|
|
Biography
Comedians have always had a tough time
building a long-term career in cinema. For a start, as genuinely funny
scripts are few and far between, they're usually forced to draw on their
own well-worn routines and, after a few pictures, begin to bore their
audience. No matter how brilliant, no comedian can keep carrying movies
by sheer weight of personality, not indefinitely. Eddie
Murphy and Steve Martin are proof of that. No, to really last, they
must break through that barrier, become accepted as "proper"
actors, and VERY few have done that.
Indeed, recently, there's only been one who's managed to take that
mighty step. And, in many ways, he was the most unlikely of them all.
Known to the world as the gibbering, gurning, beaming alien Mork from
Ork, Robin Williams stood a very high chance of never, EVER being taken
seriously.
How could he be? Mork aside, in his
stand-up routines he was a whirlwind of snappy one-liners, brilliant
impressions and surreal asides, his ideas falling like rain. His first
cinematic breakthrough, Good Morning Vietnam, was just Williams being
Williams. So were other mega-hits, Mrs Doubtfire and Aladdin. The Oscar
for Good Will Hunting was just for a cameo, really. A fluke. The guy
could never really ACT. He'd never be able to stand still long enough.
Yet he could act. In fact, he HAD acted, quite brilliantly, before the
box-office hits came. And, when the time came, in 2002, to spread his
wings once again, he acted his ass off. Three movies, three characters,
all killers but all different. Up against the King of Gravitas Al
Pacino, he held his own. And up against the young pretender to the
crown, Ed Norton. Now there was no denying it. The lightweight funny-man
was actually a heavyweight artist.
He was born Robin McLaurim Williams on
the 21st of July, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois, to a well-to-do family.
His father, Robert, was an executive for the Ford Motor Company, while
his mother, Laurie, was a fashion model. Both had children, by now
grown, from earlier relationships. Robert's son Todd would later own a
winery (and appear in Mrs Doubtfire, credited as Mr Toad), while
Laurie's son became a High School chemistry teacher. As his
step-brothers had left home, Robin was raised as an only child.
With Robert rising through the ranks at Ford, the family moved wherever
his appointments took him. When Robert was transferred to Detroit, they
shifted from Chicago to a 40-room farm-house in Bloomfield Hills. These
were tough times for Robin, who later described his young self as
"short, shy, chubby and lonely". Bullied quite badly, he'd
seek out new routes home to avoid his tormentors, and spend much of his
time alone in the big house, playing with his 2000-strong army of toy
soldiers, his imagination running riot. Eventually, being something of a
sporty youth, he gained some measure of respect by joining the wrestling
and track teams. And, of course, he learned to make the other kids
laugh.
His sense of loneliness was not eased by his parents. Robert was away
much of the time and, when he was home, Robin found him
"frightening". Laurie worked, too, leaving Robin to be pretty
much raised by the maid they employed. He later explained that, though
he knew they loved him, they found it hard to communicate their
affection. In fact, he says he began in comedy through his attempts to
connect with his mother ("I'll make Mommy laugh, and that will be
OK"). Still, he was marked by the experience, being left with an
acute fear of abandonment and a condition he describes as Love Me
Syndrome.
Finally, Robert took early retirement (this would give 16-year-old Robin
a chance to "discover" his dad at last), and the family moved
to Marin County, California, near San Francisco. Here Robin finished his
early education at Redwood High School at Tiburon, across the bay from
the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. After graduation in 1969, he
attended Claremont Men's College, studying political science and playing
soccer, but a new interest now took hold.
As said, circumstances had turned Robin
into an inveterate joker, and he'd further studied the craft by learning
the comedy records of Jonathan Winters (his first idol) off by heart. At
Claremont, he began taking lessons in improvisation, a discipline suited
to his quick wit. And now he was hooked.
After Claremont, he enrolled at the
College of Marin to study acting but, proving to be extremely gifted, he
quickly won a full scholarship to the prestigious Juilliard School in
New York City. Studying under the legendary John Houseman, his fellow
students included William Hurt, Mandy Patinkin and Christopher Reeve.
Robin became great friends with Reeve and the pair made a pact that,
should one of them succeed, he would help the other.
