Mork & Mindy: THE MOVIE (of the week)

Canadian actor delivers Robin Williams for new Mork & Mindy TV movie
By John McKay
TORONTO (CP) — Other actors stayed away in droves, but for Toronto-born Chris Diamantopoulos it was the opportunity of a lifetime to bid “na nu, na nu” to obscurity.
Already known as a “vocal chameleon,” Diamantopoulos, who turns 30 in May, was shooting an episode of TV’s Kevin Hill in Toronto last year when word came of the auditions being held in Vancouver for the part of Robin Williams in the NBC movie of the week, Behind the Camera: Mork & Mindy.
“This wasn’t some sensationalistic expose that I jumped aboard because I could do a Robin Williams impression,” insists Diamantopoulos. “I’ve never done a Robin Williams impression in my life, and I’d like to see someone do a Robin Williams impression and hold it for two hours.”
Diamantopoulos says he saw an opportunity to advance his fledgling TV and film career by stepping up to the challenge of playing an exciting and interesting character, one most others shied away from because they didn’t want to risk becoming famous as the person who tried to do Williams and failed.
The “unauthorized” TV movie, which airs Monday night on Global, follows Williams’s own early career and the break he caught playing the alien Mork on an episode of Happy Days back in 1978. That led to the hugely successful Mork & Mindy sitcom on ABC-TV which in turn led to the creators’ ongoing struggle to shoehorn Williams’s rapid-fire improv style into the confines of a prime-time TV series, and eventually to Williams’s own difficulties coping with the sex and drugs that came with instant success.
The warts are there but it is generally not a hostile portrayal, tastefully dancing around the events surrounding the 1982 overdose death of friend John Belushi, a jolt that helped Williams finally kick the drug habit.
While he sees the TV movie as a tribute to the famous comic, Diamantopoulos says he’s had no personal communications with Williams who, he adds, may well feel like anyone would having their story told without any consent or input.
“I’m sure that Robin Williams is probably above being frustrated or upset by it. I think I’ve heard that he said he finds it interesting that the movie is being made, he wishes us well, but he probably won’t be watching.”
As for the performance, it’s one thing to “do” Williams when he’s on, as a manic character like Mork from Ork. But if one listens with eyes closed, Diamantopoulos also captures Williams’s private voice with remarkable realism. To accomplish that, the actor watched every Williams movie and stand-up tape made, but gained particular inspiration from Good Will Hunting, Dead Poets Society and the James Lipton Inside the Actors Studio interview.
“I listened to this stuff for hours and hours and weeks and weeks,” he says. “There’s a resonance and lilt to his voice that’s almost Irish.”
And Diamantopoulos found there was a definite connection between doing the voice and Williams’s physicality.
“If I wasn’t standing the way he stands and moving the way he moves, I couldn’t do the voice, (but) if I put myself into his stature, there it was.”
Still, it was daunting to go before the cast and crew on the set where he imagined they wondered who he thought he was. But before the three weeks of filming was over, he was getting standing ovations after his takes.
Although Diamantopoulos is “a proud Canadian,” that proved to be just a coincidental boon to the U.S. production because it gave it more Canadian content points.
There are plenty of other photo-realistic portrayals in the story, too, including those of Belushi, Henry Winkler’s Fonzie, Pam Dawber’s Mindy, producer-director Garry Marshall and Penny (Laverne) Marshall.
Other real-life characters like John Travolta and Robert De Niro are referenced only, and there are other cosmetic changes made for legal reasons.
“The suspenders are slightly different, the emblem on the Mork costume is different, there are a lot of subtle differences that had to change,” says Diamantopoulos, who maintains that otherwise, everything has been cleared 100 per cent.
“The movie is a dramatic interpretation of the events, so it’s not verbatim what happened, it’s just sort of a loose idea of what may have occurred.”
Even Williams’s original material could not be used (although there are familiar bits like Mork’s famous “Na nu, na nu” goodbye and “Carpe diem - that’s fish of the day”). So the writer let Diamantopoulos contribute some of his own Robin-like improv mania.
“He was gracious enough to let me throw a lot of my own stuff in, and the director was smart enough to let the camera roll.”
The young actor says this is definitely a career turning point, as he moves from what has until now been mostly theatrical work.
“This is the first time I will ever be carrying a feature on my shoulders that will be seen by millions of viewers, and I think that it was a great way to start.”