Robin Williams - When the Laughter Stops 1951-2014 (15 page)

Patch Adams
it was not but it marked a massive return to form. If Williams had stuck to films like this, he would have had to endure a great deal less criticism than some of his choices garnered – although, as he himself admitted, the film was never going to be a big money spinner – because people loved it.
World’s Greatest Dad
was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. ‘Lusciously perverse, and refreshingly original comedy that tackles love, loss, and our curious quest for infamy,’ was the verdict, while Robin was praised for his outstanding performance. It was ‘brilliant’, ‘genius’ and ‘one of the best films of the year’, said the critics.

‘A startlingly excellent dark comedy about the power of positive posthumous PR. One of 2010’s must-see movies,’ wrote Catherine Bray. ‘Goldthwait’s pacing is uncertain, and his humour is frequently “off”, but the sense of risky provocation is compelling,’ opined Anthony Quinn in
The Independent.
And the message was clear: Williams still had what it takes. If only he would choose his other projects a little more carefully. However – and it was a
big
however – the film was not a massive hit, almost certainly because of the subject matter.

Goldthwait initially enlisted Robin as a friend, not the potential lead, to see if he could help him to get the film into production. ‘I read it to say, “Look, let me see if I can help get this made for you.” Because when he did Shakes the Clown, I played Jerry the Mime as a favour, and it was like, let me see what I can play… and then I thought, “No, this is really good.”’

He was aware, though, that they were dealing with a difficult subject matter. ‘Dealing with the loss of a child, I can’t imagine… so that’s kind of difficult to think of. But the script was fearless and we had to go that way. You can’t be glib about it. You can’t be like, “Hey, my kid was a prick. He’s dead. So what?” You can’t go that way.’ And then there was the tidying up scene… ‘Yeah and clean up after his kid. And try and y’know… even the idea of zipping up his fly and putting away every bit of evidence, it’s like, “Okay, how we gonna deal with this, coach?”’

Things seemed to be looking up. Robin had a new wife, Susan Schneider, whom he’d met in an Apple Store. ‘I was wearing camouflage pants, and she said, “How’s that camouflage working?” I said, “Pretty good, because you noticed.” I had this weird feeling, so I said, “I know this sounds like a horrible pickup line, but I feel like I know you.” And she said, “Yeah, me too.” And then we realized we had a common theme in sobriety,’ he told
People Magazine.
They’d met in 2009, just before Robin discovered he would need surgery and Susan, a San Francisco-based graphic designer, proved a keeper, looking after him as he
recovered. Fifteen years younger than him and five inches taller, she was also a painter and brought some much-needed happiness back into his life.

The relationship turned serious pretty quickly: they married in 2011 at the Meadowood Resort in St Helena, California, and honeymooned in Paris. Williams was a man who needed female companionship: he’d never had the slightest problem attracting women but he required something more stable than a few casual flings that didn’t mean anything.

‘No, Apple. A-p-p-l-e store; we were both looking for weird technology and our eyes met and we just got married last month, which, given my track record, is a bit like bringing a burns victim to a fireworks display,’ he said on another occasion to the
Daily Telegraph.
The couple now lived in Robin’s mother’s old home: ‘I’ve done the ranch thing, now I’m doing the water thing where I go kayaking and paddleboarding and take to the woods for hours on my bike. It’s my thinking time and very therapeutic. I also have a gay rescue pug called Leonard, who I take for walks, because I am very secure in my sexuality. He has a boyfriend and they are planning to adopt a Siamese kitten together. We’re very modern.’

It was a new family; you didn’t need to be a psychologist to guess that Robin was almost certainly trying to replace the one he had lost.

He continued to worry about money, however. ‘I’ve never been asked to appear on
I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of 
Here!
’ he mused, ‘so I guess I mustn’t be on the professional skids just yet,’ he told the
Daily Telegraph.
‘Besides, I would never appear on it. Never. I don’t do well with snakes and I can’t dance. I am such a bad dancer, in fact, that I could only ever appear on a telethon, raising money for damaged people: “The phone lines are open. Pledge us money and We Will Make Him Stop”.’ He seemed to have mistakenly confused
I’m a Celebrity
… with
Strictly Come Dancing
but the fretting was there nonetheless.

The renewed stability in his private life, allied to the fact that he was making some decent films, seemed to have opened Williams to the possibility of taking a risk. It was now years since that less-than-successful outing with
Waiting For Godot
at the Lincoln Center but, in 2011, he trod the boards once more in Rajiv Joseph’s
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo
at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, his Broadway debut. The wife of his manager, David Steinberg, had introduced him to the play. Heavily bearded (a look he sported a lot in those days), Robin played the tiger, a beast guarded by two American soldiers in the early days of the war in Iraq. The tiger talks to the audience and continues to do so after a soldier has shot and killed it.
Bengal Tiger
was a brave play and it was a brave man who took on the role. Again, he garnered excellent reviews.

