Thanks for such an honest, first hand insight JJ, it may well help only one person but what a wonderful gift that would be

R.I.P. Robin Williams

Unfortunately, it takes me some time to cotton on to this, so I keep asking questions about World's Greatest Dad. Williams plays Lance, a failed writer, failed teacher and single father of perhaps the most irredeemably dislikable teenager ever to appear on screen. His son Kyle is addicted to hardcore internet pornography and is almost universally loathed – until he accidentally dies. His father fakes a suicide note, and when it is leaked, the school magazine reprints the letter, its poignancy prompting a posthumous revision of everyone's former low opinion of the boy. Soon a juggernaut of confected grief is roaring out of control.

Unable to resist the allure of his new popularity, Lance proceeds to fake a whole journal, passing it off as his son's and fuelling the insatiable hunger for loss. A bidding war breaks out between publishing houses, the journal becomes a bestselling book, and Lance winds up on a daytime TV show, like a pseudo celebrity, peddling his mythical son's tragedy to the nation.

The film is a devastatingly funny indictment of the modern grief industry, but when I ask Williams if he thinks it's getting worse, he says mildly, "Well, I think people want it. In a weird way, it's trying to keep hope alive." So does he not share the film's judgment on mawkish sentimentality? "Well, you just try and keep it in perspective; you have to remember the best and the worst." It seems as if he's about to engage with the question – "In America they really do mythologise people when they die," he agrees – but then he veers off at a tangent, putting on Ronald Reagan's voice but talking about the ex-president in the third person: "Maybe he was kind of lovable, but you realised half way through his administration he really didn't know where he was."

I wonder if Williams had experienced a little bit of the film's theme himself, when his great friend Christopher Reeve died. Was it hard, I ask, to see fans mourning Superman, when to Williams he was a real person, a real friend?

"He was a friend," Williams says solemnly. "And also knowing him, especially after the accident and everything he went through – it was a weird thing." What was it like, I try again, to grieve privately for a public figure? "Well, it's a whole different game," he says, but then starts talking about the death of Reeve's wife a year later. "It happens all the time, I know, but I know their kids, they're amazing, and to see them go through so much loss in one year – that's tough."

I ask about the media's role in the manufacturing of grief, but instead he recalls a talkshow he saw where a man confessed to adultery before a female studio audience. "Idiot. Why don't you just go bobbing for piranha? These women are screaming 'You bastard!', but the idea of being on TV overrode everything." He adopts a southern redneck accent: "'Ah'm on TV, y'all.' You're a schmuck, why would you do that?" Then the accent again: "Ah'm on tee-vee, ah'm gonna be fay-mous.' Yeah, for all of five minutes, big time."

We're not making much headway on the grief industry, so I try internet porn. Williams's three children have grown up through the internet age, so I'm curious about his views on its impact on adolescents. "It's just like – there's everything you could ever think about online." But what does Williams actually think about it; is it liberating and a good thing, or corrupting and a bad thing? "It's an old thing," he shrugs. "Look at the walls of Pompeii. That's what got the internet started." Then he starts talking rather boringly about iPhones, and how it's now possible to do video-conference calls on a mobile.

My worry beforehand had been that Williams would be too wildly manic to make much sense. When he appeared on the Jonathan Ross show earlier this summer, he'd been vintage Williams – hyperactive to the point of deranged, ricocheting between voices, riffing off his internal dialogues. Off-camera, however, he is a different kettle of fish. His bearing is intensely Zen and almost mournful, and when he's not putting on voices he speaks in a low, tremulous baritone – as if on the verge of tears – that would work very well if he were delivering a funeral eulogy. He seems gentle and kind – even tender – but the overwhelming impression is one of sadness.

Even the detours into dialogue feel more like a reflex than irrepressible comic passion, and the freakish articulacy showcased in Good Morning Vietnam has gone. Quite often when he opens his mouth a slur of unrelated words come out, like a dozen different false starts tangled together, from which an actual sentence eventually finds its way out. For example, "So/Now/And then/Well/It/I – Sometimes I used to work just to work." It's like trying to tune into a long-wave radio station.

I find myself wondering if alcohol abuse might have something to do with it. Williams used to be a big-drinking cocaine addict, but quit both before the birth of his eldest son in 1983, and stayed sober for 20 years. On location in Alaska in 2003, however, he started drinking again. He brings this up himself, and the minute he does he becomes more engaged.

