RIP Robin Williams

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