Robin

by Dave Itzkoff

He was more like an illusionist, and his magic trick was making you see what he wanted you to see—the act and not the artist delivering it.

The real Robin was a modest, almost inconspicuous man, who never fully believed he was worthy of the monumental fame, adulation, and accomplishments he would achieve. He shared the authentic person at his core with considerable reluctance, but he also felt obliged to give a sliver of himself to anyone he encountered even fleetingly. It wounded him deeply to think that he had denied a memorable Robin Williams experience to anyone who wanted it, yet the people who spent years by his side were left to feel that he had kept some fundamental part of himself concealed, even from them.

In a room full of strangers, it compelled him to keep everyone entertained and happy, and it left him feeling utterly deserted in the company of the people who loved him most.

“It made me realize that we cannot drink,” she said. “There were people in the family who rose to great heights and then BOOM! just like that, and it was from alcohol. If you can’t handle it, just stay away from it.… It’s poison for our family.”

“What drives you to perform is the need for that primal connection,” he later explained. “My mother was funny with me, and I started to be charming and funny for her, and I learned that by being entertaining, you make a connection with another person.”

Comedy, Leno said, is an unusual discipline where “the affirmation of strangers is more important than that of friends or family members. No comic wants his friends or his family in the audience. They’re either going to laugh too hard or they’re not going to laugh at all. You want complete strangers. They’re the only ones that count.”

“He stands on a street corner, does a lot of voices and impressions, and passes the hat.” Marshall was unconvinced. “Are you kidding?” he said. “This is who you want me to hire?” “Well, you’ve got to understand, it’s an awfully full hat,” Hallin replied. “I thought that was a great line,” Marshall recalled. “So I said, all right. Bring in the guy with the full hat.”

Winkler, a graduate of the Yale School of Drama who had become one of television’s best-known stars, said that there was no jealousy from him or Howard if Robin happened to be commandeering the spotlight. “It didn’t matter,” Winkler said. “That wasn’t even in my mind. It was: if the show was successful, we have a job. If it’s not, we’re back on the unemployment line. So it never dawned on me that it was anybody’s show. No one talked about fan mail, or fame, or status. We were an ensemble, and if you just gave yourself over to what he was doing, you would be where you were supposed to be.”

‘Where’s he from, is he Russian?’ And she said, ‘He’s not Russian! He’s nuts!’”

From me to you. You got to be crazy. You know what I’m talking about? Full goose bozo. ’Cause what is reality? You got to be crazy. You got to! ’Cause madness is the only way I’ve stayed alive. Used to be a comedian. Used to, a long time ago. It’s true. You got to go full-tilt bozo. ’Cause you’re only given a little spark of madness. If you lose that, you’re nothing. Don’t. From me to you. Don’t ever lose that, because it keeps you alive. Because if you lose that, pfft. That’s my only love. Crazy.

“I get the feeling that if Williams were to let it all out, his audience would need a scholastic aptitude test to get in the door.”

“Robin loved cocaine and we loved Robin, so we went with Robin to parties with sniff in the air. I did not enjoy cocaine. It made me want to vacuum every hallway in every apartment building in the world.”

At its core, The World According to Garp was about how the things we fear most in life are determined at an early age and amplified, not overcome, as we grow older.

Robin talked about the real benefits he’d been seeing from psychotherapy—“open-heart surgery in installments,” he called it—which he’d now been enrolled in for a year, and how he believed it had helped his performance in Good Morning, Vietnam. “It allowed me to show more vulnerability,” he said, “and I think the camera can catch that. I think therapy has helped me to bring out a deeper level of comedy.”

“For that moment,” Crystal said, “there was no war in Iraq or Afghanistan. There were no terrorist threats. There was no trouble in the world, except that Robin had died. Every paper, everywhere, the front page. He was a joyous spirit that people loved and trusted. It didn’t make sense.”