RIP Robin Williams
 

63 years old, felled by the twin demons addiction and depression.

We hated him in some things, made fun of him, took him for granted. But we all, all loved him at one point, and that's something special.

I can't tell if this clip is highly inappropriate or not, but I think it is, ironically, sadly, one of his best acting moments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piQ2-mNeTZM

It really sucks when someone is sober for years/decades and they relapse. In some ways Robin Williams was an underrated actor, he really shined in dramatic roles, and he really took on some interesting roles in the past few years. Sad news.

This totally fucking sucks.. Robin Williams, while often annoying, was probably one of the few sincerely decent human beings in the Hollywood circle. He was also funny at many levels, and probably navigated the world of "funny for kids while being funny for adults" better than ANYONE ever even tried..

We will miss this guy! This also comes a total shock, hopefully it can be a teachable moment for people to pause and reflect that just because people look like they have their lives together on the outside doesn't mean they have it altogether on the inside.

Also, as is always the case with suicide, we need to ALL pause and reflect on how we can literally save a person's life just by being nice to them one day. This shows how there are people walking around with crippling pain inside and are helpless to the point of hurting themselves, and if the people in their lives were to almost randomly take notice, it can save that life.

If you notice ANYTHING remotely troubling about ANYONE in your life, NEVER be nervous or apprehensive to ASK them about it. Suicide is a desperate act, one which quite often is prevented simply by giving the person a chance to talk it out with a sympathetic listener :(

Wow. Just heard. That's awful. Always thought he should've played Willy Wonka in the Tim Burton remake.

Greatest actor of all-time. I'll stand by that wholeheartedly.

I'll miss ya duder.

i love life soo much...but the worst thing i can listen when someone commits suicide, is that 'the hard thing is to choose to live and not to choose to die'. there are emotional states, most of us, the lucky ones, cant even begin to comprehend. i really wish all the people who feel that way can be saved somehow.

love to robin williams.

So sad and frustrating at the same time. horrible news.

it's a rough process to say the least

He shared a birthday with me, July 21st, Cancerian, the motto of those born under this sign is "I Feel", it is very apt, you tend to feel everything to an extreme: the highs and the lows, the greatest of joy and the deepest of sorrow, it's something that doesn't ever leave you

this is sad. love him or hate him, the guy was one of the few actors/celebrities/whatever who seemed to have a real soul. i don't mean by this some kind of ghostly ectoplasm attached to the body meat-- i mean a depth of feeling and sensibility that made him come across as very human-- yes, even when he was being annoying, he was probably annoying because you could actually feel his pain.

personally, i loved him in "the fisher king." it's been ages, so i can't make a critical appreciation of it from memory, but i really liked that movie when i saw it, and he was particularly great in it.

I am surprised at the amount of praise his acting and comedy are getting now that he's dead. Never cared for his ''talent'' myself. RIP anyway.

i got swept up in the necro culture senitmentalism earlier

everyones really enjoying it.

I'll join in then. Mork and Mindy was my 2nd favourite American TV show when I was a kid.

in a country of fake tough guys with fake emotions, he had the balls to show pain



it wasn't always comfortable

Once again (oh surprise), the media got it all wrong. "Ooooh, he was the funny man, how shocking". Do you, ignorant media fucks who couldn't come up with an original thought if your sorry-ass lives depended on it, even realize what Williams' supernatural gift was? Speed. Not the drug - unfuckingbelievable mental speed. You can't always appreciate it, what with some lame scripts in some of his movies and whatnot. One-on-one, however, in an interview or something similar, guy was mind-blowing, and NOBODY has ever come close, including Carrey and others.

Al Pacino said years ago that whenever he felt in a tough sport regarding a character, he would ask himself: "What would Robin Williams do?" Such an ability, as it usually happens (who's free of this curse? Paul McCartney?), comes coupled with a fucked up mental wiring. I don't and never will have the guy's powers, but what can I tell ya, I do relate to this.

I don't know, I think the idea that an individual has the capability of having some supernatural powers in terms of creativity that lasts throughout their lifetime doesn't have any proof other than media obituaries and journalists (who else?) trying to ride on their subject's peaks to make a name for themselves. Robin Williams' acting abilities were poor but entertaining. I can't get out of my head that he was entertaining because he was there anyway and you couldn't get rid of him. He was on TV, he was in films that you're often told you should go and watch if you're taking the girlfriend out and can't be bothered to watch your dog having a shit on the pavement instead. Regardless, it’s tragic that anyone feels this is a natural way to die and it hurts no matter what to the people who were close to him as human being.

