Robin Williams - When the Laughter Stops 1951-2014 (11 page)

The film earned both mixed reviews and a great deal of money, which meant that anyone upset by the critics was at least able to cry all the way to the bank. And it was good, old-fashioned fun. ‘A machete. Flamethrower! And a nightlight (oh, that’s right, I was ten, so maybe I should lose the flamethrower and exchange that for a Ronson lighter),’ said Williams on
Reddit
when asked what he’d have taken if he had to go into the board game that was Jumanji.

And some of the critics were prepared to accept the fun element. ‘Take away the CGI mayhem and what emerges is a rather touching tale of second chances and innocence
prematurely lost,’ said Neil Smith on
BBC.com
. ‘A calculated but very entertaining special effects extravaganza,’ declared
USA Today.
‘Like the rest of Johnston’s oeuvre,
Jumanji
puts vivid characters through paces that will quicken any child’s pulse,’ said Peter Canavese in
Groucho Reviews
.

‘A visually impressive and exhilarating adventure that keeps the suspense, thrills and comedy running high through the surprising end and supplies interesting characters with moving plights that keep the audience rooting,’ declared Christine James in
Boxoffice Magazine.
‘Everyone is good here, with Williams taking on the unusual persona of straightman much of the way,’ said Chris Hicks in
Deseret News
. Audiences loved it too, with Williams as a sort of Indiana Jones character, albeit not an archaeologist looking for lost treasures but just an ordinary Joe.

But the famous film critic Roger Ebert was less than impressed: ‘The movie itself is likely to send younger children fleeing from the theater, or hiding in their parents’ arms. Those who do sit all the way through it are likely to toss and turn with nightmares inspired by its frightening images,’ he wrote in the
Chicago Sun-Times
. ‘Whoever thought this was a family movie (the MPAA rates it PG – not even PG-13!) must think kids are made of stern stuff. The film is a gloomy special-effects extravaganza filled with grotesque images, generating fear and despair. Even for older audiences, there are few redeeming factors, because what little story there is serves as a coathook for the f/x sequences, which come out of nowhere and evaporate into the same place.’

Despite this,
Jumanji
has gone on to become one of the acknowledged famous children’s films and is still a firm favourite on television, where it is regularly screened.

Williams was a busy man. In 1996 there was
The Birdcage
, based on the French smash hit
La Cage aux Folles
, about a gay couple: Armand Goldman (Williams), who owns a nightclub, and his partner Albert (Nathan Lane), a drag queen. (Many people expressed surprise that the casting wasn’t the other way around.) Armand has a son, Val (Dan Futterman), who has just got engaged and wants to introduce the two sets of parents but his fiancée comes from conservative stock. Much hilarity ensues.

Were they worried they were putting across a somewhat stereotypical view of gays, with a lot of screeching and camp? ‘The one thing that will help is the tenderness of it,’ Robin told
Premiere
magazine. ‘We may have sacrificed something, but we tried to get across a couple who were just as loving as any heterosexual couple. It’s a love story. But you have to brace yourself, though, because there’s gonna be people pissed off.’

It also put him in the very unusual position of being the one to tone it down while his fellow actor got to be exuberant. Perhaps aware that this might be difficult for Lane, Williams was exceptionally generous about his co-star, aware that it was he and not Nathan who would be expected to have everyone cracking up. ‘Oh, it was really hard,’ he said in an interview with
Reddit,
when asked if he was tempted to laugh. ‘His voice, that character, Agador
Spartacus. It wasn’t just me that had a hard time. [Director] Mike Nichols would laugh so hard they would have to put a blanket over his head. The other guy who was so funny was Gene Hackman. His speech about the leaves in New England was one of the funniest, driest pieces of comedy I’d ever seen.’

The movie garnered generally good reviews and praise from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation for ‘going beyond the stereotypes to see the character’s depth and humanity. The film celebrates differences and points out the outrageousness of hiding those differences’. Perhaps most importantly of all, in the eyes of Hollywood at least, it made a huge amount of money too. It proved that Williams, in a gay role, could also be the straight man.