It didn't prove to be necessary. When, in
1978, Williams broke through as Mork, Reeve was starring worldwide as
another, infinitely better-known alien . . . Superman. Robin, though,
would come to his friend's aid later. When Reeve was paralysed from the
neck down in a horse-riding accident, Robin promised to pay all hospital
expenses not covered by insurance. (It was also a mark of their great
friendship that, immediately after the accident, when Reeve had been
informed he would never walk again and was surrounded by solemn faces,
Williams turned up dressed as a doctor and pretending to be Reeve's
proctologist. It was the first time Reeve smiled after the fall).
There was another important meeting at Juilliard, when Robin fell for
dancer Valerie Velardi. The couple would marry in 1978, and produce one
son, Zachary.
While at Juillard, Williams waited tables for extra money, then took to
performing mime on the streets, often outside the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. On a good day, he'd take $40. He also practised stand-up,
eventually leading Houseman to tell him that comedy, rather than acting,
was probably where his future lay. Noting Robin's keen intelligence,
Houseman would later have something interesting to say about his
seemingly chaotic performances: "I always believed there was rather
more artifice to Robin's comedy than people know. He thinks very
quickly, but his mind is tightly controlled".
Taking Houseman's advice, Robin left Juilliard for Los Angeles and a
spell on the burgeoning West Coast comedy circuit. He was befriended by
Jay Leno who helped him find gigs, his reputation for hi-octane humour
growing ever stronger. 1977 saw him win a spot on The Richard Pryor
Show, and also on Laugh-In, a reprisal of Rowan and Martin's late
Sixties hit show (which had spawned Goldie Hawn). Though the show was
not well-received, Robin stood out, putting on crazy voices, changing
accents at will. At one glorious point, he played a redneck shaking
hands with Frank Sinatra and shouting "Sell mah clothes, Melba,
ah've gone to heaven!"
Now came the big break. Garry Marshall, creator of the massively
successful Happy Days, was planning an out-there episode where the Fonz
would be abducted by aliens. Consequently, an alien was required. At his
audition, when Marshall asked Robin to sit down, he sat on his head and
was instantly employed. Well, said Marshall, he was the only real alien
who applied.
As Mork from the planet Ork, Robin was a sensation, the audience
response being so strong that a new show was created for him - Mork And
Mindy. Here he shared a flat with Pam Dawber and caused comic mayhem
while learning about love, goodness and human relationships, ending each
episode by sticking his finger in his ear and reporting back to
Orson.
It was a mighty hit. Mork's greeting,
Nanu-nanu, became a worldwide catch-phrase, and Robin also enjoyed
working alongside his idol Winters, appearing as a fellow alien. Such
was Williams' dominance of the programme, so brilliant were his improv
skills that soon the scripts would contain big gaps marked "Mork
can go off here".
Robin's star was rising at great pace. In
1979, he released a comedy LP titled Reality . . . What A Concept, and
appeared onstage in Andy Kaufman's Carnegie Hall special, playing Andy's
grandmother. The character would later mutate into Mrs Doubtfire.
And Hollywood came knocking, Mork's success allowing Robin to start at
the very top. Taking the title role in Robert Altman's Popeye, he
travelled to Sweet Haven, fell for Shelley Duvall's Olive Oyl and
battled with pirate and extortionist Bluto, singing and yuk-yukking all
the way. All the performances were exceptional, physically superb, and
all without the aid of computer generation. Unfortunately, though it was
a fantastic portrayal of the comic strip, it wasn't particularly funny,
and the critics shredded it.
Robin escaped back to Mork, and stand-up. It would be two years before
his next film was released. This was The World According To Garp,
written by John Irving and directed by George Roy Hill (of Butch Cassidy
fame). Here Robin played Garp, the bastard son of stern nurse Glenn
Close. He sees himself as a "serious" writer but finds his
career eclipsed by his mother's, when she pens a feminist manifesto that
catches on big-time. Naturally, some bizarre characters are drawn to
her, including John Lithgow as a tortured cross-dresser, and some
murderous wackos, too. By turn, it was hilarious, provocative and
life-affirming - just like Robin's stage act. But here Robin was the
straight man - though nowhere near as straight as he would be in some of
the roles soon to come.
Garp was released in 1982, the same year Robin left Mork And Mindy
behind. It was also the year John Belushi died of an overdose at the
Chateau Marmont Hotel. This was the sorriest chapter in Robin's life.
For a while, like many performers who expend high levels of energy, he'd
been caning the alcohol and drugs, in particular cocaine, his Love Me
Syndrome being in full effect. He actually got loaded with Belushi the
day he died (he'd guested on Belushi's Saturday Night Live the year
before), though he wasn't at the hotel when it happened. Valerie tried
to get him to stop - he couldn't. His marriage slowly went on the skids.
