Robin Williams Dies

Robin Williams

July 21st 1951- August 11th 2014

The famous actor and comedian Robin Williams has died at the age of sixty-three. Yesterday the emergency services were called to his house in Tiburon, California USA and found him unconscious. He could not be resuscitated and was pronounced dead at the scene, probably from suicide. He was known to have been battling depression and had a drink and drug problem. He became famous on TV as an egg-cracking and wise-cracking alien in Mork and Mindy and in the movies he played Popeye in the 1980 film of that name. However it wasn't until the late 1980's that he became role-cast into the form I most admired him for, that of the archetypal trickster rebel. Beginning with Good Morning Vietnam he played a whole series of eccentric and funny free-spirited characters who find themselves in a setting in which conformity, discipline and sombreness prevail; this results in friction between these characters and the authorities which fuels the story. Other examples are Dead Poets Society and Patch Adams. These films are very emotive as well as comical; tragedy was something else Williams excelled at, such as in Bicentennial Man. Not that he lacked versatility; in Insomnia he played a very credible and detestable villain. He was also equally talented as a stand-up comic, but less famous for it, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdIRME3EpFY.

What made Robin Williams one of my heroes was the way he championed nonconformism. He made me feel that being an oddball was fine and that I didn't have to change; even though everybody around me was telling me I had to, and was even putting pressure on me to do so, up to and including the use of violent force. He was a role model for me my entire life, especially when I was a child and felt I didn't fit in with my peers. His absolute masterpiece was The Fisher King in which its incitement to breach conformity is breathtaking; here's my favourite scene from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lASPrnWf6cA. Those who knew him say that he often found it hard to switch off when he was acting and he sometimes remained in character during his free time, causing riotous scenes in public places and social gatherings. He found it hard to be serious; many of his best comedy moments are ad-libbed by him and were not originally scripted into his films. But life as a nonconformist is never easy. Many great funny men hide deep anguish behind their jokes and like Kenneth Williams and Tony Hancock, Williams fought a long hard battle against depression. He also fell into the trap of addiction, like many in Hollywood, including his co-star in Patch Adams, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. When his best friend and fellow actor Christopher Reeve died, it dealt him a devastating blow from which he never completely recovered. One of his best films was What Dreams May Come, based on the Richard Matherson novel about the prospect of life after death. I've always found it deeply poignant, but never more so than today; however it gives me hope, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmZ-FuBThuQ. I'll miss you badly, Robin. RIP.