‘But Mr Williams, the kinetic comic who has sometimes revealed a marshmallowy streak in movies, never indulges the audience’s hunger for displays of humorous invention or pinpricks of poignancy,’ wrote Charles Isherwood in
The New York Times.
‘He gives a performance of focused intelligence and integrity, embodying the animal who becomes the play’s questioning conscience with a savage bite that never loosens its grip.’ This was, in fact, considerably better than the days of
Godot
: once again, he was receiving the professional acclaim he so craved.

‘It just hit me hard, it was so powerful,’ Robin told
The
New York Times.
‘I read it, and I was going: “I’m in. I can come into it and create it from the ground up.” And I’m hairy enough to be a tiger, so that’s good. Most of the time, most of the characters are, to be blunt, ghosts. I mean, I don’t want to spoil it – ‘This is what it’s about’ – but right off the bat, you’re in Iraq, it’s all these ghosts wandering around, talking and gaining more consciousness as they continue through the play.’

He had, of course, actually been to Iraq, when he was entertaining US troops. ‘The last time I was [in Iraq] I stayed in [Saddam Hussein’s son] Uday’s hunting lodge, although the only thing he hunted was Russian hookers,’ he told
TIME Magazine
in an interview in 2011. ‘It was like if Hitler had built Graceland; it was so tacky. Even Colombian drug lords are going, “This is some tacky stuff.” But my feelings about the war are about ghosts. I was just there recently, and [everything is] “winding down.” What do you leave there when it just ends? There’s a line in the play: “The Americans think when something dies, that’s it, it’s over.” But when you go to the Middle East, you realize there’s a real sense that things stay around.’

It was, in fact, a triumph and he received a great deal of acclaim. Again and again, he was showing he’d still got it, in every field he touched. But that nagging insecurity about money continued and, along with choosing to sell his beautiful ranch in Marin County, Robin decided he wanted a regular income.

He was going back to where it all began – a regular series on TV.

Williams continued to adjust to his new life. His children had grown up and left home now – although in the wake of the divorce their base had been with Marsha anyway - so it was just Robin, Susan and the dogs. In the old days, he had enjoyed the scrum of the family but, even if he and Marsha hadn’t divorced, life was changing. He was growing older and life moved at a different pace.

‘It’s quiet,’ he told
MSN Today
in 2011. ‘I just saw my daughter, Zelda, the other night. My oldest son is married, and my youngest son just went off to college. It’s like they’ve left the earth’s gravity, and I’m watching
them. “There he gooooes!” I’m just so proud. I don’t have a college degree, and my father didn’t have a college degree, so when my son, Zachary, graduated from college, I said, “My boy’s got learnin’!”’

Of course, the immensely erudite Robin had learning too – lots of it.

And he was proud of his children. ‘I have to give credit to my ex, Marsha,’ he told
Parade.
‘She did the majority of the work on that level. She really tries to ground them and protect them, but not overly so. There were three years [drinking] when I was pretty out. Now I really have to be there for them. The most important thing to say is “If you need me, I’m here.” Zelda’s acting in small movies and writing, which is wonderful. Cody is doing music production. Zachary’s married and working. When he graduated from NYU, it was one of the most moving days of my life. I was so proud of him. Because I don’t have a college degree.’

It was odd that Robin was obsessing so much about this now: in midlife, perhaps he had got to a stage of brooding about what might have been.

Meanwhile, the films continued to pour out. He reprised his dual role in
Happy Feet Two
(2011): ‘Well, you have to do it better than the first time to make it worthwhile, not just for the sake of the franchise,’ he told
MSN Today.
‘[Director] George [Miller] kicked it hard. I asked him after he saw it what he thought, and he said, “Well, I don’t know, but I think it’s better.” I said, “I think so, too.” He
used the technology, performances, everything, and took it to a new level.’

There was the usual ad-libbing: ‘There was one moment as Lovelace where I started speaking in tongues. I got so kind of crazy that I almost passed out. George said, “That’s great. Keep going!” I told him that if I kept going, I would fall down. I just started doing this Baptist hymnal thing. “Hmmmmhmmmmhmmmm.” I think that’s actually what led to the gospel song that’s in the movie.’

Then there was another film (though, alas, not one of his better choices):
The Angriest Man in Brooklyn
(2014). The story involves an obnoxious man who has a car accident and is so unpleasant to the doctor in the hospital he is sent to that she tells him he has only ninety minutes to live. Queue the patient charging around the place, trying to right the wrongs he has committed in record time, while the doctor, realising that she could be struck off, charges round, trying to find him.

