Robin Williams - When the Laughter Stops 1951-2014 by Emily Herbert Page B
Authors: Emily Herbert
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good at conveying his utter bewilderment at the strange goings-on around him, while Jenny just stands back and smiles, never once thinking that any of this is odd.’
Meanwhile,
Variety
was complimentary about the film, though not entirely sure about Robin. ‘Garp grows up in a placid academic environment, and the grown man in the person of Robin Williams appears after only 25 minutes,’ it wrote. ‘He meets and marries Mary Beth Hurt, raises his family, fitfully pursues his writing while she teaches, has skirmishes with the feminists at his mother’s mansion, and all the while tries to avoid the “undertoad”, the unseen, pervasive threat which lurks everywhere and strikes without warning. Physically, Williams is fine, butmuch of the performance is hit-and-miss. Otherwise, casting is superior. Hurt is excellent as Garp’s wife. Glenn Close proves a perfect choice as Jenny Fields, a woman of almost ethereal simplicity. Best of all, perhaps, is John Lithgow as Roberta Muldoon, a former football player, now a transsexual.’
Time Out
also wasn’t convinced. ‘Williams is cuddly enough as the man whose talents for nurturing a family are constantly undermined by a malign fate, and there is a performance of some dignity from Lithgow as a six-and-a-half-foot ex-pro footballer transsexual,’ it said. ‘But it’s the kind of movie which is brave – or stupid – enough to ask the meaning of life without having enough arse in its breeches to warrant a reply.’
Some noted the development in Robin’s career from comic to actor. ‘Mr. Williams is at his most affecting with the children; he makes a fond, playful father, a man perfectly at home in a suit of make believe armor made of welcome mats and garbage-can lids,’ wrote Janet Maslin in
The New York Times.
‘Mr. Williams’s role is a very demanding one, calling on him to age from a teenager to a family man, a process he has trouble with. His performance is engaging but erratic, more effective in the clownier, busier scenes than in those that ask him to recite lines or stand still. Mr. Williams is much less compelling at rest than he is when free to represent Garp through action. When the role doesn’t call for movement of some kind, he falters.’
And some just couldn’t get on with the film. ‘What arewe to think of these people and the events in their lives?’ asked the rather more skeptical Roger Ebert in the
Chicago Sun-Times.
‘I thought the acting was unconventional and absorbing (especially by Williams, by Glenn Close as his mother, and by John Lithgow as a transsexual). I thought the visualization of the events, by director George Roy Hill, was fresh and consistently interesting. But when the movie was over, my immediate response was not at all what it should have been. All I could find to ask myself was: What the hell was that all about?’
Pauline Kael was none too happy either: ‘There’s no feeling of truth in either the book or the movie,’ she declared, and the ‘generally faithful adaptation seems no more (and no less) than a castration fantasy.’
Whatever people thought about it, however, it had made the point that Robin Williams could act. Some, including the film critic Roger Ebert, were to maintain the view that he was essentially a comedian rather than an actor but, from now on, it was clear that his talents ran far deeper than anyone had realised up until then. And it was good timing too:
Mork & Mindy
had just come to a close and now it was time to get on with life’s next act.
But three months before the movie came out something happened that was to have a profound effect on Williams’ life. In March 1982, aged just thirty-three, his close friend and fellow actor and comic John Belushi died of a drug overdose, after consuming a speedball (a mixture of cocaine and heroin). He was found dead in his roomat the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard. In the early hours on the day of his death he was visited both by Williams and
Meanwhile,
Variety
was complimentary about the film, though not entirely sure about Robin. ‘Garp grows up in a placid academic environment, and the grown man in the person of Robin Williams appears after only 25 minutes,’ it wrote. ‘He meets and marries Mary Beth Hurt, raises his family, fitfully pursues his writing while she teaches, has skirmishes with the feminists at his mother’s mansion, and all the while tries to avoid the “undertoad”, the unseen, pervasive threat which lurks everywhere and strikes without warning. Physically, Williams is fine, butmuch of the performance is hit-and-miss. Otherwise, casting is superior. Hurt is excellent as Garp’s wife. Glenn Close proves a perfect choice as Jenny Fields, a woman of almost ethereal simplicity. Best of all, perhaps, is John Lithgow as Roberta Muldoon, a former football player, now a transsexual.’
Time Out
also wasn’t convinced. ‘Williams is cuddly enough as the man whose talents for nurturing a family are constantly undermined by a malign fate, and there is a performance of some dignity from Lithgow as a six-and-a-half-foot ex-pro footballer transsexual,’ it said. ‘But it’s the kind of movie which is brave – or stupid – enough to ask the meaning of life without having enough arse in its breeches to warrant a reply.’
Some noted the development in Robin’s career from comic to actor. ‘Mr. Williams is at his most affecting with the children; he makes a fond, playful father, a man perfectly at home in a suit of make believe armor made of welcome mats and garbage-can lids,’ wrote Janet Maslin in
The New York Times.
‘Mr. Williams’s role is a very demanding one, calling on him to age from a teenager to a family man, a process he has trouble with. His performance is engaging but erratic, more effective in the clownier, busier scenes than in those that ask him to recite lines or stand still. Mr. Williams is much less compelling at rest than he is when free to represent Garp through action. When the role doesn’t call for movement of some kind, he falters.’
And some just couldn’t get on with the film. ‘What arewe to think of these people and the events in their lives?’ asked the rather more skeptical Roger Ebert in the
Chicago Sun-Times.
‘I thought the acting was unconventional and absorbing (especially by Williams, by Glenn Close as his mother, and by John Lithgow as a transsexual). I thought the visualization of the events, by director George Roy Hill, was fresh and consistently interesting. But when the movie was over, my immediate response was not at all what it should have been. All I could find to ask myself was: What the hell was that all about?’
Pauline Kael was none too happy either: ‘There’s no feeling of truth in either the book or the movie,’ she declared, and the ‘generally faithful adaptation seems no more (and no less) than a castration fantasy.’
Whatever people thought about it, however, it had made the point that Robin Williams could act. Some, including the film critic Roger Ebert, were to maintain the view that he was essentially a comedian rather than an actor but, from now on, it was clear that his talents ran far deeper than anyone had realised up until then. And it was good timing too:
Mork & Mindy
had just come to a close and now it was time to get on with life’s next act.
But three months before the movie came out something happened that was to have a profound effect on Williams’ life. In March 1982, aged just thirty-three, his close friend and fellow actor and comic John Belushi died of a drug overdose, after consuming a speedball (a mixture of cocaine and heroin). He was found dead in his roomat the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard. In the early hours on the day of his death he was visited both by Williams and
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