RIP Robin Williams

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.