In actual fact, he had first been approached to play the drag role. He had also been asked to drag up the previous year in Julie Newmar’s
To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything!
(1995) but refused both parts for the same reason: having already dressed as a woman in
Mrs. Doubtfire
, he didn’t want to get typecast. ‘My manager begged me to play Albert,’ he explained. ‘He said it would give me carte blanche to be the most outrageous I’ve ever been. But I’ve been a big bad woman before. The challenge for me was to play the more subtle Armand and see if I could still get my share of laughs. It’s bad enough that the
Mrs.
Doubtfire
people want to put me back in drag for a sequel. I don’t have to wiggle into a bra and pantyhose for every other studio in Hollywood.’

The never-to-be-realised sequel to
Mrs. Doubtfire
was, indeed, already under discussion but, even at that point, it was clear that the filmmakers were experiencing difficulties in coming up with a decent script.

In contrast to his extraordinary professional output, Williams was going through a calmer stage in his personal life. Most youngsters want their parents to put on silly voices when they read them a story but Robin’s children were the opposite, telling him to calm down. Interviewers began to comment on the fact that he didn’t tend to go off into funny voices in the middle of interviews as much as previously, which was surely a good sign. Apart from anything else, he was a father now, three times over and, as such, was required by his children to act as a grown-up. He and Marsha were working very much as a team, managing his career and their charitable work, not to mention their home life. And as one of the most bankable stars in the world, the offers continued to flood in. Life was good.

On screen, however, he was manic as ever and again invited comparisons to a classic 1988 film –
Big
, in which Tom Hanks plays a twelve-year-old in the body of a grown man – when he starred in
Jack
(1996), in which he played a ten-year-old in the body of a grown man. In
Big
, the mix-up came about because of a mysterious fortune-teller machine, while in
Jack
, it was because of a premature ageing condition but there were certainly similarities, not least because both had to deal with the awkward subject of girls.

Robin was initially reluctant to take on the project. ‘When the script for
Jack
came to me, I gave it a resounding no,’ he told the
Calgary Sun.
‘I told Disney I’d been there and done that enough. I’m 44 and furry. The only thing I’m really suited for is the musical version of
Congo
. [But] Disney pulled out the big guns. They called my friend Francis Ford Coppola to direct and he assured me I’d never played this kind of character before.’

Francis Ford Coppola is certainly a name to deal with. Robin signed on the dotted line and proceeded to spend a couple of weeks bonding with the child actors who were to play Jack’s friends, camping, playing baseball and telling ghost stories. ‘It was like
Lord Of The Flies
day-care centre,’ he said.

‘I came up with this concept to have Robin in a situation with eight or nine nine-year-olds,’ Coppola told the
Toronto Sun
in 1996. ‘I’m an old camp counselor and we did all sorts of activities. We made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and slept on the mountain.’

‘We called it Camp Coppola,’ added Robin. ‘We did kid things, rode bikes for days, went to toy stores. By the end, it was weird, I’d assimilated all this stuff. It was like time travelling by association. Y’know, it’s all little things at that age that are important – your “stuff,” things they have, friendships. When the world collapses, it collapses completely. That’s why they break down and cry and the next minute feel great.’

Coppola was fulsome in his praise: Williams was
‘childlike but not childish or even remotely a child. His inventiveness and enthusiasm are what make Robin seem so childlike,’ he said and both of them took the project so seriously that they got a ten-year-old boy on board to help him prepare for the role. ‘Robin would go through each scene first,’ explained Coppola. ‘Then his adviser would do it independently with Robin watching. There were things the boy would do that would absolutely amaze Robin and he would adjust what he was doing.’

The two men felt the film reflected a sadness in their own childhoods. ‘I lived in that big house and I was pretty much alone,’ Robin told the
Toronto Sun,
in a sober tone that would quite often emerge from all the humour. ‘I still went to school, but I was kind of out in a big farm in the country way away from everybody. I remember getting picked on, having to find alternate ways to get home ’cause you don’t want to get your ass kicked. I was picked on for being small. At a certain point I felt fat, pudgy. That’s why I became a wrestler in high school. At least if you’re only going to be 103 pounds, you can kick another 103-pound guy’s ass.’

It seemed Coppola didn’t have much fun as a child either. ‘I think it was Hemingway who said that to be a great artist you have to have an unhappy childhood,’ he said. ‘I had polio as a child and was kept from any contact with kids. There was a lot of longing. And I think that was why I empathized with this film.

