Robin WIlliams, 1951-2014

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• Petey says:

  August 11, 2014 at 7:53 pm

  Amazing comedi­an. Amazing stuff when young, onstage and on teevee.
  Somewhat thin film career for someone of his tal­ent. Got to Old Bob De Niro stage at a young­er age.
  But The Survivors, Moscow on the Hudson, Club Paradise, Cadillac Man, The Fisher King, Deconstructing Harry, One Hour Photo, Insomnia.
  Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all. RIP.

• Jose says:

  August 11, 2014 at 8:14 pm

  The last thing I saw him in was a cameo on Louis C.K.‘s show. It was a brief scene at the start of the epis­ode, but he was bril­liant in it. It was the sort of thing I wish he could have done all the time, weird, dark and hil­ari­ous. Along with the movies Petey men­tioned, I’d also throw in Mike Nichol’s remake of The Birdcage and Dead Again. And I’d like to check out the movies he made with Bobcat Goldwaith one of these days. But I don’t think Hollywood ever cap­tured what he was prob­ably truly cap­able of.
  He’ll be missed. RIP.

• george says:

  August 11, 2014 at 9:56 pm

  Surprised no one has men­tioned GARP. I keep think­ing of this scene:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBGrTbbV_aQ

• Grant L says:

  August 11, 2014 at 11:00 pm

  Strikes even harder because last year I had a friend who ended his battle with depres­sion in much the same way. Said my wife, who’s also dealt with it quite a bit: “Sometimes it gets so hard to stick around.”

• Petey says:

  August 12, 2014 at 10:01 am

  “I’d also throw in Mike Nichol’s remake of The Birdcage”
  It was utterly spoiled for me by see­ing the (super­i­or) ori­gin­al first. If I had­n’t, it’s cer­tainly pos­sible I’d have enjoyed it more. I gen­er­ally wor­ship the ground Mike Nichols walks upon.
  “But I don’t think Hollywood ever cap­tured what he was prob­ably truly cap­able of.”
  Yeah. That was my point too. (Though his per­form­ances in a few of his early, unfairly neg­lected films are amaz­ing.) But as a res­ult of his some­what thin Hollywood career, I don’t know if he’ll get mem­ber­ship in the Forest Lawn Memorial Golf Club In Heaven on the first ballot.

• Dale Wittig says:

  August 12, 2014 at 10:22 am

  I had almost for­got­ten how good One Hour Photo and The Birdcage were (though the lat­ter might have been truly great had Elaine May dir­ec­ted in addi­tion to writ­ing it) and one should­n’t for­get William’s bril­liant turn as the King of the Moon in Gilliam’s mas­ter­piece, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, but for me Williams’s best per­form­ance in a truly great film was his first: Altman’s (and Feiffer’s and Nilsson’s) under­ap­pre­ci­ated Popeye. To my way of think­ing, his trans­form­a­tion into a live action car­toon is as good as any­thing Jerry Lewis ever pulled off, and, bet­ter still, he showed there that he could be genu­inely sexy. (Of course it helped that he had Warren Beatty’s McCabe as a kind of mod­el to par­ody.) It’s a shame that the American film mak­ing com­munity was­n’t able to provide him more oppor­tun­it­ies to do such work.

• Petey says:

  August 12, 2014 at 10:25 am

  Kudos to Glenn for call­ing out Moscow on the Hudson in his Vanity Fair piece. Definitely in the run­ning for his greatest film performance.

• Melissa says:

  August 12, 2014 at 6:18 pm

  “Because he even­tu­ally lost the battle with one of the things he struggled with does not, I think, make him any less of a hero.”
  I did not under­stand that this was true until I read it. Thank you.

• george says:

  August 12, 2014 at 8:35 pm

  As if this week did­n’t suck badly enough, Lauren Bacall has died.
  https://www.yahoo.com/movies/lauren-bacall-hollywoods-icon-of-cool-dies-at-89–94579236487.html

• Michael Dempsey says:

  August 12, 2014 at 9:46 pm

  An espe­cially mem­or­able Robin William per­form­ance is his unbilled por­tray­al of the assas­sin in Christopher Hampton’s 1996 adapt­a­tion (he wrote and dir­ec­ted it) of Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Agent” (also the source of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Sabotage”).
  His per­form­ance in this seem­ingly for­got­ten film cap­tures his char­ac­ter­’s unnerv­ing nihil­ism, which sees abso­lutely no value what­so­ever in the entire human pro­ject, with a pre­ci­sion and a pas­sion that I’ve nev­er seen sur­passed in the cinema for sheer blood-chilling intensity.
  Could this be why he is unbilled in the cast list? Could the shat­ter­ing bleak­ness of this char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion, so unlike what any­one then could have expec­ted from the Williams who was so cel­eb­rated and loved (prop­erly so) for the seem­ingly inex­haust­ible fer­til­ity of his com­ic invent­ive­ness, have been a glimpse into whatever drove him to end his life?
  Let’s not spec­u­late. Instead, let’s con­sider mak­ing this atyp­ic­al Williams film a bit less obscure so that it can join his more fam­ous achieve­ments when we pay trib­ute to his career and life.

• Kurzleg says:

  August 12, 2014 at 10:41 pm

  @Michael: I vaguely recall this film when it came out, but I had not idea until look­ing it up just now how much act­ing tal­ent is in the cast. I will cer­tainly have to check it out.
  I come from a gen­er­a­tion that mostly remem­bers Williams as the zany sit-com act­or and stand-up comedi­an that he often was. This might be why the breadth of his per­form­ances is so sur­pris­ing. Even now, it’s hard to believe how often and well Williams reined in the man­ic energy that he so often put on dis­play in favor of devel­op­ing restrained, recog­niz­able human char­ac­ters. (As a point of com­par­is­on, Jim Carrey has man­aged to do the same only spar­ingly. In fact, “Eternal Sunshine…” is the only film that imme­di­ately comes to mind.) I sup­pose such act­ing range should­n’t be all that sur­pris­ing com­ing from a Julliard-trained act­or, but Williams’ man­ic comed­ic per­sona burst on the scene so force­fully and left such an indelible mark that it obscured the full extent of his talent.

• george says:

  August 17, 2014 at 7:52 pm

  http://www.avclub.com/article/gene-simmons-continues-asshole-tour-telling-depres-208204
  KISS front man Gene “Asshole” Simmons says depressed people should kill them­selves. Great tim­ing, Gene.
  At least an Australian radio net­work respon­ded by ban­ning KISS songs, with the net­work chief describ­ing Simmons as a “dick­head.”