When someone so iconic, so imprinted on the DNA of our popular culture and personal memories like Robin Williams dies we automatically think that the professional obituary writers remember every movie, every stand-up show and every television appearance in precise detail. When it comes to movie stars, rock idols and novelists they are blessed by god with the omnipotent power to pluck out the most obscure gesture or throwaway line the deceased has ever uttered.
We need them to be the organic equivalents of You Tube bred to stay our grief with anecdotes and forgotten gems so we laugh and smile and wonder how just one man can move genocide from the top of the news agenda? How can a stand-up comedian so thoroughly defeat The Islamic State when American air strikes are barely containing them? We need them to remind us why we loved him so much and why he struck such a cord in our lives.
Of course these media demi-gods are just like everyone else when a figure of such electric repute like Williams suddenly vanishes from the landscape of our dreams. They are groggy like Kenneth Turan film critic of the Los Angeles Times who couldn’t remember that Williams was in “Good Will Hunting” but he could remember interviewing him just before “Mork and Mindy” was ready to launch his career into the stratosphere.
What we really remember, what the critics and commentators really remember, both collectively and personally are the moments when Robin Williams’ career collided with our own lives. The dim recollection of an appearance in “Happy Days,” those rascal jumpers in “Mork and Mindy” and that late night viewing of “Live at the Met” that changed your perception of what heights a comedian could accomplish in front of a stagecoach set.
What about the time when you had to miss the end of “Good Morning Vietnam” at the cinema so you could get the last bus home? Did “Hook” and “Toys” really get better with time? Didn’t you cry at “Awakenings” and realise that you’ve never actually seen “Dead Poet’s Society” even though you marked it off your watched list? What about that reveal in “One Hour Photo” and those Obama White House skits about basketball that made you a little uncomfortable under the collar?
Early reports strongly suggest that Robin Williams took his own life after suffering from depression. It’s a cliché but what a shame he couldn’t live to see how much unadulterated joy he brought to us all over so many years. He was a maverick, supremely talented; a comic genius that machine gunned you into submission or quietly moved you to tears. We can question our news priorities when the world is currently going to hell but surely a short time out to remember Robin Williams and how he made us laugh is what makes us human in the first place?