The reviews were pitiless. ‘A schmaltz opera that indulges Robin Williams’ most melancholy tics and themes,’ wrote Peter Debruge in
Variety.
‘The film never quite manages to figure out what it’s actually about,’ declared Bilge Ebiri in
New York Magazine/Vulture.
‘The movie is predictably sentimental at its root, but it’s also meant to be comedy, partly resting on Mr Williams’s energetic but failed attempt to play a jerk,’ said Nicolas Rapold in
The New York Times.
‘Every scene between two people comes off like drunkenly shot video of a play
rehearsal gone horribly wrong,’ opined Robert Abele in
The Los Angeles Times.

‘Robin Williams once again proves he can insufferably crank the energy to 11 without batting an eye, only this time his frenzied comic demeanor is replaced with equally harried contempt,’ said Drew Hunt of
Slant Magazine.
‘As broad as Williams goes in these scenes, it’s not really his fault. He’s acting out a screenplay, credited to Daniel Taplitz, that’s peppered with bad writerly flourishes,’ wrote Jesse Hassenger of
AV Club.

Ouch! To a somewhat oversensitive man, this was not a pretty read.

That said, along with the brickbats, there were plenty of bouquets flying Williams’ way. He was invited to The Paley Center for Media for an evening in his honour, sponsored by
TV Guide.

‘I never think of myself as a legend,’ said Robin, somewhat wonderingly. ‘It’s a weird label, like “mythological,” with little people behind you [saying], “We worship you.” When I started on TV there were only three networks and now there are hundreds. And even though this is my first time at The Paley Center, I know you can come here and see incredible TV from the past.’

Director Bobcat Goldthwait made a speech. ‘During my toast at Robin’s wedding, I referred to his new wife as a MILF,’ he said. ‘And I threw him a bachelor party, where a lovely performer named Lady Monster showed up and lit different parts of her anatomy on fire. It’s the least I
could do for Robin, who has always offered a shoulder for me to cry on when things were bad. We’ve had a nice run as best pals.’

Some more very small-scale films went on, including
The Face of Love
(2013), in which a woman, Nikki (Annette Bening), falls in love with someone who looks incredibly like her late husband (Ed Harris). Robin played Roger, a close friend who wanted to be something more.

As so often, the filmmakers were thrilled to have Williams on board: ‘He’s probably one of my favorite people I’ve ever worked with,’ said producer Bonnie Curtis. ‘I met Robin when I was twenty-three or twenty-four years old. We did the movie
Hook
[1991] together, which was about a three-year shooting schedule, so we all got to know each other really well. I called up Robin because I thought, for this part, that he would just get this guy.’

She sent him the script and ‘he called me up and he said, “Well, now Ed has the really good part.” And I agreed, “Yes, he does.” And then Robin said, “But I get this guy. I get Roger, and I can do it. I’d love to try, at least.” And that was really it. He was absolutely precious. He told me that he based it on an actual occurrence that happened to his mother, seeing a man who looked exactly like his father and how that affected her, and that he’d built it from that, which is kind of beautiful. The tone is very sweet. At the same time, there’s great depth and sadness. This stuff is very passionate, and very palpable.’

There was absolutely nothing wrong with doing this sort
of film – it was art-house territory, with an interesting plot and well worth making – but it was not the mega-bucks blockbuster of yesteryear and Williams had worked himself into a state about money. Life was pretty depressing in other ways, too. The comedian and actor Jonathan Winters had just died and Williams paid a gracious tribute to his friend in the way that, alas, so many of his contemporaries would soon do for him too.

‘Jonathan Winters was my mentor. I once told him that and he said, “Please. I prefer ‘Idol.’” But I knew it was true. I knew the moment I saw him on
The Tonight Show
when Jack Paar handed him a stick. What happened next was a genius at play. John and that stick transformed into a dozen different characters, complete with sound effects – a fly-fisherman, a matador, Bing Crosby playing a round of golf … he was comedy at the speed of thought and I was hooked.

‘Twenty years later I got to play Jonathan’s dad on
Mork & Mindy.
His riffs on our show were like epic mini-movies. Sometimes I would join in and jamming with Jonathan was like dancing with Fred Astaire. He always brought out your best.

‘The beauty of Jonathan was that he was a big, brilliant kid that never grew up and the world was his playground. In April, Johnny turned out the lights, but he sure burned bright while he was here. Thanks for the spark, big guy.’

But that was not the only sad news. Robin was still a keen cyclist but now his good friend Lance Armstrong
had become caught up in a drugs scandal when it was discovered that he had been taking illicit performance-enhancing drugs.

‘I got involved [in cycling] because I couldn’t run anymore,’ Robin told
Parade
in 2013. ‘I loved running, but all of a sudden everything hurt so much. I started cycling when Zelda was born. When I met Lance, I was [already] a cycling fan. I went to five Tours de France and followed his team. That’s why it was so disheartening when [the doping scandal] went down.’

