dagblog - Comments for "Robin Williams and Making Live Comedy Live"

I just wanted to add this, a

Richard Day — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 21:16:00 +0000

In reply to Robin Williams and Making Live Comedy Live

I just wanted to add this, a real homage to one of my heroes and it is just to add to his mania:

http://www.salon.com/2014/08/12/13_of_the_most_memorable_robin_williams_...

Salon did this homage and I loved it.

If the thing does not take just go to Salon.

There is at least an hour of fun!

What some call cheerful

artappraiser — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 08:29:02 +0000

In reply to Between David Foster Wallace

What some call cheerful slacking others might call peace of mind or being comfortable in one's own skin?

I am interested for personal reasons in the horrors that relapse of serious addiction can cause. So I have been reading more than a few the obits and related et. al. Just like I did when Philip Seymour Hoffman died.

And what comes to mind now after processing some of what I have been reading: it occurs to me that I was never a big fan of the manic comic Robin Williams. Mrs. Doubtfire type characters were never my cup of tea,. comedy-wise, and the Mork kind of thing goes further: it really turns me off. But then I was never a big fan of Jonathan Winters, either.

If it was one of Williams' more sophisticated riffs, where he jumped character to character with stream of consciousness connections at lighting speed: sure, I was amazed, astounded and amused. But still there was also always the discomfort in the background of such a performance of watching someone in a manic episode. It's almost as if purposefully playing your nervous system, ratcheting it up to a frenzied level so the release from laughter can make the whole thing like a ride on a roller coaster.

It also just occurred to me that I was a big fan of the kinder, gentler, Juillard-trained Robin Williams playing roles like Dr. Oliver Sacks character in Awakenings. (That's one of my favorite movies, actually, one I can watch over and over just for the performances--excepting that they should have cut Anne Meara's performance....) Some of what I've been reading suggests that he had discomfort with showing that "vulnerable" side of himself. If so, more's the pity that he didn't know there were fans out there with alternate preferences like me. Roller coasters are not always what they are cracked up to be.

Between David Foster Wallace

jollyroger — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 22:32:50 +0000

In reply to Robin Williams and Making Live Comedy Live

Between David Foster Wallace and, now, Robin Williams, it is smooth terrifying how the hugely talented can. their accomplishments notwithstanding, find themselves lacking on some internal scale.

Then there are the cheerful slackers,( amongst whom I count myself), who are clinically immune to depression where a little objective self-examination would leave arealistic observer hiding the sharp instruments.

Well, how much of your life

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 22:31:24 +0000

In reply to I have done some stand up --

Well, how much of your life are you willing to sacrifice to make a bunch of strangers in bars laugh? Doing something else, considering all the obstacles, is the healthy choice.

The raw talent to be a comedian isn't necessarily correlated with depression, but the drive to do so is. It's really hard, and you have to be very, very driven to do that. It can't be about the money (because every comic goes through years of poverty). It has to be about the need to perform, and that's often about the craving for applause and approval.

As for not being a Williams fan: well, his greatest strength was live, and he was at the apex of his powers thirty years ago. And, like all game-changing artists, he lived to see the next generation or two absorb parts of his game, so that he came to seem less original.

A weak Williams performance, past his prime, could degenerate into the hacky flop sweatiness that he used to transcend. But that just highlights how hard what he was doing actually was.

Sure. Plenty. (But thanks.)

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 22:20:15 +0000

In reply to Damn, Doc, is there any

Sure. Plenty.

(But thanks.)

Well, I think his performance

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 22:19:47 +0000

In reply to You know that when we get

Well, I think his performance style has hidden links to his depression, but not quite in the way you say. The "mania" on stage was an act, after all ... it wasn't something he could only do during periods of mania. In fact, there's no indication that he was bipolar. He didn't necessarily have manic swings.

And if his frenetic style HAD been a symptom of mania, he would not have been able to do it all the time. That's what manic-depression means: long stretches of each. There's no button to turn the phases on or off. If his comic persona were actually mania, he would not have been able to perform at all for stretches of weeks on end, and when he cold perform he would be symptomatic even when he wasn't on stage. These things seem not to have happened. The illness is about the inability to regulate your mood.

What's more likely true is that Williams could put on his stage persona and play the happy wild man on stage while being completely depressed and anhedonic on the inside.

The real symptom of depression is that Williams, like many depressives, was enormously focused on pleasing other people. He was always making YOU laugh, making sure YOU had a good time. The psychiatrist Peter Kramer uses the phrase "depressive charm." And one of Williams's old co-stars, I think Pam Dawber, once said of him that "He has a deep-seated need to be wonderful." That deep-seated need comes out of a very needy and unhealthy place.

Damn, Doc, is there any

Michael Wolraich — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 20:50:47 +0000

In reply to Robin Williams and Making Live Comedy Live

Damn, Doc, is there any subject on which you cannot speak profoundly?

You know that when we get

Richard Day — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 20:50:18 +0000

In reply to Robin Williams and Making Live Comedy Live

You know that when we get into this psychological crap, I can find sociopaths all over Congress and the mass media.

But I knew, I really knew, that Mr. Williams had to be manic/depressive.

Of course I followed his bio for years; hell decades.

No one can be that 'high' and not have lows.

And I am not just writing about drugs.

But so did Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar and hundreds of thousands of others for the last thousands of years.

His mania was wonderful!

I mean he was funny.

He won all the awards available.

Hell, I saw him on a replay of L & O and it was wonderful.

Again, as I pointed out in the news section, I just cannot get my around the fact that some guy who has everything, calls it quits!

Oh well....

I have done some stand up --

Michael Maiello — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 20:03:59 +0000

In reply to Robin Williams and Making Live Comedy Live

I have done some stand up -- nowhere near enough to get even okay at it and the daunting prospect of hanging out in comedy clubs and participating in bringer show after bringer show just to get the practice, not to mention barking on the street to get tourists to go to other people's shows was just too daunting for me in the end. It really is an insanely hard art form to pursue and there are very few people who can make it seem as easy as, say, Patton Oswalt. Just getting the practice in... I was never a huge Williams fan. I think I'll mostly remember him as the out-of-focus actor in Deconstructing Harry...