I don't know that what I've been doing lately, regarding Robin Williams' self-guided exit from this world, can be called "mourning". For one thing, it has involved a lot of laughing. For another, it's involved a lot of reflection over why Williams made an impact on me in the first place.
After the initial shock of the news that Robin Williams had taken his life, a weird kind of "denial" ensued. "Well, it's a shame, but it's not like he was kin, or anything." But I started thinking about how much of the fabric of my own worldview Williams affected, and why I was in such a good position to have it affected...and it turns out, I have a blog,
Long story short: it's complicated.
Long story long...
I've always regarded comedy as the best way to deal with life, and anyone who knows me knows that. Probably with some annoyance at times. At most times. All the time, really.
I come by the affectation honestly. Born in 1964, I was apparently media-cognizant enough by 1969 (and with a moon landing happening, it was hard not to be a media-cognizant five-year-old) that when I wasn't being fascinated by all things NASA, I was endlessly entertained by a guy in a raincoat riding a tricycle into inanimate objects and falling over on "Laugh-In". (And why shouldn't there be dancing women in tiny bikinis? It just made more space to write gag lines on them, none of which I probably understood. But, hey, girls dancing. Perfectly reasonable entertainment from a five-year-old's perspective.)
By now, you've noticed most of my paragraphs begin with "I". This is a personal blog. Deal.
It's probably because I came of age in a time when regular TV programming was constantly interrupted by Important Things (much of it, at least until the onset of Watergate, having to do with the space program) that I became fascinated with the idea of broadcasting itself. All those broadcasts involved enough on-screen reference to the mechanics of broadcasting that I wound up taking the bait. To this day, if something's being broadcast live, I want to see it, partly because I'm fascinated by its mechanics, and - full disclosure here - partly because I'm fascinated by the possibility that it'll fail spectacularly.
Fast-forward to 1975 when, during a trip to Boulder, Colorado, I looked through the newspaper's TV listings and noticed that NBC had a live show on that Saturday night that featured George Carlin. My father, having gone to high-school with Carlin, figured that late-night network TV was probably safe enough for the now-eleven-year-old me to watch, especially at 10:30pm in Colorado, but I knew it was live, so anything could happen. (Actually, it wasn't exactly live. The East Coast got to see the premiere of Saturday Night Live an hour before I did. When you're 11, you don't necessarily understand all of television's mechanics.)
Incidentally, on the one occasion I got a response from NBC in trying to get tickets to Saturday Night Live, it was for the dress rehearsal for the show scheduled to have Raymond Burr as host. NBC's info helpfully reminded us that you had to be 18 to be admitted, and so my father and I decided that we'd skip it, because of the chance we'd get turned away, and besides...Raymond Burr? Well, Burr pulled out, and former Smothers Brothers Show writer Steve Martin jumped in at the last minute for his first hosting gig. (I swear that, looking at the show today, you can pretty clearly see occasional non-18-year-olds in the audience, but I'm not bitter. Nooooo.) So, to my performing friends: if you ever invite me to see your act and I don't show up, please, think of it as a good sign.
Of course, I started relaying the material I was seeing to my classmates in the 7th grade who, not having been clued in to Saturday Night Live, got a good laugh out of it. (They were pretty much paying attention to Cheech & Chong records, so I was safe, plagiaristically speaking. In the 70's, there was no such thing as a "parental advisory".)
Sometime before that, our family got a subscription to a pay-TV service called "Channel 100", which almost immediately went out of business and was replaced by "Home Box Office", which didn't go out of business. Soon, HBO realized that just playing the movies they could get their hands on wouldn't pay the bills alone. Starting with a special featuring Robert Klein, HBO showed nearly complete performances by well-known comics, quickly buttressing that schedule with package shows featuring complete, though short, performances by not-so-well-known comics. The first of these from 1976, "Freddie Prinze And Friends", had a slate that included Jay Leno, Elayne Boosler and Tim Thomerson, all of whom rose to a variety of levels of fame. Soon, Steve Martin did a special, and I was clued in to catch that show because I'd seen him on Saturday Night Live. It became worthwhile to devour the little monthly guide HBO printed up back then to see who'd be featured next.
1977 seemed to be the year I couldn't avoid Robin Williams. He was a regular on Richard Pryor's variety show and on the resurrected Laugh In, and then showed up on a Young Comedians show on HBO (possibly the first that was actually called "Young Comedians", with David Steinberg hosting) and, frankly, stole the entire show. So my familiarity with Robin Williams really began with his stand-up and sketch comedy performances. In fact, his eventual starring role the next year on Mork & Mindy - and, actually, just about everything he did on film save for the notable exception of his voice work as the Genie in Disney's "Aladdin" - seemed forcefully restrained after having seen him so unfiltered on HBO. His uncredited appearance in Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen" probably ranks a close second, as his disembodied head complains about the base desires of the rest of his body.
Watching that old HBO video today, it's easy to see where the rough edges and crutches were in his performance, but it's also still easy to see what was so captivating about it. His ability to switch gears, to slip bits of business between jokes, and to simply be as entirely "on" as a performer can be, was hypnotic, and hard to convey in any other forum.