Did he feel betrayed? ‘It wasn’t just Lance. [Most of the] team was doping. I haven’t seen him since one of the last Livestrong benefits, I think just before the Oprah interview. It was literally like a wake for someone who was still alive, this overall feeling that the dream was over.’

The world of television was abuzz. David E. Kelley, the man behind such TV classics as
Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, The Practice, Ally McBeal
and
Boston Legal
was launching a new series,
The Crazy Ones,
about a man called Simon Roberts who works in advertising with his daughter Sydney at a Chicago agency called Lewis, Roberts + Roberts. There was particular excitement because the actor who was to play Simon would be none other than Robin Williams. The part had been written especially for him. It was the first time that he had appeared in a television series since
Mork & Mindy,
thirty-one years previously.

The actress playing his daughter Sydney, Sarah Michelle
Gellar, certainly regarded it as a big deal. As soon as she heard Williams would be starring in a new series, she rang a friend of hers called Sarah de Sa Rego, who just happened to be married to Bobcat Goldthwait, to say she wanted to play Sydney. According to Gellar, she ‘stalked’ Robin: ‘I even called his best friend and I was like, “I have to be on this show. Please tell Robin!” I really did!’ she said. Her wish was fulfilled. ‘He is a legend! Think about it: Greatest stand-up comic of all time, Academy Award winner and nicest man on the planet,’ added Gellar.

‘It’s like if Gandhi did stand-up!’ Robin responded.

Like so many before him, he had used television as a platform to launch a film career: so did this feel like a step back? Certainly there was no need for it to feel that way. It was increasingly common for major film stars to appear on television – Alec Baldwin, to name but one, had been a revelation in NBC’s
30 Rock.
And David E. Kelley was one of the biggest names in television. There was no conceivable need to fret.

‘We needed an actor who could convey genius, insanity, and comedy, tempered with humanity,’ Kelley told
Parade
magazine. ‘Robin was the first and only choice.’

Robin was certainly enjoying himself. Temporarily relocated with Susan to Los Angeles, he was sounding very enthusiastic. ‘It’s fun,’ he told
Parade
. ‘I’m having such a blast doing it with Sarah. She’s a sweet woman. And the idea of the father-daughter relationship – since I have a daughter, I’ve done the research on that. You know, pride and trying
to help her along, but at the same time not helping so much that she doesn’t learn.’

But there was something else about it that he liked as well. ‘The idea of having a steady job is appealing,’ said Robin frankly in 2013. ‘I have two [other] choices: go on the road doing stand-up, or do small, independent movies working almost for scale [minimum union pay]. The movies are good, but a lot of times they don’t even have distribution. There are bills to pay. My life has downsized, in a good way. I’m selling the ranch up in Napa. I just can’t afford it anymore.’

The ranch didn’t sell – it remained unsold after his death – but there was a truly unhappy note running through all this and, although depression was something Williams had always struggled with, it came out as manic humour, not feeling miserable. ‘The idea of you’re hot, then you’re not,’ he said. ‘When you’re hot, people throw themselves at you. I once got stopped by a cop: “Hi, Mr. Williams. I’m not going to give you a ticket, but I do have an idea for a film.”’ And when you’re not so hot? ‘People walk away from you.’ He sounded pretty bleak.

Nonetheless, he was prepared to give it his all. His character Simon was, ‘a guy who can sell anything. He could sell frappuccinos to Starbucks. He could sell clouds to God. Simon’s a guy with a lot of nuance. He’s lived hard and been on the edge for a long time. Multiple marriages, rehab, even rehab in wine country. Trust me, I’ve done the research myself.’ The idea was that Simon had been
married and divorced a few times, neglecting Sydney as a child, and was now intent on making it up to her as an adult – although she had to prove herself to him before he would take her on. Simon was the manic one, while Sydney was his straight man.

There were more regular characters, not least to provide Sydney with a love interest and to engender a spirit of competition. Pam Dawber, aka Mindy, made a guest appearance towards the end of the season: the first time she and Robin had appeared opposite one another since the old days. So did the new series work? Not really, although all the elements were there.

Everyone involved said they were nervous.
Zap2it
asked Robin how he and Sarah were getting along. ‘Very sweetly,’ he said. ‘I think the first day, we were very honest. I leaned over, and I said, “I’m a little afraid.” And she said, “Me, too.” I knew there was no audience, which took the pressure off, and then we started doing it.’

And what of James Wolk, who played the womanising copywriter Zach Cropper? ‘He’s really good,’ Robin replied. ‘This is a nice thing for him to kick out and be as crazy, as funny as he can, playing this studly character. “Did you sleep with her?” “Not yet.” “OK, cool.” And they can also pitch with me and throw ideas around and send him in as the designated shtick man, which is kind of wonderful.’