Way back in some corner of the crowded shelf called memory, we vaguely remember a comic doing an imitation of Robin Williams. This must've been decades ago, when Robin Williams was on top of his game and the film industry. The long-forgotten comic of memory mumbled something about the president, then jumped in the air on some sort of magical bird, and began screaming "Help me! Help me!" in the voice of the Fly in the old horror flick. Then he broke into a Broadway lyric sung with gusto: Mariiaaaaa! All in machine-gun, rapid-fire succession.
That was Robin Williams, all right, a manic miracle. A lightning storm. And you never knew when or where the next bolt would strike, or how close it'd be. You just knew there wouldn't be much down time in between. Take cover!
There were so many emotions the name Robin Williams and his loss stirred Monday when the news arrived like another bolt of lightning. One lady said, no, it didn't happen, couldn't have happened, because she refused to believe it. Like the shocked critic who, when he heard George Gershwin had died at a tragically early age, said you didn't have to believe it if you didn't want to--and he didn't want to.
The lady who refused to mourn Robin Williams grew up watching him play the title role in Mrs. Doubtfire, which may have been his stellar performance. (There were so many other comic tours de force to choose from.)
A young man who grew up watching Aladdin and its bouncing-off-the-walls genie said his day was ruined. (His day? The young are notorious for having short attention spans.) While a couple of inky wretches in the newsroom, old enough to remember the 1970s--and Mork and Mindy--debated the details of Moscow on the Hudson.
It may have been this newspaper's own Philip Martin who put it best, as he so often does, when it came to summing up the national mood Monday afternoon: Someday, too, Bill Murray won't be around. And this is what that day will feel like.
Yes, much like the day we heard Jonathan Winters was gone. It came to mind upon hearing the news because Robin Williams, whose taste was impeccable despite some of the much-too-cutesy scripts he was handed, chose Jonathan Winters as friend and mentor. Along with the incomparable comic genius Richard Pryor. Tell us who a man models himself after and we'll tell you whether he'll amount to much. Robin Williams amounted to a lot.
Here's a good test of how indispensable Robin Williams was to his movies: Can you think of any actor who could have replaced him? They say Tom Selleck was considered for the lead in the first Indiana Jones movie. Okay, that's easy enough to imagine. But can you imagine Aladdin without Robin Williams?
Back in the 1980s, we met Adrian Cronauer when he was touring small colleges. He was hot back then because a movie called Good Morning, Vietnam had just come out, and Robin Williams was playing him. Mr. Cronauer said, no, he didn't sound anything like Robin Williams in his radio gig--because if he did, he'd be Robin Williams, rich and famous and funny, not just another radio announcer. ("Good morning, Vietnam! Hey, this is not a test. This is rock-and-roll. Time to rock it from the Delta to the DMZ! Is that me, or does that sound like an Elvis Presley movie? Viva Da Nang! Oh, viva, Da Nang! Da nang me, da nang me, Why don't they get a rope and hang me? . . . .")
Could you even pitch such a movie to the studios without guaranteeing that Robin Williams would be willing to take the gig? Only after that would it sound irresistible.
When the Weather Channel started broadcasting Tuesday morning, it covered Robin Williams' death. The Weather Channel. The way it would cover any other tornado. The show ran clips of him telling jokes about the weather.
Even ESPN covered the story Tuesday morning, this with NFL training camps in full swing. Not kidding. It makes a kind of wacky Robin Williams sense. The man was a major sport of his own. He transcended any one category of comedy you might try to cram him into.
What was intolerable, what was insufferable, was the behavior of much of the almighty Media, which would have made Fleet Street and the more vulgar reaches of Rupert Murdoch's vast press empire look almost respectable. A few minutes after the news broke, one of the TV screens in the newsroom was showing views from a helicopter above Robin Williams' home.
It was hard at that moment not to think, "And so it begins." The next hours were filled with details, details, details about how the man died, along with a long line of certified Analysts and Alienists offering their oh-so-deep opinions about why. As if they had any idea. At all. Par for the vulgar course.
All we know for sure is that first we lost Philip Seymour Hoffman, an altogether different breed of genius, and now Robin Williams. Damn this thing, this disease, and maybe ultimate sin called suicidal depression.
Television, especially the national 24-hour news channels, revels in the revolting. It's got to do something to fill all that dead air time just waiting to be crammed full of trash. Like a giant dumpster that can't complain about whatever is thrown into it. And so a man who had brought so much delight to so many went out chased by the electronic paparazzi.
So much for his widow's plea: "On behalf of Robin's family, we are asking for privacy during our time of profound grief. As he is remembered, it is our hope the focus will not be on Robin's death, but on the countless moments of joy and laughter he gave to millions."
Yes, Robin Williams starred in some real losers. Naturally he would win an Oscar for his role in Good Will Hunting, our choice as the most cloying, false and deeply subversive movie of a whole decade with its unmistakable moral: It doesn't matter how hard you try, you're either born with talent/intelligence/virtue or you might as well give up. Because work, devotion, constancy of purpose, not even goodness of heart and deed, will ever get you there, and certainly education won't. Unless maybe you have the services of a shrink with all the right, maudlin cliches at the ready.
Oh, to clear all that away and just hear one more genuine Robin Williams riff.
Editorial on 08/14/2014