I have long claimed myself to be a cold-hearted monster. I heard stories of presidents being assassinated and people crying and mourning their death, and I never understood. Why would you mourn someone you never met? Why would you cry over the death of someone that was basically a stranger to you?
Today, I understand.
I have never before been upset by hearing that a celebrity died, but today's news shocked me to my core. Robin Williams has long been a sort of role-model for me. He was goofy, charismatic, quick-witted, and fearless but simultaneously deep, emotional, and passionate. He was probably the first actor I knew by name and has almost always been one of the first additions to any list I ever made of my favorite actors.
Many years back, I decided to cast the Greek gods using all A-List actors. The first time I did this, I cast him as Dionysus. At the time, my thoughts were that both were essentially big goofballs. Things didn't stay that way.
As early as I can remember, my favorite movie was always Aladdin. There are many fantastic characters in that movie including Jafar, one of the greatest villains of all time; Abu, probably the coolest pet anyone could own; Raja, animalkind's best hope of rivaling Abu for the title of coolest pet; and Jasmine, by far the most attractive Disney princess. But all of that would still only add up to a really good movie. Aladdin, however, is a GREAT movie because of one, simple, brilliant casting choice: Robin Williams as Genie.
Genie was a fantastic character for the same reason that all of Robin Williams's characters were: there was more to him than just a goofy demeanor. When I was a kid, I loved watching and listening to Genie because he was rambunctious, wild, and fun. As I've grown up, I love watching and listening to Genie because he's layered, emotional, and believable. The same can be said for all the roles I knew him in as a child: Mrs. Doubtfire, Professor Brainard, Peter Pan, Alan Parrish, and Patch Adams. In all those roles, I feel in love with him as a kid because he related to me. He was essentially a living cartoon character. Then, as I grew up, I stayed in love with him because those roles continued to relate to me. Those characters dealt with heartbreak, rejection, loneliness, and being held down by society's expectations.
It wasn't until many years later that I started to see Robin Williams as more than a goofball. The first time it really stuck out at me was the movie Bicentennial Man. That movie really isn't funny. It is still one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen, but it really isn't funny. I was shocked, but it opened my eyes to a whole new world (yes, I meant to) of Robin Williams's talent.
I recently recast the Greek pantheon using actors that weren't necessarily A-List, but were definitely some of my favorites. More importantly, they were actors I felt best fit the character I cast them as. Robin Williams, of course, made the list once again. This time, however, as I was looking through pictures trying to decide who to cast him as, I came across a shot of him from August Rush and immediately recognized who I wanted him cast as: Apollo.
As time has progressed from my original casting, my interpretation of Dionysus (at least in the context of this dream casting) has gotten much darker and more malicious, and Robin Williams just didn't fit the part for me. Apollo, on the other hand, is kind of an odd god. He is, historically, one of the oldest gods in the Greek pantheon, but part of the second generation in the context of the mythology. This leaves him with the odd position of being both an old and young god. To me, that is Robin Williams.
When I was in High School, I was into competitive One-Act-Play pretty intensely. It gave me an opportunity to shed my skin and be someone else for a little while. My sophomore year, we did a play called The Day Room. It is a very strange play about people that are most likely living in an insane asylum and living multiple lives. It is, however, very confusing and I'm only mostly sure that that's what it's actually about. We didn't advance with that play past the first level of competition, but, in a twist that I had never seen before and have never seen since, a cast member from our non-advancing play won one of the most coveted individual awards given at these competitions: Best Actor.
Yes. It was me. I was awesome.
My part in The Day Room was, for the first half of the play, a guy at a hospital who is just there for a check-up, but turned out he was part of the psych ward (or something like that). The second half of the play, however, took place in a collective delusion. Everyone from the psych ward believed themselves to be at a hotel room, many of whom were planning on going to a play later. I spent most of that half of the play sitting in a straight jacket in a rolly chair staring at a spot on the floor about three feet in front of me. Every once in a while, someone else would point a remote at me, turn on the "TV" (me), and flip through the channels.
I was, so I'm told, rather hilarious, because I had a different voice for each channel that they flipped to and all our timing was perfect so that they clicked the button, I clicked on, changed channels, or turned off. Our judge told us that she kept looking over at me expecting to see me moving during the interludes between channel surfs, but never caught me.
Then she gave me the single greatest compliment I ever received in my acting career. She said that when she first read the play, she envisioned Robin Williams in that part and that he couldn't have done it any better. That comment left me flabbergasted. I didn't even know how to react to that. Robin Williams was my idol and I had just been compared to him. (Granted, my cynical self has analyzed the performance and maintains that he would have found a way to add more subtext, but oh well.)
For someone that grew up with as many (if not more) fictional friends as real ones, someone who could create as wonderfully entertaining, deep, and believable characters as Robin Williams is a godsend. His characters were as much my friends as anyone I knew in real life. As I said, I have never before felt much about the death of any celebrity, but I have also never had to deal with the death of someone I believe in so strongly.
It wasn't until this last year that I finally saw Dead Poet's Society (I know. You can burn me at the stake later.), and to be perfectly honest, the reason I finally looked it up was because of an Apple commercial. The passage that Robin Williams speaks over that commercial, however, touched me deeply, and his delivery of it was simply so powerful. It was one of the things that pushed me deeper into me writing, because it sums up a piece of my philosophy on writing:
We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love: these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer: that you are here; that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?
Robin Williams was my idol.
His characters were my friends.
And none of us will ever have a friend like him.
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