Btw, I think Al Pacino sucks too.

Poor?

Have you seen films like Good Will Hunting, Awakenings, One Hour Photo, or Insomnia? Williams may have hammed it up in his family comedies, but that was part of his charm in those films.



Oh, okay.

I was using the term "supernatural" the way Morrissey used it to describe Sandie Shaw's beauty - a hyperbole, not a believe in anything actually supernatural which sure as hell I don't have.


Strongly disagree.
:)


I stopped caring about Pacino when he got addicted to tanning (DUDE, you're ORANGE), but that was one solid performance by him on Phil Spector.

Have you read his Autobiography? The way he writes about her is not as ''dreamy'' as you would think considering his initial adulation of her pop persona. She wasn't a Smiths fan to start with and the band's crusade didn't mean much to her other than top chart positions.

I've read it, yes; that's where I took the adjective from. Several (but by no means all) people initially admired by Morrissey end up getting a good jab (or many) by the author - the pages on Siouxsie are particularly hilarious in that regard. Too bad the book was finished before the "Kristeen Young Contagious Disease" incident...

I agree with Soup Nazi, Robin Williams mental speed and capacity were amazing, and you only get to see this either in his stand up or his interviews. The guy was brilliant by every level, and he created the shtick filled persona as "the funny man" but it was so crafted that people actually thought that was who he really was! When you saw him do something more serious like Charlie Rose or Barbara Walters you saw a more intelligent, composed, and sincere human being.

As was mentioned above, of all the "Hollywood" people Robin Williams came across as the most sincerely human, with depth and personality, and we will miss that.

Don't forget as !@#$%! mentioned The Fisher King and also the very moving What Dreams May Come. Robin Williams had a very serious side as an actor, but people liked the shtick.

I always thought he was a cunt. Short and to the point opinion on this now very dead actor. Get a grave that fits your big ego, piece of shit. End of the argument.

Ground breaking standup comic, and his humor wasn't mean spirited and degrading of women like so many. I remember when he percolated through mass culture, coming along after Steve Martin in the 70's.

Media is reporting he divorced twice and basically had to give up half his wealh each time and was now having money problems, which just seems unbelievable considering his success. (but then, he did buy a USD35 MM ranch, taxes alone would be brutal)

Its such a shame, he made me laugh so much, but he was an emotional mess. A pal I knew in san francisco who was a busboy in an expensive restaurant told me he came in once and just cried through the entire meal, this was years ago, circa 92. He also told me some interesting things about Bill Shatner, having lived next door to him in Marin (lots of buff young men hanging around)

Really? Really now.. That is a lot to say about a person who was probably the opposite of all that you just said ;)

this doesnt surprise me. the kind of psychological state that people like him would exist in, considering their place in the world - i can see this anecdote being true. also coke = loss of grey matter. his brain would have aged twice as fast and he was relapsing often. what gives it a kind of poignancy is reading interviews and seeing the obvious horror and hell behind his facade, which is one that is very gentle and inquisitive and even decent.

but the fact that he spent 35m on a ranch shows that he simply didnt have his basic sanity intact. you cant really respect or expect anything from a man who uses his wealth that way. before he died he was doing films flat out, and said in interviews it was all for the cash.

so williams got scammed. he was niaeve enough to fall for the marriage scam - TWICE - he was incapable of saving and preserving his fortune. he made a joke about alimony being code for "all your money". well shit yeah it is, and a sentimental romantic dude like you is gonna get taken to the fucking cleaners unless you stand up for yourself. but i dont think he wanted to do that and so ended up with the masochistic depression.

from what ive read today he seemed to be a very kind and sweet man. one who would have been incredibly lonely and ended up becoming a servant drone for women who used him to enrich themselves. obviously this was too much to take, and he was probably very sad and wanting to not be aware of his shame.

of course this is all absolute speculation and i may be completely wrong but whatever noone will think about or remember this soon

What a disrespectful twat you are.

genteels remarks are not as bad a fate than being ignored in life then celebrated for your death by the sentimental celebocracy

so one of us here is going to be celebrated for their death, you're saying?

no.

its more dignified to be called a cunt by genteel than to kill yourself then to be used by "charities" that make money off our inhumanity towards each others suffering (because we scapegoat and abuse people and need 'professionals' precisely so we dont have to deal with them). because we believe it is the individuals fault and they can magically take on and exorcise the horror of reality itself. thats why we're so nice to people like him (in retrospect) because he failed and thus flattered our vanity

its more dignified to just be dismissed as a cunt than for your legacy to be this totally insincere mass grief performance. people saying "thank you". poor fucking bastard!