In the meantime, he continued in a mixed
bag of movies. In 1983's The Survivors, he played a chatty clown to
Walter Matthau's world-weary cynic. Both lose their jobs (Robin is
actually fired by his boss's parrot) then, having prevented a robbery at
a diner, are pursued by the vengeful bandit. Then came a semi-comic
role, in Paul Mazursky's Moscow On The Hudson, where he played a Russian
circus-musician who defects while in Bloomingdale's.
Befriended by a security guard and
falling for Italian perfumer Maria Conchita Alonso, he looks for work
and learns all about the USA. Robin's Eastern European accent would come
in handy again later, in Nine Months and Jakob The Liar. He'd also use
it to spectacularly trick John Travolta. In 2002, he posed as Travolta's
chauffeur, pretended to be foreign, and deaf, and took numerous wrong
turns, finally causing Travolta to call for help when he offered him a
slug of vodka from an open bottle.
Next came The Best Of Times, where he was sniveling nerd Jack Dundee
who, along with washed-up quarterback Kurt Russell, gets to replay the
high school football game that cost him his reputation and dignity. Then
there was the Harold Ramis comedy Club Paradise where, retiring from the
fire brigade, Robin moves to the Caribbean and tries, along with Jimmy
Cliff, to make a go of a holiday night-spot. Governor Peter O'Toole,
though, wants to sell the whole island to a ruthless entrepreneur.
Again, Williams played the straight-man.
Williams' next movie saw him in a purely dramatic role. In Seize The
Day, based on a Saul Bellow story, he was Tommy Wilhelm, a sad-sack who
loses his job, his family and his initiative. It was pretty depressing
stuff, but Robin showed once more that he could operate outside the
comedy genre. That same year, 1986, saw him co-host the first American
Comic Relief, raising money for the homeless. It was one of many
charities that Robin would back consistently. And he won a Grammy for
his Live At The Met comedy LP. '86 also saw him sued for $6.2 million by
an ex-girlfriend who claimed he'd given her herpes. He counter-sued for
extortion, the case being settled out-of-court, terms undisclosed.
Having consolidated his position as a leading man in smaller movies,
Robin now moved into the Big League. In Barry Levinson's Good Morning
Vietnam, he played real-life military DJ Adrian Cronauer whose crazy
banter and barbed truth-telling cheered the troops and annoyed the
authorities during the campaign. Then, falling for a local girl, he
experiences first-hand some of the horrors of war.
The highlights of the movie were,
naturally, Robin's broadcasts to the troops, all of them ad-libbed
(unless you believe John Houseman, of course). The real Cronauer said
the movie was about 40% accurate, as it made him seem anti-war when he
was in fact just "anti-stupidity". He added that, had he done
half the things Williams did, he'd have been court-martialled for sure.
The film was a big hit, Robin's first
$100 million success. And Robin, having won a Golden Globe as Mork, and
been nominated for Moscow On The Hudson, was now honoured with an Oscar
nomination. But his personal life was in uproar. In 1984, he and Valerie
had hired Marsha Garces, a young painter working as a waitress, to be
nanny to Zachary. By 1987, the marriage was over, with Valerie already
in another relationship. Garces became Robin's assistant, travelling
with him, and the pair fell in love, eventually marrying in 1989. They'd
have two kids, Zelda and Cody. Marsha would also partner Robin in the
Blue Wolf production company, vetting scripts and keeping him free from
pushy users. This power would, of course, make her a real Hollywood
mover.
Now, after a wacko cameo as the King of the Moon in Terry Gilliam's
fabulously ambitious Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, and a stint on
Broadway with Steve Martin in Waiting For Godot, came another of Robin's
most famous roles, as professor John Keating in Dead Poets Society.
Originally, Liam Neeson had the part, but lost it when director Peter
Weir came onboard, leaving Robin to excel as the teacher who inspires
private school kids to love poetry and, for the second time, seize the
day. (The expression would also be used at the end of Hook, and alluded
to in Mrs Doubtfire when, losing his false teeth in a restaurant, Robin
says "Carpe Dentum"). Another hit, another Oscar nomination.
