I was gonna get up and bitch about having to go back to work today after being off for about 10 days. Then I saw the news about Robin Williams, and I guess I don’t feel like complaining about work. When I was a projectionist, we ran the hell out of ‘Dead Poets Society’ after having run the sneak for it a couple of weeks before it officially came out (one of the rare times the production company actually called after the show to ask about the audience reaction). <\/p>\n
I remember seeing Robin Williams on several of his Tonight Show appearances. It was like watching an unstoppable force of nature – he was so fast and so funny it was exhausting just to watch. His stand up shows were no different (just longer and even more exhausting). He made a ton of exceptional movies (I even liked Popeye – so sue me) as well and I ran a couple of them back in the day – aside from DPS (where I had to teach one of my ushers that it’s “i before e except after c or even after what sounds like ‘see'” because he spelled it “Sieze the Day” on the side of the marquee – which I always like to think of as the Marquee de Side. Fun fact, a few years before DPS, Williams was in the movie adaptation of Saul Bellow’s “Seize the Day”), there was Good Morning Vietnam, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen .<\/p>\n
Ah, we were both so much younger back then.<\/p>\n
I guess Robin found a kindred spirit in the late, great Jonathan Winters. I’d have loved to have been on the set of Mork and Mindy to watch those two together off stage. I think maybe to be that funny, you have to have a lot of pain in your heart. <\/p>\n
And the world is suddenly a lot less funny today.<\/p>\n