"I was in a small town where it's not the edge of the world, but you can see it from there, and then I thought: drinking. I just thought, hey, maybe drinking will help. Because I felt alone and afraid. It was that thing of working so much, and going kiss, maybe that will help. And it was the worst thing in the world." What did he feel like when he had his first drink? "You feel warm and kind of wonderful. And then the next thing you know, it's a problem, and you're isolated."

Some have suggested it was Reeve's death that turned him back to drink. "No," he says quietly, "it's more selfish than that. It's just literally being afraid. And you think, oh, this will ease the fear. And it doesn't." What was he afraid of? "Everything. It's just a general all-round arggghhh. It's fearfulness and anxiety."

He didn't take up cocaine again, because "I knew that would kill me". I'd have thought it would be a case of in for a penny – "In for a gram?" he smiles. "No. Cocaine – paranoid and impotent, what fun. There was no bit of me thinking, ooh, let's go back to that. Useless conversations until midnight, waking up at dawn feeling like a vampire on a day pass. No."

It only took a week of drinking before he knew he was in trouble, though. "For that first week you lie to yourself, and tell yourself you can stop, and then your body kicks back and says, no, stop later. And then it took about three years, and finally you do stop."

It wasn't, he says, fun while it lasted, but three years sounds like a long time not to be having fun. "That's right. Most of the time you just realise you've started to do embarrassing things." He recalls drinking at a charity auction hosted by Sharon Stone at Cannes: "And I realised I was pretty baked, and I look out and I see all of a sudden a wall of paparazzi. And I go, 'Oh well, I guess it's out now'."

In the end it was a family intervention that put him into residential rehab. I wonder if he was "Robin Williams" in rehab, and he agrees. "Yeah, you start off initially riffing, and kind of being real funny. But the weird thing is, how can you do a comic turn without betraying the precepts of group therapy? Eventually you shed it."

Williams still attends AA meetings at least once a week – "Have to. It's good to go" – and I suspect this accounts for a fair bit of his Zen solemnity. At times it verges on sentimental: he asks if I have children, and when I tell him I have a baby son he nods gravely, as if I've just shared. "Congrats. Good luck. It's a pretty wonderful thing." But it may well be down to the open-heart surgery he underwent early last year, when surgeons replaced his aortic valve with one from a pig.

"Oh, God, you find yourself getting emotional. It breaks through your barrier, you've literally cracked the armour. And you've got no choice, it literally breaks you open. And you feel really mortal." Does the intimation of mortality live with him still? "Totally." Is it a blessing? "Totally."

He takes everything, he says, more slowly now. His second marriage, to a film producer, ended in 2008 – largely because of his drinking, even though by then he was sober. "You know, I was shameful, and you do stuff that causes disgust, and that's hard to recover from. You can say, 'I forgive you' and all that stuff, but it's not the same as recovering from it. It's not coming back."

The couple had been together for 19 years, and have a son and a daughter, both now grown up; he has another son from his first marriage to an actress in the late 70s. Williams is now with a graphic designer, whom he met shortly before his heart surgery, and they live together in San Francisco. "But we're taking it slow. I don't know, maybe some day we'll marry, but there's no rush. I just want to take it easy now. This is good news. It's the whole thing of taking it slow. And it's so much better."

Williams thinks he used to be a fairly classic workaholic, but at 59 is now taking it slow professionally too. "In one two-year period I made eight movies. At one point the joke was that there's a movie out without you in it. You have this idea that you'd better keep working otherwise people will forget. And that was dangerous. And then you realise, no, actually if you take a break people might be more interested in you. Now, after the heart surgery, I'll take it slow."

Williams has been nothing if not prolific. After first finding fame in the late 70s as a kooky space alien in the sitcom Mork and Mindy, he became better known as a standup comedian, but his astonishing performance in Good Morning Vietnam earned him an Oscar nomination in 1988, with two more in the following five years, for Dead Poets' Society and The Fisher King. Mrs Doubtfire, in which he dragged up to play a nanny, brought wider mainstream success, and in 1998 Good Will Hunting finally won him an Oscar. In recent years, however, he has made an awful lot of what would politely be described as less critically acclaimed films.

