One year later, Williams’ death still haunts,
No other celebrity’s death has affected me more deeply than that of this generous man
One of my earliest memories is coming home from school for lunch one sunny November day, and finding my mother sobbing.
She was in the living room, watching breaking TV news reports on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
I was just 7 years old, and didn’t know who Kennedy was. Only that his death had made my mother very sad, and I wanted to know why.
My interest in journalism may have started that day. The daily news became a fascination, especially when there was a celebrity death.
As a young paper boy, delivering the old Toronto Telegram, I would sit on my bundles of newsprint reading about the passing of such notables as Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. before doing my rounds, much to my customers’ chagrin.
As a journalist, now for more than 40 years, I’ve written countless obits and career appreciations for the likes of John Lennon, Bob Hope, Elizabeth Taylor, Lou Reed, Philip Seymour Hoffman and many more, trying to convey the sense of loss we all feel when a star suddenly fades to black.
The task requires some professional detachment — there’s always a deadline to meet, no time for tears — and yet I found my eyes welling up last Aug. 11, almost a year ago, when news broke of the death of Robin Williams, at the too-young age of 63. In my adult life, I don’t think any other celebrity demise has affected me so personally and deeply.
The shock and sadness doubled when it was learned that the actor died not through murder, accident or old age, but his own hand, having hanged himself in his bedroom.
How could this have happened? He always seemed so happy to be alive, always quick with a joke or smart remark, even in his dramatic movie roles. Didn’t he make the most mundane showbiz event seem special, simply by showing up?
The coroner’s report blamed severe depression for William’s desperate act, possibly due to a recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. But the truth is we’ll never know for sure. Depression is as elusive as it is ruthless.
All I know is that his death hit me hard, as it did many people, and I’ve been thinking about him a lot as the tragic anniversary approaches. The movie with Robin’s final onscreen performance, the unheralded indie drama Boulevard, opens at a single theatre in Toronto next week.
The bright lights of Hollywood seem dimmer without him.
I wouldn’t presume to call Robin a friend, but I had interviewed him many times over the years, as did many journalists, and he knew me by name. It was impossible not to love him, even when he was starring in movies that were frankly beneath him — and there had been many of those, especially in recent years.
Unlike many actors, he didn’t seem to mind talking to journalists, even on those endless interview days when the chattiest person could be ground down into monosyllabic responses.
He was generous with his time and attention. My eldest son Joe once accompanied me to an interview, planning to sit quietly in the corner and just watch, but Robin insisted on including him in our discussion. Joe sported a full set of dreads back then, and Robin did a “Rastaman Vibrations” riff about that, much to our delight.
Everybody wanted to talk to Robin, because they knew that even if the movie sucked, he’d find a way to make a funny story out of it.
I once summoned the nerve to ask him why he said “yes” to so many terrible films, junk like Patch Adams or Flubber or Man of the Year.
“I do them because kids have a great time,” he answered. “There’s a value to that. If I’m a De Niro to a 9-year-old, that’s OK. That’s a great thing.”
He didn’t seem the least bit offended by the question, although another time he admitted that he sometimes found the public difficult to deal with.
“People think they know you,” he said with a grimace.
“They expect you to be literally like you are on TV or in the movies, bouncing off the walls. A woman in an airport once said to me, ‘Be zany!’ . . . At that point you want to go, ‘Back off!’ ”
Robin said this long before the current fad of the “selfie” photos that fans now demand with their objects of worship. I suspect Robin would have found selfies more wearying than most actors, because he always seemed so approachable and many fans would have wanted one with him.
Robin Williams also made a lot of great movies, both comedies and dramas.
There are the obvious ones such as Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, The Fisher King and Good Morning, Vietnam.
There are also the personal-taste ones. Everybody has their own list of favourite Robin Williams films.
I’m almost alone among my critical brethren for liking Death to Smoochy, in which he plays a vengeful children’s entertainer, “Rainbow Randolph” Smiley, who can’t abide being upstaged by an upstart in a rhinoceros outfit, played by Edward Norton. Smiley was like Wile E. Coyote to Smoochy’s Road Runner. It cracks me up.
I’m going to watch Robin Williams movies this weekend, in tribute to the man. I miss him, and I know I’m not alone. phowell@thestar.ca