional robot talk

the spelling and grammar of people who are ostensibly in a writing industry is consistently appalling

rip editors

BOSTON SEO STRONG

Not sure the point of leaking that memo tbf. It's how news people have to think. SEO stuff is just another layer on top of worrying about what goes above the fold, etc. Newsrooms are necessarily crass places.

(Not defending her grammar, but internal memos don't generally get run through the copy desk.)

i think it's more the word choice than the fact that the memo exists. not that hard to imagine a tactful editor getting across the same point without seeming like a terrible idiot.

wtf - his daughter having to ditch twitter because a bunch of sociopaths posting awful things to her is some sickening shit.

good to see the internet has decided bravely go on being as terrible as usual in the face of this loss

What do they mean by "robot talk"?

http://cdn.mos.totalfilm.com/images/b/bicentennial-man-400-80.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/Robots2005Poster.jpg

I'm kind of gratified with the knowledge that I'll doubtless be hearing RW's voice in years to come in the kids movies my currently-three-months-old daughter will be watching again and again and again

my mum, who is not a natural facebooker and usually just uses it to follow my brother and i and see what we're up to, posted a very sad message about RW, and it reminded me of when we went to see Mrs Doubtfire together when I was a teen. She'd just split up with my dad, and left us in his custody, and I just remember her being in proper floods of tears throughout in the cinema, dealing with lots of latent guilt she was feeling and so on.

Mrs. Doubtfire is 100% one of those movies that depends on an excess of charisma from the lead - if you have no compulsion to like the reckless, unhelpful guy who responded to his long-suffering wife's belated divorce by verbally harassing her on the phone, imitating an elderly maid and nearly killing her kind, responsible new boyfriend (after telling him you have an std) for the sin of not thinking highly of the deadbeat she was married to, it's as dark as Fatal Attraction.

telling him she has an std, i mean. Though those crabs jokes probably went over the head of 50% of the audience

I lasted 2 mins into Mrs D, about the point where he refused to do the voiceover of the happily smoking mouse. Like, "Hey, the guy has principles" sure but that cartoon would never have been allowed to air anyway....

I think we always knew that RW's awful films were awful despite his efforts, not because he 'ruined' them.

Unless you can think of some where the opposite applies...

mrs doubtfire is christopher columbus, all his movies are bizarre fantasies

I think we always knew that RW's awful films were awful despite his efforts, not because he 'ruined' them.

Unless you can think of some where the opposite applies…

http://www.wingclips.com/system/movie-clips/patch-adams/clowning-around/images/patch-adams-movie-clip-screenshot-clowning-around_large.jpg

he is terrible in every movie he made between 1998 and 2000 (haven't seen WDMC).

Alimony, kids, not keeping a small nut.

I watched Popeye last night for the first time since Mum took 4yo me to see it in the theater when it came out

and seriously lol that 4 year old me was afraid of the octopus wrestling scene (which was the only thing I remembered) because it could not look more fake and rubber now to 38 yo me

it's such a strange, beautiful, weird little movie. and Williams commits all the way to this popeye guy to the point where I forgot it was him. I'm glad I rewatched it. I would definitely watch it agian.

I have been trying to get my daughter to watch it with me for like a year to no avail

this is little me with my popeye record

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7239/7367592488_45e8c510f0_s.jpg

that is the best

I saw it for the first time since 1980 recently, in the last couple of years. Stuff I had no way of even catching... the boxing scene alone made me go, Damn, this really is a Robert Altman movie, isn't it?

This has a happy ending, but

My family was in an awful car crash a week before Christmas 1980, coming home from a school play I'd been the lead in. My four-year-old sister, riding in the front seat with no seat belt as you did in those days, nearly sliced her tongue off from left to right. Doctors stitched her up and she was home for Christmas, although temporarily mute.

For some reason, she laid on the couch and with her fingernail, scratched all of the black off of Shelly Duvall's dress on that album cover, humming to herself the whole time. She healed up and was able to speak again, but years afterward, we'd pull out that Popeye record and seeing that scratched-up dress always reminded us of something.

Her birthday was Monday, so as her older brother, I was obligated to post on her Facebook something like, "Happy birthday. Bet you wish you hadn't ruined that Popeye record NOW, right?"

lol

some nice stuff here

http://thedissolve.com/features/tribute/703-the-dissolve-remembers-robin-williams/

i still have my popeye record on my shelves
that tongue thing will probably give me nightmares
good lord
glad she's ok

pplains story weirdly has a parallel with part of the plot of The World According To Garp (the novel, anyway, still haven't seen the movie)

that's in the movie

oh
still that's gross

lol I forgot about that part

Ha! Well, Mom's boyfriend wasn't with us that day so it wasn't that parallel.

And yeah, she's ok. Good lord, she hasn't shut up since 1981.

Otm about the dad in doubt fire

being a shit, that is. I'm with the judge!

re that Dissolve piece, look it's fine if Mrs Doubtfire is your favorite childhood touchstone but calling it a masterpiece of screwball comedy is just

cmon

Youngs, what can ya do.