Some of them have been downright awful; schmaltzy family comedies drenched in maudlin sentiment, such as the unwatchably saccharine Patch Adams or, even worse, Old Dogs. When I ask why he made them, he says: "Well, I've had a lot of people tell me they watched Old Dogs with their kids and had a good time." It didn't offend his sense of integrity? "No, it paid the bills. Sometimes you have to make a movie to make money." He didn't mistake them, he adds, for intelligent scripts: "You know what you're getting into, totally. You know they're going to make it goofy. And that's OK."

Like many people, I had always been confused by Williams's film choices. The sharpness of his early standup just seemed so incompatible with the sentimentality of his worst movies, and if, as Williams claims, Old Dogs simply paid the bills, he must have one very high-maintenance lifestyle. When I watched World's Greatest Dad I just assumed it echoed his own sensibility more accurately than all the other rubbish he has made. But actually, having met him, I'm not sure it does. I don't know whether it was rehab or heart surgery, but he seems to have arrived at a place where sentimentality can sit quite easily.

I ask if he feels happier now, and he says softly, "I think so. And not afraid to be unhappy. That's OK too. And then you can be like, all is good. And that is the thing, that is the gift."

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/sep/20/robin-williams-worlds-greatest-dad-alcohol-drugs

Robin Williams 'started to disconnect', says friend
Movies Date August 14, 2014 - 9:44AM
Robin Williams: the man behind the mask

Australian cinematographer Don McAlpine shot three Robin Williams movies, including Mrs Doubtfire. Speaking with Garry Maddox, he remembers a man as obsessive as he was brilliant.


Obsessive side of Robin Williams

The end was shockingly sudden. But the road that led to Robin Williams' suicide at age 63 was a long one - and if you knew where to look, there were plenty of signposts indicating trouble along the way.

In the wake of Williams' death at his home on Monday, fans around the world have struggled to understand what could have led a man whose thousand-megawatt comic persona had brought so much joy to millions to such depths of despair. But Robin Williams' closest friends and colleagues knew well that beneath his manic, Technicolour exterior, the actor had battled depression for years.

In recent months - as Williams wrestled with the cancellation of his CBS TV series The Crazy Ones and fought to maintain a sobriety that had at times proved fragile - those friends could see that he was losing that fight.

Advertisement "He started to disconnect," comedian Rick Overton, a friend of Williams' since the 1970s, said on Tuesday. "He wasn't returning calls as much. He would send texts and things like that, but they would get shorter and shorter."

Williams appeared to have died of asphyxia, authorities said on Tuesday. The actor's wife, Susan Schneider, had left their home that morning at 10:30. His assistant arrived about an hour later and found his body, Lieutenant Keith Boyd, assistant deputy chief coroner for the Marin County Sheriff's Department, told reporters.

Blow: his show The Crazy Ones was cancelled.
Blow: his show The Crazy Ones was cancelled. Photo: Supplied

Boyd confirmed that Williams had "received treatment for depression" but declined to speculate on what may have led the actor to take his own life. Toxicology tests will be conducted to determine whether he had drugs or alcohol in his system. Boyd declined to say whether Williams had left a note.

Comedian and longtime friend Steven Pearl ran into Williams at a barbecue last month in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he could see that something was wrong. Williams, who had battled drug and alcohol addiction early in his career, had just come out of a stint in rehab in Minnesota, where he had gone, his publicist said at the time, to "fine-tune and focus on his continued commitment" to his sobriety.

"You could just tell something was off," Pearl said. "He seemed detached. It's hard to explain. He didn't seem like his usual self. My fiance and I were like, 'Is he OK?' I didn't know it would get this dark."

A photo of Robin Williams' Mork character is left at an impromptu memorial set up outside the house used in his breakout hit TV series.
A photo of Robin Williams' Mork character is left at an impromptu memorial set up outside the house used in his breakout hit TV series. Photo: Reuters

From the outside, Williams' career looked like one that any actor would envy. Propelled to fame in the late 1970s as a lovable alien on the smash sitcom Mork & Mindy, he transitioned to movie stardom with apparent ease, weaving between broad comedy and more serious dramatic turns. He earned Academy Award nominations for 1987's Good Morning, Vietnam, 1989's Dead Poets' Society and 1991's The Fisher King, and finally won the best supporting actor Oscar for his performance in 1997's Good Will Hunting.

