The man had demons. For a long long time. There is an old belief that comedy comes out of pain. When asked if this was true Ray Romano once said "If my dad had hugged me just once you'd never be talking to me"
Robin Williams was a funny guy. He was fantastic with accents and dialects. He had a penchant for physical comedy. He was very adept at reading his audiences. I never got to see him perform live but if I did I'd imagine my face and lungs would hurt so much from laughing that I may need to seek medical attention.
He had very early success with Mork and Mindy. And very unexpected success. I don't think many people could predict how popular that show would become or what level of stardom its young comic leading man would achieve.
That's a very old Hollywood curse isn't it, sudden and unexpected success. And perhaps unwarranted. Williams was a great performer but he was also a thief. A joke thief. Over the years several comics, chief among them David Brenner, accused Williams of stealing material. It became a running joke among LA comics that if Williams was in the house, don't use your best material. Because he would, at some later time
But on Mork and Mindy it was the script writers whose material Williams used and of course that's all kosher. He at least paid tribute to the man who was a main source of inspiration for him, Johathan Winters, who had written into the show
After Mork, Williams could have continued on in TV but he wanted to be a movie star. I think this was the beginning of his downfall. Williams made some outstanding movies. I can watch Good Morning Vietnam over and over, same with The Bird Cage. I liked him in Good Will Hunting and he was hilarious as the Genie in Aladdin.
But mostly Robin Williams made dogs. Movies that is. Mrs Doubtfire is unwatchable, as is Patch Adams. He made some horrible family movies like RV that were worse than the worse sitcoms on TV. He was a pretty good supporting actor, ad in Good Will Hunting, drawing on his uncanny dialect ear and ability to mimic.
But the guy could not pick a good movie project to save his life, over all. Let's face it, the last 10 years or so have not been kind to Robin Williams. Jumping from one tired movie project to another he lost whatever relevance he once had. I did not see his return to network TV, The Crazy Ones, but I know that it was cancelled. And I read somewhere that he based his onscreen character on another character created by another comic ..
I do admire that he attempted to expand beyond comedy with films like One Hour Photo and Insomnia. He was passable in the latter movie but never was able to command the screen as the villain. It's a movie that spotlights the downward spiral of two stars, Williams and even more sadly, Al Pacino, one of the greatest actors of his generation reduced recently to cruising through entirely forgettable films
As I said I regret never having seen Williams live. I loved his HBO specials. I wouldn't have cared how much of the material was his own, the man was funny and he was a great performer. But he was not as great as he wanted to be, perhaps needed to be. He floundered, never really finding the long term success as a movie star.
Sudden success was difficult on him as witnessed by his early drug abuse. Failure to maintain that success may have been difficult with recent problems with booze. I wonder if he was never comfortable in his own skin.
Because he may not have known whose skin it actually was
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