His early scenes leap off the screen with infectious energy; his final ones, when Aladdin grants him his freedom, brim over with genuine emotion. Early in the film, the Genie tells Aladdin he’s never had a friend like him, and he was right.

re that Dissolve piece, look it's fine if Mrs Doubtfire is your favorite childhood touchstone but calling it a masterpiece of screwball comedy is just

cmon

― SEEMS TO ME (VegemiteGrrl),

yeah but Doubtfire's fake tits get set on fire

it's kind of unfathomable now with dvr/netflix/etc, that if there was nothing on tv when i was a kid we'd pop in a movie like mrs. doubtfire for the eighteenth time

today it's a great honor if i bother to see something twice, but back then if you were a halfway tolerable comedy you were in the vhs player probably every three months

hell, in college too. I burned out my used Blockbuster copies of JFK and Husbands and Wives.

I've only seen the last 15-20 minutes of Mrs. Doubtfire, so I never got invested in the plight of the character. It just always looked corny enough to me that I had no urge to see the whole movie.

very few "bad dad redeems himself through insane/magical bullshit" movies from the '90s i can see playing well today

If nothing else -- IF NOTHING ELSE -- it gave us David Cross's amazing Mrs. Featherbottom on "Arrested Development."

plus with Sally Field as Mom I wonder why the court took her side

today it's a great honor if i bother to see something twice, but back then if you were a halfway tolerable comedy you were in the vhs player probably every three months

i just really don't like Pierce Brosnan

also croup otm

there's no good explanation for why I can now recite the entire script of Big Business

I have never seen a minute of Mrs Doubtfire, and that will continue to be so.

RW's awful films were awful despite his efforts because he agreed to do them

(ok, at least in some cases, huh)

Thanks to his mullet I'd call Pierce Brosnan a sociopath if Mrs Doubtfire didn't exist

back then if you were a halfway tolerable comedy you were in the vhs player probably every three months

nope

let us lower life forms have our fun

there was an early special of his where he starts to lose the audience and does this "into the mind of a comedian who's bombing" bit where he's running around inside his own head pulling switches and turning nobs and finally says "ok, we have to do it -- no! we can't do it! -- yes, we must... release, the id!" and he comes crawling out of an invisible box like a horror movie creature. can't find it on youtube.

I went looking for 'Reality, What A Concept' on YT and somebody had just posted it up, he does the comedy hell bit on this record, which I love so much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StPjkm1bbbY

Then I found a lot of the same material on this insane TV special, really wish I had seen it earlier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsIh5z7oYyY

wow, good find there

back then if you were a halfway tolerable comedy you were in the vhs player probably every three months

nope

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, August 13, 2014 6:57 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

talking 'bout my generation

i've seen mrs. doubtfire probably a dozen times

i've never seen popeye or good morning vietnam but i plan on watching both soon!

why would anyone watch mrs. doubtfire

we were young, man

not everybody on ilx was voting age in 1993, shocking i know

i was < 15yo and it was on TV a lot!

Top two movies of that year were Jurassic Park and Mrs. Doubtfire. Never saw either of them, was busy voting.

mod edit

http://i.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/hello-mrs-doubtfire.gif

oh whoops

I do remember an unfortunate double-feature on the VCR of "Man On the Moon" with Reese Witherspoon and "Toys".

Kids don't wanna learn about dinosaurs, man, if you wanna appeal to kids you have to do impressions of people they've never heard of

Man in the Moon isn't bad.

man i was soooo psyched for toys before it came out, convinced myself it was genius at the time

It wasn't.

Toys, on the other hand....

written by Barry Levinson and his wife, costarring LL Cool J, what could go wrong

the references to the toys trailer in the springfield film festival episode of the simpsons must be one of their most obscure ref points now

spring Smoochy on yr kids, they'll grow up fast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j39lYCi2itI

https://www.screenused.com/images/toys/15415_5.jpg

the references to the toys trailer in the springfield film festival episode of the simpsons must be one of their most obscure ref points now

― da croupier, Wednesday, August 13, 2014 3:28 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is pointed out in the DVD commentary, something along the lines of, "See, ok, there was this movie called Toys, and it was kind of a flop..."

Also, the episode is "Burns' Heir."

not everybody on ilx was voting age in 1993

neither was I

ooohhhh right it was the ad for his heir, not for his movie, my bad

sorry shakey, i just assumed your inability to understand why anyone would see a massively successful family film released in 1993 was an age thing

Alex Belth of Deadspin liberally quotes Kael's reviews of RW's work. I am kinda shocked she liked The Fisher King (in that post-retirement interview). I think she's dead on re GMVietnam and Awakenings.

http://thestacks.deadspin.com/robin-williams-he-left-something-on-the-stage-for-us-1619840741

I could barely finish The Fisher King but she's right about Ruehl, Bridges, and Plummer.