‘I read the script of
Jack
with Robin in mind. And I read
it kind of like Kafka’s
Metamorphosis
. I said, “If you accept him as a giant cockroach, it’s going to be good. If you don’t accept Robin as a 10-year-old, the premise falls.”’

But the audience
did
accept Robin as a kid – they had already done so in many of his previous roles, whether or not he’d been playing a child. But Williams was, by now, halfway through his forties, married with children and a serious A-lister. He had, beyond a doubt, grown up.

It didn’t take long for matters with Disney to calm down: to be fair, it made no sense for either party if a major star and a major film company continued to indulge in a feud. And anyway, they wanted Williams to work for them again. Robin addressed this in typically knockabout style.

‘No, I don’t have a contract with Disney,’ he told the
Toronto Sun.
‘Actually, they have a contract on me. A man named Tony has been following me around. [Mafioso voice]: “I want you to stop saying things about Mr. Eisner. The man has the warmth of a snow pea.” “You made fun of the King!” “Robin, we’d like to talk to you outside.”

‘Merchandising tie-ins, the whole thing. I don’t mind if they make dolls,’ he continued. ‘It’s when they use my voice that it gets interesting.’ But that Picasso had clearly helped, although Robin’s version of events was a little different. ‘The thing is they didn’t give me a Picasso as a payback for violating the agreement,’ he continued. ‘The Picasso came first, then they violated the agreement, then we broke off the marriage. Then they apologized, and that was all I wanted. I wanted them to say, “We violated the agreement and then we put out a press campaign that made it look as if you were sticking us up for money.” Studios do this all the time, but they just don’t cop to it. “Shhh! You mean lie?” But they did and they admitted it and now we’re back. It was tough for a while. How do you tell the kids, “Daddy’s fighting with Disney, so we won’t be going to Orlando for a while? No more plush toys or Hunchback packs or merchandising.”’

Williams, incidentally, had been paid $75,000 for a film that took over $600 million at the box office but that wasn’t the issue: the principle was at stake.

But everyone had kissed and made up, just in time to make an Aladdin sequel,
Aladdin and the King of Thieves
(1996). This was not, in fact, the first sequel – that had been
The Return of Jafar
(1994), with the Blue Genie voiced by Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson), when feelings were still running high – and it was being made for the video market rather than the cinema but it was in everyone’s interests to get Williams back on board. In fact, some of the
film had already been made using Castellaneta again, with a third of the animation done but, when Robin signed up, everyone was happy to start again from scratch.

‘With Robin, it’s a much stronger film,’ Ann Daly, president of Buena Vista Home Video, told
TV Guide
in 1996. ‘It elevates the project to a new level. Nobody can do what he does in the recording studio. The animators were inspired by him.’ (It seemed a little unfair on Castellaneta but that’s showbiz.)

In 1997 Williams put in the performance that finally got him an Oscar in
Good Will Hunting
, the film that also launched the careers of Matt Damon and, to a lesser extent, Ben Affleck (who had already begun to make his mark), although the award was for Best Supporting Actor rather than as the lead role. The story, written by Affleck and Damon, starred Damon in the lead: it involved Will Hunting, a mathematical genius who is a blue-collar worker. After his gifts come to light, he almost ends up in jail for assaulting a police officer but is let off if he agrees to study mathematics with a famous professor (Stellan Skarsgård) and sees a therapist, Sean Maguire (Williams), who also had to deal with many issues in his past. Will is then able to reassess his life and starts to make something of himself.

The film was a massive success – one of the biggest of Williams’ career – grossing over $225 million during its theatrical run and earning nine Oscar nominations. Along with Robin’s win, Affleck and Damon got an Oscar for the
Best Original Screenplay. It was one of those films both beloved of audiences and critics alike.

‘Damon and Affleck were smart enough to realise that they wouldn’t get their script filmed just by writing good parts for themselves,’ wrote Quentin Curtis in 1998 in the
Daily Telegraph.
‘They needed a major star, and so they dangled the prospect of a great supporting role before the A-list names. The part is that of Will’s psychiatrist, whose own life has gone off the rails, and who goads Will into maturity. Robin Williams took the bait, and he gets to deliver two speeches so juicy they look set to become actors’ audition pieces: one about the virtue of imperfection, the other a hostile lecture to Will on the difference between knowledge and experience.’

