{"id":87988,"date":"2014-08-12T06:34:07","date_gmt":"2014-08-12T10:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=87988"},"modified":"2015-02-08T10:07:50","modified_gmt":"2015-02-08T15:07:50","slug":"r-i-p-robin-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=87988","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. Robin Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robin<\/a><\/p>\n

\nHe came and spoke at my school. He answered questions. He was hilarious, of course, but also forthcoming. But what was extraordinary about him in person, and what is with me right now, on this very sad day, is how “in tune” he was with The Comedic. This is clearly not news, but it was almost a physical sensation being in his presence, that he was hearing things on a different frequency, he was in touch with his instincts, and he could feel the joke coming 20 minutes out. Billy Crystal said, “If I’m fast, Robin Williams is faster.” He was like a chess master, 20 moves ahead of everyone else in the room. It was absolutely dizzying to be in his presence and feel that almost supernatural ability ricocheting around the room. It FELT like pure anarchy and in many ways it was. But on another deeper level, he was the Maestro, completely controlling it. <\/p>\n

Everyone is reeling from the news that he has apparently taken his own life. His despair must have been excruciating. He had battled substance abuse as well as depression (or, I have also heard, bipolar, which often goes hand in hand with substance abuse), and had gotten help, was in treatment. And yet still, the darkness overwhelmed. This is the insidious and tragic thing with mental illness. It is a MONSTER. Matt Zoller Seitz in his beautiful obituary wrote<\/a>: “Anybody who’s dealt with these often-intertwined problems, substance addiction and depression, knows you don’t so much beat them as beat them back.”<\/p>\n

I will treasure his performance in The Fisher King<\/i> forever (it is one of my favorite movies). A friend of mine, who is a therapist, said that clips from that film were shown in a class she took on PTSD. That’s how accurate he got it. But his stand-up. My God, his stand-up. It’s an assault of genius. You wonder how anyone could live at that speed. <\/p>\n

While there are so many films to talk about, some good, some not-so-good, I wanted to share this clip of Robin Williams doing a sketch on a Carol Burnett special. The sketch has to do with death and a funeral, so there is that eerie dovetail to it, but what I love about the sketch is that they do it twice in a row<\/i>. And so you can see Robin Williams RIFF on a theme. Notice how the structure remains the same, and he does the blocking mostly the same, but in the second one, he goes OFF on the tangents that he felt come to life in the first time through. It’s almost like the first sketch was a “dry run.” That’s what I mean about Robin Williams feeling a joke 20 minutes out. <\/p>\n

And it gets funnier \u2026 and funnier \u2026 and funnier \u2026 <\/p>\n