"Death to Smoochy" is so overrated in certain circles. Just because something is cynical doesn't inherently make it good.

yeah, witness The Wolf of Wall Street

i tried to watch death of smoochy but i hate devito's directorial style (much the same reason i hate later mike nichols)

that pic with bellow!

it's not a real movie thread till someone points out that pauline kael didn't like some movies

he has such an odd voice -- not just the way he uses it, but the actual timbre of his voice -- that i was forever wondering what strange part of the country produced that accent. of course, he's from chicago. he just talks like no one else. talked. RIP.

when as a kid I realized who Bono was I thought Robin Williams could play him.

xps lol, i know, she's instant flame-bait. while dissing Good Morning Vietnam, she also has to crap on Planes Trains and Automobiles too

i find one-hour photo pretty much unwatchable. it's not that over-art-directed, studied solemnity that seems to afflict a lot of features made by music-video directors.

by a lot i guess i mean, mark romanek's and anton corbijn's.

xp Alfred, my little group of high school friends initially referred to Bono as 'Mork From Cork'.

I just found OHP unwatchable because it was too uncomfortable. I hate being made to squirm in my chair.

Video directors also tend to overscale scenes.

guy dies, wankers crawl all over youtube taking stuff down. i'm not happy. butthatsjustme.

Video directors also tend to overscale scenes.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, August 13, 2014 3:43 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

overscale, or just overwork

fincher is guilty of this too in a way, but he's a lot smarter than those other guys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wCUcepbflA

one hour photo is amazing, i love movies that make me squirm in that way. not gore, but deep creep. one of the most profoundly disturbing movies i've ever seen. love it.

agree.

Just watched The Fisher King again, maybe for the first time since its original run. Wow, I forgot just how Gilliam-y it is, to the extent I can't believe it was a hit. ( was it?) Anyway, performances are so good all around. Forgot so much of this, from the train station waltz to Williams going the Full Robin.

I saw it in rep a few years ago as part of a Jeff Bridges series, and I don't think most us were ready to see Williams' Wang up on the big screen.

Richard LaGravenese wrote it, and he's good at unexpected and oddly timed exchanges b/w characters. The stuff involving Plummer-Williams-Ruehl-Bridges is terrific. The rest is too Gilliam-y, a director I don't much like.

it's not a real movie thread till someone points out that pauline kael didn't like some movies

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, August 13, 2014 3:59 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Since the seal's been broken, she liked both The Best of Times and The Survivors. Do I need to see these?

the former? yes

The latter? Yes.

When Robin Williams was in Seattle filming World's Greatest Dad, he crashed a comedy night at Rebar: http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/07/robin_williams_crashes_laff_hole

He was also a regular donor to the West Seattle Food Bank: http://westseattleblog.com/2014/08/remembering-robin-williams-his-west-seattle-food-bank-benefits-also-how-to-get-help-if-you-need-it/

The stuff involving Plummer-Williams-Ruehl-Bridges is terrific.

isn't this the entire cast

aside from whoever plays the burning equestrian avatar of psychosis

I saw Toys at the cinema. I think I remember really liking it at the time, tempted to rescreen.

Am guessing I would swiftly regret it tho.

now wondering how come he never played a Burton batman villain

was he not in line to play the riddler at some point? before carey?

One Hour Photo is utter crap bar Williams' performance btw

The stuff involving Plummer-Williams-Ruehl-Bridges is terrific.

isn't this the entire cast

Some random familiar faces in this, too, like David Hyde Pierce and Tom Waits. But yeah, the four person axis is pretty much everybody and all the speaking roles, save Michael Jeter, who is also pretty intense in this.

it's just outrageously corny and hence untruthful

I meant the four of'em together, which takes almost an hour to happen.

xpost That's one of the many things so strange about the movie. Like I said, it was way more Gilliam-y than I remembered, but the story did not necessarily call for the Gilliam touch. So there are these weird glimmers of fantasy and ... not truth, interspersed with these moments of raw emotion. Very awkward, precarious mix. I mean, jeez, there is a scene where Robin Williams' wife's brains are blown out all over his face.

i saw a similar brains-blowing scene the other night in Raul Ruiz's City of Pirates, a much funnier film

anyway, which of RW's standup lines have been repeated most often? I think "Cocaine is God's way of telling you you're making too much money."

God fucked up and creating the platypus.

Or was that George Carlin.

Another wrinkle:

Robin Williams Had Early Parkinson's, Wife Says

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/robin-williams-death/robin-williams-had-early-parkinsons-wife-says-n180826

Wau

:(

i wondered whether health news had inspired this

the guy was already walking on a wire when he COULD be constantly active

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XiooG_Zrmc

anyway, which of RW's standup lines have been repeated most often?

Among Reagan-era early teens, the "heat-seeking moisture missile" one.

http://petapixel.com/2014/08/14/photographer-photographs-two-mimes-1974-realizes-35-years-later-one-robin-williams/

awesome

I rescreened The Best of Times last night. Still holds up. I forgot the Under Fire team of Roger Spottiswoode and Ron Shelton directed and wrote it, which explains how well drawn the townspeople are.