But, like any major movie star with such a long career, Williams accumulated his share of bombs along with the hits, including much-maligned critical and commercial duds such as Father's Day and Bicentennial Man. In recent years, he would sometimes joke self-deprecatingly about what he seemed to view as a downturn in his career. On his 2009 stand-up tour he imagined a conversation with his car's GPS, in which the navigation system was trying to steer him off the Golden Gate Bridge. "I said, 'Why? Have you seen my movies recently?' "

In 2005, with his box office drawing power inexorably waning, Williams began drinking again while shooting the independent film The Big White in Alaska, and soon checked himself into rehab. At one point, as he told comedian Marc Maron in a 2010 interview on the WTF podcast, he contemplated suicide.

Money worries: Robin Williams.
Money worries: Robin Williams. Photo: Wayne Taylor

"It's trying to fill the hole, and it's fear," he told Maron of what led him back to drinking. "You're going, 'What am I doing in my career?' You bottom out. ... People say, 'You have an Academy Award.' The Academy Award lasted about a week, and then one week later people are going, 'Hey, Mork!' "

No longer on Hollywood's short list for major starring vehicles, Williams increasingly took supporting roles in films like Night at the Museum, along with smaller independent films and roles on the stage. He had always been an adventurous performer, and quite often these projects allowed him to stretch himself in ways he hadn't before. Recently, for example, Williams attached himself to play the role of a Chechen terrorist in an independent comedy called Eisner.

"It would allow him to go a little nuts, which he liked to do," writer-director Andrew Bergman said. "He didn't have that many movie parts where he could be his unchained self."

Flowers are placed on Robin Williams Hollywood Walk of Fame star.
Flowers are placed on Robin Williams Hollywood Walk of Fame star. Photo: Valerie Macon/Getty Images

Still, while he continued to work regularly, Williams no longer pulled in the big paydays he had in his earlier career and, with tens of millions of dollars in divorce settlements from his first two marriages to contend with, he found himself facing growing money problems.

In hopes of shoring up his finances and recapturing some of the old Mork & Mindy magic, he returned to television last fall with a highly touted starring role in the CBS comedy The Crazy Ones. The network had high hopes for the show, on which Williams played an over-the-top Chicago ad man opposite Sarah Michelle Gellar. The gig also provided a steady paycheck - a reported $US165,000 per episode - which he candidly admitted he needed.

"I have two (other) choices: Go on the road doing stand-up, or do small, independent movies working almost for scale," Williams told Parade magazine in 2013. "There are bills to pay."

To raise cash, Williams also decided to part with a 640-acre ranch in Napa he had owned for more than a decade, a spread he called Villa Sorriso, or "Villa of Smiles," which was listed this spring for $29.9 million. "I just can't afford it anymore," Williams told Parade, adding, "Divorce is expensive. ... It's ripping your heart out through your wallet."

The Crazy Ones started off strong, with more than 15 million tuning in for the September 26 premiere, according to Nielsen. But the reviews were mixed and the audience steadily eroded as the season went on. Production on the series wrapped in March and was followed by a wrap party for the show at Bugatta Supper Club in Los Angeles. But Williams wasn't able to attend because he was starting work on the film Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, the third installment in 20th Century Fox's comedy franchise.

On May 10, CBS announced The Crazy Ones wouldn't return for a second season. Friends say the news was a serious emotional blow to Williams, who had spoken of finding himself increasingly prone to bouts of depression ever since undergoing open-heart surgery in 2009.

"He took the cancellation of the show hard," Overton said. "It would hit any of us hard, but especially a heart patient who has depression. The one-two punch of that can make all the difference in the world. He got real quiet. I've known those eyes for decades. I know where the spark is supposed to be."

In late spring, Williams wrapped up work on the latest Night at the Museum film - reprising his role as Theodore Roosevelt - and voiced a talking dog in "Absolutely Anything," a sci-fi comedy from former "Monty Python" star Terry Jones. It would be his last professional job.

In early July, Williams checked himself into the Hazelden addiction treatment centre in Center City. He had not fallen off the wagon, his publicist said at the time, but was instead struggling to hold himself together as he crumbled under the weight of depression.

What transpired in the weeks between Williams' return from Hazelden and his death is unknown except to those closest to the actor. It may never be clear what fueled the darkness that haunted him for years.

In June, Williams made what was to be his last major public appearance, at the San Francisco Zoo, an organisation he had raised money for over the years. Along with zoo director Tanya Peterson, he toured the grounds, checking in on a parrot he had donated to the institution and feeding a howler monkey that had been named after him.

"He met the monkey and immediately quipped, 'Finally, an animal species that is as loud and hairy as I am,' " Peterson recalled. "It was on a Friday at 4 o'clock, and I kept thinking Robin Williams would probably have better things to do. But it was a lovely moment."