‘The strength of
Good Will Hunting
lies in the amazing assurance of its script, and the backing both its cast and makers give it,’ said
Empireonline
. ‘Director Van Sant steers well clear of unnecessary sentiment, opting instead to find the emotional reality and harshness within the story. Damon is superb, his pal Affleck equally strong. But, in a movie that exudes quality, however, it is Robin Williams that provides both its heart and its highlight – the Oscar, in this case, was entirely deserved.’

‘Mr. Williams is wonderfully strong and substantial here; Mr. Damon, very much the supernova, is mercurial in ways that keep his character steadily surprising,’ wrote Janet Maslin in
The New York Times.
‘The screenplay’s best moments come in a couple of long, defining monologues
(particularly one from Sean in the Boston Public Gardens) that angrily bring Will and Sean to life.’

‘A towering performance by Matt Damon in the lead, and a superlative ensemble headed by a terrific Robin Williams, elevate
Good Will Hunting
, Gus Van Sant’s emotionally involving psychological drama, a notch or two above the mainstream therapeutic sensibility of its story,’ wrote Emanuel Levy in
Variety
. ‘Centering on a brilliant working-class youngster who’s forced to come to terms with his creative genius and true feelings, this beautifully realized tale is always engaging and often quite touching.’ The film has, to date at least, survived the test of time: it is now considered one of the finest of its era and Damon and Affleck went on to become massive stars.

For his part, Williams was thrilled. ‘A lot of people are coming to me, thanking me for
Good Will Hunting
, because it touched them so much,’ he said. ‘That’s just as meaningful to me as someone saying “I laughed my ass off, cuz, y’know, you’re one funny bastard.”’ His role in the film, people’s reaction to it and the Oscar all brought him a sense of validation – that at last he was truly being recognised as a serious actor.

Indeed, he was becoming an increasingly serious figure. He was still doing a great deal to support Christopher Reeve, accompanying him to Puerto Rico to attend an American Paralysis Association benefit and appearing increasingly reluctant to indulge interviewers with his zany side. ‘It’s too early,’ he complained to one, adding, ‘I
just want to work with characters, with great ensembles of people.’ He was, in fact, doing just that: appearing as Osric in Kenneth Branagh’s
Hamlet
(1996), the tragic story of the Prince of Denmark, and as a malevolent bomb-making chemist in
The Secret Agent
(1996), based on Joseph Conrad’s novel. His billing on
Hamlet
was well below the usual, in the midst of a very starry ensemble indeed. Even the bit parts were played by superstars, with Billy Crystal (another funnyman who wanted to be serious) as First Gravedigger, Judi Dench as Hecuba, Julie Christie (Gertrude), Derek Jacobi (Claudius), Kate Winslet (Ophelia) and even Gérard Depardieu putting in an appearance as Reynaldo. Jack Lemmon played Marcellus. It was, to put it mildly, an eclectic cast.

But Robin was happy for a lowlier billing (although being a part of that crowd spoke volumes in itself) because, to put it bluntly, the pressure was off. When your name is above the billing, your neck is also on the line: if the film fails, it will be seen to have been because of you. Williams had had a fair number of flops in his time (one interviewer commented on the fact that, although he was prepared to admit this, it was noticeable that he never talked about
Popeye
anymore) but, in cases like this, life was a little easier. He did not have to carry the film.

For he had discovered that enormous success also brings with it enormous pressure; he had his detractors and there was no shortage of volunteers willing to throw mud if something went wrong. Five of his films in the 1990s
–
The Birdcage, Jumanji, Mrs. Doubtfire, Aladdin
and
Hook
– had grossed more than $100 million and that brought about pressures all of their own. He was still turning up unannounced at comedy clubs – ‘cheaper than therapy’ – but equally, he now wanted to be seen as an
homme
sérieuse
. To further emphasise his unusual position – and as an added source of pressure – he had been called the ‘funniest man alive’ by both
People
and
Vogue
, which inevitably led to some being at pains to say they didn’t find him that funny.