Next came Cadillac Man, where Robin was Joey O'Brien, who must sell
twelve cars in two days or lose his job. On top of this, he's got
trouble with his two girlfriends and his ex-wife, his daughter's
missing, AND there's a jealous husband with a machine-gun.
It was time for a more sober role, and this came with Awakenings.
Directed by Penny Marshall (sister of Garry Marshall and star of Laverne
And Shirley, another Happy Days spin-off), this was the true story of
doctor Oliver Sacks, who defied the authorities and used new drugs to
wake a wardful of coma-bound encephalitis victims. It was a great
performance, not overly sentimental and not overshadowed by Robert
De Niro at his most moving. The real Sacks notably described
Williams as having some sort of voluntary Tourette's Syndrome.
1991 brought three more prize roles. In Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again, he
played it straight once more as a disgraced psychiatrist who - angry,
bitter and working in a supermarket - gives Branagh some deadly advice
on how to off his girlfriend. He impressed Branagh mightily and, five
years later, would be cast as Osric in his Hamlet.
After Dead Again came Gilliam once more with The Fisher King, perhaps
Williams' best movie. Here Jeff Bridges played a talk DJ who goes off
the rails when he inadvertently causes a massacre. Williams plays Parry,
a down-and-out, maddened by his wife's murder and obsessed with
mediaeval mythology, who saves Bridges' life and draws him into a quest
for the Holy Grail, while Bridges in turn tries to hook Robin up with
Amanda Plummer and save him from madness. Strange, exciting and truly
moving, it saw Robin once again Oscar-nominated.
Now came Spielberg and Hook, with Robin
as a grown-up Peter Pan who, when Dustin Hoffman's devilish Captain Hook
kidnaps his children, must return to Neverland and re-discover the power
of his youth. Though action-packed and adventurous, and despite breaking
the $100 million barrier, the film was deemed to be overly sentimental
and Spielberg's first flop. And it might never have happened, to Robin,
at least. Kevin Kline was originally down to play Peter, but dropped out
when Soapdish over-ran.
But nothing could stop Williams. He moved straight on to Disney's
Aladdin, ad-libbing like crazy once more as the voice of the Genie, his
performance carrying the movie past the $200 million mark. Yet there was
trouble with Disney. Having demanded that they not market the film as a
Robin Williams vehicle, Robin complained vociferously when they did just
that. They, in turn, claimed he was just trying to stick them for more
money. In fact, he said, all he wanted was an apology, which he duly
received.
Perhaps unwisely, Robin stayed with the kids' market with Barry
Levinson's Toys. Here he played Leslie Zevo, whose dying toy-maker
father bequeaths his factory to his brother, military man Michael Gambon,
who uses it to manufacture weapons. Could Robin foil his wicked plans
and return the factory to its former glories? No one seemed to care.
But yet again Williams escaped from failure unscathed, his huge
popularity undiminished. Better still, he stepped straight into his
biggest hit to date. His wife, Marsha, had been seeking projects for him
and discovered Mrs Doubtfire. Hollywood scoffed when he had her produce
the movie, but she brought in Home Alone's Chris Columbus to direct and
got to work.
Robin, playing a divorcee who disguises
himself as an elderly house-maid in order to see his kids, delivered a
storming performance (oddly, having divorced his wife and married the
nanny, he here divorced his wife and BECAME the nanny). The film went
through the roof, delivering Robin's second $200 million hit in two
years (both won him Golden Globes). The scoffing ended pretty sharpish.
In Mrs Doubtfire, Robin employed a Scottish accent. This he picked up
from Bill Forsyth, director of a movie he'd just filmed called Being
Human. This followed Robin through five separate lifetimes, each
centuries apart, as he sought the meaning of, well, being human. It was
charming, and insightful, if a little too ambitious. Robin immediately
went back to Columbus and Nine Months, where he played Julianne
Moore's bungling Russian obstetrician, continually mixing up his
words ("Let's have a look at your volvo"). This was the first
of several remakes of French movies Robin would headline in the
mid-Nineties.
Having turned down an approach from
Oliver Stone to play the lead in Nixon (the year before, 1994, he'd
received an Emmy nomination for a brief role in Homicide: Life On The
Streets. See how seriously he was taken by his peers?), Robin re-entered
the kids' market with the superior fantasy Jumanji. Here young Kirsten
Dunst and Bradley Pierce play a magical board-game and accidentally
release Robin, trapped in the game as a child, 26 years before.