It's easy to say Williams will be missed - and he will - but having all that early work preserved and available is not just amazing, it's vital. It's the answer to any question about how lasting his mark was on pop culture. Some are asking that question - in answer, all you have to do is point them at it.
After the initial shock of the news that Robin Williams had taken his life, a weird kind of "denial" ensued. "Well, it's a shame, but it's not like he was kin, or anything." But I started thinking about how much of the fabric of my own worldview Williams affected, and why I was in such a good position to have it affected...and it turns out, I have a blog,
Long story short: it's complicated.
Long story long...
I've always regarded comedy as the best way to deal with life, and anyone who knows me knows that. Probably with some annoyance at times. At most times. All the time, really.
I come by the affectation honestly. Born in 1964, I was apparently media-cognizant enough by 1969 (and with a moon landing happening, it was hard not to be a media-cognizant five-year-old) that when I wasn't being fascinated by all things NASA, I was endlessly entertained by a guy in a raincoat riding a tricycle into inanimate objects and falling over on "Laugh-In". (And why shouldn't there be dancing women in tiny bikinis? It just made more space to write gag lines on them, none of which I probably understood. But, hey, girls dancing. Perfectly reasonable entertainment from a five-year-old's perspective.)
By now, you've noticed most of my paragraphs begin with "I". This is a personal blog. Deal.
It's probably because I came of age in a time when regular TV programming was constantly interrupted by Important Things (much of it, at least until the onset of Watergate, having to do with the space program) that I became fascinated with the idea of broadcasting itself. All those broadcasts involved enough on-screen reference to the mechanics of broadcasting that I wound up taking the bait. To this day, if something's being broadcast live, I want to see it, partly because I'm fascinated by its mechanics, and - full disclosure here - partly because I'm fascinated by the possibility that it'll fail spectacularly.
Fast-forward to 1975 when, during a trip to Boulder, Colorado, I looked through the newspaper's TV listings and noticed that NBC had a live show on that Saturday night that featured George Carlin. My father, having gone to high-school with Carlin, figured that late-night network TV was probably safe enough for the now-eleven-year-old me to watch, especially at 10:30pm in Colorado, but I knew it was live, so anything could happen. (Actually, it wasn't exactly live. The East Coast got to see the premiere of Saturday Night Live an hour before I did. When you're 11, you don't necessarily understand all of television's mechanics.)
Incidentally, on the one occasion I got a response from NBC in trying to get tickets to Saturday Night Live, it was for the dress rehearsal for the show scheduled to have Raymond Burr as host. NBC's info helpfully reminded us that you had to be 18 to be admitted, and so my father and I decided that we'd skip it, because of the chance we'd get turned away, and besides...Raymond Burr? Well, Burr pulled out, and former Smothers Brothers Show writer Steve Martin jumped in at the last minute for his first hosting gig. (I swear that, looking at the show today, you can pretty clearly see occasional non-18-year-olds in the audience, but I'm not bitter. Nooooo.) So, to my performing friends: if you ever invite me to see your act and I don't show up, please, think of it as a good sign.
Of course, I started relaying the material I was seeing to my classmates in the 7th grade who, not having been clued in to Saturday Night Live, got a good laugh out of it. (They were pretty much paying attention to Cheech & Chong records, so I was safe, plagiaristically speaking. In the 70's, there was no such thing as a "parental advisory".)
Sometime before that, our family got a subscription to a pay-TV service called "Channel 100", which almost immediately went out of business and was replaced by "Home Box Office", which didn't go out of business. Soon, HBO realized that just playing the movies they could get their hands on wouldn't pay the bills alone. Starting with a special featuring Robert Klein, HBO showed nearly complete performances by well-known comics, quickly buttressing that schedule with package shows featuring complete, though short, performances by not-so-well-known comics. The first of these from 1976, "Freddie Prinze And Friends", had a slate that included Jay Leno, Elayne Boosler and Tim Thomerson, all of whom rose to a variety of levels of fame. Soon, Steve Martin did a special, and I was clued in to catch that show because I'd seen him on Saturday Night Live. It became worthwhile to devour the little monthly guide HBO printed up back then to see who'd be featured next.
1977 seemed to be the year I couldn't avoid Robin Williams. He was a regular on Richard Pryor's variety show and on the resurrected Laugh In, and then showed up on a Young Comedians show on HBO (possibly the first that was actually called "Young Comedians", with David Steinberg hosting) and, frankly, stole the entire show. So my familiarity with Robin Williams really began with his stand-up and sketch comedy performances. In fact, his eventual starring role the next year on Mork & Mindy - and, actually, just about everything he did on film save for the notable exception of his voice work as the Genie in Disney's "Aladdin" - seemed forcefully restrained after having seen him so unfiltered on HBO. His uncredited appearance in Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen" probably ranks a close second, as his disembodied head complains about the base desires of the rest of his body.
Watching that old HBO video today, it's easy to see where the rough edges and crutches were in his performance, but it's also still easy to see what was so captivating about it. His ability to switch gears, to slip bits of business between jokes, and to simply be as entirely "on" as a performer can be, was hypnotic, and hard to convey in any other forum.
It's easy to say Williams will be missed - and he will - but having all that early work preserved and available is not just amazing, it's vital. It's the answer to any question about how lasting his mark was on pop culture. Some are asking that question - in answer, all you have to do is point them at it.
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