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/robin-williams-started-to-disconnect-says-friend-20140814-103tu9.html#ixzz3AK0Pj7k7

Exactly Gay .

why do these people feel it is their duty to inform us with endless copy and pastes?

if we are interested enough we are capable of finding these articles ourselves.

it was great when mirrors left but this guy is just as bad

James Bond Esq wrote: These are great articles that cover the gammet of emotional responses to a moment in time that was disturbing and upsetting to any number of people across the globe. People hurt, they show their hurt and respect in many different ways. But there are truly some very relevant and poignant information that touches the very soul and the very fibre of our being. it is absolutely fantastic that these can be shared for prosperity sake. Robin Williams has touched all our lives over the last 30 years and it is lovely that we can share information about his life, his journeys and the man he was.

we can find it ourselves if we are interested, quite capable of googling

why is it that your spelling is perfect at times, yet atrocious at other times ?

slipping in and out of character

gammet  gamut


are truly some very relevant and poignant information   is

well, if i wasnt depressed before , i am now !

James Bond Esq wrote: These are great articles that cover the gammet of emotional responses to a moment in time that was disturbing and upsetting to any number of people across the globe. People hurt, they show their hurt and respect in many different ways. But there are truly some very relevant and poignant information that touches the very soul and the very fibre of our being. it is absolutely fantastic that these can be shared for prosperity sake. Robin Williams has touched all our lives over the last 30 years and it is lovely that we can share information about his life, his journeys and the man he was.

I agree, and thanks for putting them up. Would've missed them if you hadn't posted. I've read a few very different artices trying to make sense of it all for those who didn't appreciate his struggles and each was able to capture elements of this brilliant and extremely perceptive, down to earth yet often sad, person. Ironically we pulled out Dead Poets Society to watch on the night of his death.  I could only recall how uplifted I felt when I first saw that movie, had long forgotten the tragedy. Still it's how I'll remember him - inspiring, smart, funny, yet sad. His legacy is enormous. RIP captain oh my captain! No-one will ever do interviews the way you did. My guess is that the shows in heaven are booked out already.

3blindmice wrote: [QUOTE=James Bond Esq]These are great articles that cover the gammet o I agree, and thanks for putting them up. Would've missed them if you hadn't posted.

you are one of the few.

but as someone said in another thread if I don't like it I don't have to read it

All the best Jujuno. Thank you for your kind wishes. Good Luck.
Yes, taking care of yourself is something we all take for granted. But it is the most important thing that we all can do.

jujuno wrote:  my problems at the moment are not helped by the fact I've been suffering severe headaches, stiff neck, muscle spasms and bouts of narcolepsy...was bitten behind my left ear by a mozzie back in April, whilst in Qld...large lump appeared and four months later, still flares up...have had blood tests, MRI and endless doc visits with no definitive results...it is not Ross River but something similar...I just have to put up with it until it runs its course...cortisone and painkillers give moderate relief but most days I feel like half my head is missing...and I hate being housebound by this condition and the cold weather...can't wait for the thaw...  so if I am not my usual charming self , I hope you forgive me...   thanks for the kind thoughts, Flash...

That's re last article above of course. Some people are just inspiring.

And absolutely nothing to forgive juno just was concerned as to what may have been happening.

Relate to a lot of what you've explained since esp the 3 day wait to let anxiety level drop, amazing. So surley others relate as well. So keep being yourself and being frank, absolutely love and admire people who are that brave.

(not a fan of the cold this year either - the carbon tax went too far)

Go Flash Go wrote: l'm happy for someone to find them for me and put them up as well, sometimes we don't have the time. If something is important or interesting to you put it up, it may be to someone else too. Understanding more helps you process it towards acceptance eventually. And juno for whatever you may say or do through the banter know one thing, you've got this motley crew on your side l hope l may say, me for sure l can safely say. Noticed you've been angrier than your playful self lately and was thinking of asking but now you've said. If you're not in good shape you can't help anyone else so yes take good care of yourself first, wouldn't call it an indulgence - keep going girl. And if you need anything just ask.

exactly what would she ask for from you ?
what a pretentious. empty gesture

maccamax wrote: Hollywood wrote: R.I.P. Robin Williams What have the police officially reported on his death ?    I think they have our mods as persons of interested . When They found out poor Robby, was suspended.