Unfortunately, they also release stampeding herds of animals, swarms of
vicious insects and a hunter intent on blowing Robin's brains out. To
save Robin and the town, they must play the game to its possibly bitter
end.
Jumanji was a tremendous kids' film, both scary and uplifting, Robin
deservedly breaking the $100 million mark again. Despite losing the part
of The Riddler to Jim
Carrey (who'd also nab The Truman Show from him), now he was one of
the biggest stars alive. So, naturally, he went off the deep end. To
Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar saw three drag queens
crossing the US on their way to California, meeting serious disapproval
and finding much love. Robin was offered the lead but, having just done
Mrs Doubtfire, left it to Patrick Swayze, instead playing a cameo as
John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.
He handed over a big, camp role the next year, too, to Nathan Lane. In
The Birdcage (a remake of La Cage Aux Folles), he played a gay clubowner
whose son wants to bring his girlfriend (Calista Flockheart) and her
severely conservative parents (Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest) to stay.
So Robin, and his flamboyant, female-impersonating boyfriend (Lane),
must pretend to be straight. On set, because ladies' clothes did not
particularly suit his hairy frame, Robin was known as Dragzilla. It made
no odds at the box-office - The Birdcage was yet another $100 million
hit.
There was always a sense of child-like wonder to Williams' comedy.
Emotionally open, unashamedly silly and rampantly imaginative, he used a
child's outlook to its best adult advantage (as he had done in
connecting with his mother years before). He had a concomitant sympathy
for kids, too, donating heavily to children's charities and regularly
visiting children's wards.
And this appreciation of (and maybe a
desire for?) youthfulness clearly influenced the roles he was offered
and chose. After all, he played a man-child in Hook, Toys and Jumanji,
with his characters in Mork And Mindy and The Fisher King not being far
off. But now, in 1996, he went the whole hog with Jack.
This saw him as Jack Powell, a kid with
an ageing disorder that gave him a 40-year-old body at the age of 10.
Robin initially turned it down, believing he'd covered this territory
extensively already ("The only thing I'm really suited for is the
musical version of Congo", he said, referring to his own outrageous
hairiness), but was tempted onboard when Francis Ford Coppola decided to
direct. Williams spent two weeks camping, cycling and playing basketball
with the kids who'd be playing Powell's classmates, and made a fine job
of the part, but audiences stayed away. It was, after all, a miserable
premise for a movie.
Robin moved on into different territories, deliberately widening his
scope. There were small parts in Hamlet and Woody Allen's Deconstructing
Harry, as well as Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, as The Professor, a
bomb-maker in Victorian London's underworld.
Then it was back to comedy. Since 1986, he'd been co-hosting Comic
Relief shows with Billy
Crystal, engaging in some healthy comic competition; the pair of
them, according to Williams, behaving "like two elk spraying
musk". They'd been looking for a chance to act together and it came
with Father's Day (another movie to originate in France, as Les Comperes).
Here Robin played a depressed writer, and
Crystal a smart lawyer, both of them being told by mutual ex-girlfriend
Nastassja Kinski that he's the father of her 17-year-old son (he's run
off and she's needs someone to go looking for him). It was fast and fun,
but no world-beater, despite Williams and Crystal making guest
appearances on Friends to promote it.
The following Flubber did better. Back with Disney after their Aladdin
contretemps, Robin played Professor Phil Brainard, a brilliant man but
so sketchy he keeps forgetting his own wedding - this was, after all, a
remake of The Absent-Minded Professor. Brainard has trouble coping with
the real world, and then the real world has trouble coping with his new
invention, the uncontrollably bouncy substance of the title.
Flubber was another hit, but not as big as Williams' next effort. Here
he lent some weight and experience to a small film by a couple of
newcomers. The film was Good Will Hunting, the newcomers Matt
Damon and Ben
Affleck. As Sean Maguire, psychiatrist to Damon's troubled
street-kid genius, he was excellent, and added his own lines to the
script. In the scene where he tells Damon about his dead wife and her
farting, Damon is laughing so hard because he's never heard the speech
before. Look closely and you'll see the cameraman was shaking with
mirth, too. At last, Robin won an Oscar for his efforts.