While the media reaction is part of the morbid cult of celebrity I don't think Robin Williams was ever polluted with that "public idol" role which ruins most celebrities as human beings. He managed to always be himself, flawed, funny, but honest and sincere. His roles interestingly reflected aspects of himself, but again, you'd have to watch him on something like Charlie Rose to find that more serious side.. If you combine a dash of "Cadillac Man" with "Mrs. Doubtfire" sprinkled with some of "The Birdcage" and "The Awakening" and finish it off with "Hook" I think you actually get a glimpse at the real person. In fact, its very interesting, I can't think of very many actors whose roles actually seemed to accurately reflect their personality and experience..

Also my own bias, I literally grew up watching Robin Williams, and his cheesy "family charm" era coincided with my childhood so I may see him in an entirely more romanticized light than either (a) people ten years older than me who know him more for his raunchier 80s persona or (b) people ten years younger than me who probably don't even know who he is

Fuck off Suchfriends. The guy's nice image was always all about his appeal to what the general populace think is a nice bloke. He was the ultimate Milgram experiment actor. An arsehole.

Evidence of this arseholery? I know you think I'm just doing the typically American thing and kowtowing to pay fake homage to dead people we otherwise don't give a shit about, BUT, that is not the case with Robin Williams for me. I sincerely liked the guy, and I always found his REAL interviews to be honest, sincere, and thoughtful. True, his comedy more than bordered on annoying, but that is what classclowns feed on, annoyance which yields towards gradual acceptance.

What I don't get is why you are making such a point to criticize the guy? And without one bit of substance at that? You don't have to celebrate the guy, but its an entirely different matter to shit on somebody's grave simply to be a contrarian :cool:

We don't blow job him. He was made of paper.

look, man, don't be jealous, we'll be sad too when you and porco kill yourselves, and we'll remember how you'd post theory papers and he'd post great pictures he'd find on the interwebs and be cranky, and if someone calls you cunts we'll try to kick those people in the huevos even though it will not make an iota of difference to your dead corpses but it will to us.

and i don't know what the fuck you're talking about some suicide flattering our vanity. i mean-- i know what you're saying, i comprehend the meaning of your sentences, and maybe you feel that way, but not everyone is the same as you or fits into this grim vision of grim grimness. if you want to look at flattering vanity, you're using this as an opportunity to theorize: "hey look at me, so clever, i know what everybody else is thinking." that's vanity too. and i'm not stating that this is what you're doing, but see, it can run both ways. everyone can be accused of stupid shit if one is bored enough to take the time and make the accusations.

i do feel sorry for the dead fucker. doubly sorry because he killed himself. and yes, yes, he was often annoying, but he added some value to the lives of other people, even if it was just dressing up and acting as characters for the imagination. same as your testo yonqui which begins with a huge paean to a suicide. people like their imaginary friends to varying degrees. fucking let them.

Well said.

Al Pacino does suck.
i cannot stand him; its the same-o, exaggerated b/s every single time. shouting isnt acting.
its a shame because i surely admired him as a kid, like all the acting 'monsters' of his generation. we all did and then somehow, dunno 2 decades ago, he got out of our skin. hard.
was always fearing i 'd feel the same for de niro..hasnt really happened yet.

sadly, it has been almost the same with Williams, just without the hate. when he started out, i was feeling you know..the potential and extreme admiration you have for one's acting, but somehow again on the road, i lost it. i think if it was a notch down, his acting, it would feel more natural.

anyway, wanted to avoid that, but since i had to speak on pacino..

i dont know..maybe sometimes it is the overexposure?
i lately fear for losing interest in kevin spacey for example. brrr that feeling!
Hoffman never disappointed though, thats why i think of him as one of the greatest.

already killed myself weeks ago, losers