Dear universe: Can we rewind about two weeks and have
a do-over? Because I really preferred a world where being black was not an
arrestable offense, a good kid I knew from work hadn't drowned, and Robin
Williams was best known for being funny and not for being dead? – Facebook post
by John Munzer, my son, August 2014
It’s nearly 1 a.m. and, as usual, I can’t get to sleep.
Lately, I’ve been falling asleep around 4 or 5 a.m. and waking up around noon
or later. And I’m psyched at the moment because there’s a huge storm heading
right at central Long Island where my son lives. And though he has handled
himself well in snow before, he has never seen what is predicted – 36 inches of
snow with 50 mph winds.
And so, while I’m in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where snow
is rare, I’m listening to one of the news radio stations coming out of New York
City. It’s 4 a.m. there and the
storm is hopefully about half over, but the blizzard part of the storm has
arrived and Matt and many of my friends will wake up in a few hours to a hell
of white. So I'm in a manic mode.
But that’s not what this is about today; although perhaps it
is related as I think of the despair many will have tomorrow. It’s about Robin
Williams.
I was scanning through a possible movie to rent on iTunes
and saw “Good Morning Vietnam” and decided to rent it. It’s halfway downloaded
and the computer says it will take about another five hours to finish. Why does
it take three plus times the length of the movie anyway? And so, I’ve been
thinking about him. I’m not at all surprised he killed himself. He was clearly
bi-polar. I am too. I don’t know why, but bi-polar people can be extremely
creative and, at times, filled with immense courage. Robin was both. At the
time of his death though, he may have been also suffering from a form of
dementia according to his autopsy. There was no evidence of illegal drug use,
which had plagued him during some of his career.
My son made two posts about Robin on his Facebook page, the
second being a picture of him standing on a desk saying “my captain, oh my captain”. It was
from a scene in one of his movies, “Dead Poets Society.” I think it was his
most memorable film moment. Playing a prep school teacher, he jumped on a desk
and demanded that his students take a look at things from a different angle.
When I saw it, I too, started looking at things from a different angle. And
while never jumping on a chair or desk when I became a teacher, I certainly
urged students to do so.
My son’s first exposure to Robin (as well as mine) was when
he was a pre-schooler. Robin played Mork, an alien seeking to learn about
humanity, which gave him a marvelous comedic platform at the end of each
episode when he contacted his ruler back on his home planet.
But I suppose Robin’s movie career also impacted him. Robin
was willing to take risks. His first movie, “Popeye,” pretty much bombed. But
the script was far more terrible than Robin’s performance. For every “Good
Morning Vietnam,” Dead Poets Society” and “Mrs. Doubtfire,” there were flops,
sometimes ahead of their time, like “The Birdcage,” “One Hour Photo,” and “The
Butler.” Perhaps one of the most interesting films was “What Dreams May Come,”
where, after dying, pursues his late wife who committed suicide. It was an indictment
of many of our religious beliefs about an afterlife, especially how unfair it
is. I didn’t like the film very much. I felt the computer-generated scenes were
too distracting to follow the plot and I didn’t think it was much of a plot. I
saw it with my ex, and she liked it. I suppose it was because he went to the
depths of Hell to find her. But we both loved “Patch Adams,” where the pompous
medical institution was ripped to shreds (she was a nurse and hated the
system and I hated it for what it had done to her).
But my favorite was his voiceover as the genie in Disney’s “Aladdin.”
Unlike other Disney films, Robin recorded his voiceovers, complete with dozens
of ad-libs before the film was made. Usually voiceovers are done as the
finished cartoon runs in front of the voice actor.
One of the most interesting times I saw him was in “Inside
The Actors’ Studio,” the cable television series. He was manic at his highest
(he may have been high too. This was when he was having trouble with drugs) and
he was crazy non-stop funny. But he just couldn’t come down to earth.
I was also quite shocked when I saw a DVD of his live show
“On Broadway.” It was filled with comedy of an adult nature and the man had no
limits. It completely altered my perspective of him. He was no longer a
“family” act. But he was, as
always, a tough act to follow.
Yes John, I would also like to see Robin best known for
being funny and not for being dead. But he left us a wonderful legacy
that made the world a better place for his being there – something we all
should aspire to.
By the way, it's still going to take four more hours to download the movie.