Balancing smaller, more interesting
projects with big comedy numbers, Robin now moved on to What Dreams May
Come. This teamed him up with director Vincent Ward, maker of two of the
most beautiful and moving movies of recent times, The Navigator and Map
Of The Human Heart. Together, they might create something extraordinary
- and they did. W
hat Dreams May Come saw Robin dying in a
car crash and going to heaven, a spectacular but unformed heaven that
resembles his wife's paintings (he even sloshes through wet paint as the
place solidifies for him). Cuba Gooding plays an angel-type who tries to
help him acclimatise, but things change when Robin discovers that his
wife, Annabella Sciorra, driven to madness by his death and those of her
children, has killed herself and gone to Hell. With the aid of The
Tracker, Max Von Sydow, he and Gooding must go save her.
It was a fabulous film, fascinating, touching and visually mind-blowing,
on a par with Kurosawa's Dreams. But, again, the subject matter was too
strange, too turbulent to reach a massive audience. Robin would do that
with his next effort. This was Patch Adams, the true-ish story of a
doctor who (yes) defied the authorities and treated patients more
successfully by prescribing laughter along with traditional
remedies.
For many, it was the role Williams had
waited his whole career to play - a guy who actually saves lives with
his jokes. The critics thought it a step too far, and tore it to pieces.
So popular was Williams, though, that the public ignored them and made
it yet another $100 million hit. It really seemed as if Robin could do
no wrong.
And then, of course, it ALL went wrong. Robin's next smaller movie was
Jakob The Liar, where he played a lonely widower in a Polish ghetto in
1944. Mistakenly believed to have radio-contact with the outside world,
he starts telling porkies about Allied successes in order to keep up the
spirits of the inmates, at the same time protecting a Jewish girl from
the Nazis. The movie might have been a success but, though made at the
same time, it was fatally released AFTER the Oscar-winning Life Is
Beautiful. People had had enough Holocaust humour for now.
Ordinarily, Robin - Harry Houdini when it came to escaping flops
unharmed - would have simply stepped into another mainstream hit and
made it all alright. And he did try, going back to Chris Columbus for
Bicentennial Man. This, based on an Isaac Asimov story, saw him as a
cyborg which, built as a family butler, begins to experience emotion and
creative thought.
The film follows his development towards
humanity over 200 years, with his parent company trying to destroy him
all the way. It was a great story, plus there was Robin, and an
excellent cast including Sam Neill and Embeth Davidtz, but Columbus went
all sentimental when he could have gone deep. Again, the critics
attacked and this time, with Robin heavily made-up and out-of-character,
the public stayed away. It was a financial disaster, and it cost Robin
much of his clout in Hollywood.
No matter, it was time for a radical
change. After providing the voice of Doctor Know, the oracle in
Speilberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence, Robin turned bad. Real bad. In
One Hour Photo, he won rave reviews as a photo lab worker who becomes
devoted to a young local family, and then gets weirder and weirder.
Turning his usual sweet-guy into something infinitely more malevolent,
Williams managed to draw people in, then scare the pants off them.
Death To Smoochy suffered all manner of release difficulties and fell
away fast. Nevertheless, it was a wickedly funny film. Directed by Danny
De Vito, it saw Robin as "Rainbow" Smiley, a kids' show host
who's sacked for taking bribes and replaced by Smoochy - Ed Norton as a
cuddly purple rhino. Drunk and drugged-up, Rainbow aches for revenge,
desperately trying to trick Smoochy into appearing at a Neo-Nazi rally.
Bleak, black, nasty and very funny, it was typical De Vito, and Robin
made a superb psycho.
As he did in his next picture, Insomnia, another big hit (and another
based on a European original). Here Al
Pacino starred as Will Dormer, a cop who, while chasing a killer,
becomes more and more compromised. Robin, meanwhile, is the killer, a
writer of crime fiction who thinks he can lead the investigators around
by the nose. Directed by Christopher "Memento" Nolan, the
movie was clever, complex and wholly intriguing. And Robin Williams,
despite having won an Oscar five years before, was finally accepted as
an actor of real class.
That same year, 2002, also saw Robin return to his roots, selling-out on
Broadway with another impressive stand-up show. Surely, he has nothing
left to prove. Surely he can now settle back in his San Francisco home,
enjoy his cycling (he occasionally trains with Lance Armstrong), and
watching Rugby Union (he's twice been presented with All Blacks shirts
by Jonah Lomu). But you know he won't. Having got the world to love him
as a good guy and as a bad guy, he'll probably now want us to love him
as everything inbetween. That's syndromes for you. It'll be a long
process, but fun. With Robin Williams, it's always fun. ~ Dominic Wills
|
|
