Williams docu. gives insight into his mind
Director Marina Zenovich who translated Williams’ comedy to the screen was an aspiring actor living in New York, taking on small roles to pay the bills, she was cast as an extra in The Fisher King, appearing in the scene where Parry, the madcap eccentric played by Robin Williams, imagines a spontaneous flash mob breaking out among enchanted commuters in Grand Central Station.
Zenovich’s new documentary, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, screened at the Karlovy Vary film festival this month.
It is the first documentary to comprehensively examine Williams’ life and art since his suicide in 2014. It includes virtually no narration, save for Williams’ own, which can have an eerie, almost ghostlike effect ( if only ghosts were as charming and exuberant as Robin Williams). “Every person is driven by some deep, deep, deep, deep secret,” he says in voiceover about halfway through the film.
It’s a question Williams scarce ly addressed, preferring to bare his soul by way of performance.
“Steve Martin says in the film, when Robin was on stage, whether it was theater or standup, he was in charge,” says Zenovich. “But in his life he was trying to hold himself together.”
As he says in voiceover, recalling advice from a shrink: “Be careful what you talk about, because you may be on stage in front of so many people and start talking about something you’re not able to deal with.”
Martin, starred opposite Williams in Mike Nichols’ 1988 stage production of Waiting for Godot Billy Crystal remembers the zany voicemails Robin left him; David Letterman waxes poetic about southern California in the 70s.