‘They should have just pinned a sign on my butt saying “Kick me,”’ said Robin. Quite simply, he couldn’t win.

And for an
homme sérieuse,
it must be said that he made some pretty ropey film choices. There was
Fathers’ Day
(1997) with Billy Crystal, in which the two actors played men who were both convinced they were the father of the same boy, with the mother (Nastassja Kinski) lying to both in order to get them to help find her son.

‘Billy and I have been looking for a project to do together for years. We work so well off each other on the Comedy Relief specials that it seemed a natural screen pairing,’ said Robin. ‘Whenever we’re on stage or in front of a camera together, it’s like two elk spraying musk. It’s a healthy competition. It keeps our comedy antlers sharp. Every comic is competitive. To deny that is to deny the essence of comedy.’

The essence of comedy was not, alas, evident in the film either, which pretty much sank without trace.

He had a rather happier experience with
What Dreams May Come
(1998) – a reference to Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy – in which he co-starred with Cuba Gooding Jr. This was an extraordinary film, almost metaphysical in its intent, in which Williams and Annabella Sciorra play Chris and Annie, a married couple who lose both of their children in a car crash before Chris, too, dies in another car accident. He ascends to Heaven, where he is able in some way to communicate with Annie until, consumed by despair, she kills herself. She is thus consigned to Hell and Chris, despite many warnings to the contrary, descends to rescue her. Initially, he chooses to stay in Hell with her but, in a desire to save him, Annie is knocked out of her despair and the two are able to once more ascend to Heaven. They are reunited with their children before being reincarnated to meet on Earth once again.

The film looked spectacular: it posited the theory that a person’s vision of Heaven or Hell is defined by a character’s subconscious and, as Annie was an artist with a profound influence on Chris, Heaven is spectacular. On the other hand, Hell is so horrible that some critics felt the need to warn viewers in advance.

Quite a plot and, if Robin wanted to be taken seriously, this was the right way to go about it. Roger Ebert, of the
Chicago Sun-Times
and not always a Williams fan, was full of praise: ‘This is a film that even in its imperfect form shows how movies can imagine the unknown, can lead our imaginations into wonderful places. And it contains
heartbreakingly effective performances by Robin Williams and Annabella Sciorra,’ he said.

But Stephen Holden, writing in
The New York Times
, didn’t like it one bit. ‘It wasn’t so long ago that love, in Hollywood-speak, was supposed to mean never having to say you’re sorry,’ he wrote. ‘
What Dreams May Come
, one of the most elaborate metaphysical love stories ever tackled by Hollywood, lays out a whole new set of irritating catchphrases to define the quest for a love that triumphs over death. These range from the blunt “Never give up,” which is repeated like a mantra throughout the movie, to portentous utterances about winning when you lose and losing when you win.’ Particular bile was reserved for Robin: ‘Robin Williams, with his Humpty Dumpty grin and crinkly moist eyes dripping with empathy.’

James Berardinelli of
Reelviews
was complimentary though. ‘Many movies have offered representations of heaven and hell, but few with as much conviction and creativity as
What Dreams May Come
,’ he wrote. ‘The plot, which focuses on the sacrifices one man will make for true love, is neither complicated nor original, but, bolstered by the director’s incredible visual sense, it becomes an affecting piece of drama.’

Meanwhile, Owen Gleiberman of
Entertainment Weekly
said, ‘There’s a central contradiction in a fairy tale like this one: the film may preach to the audience about matters of the spirit, but its bejeweled special-effects vision of the afterlife can’t help but come off as aggressively literal-minded.’

But, while the critics’ reaction may have been mixed, the public loved it and so, too, did the film industry, awarding it an Oscar for Best Visual Effects and an Art Directors Guild Award for Excellence in Production Design.

‘You feel a lot,’ Robin admitted to the
Toronto Sun,
very much not in comic mode not only for his performance in the film but for the accompanying interviews too. ‘There are a lot of emotions, and you think: “Do I want to go through this?” That’s the main question. In the end, I decided, “Yes!” But it’s hard stuff to deal with, all the loss and all the pain of it all. There were only a couple of days where you got to go: “This is a good day.” Even in the moments when he was in heaven, he was still dealing with not wanting to let go and trying to connect with her [his wife]. It’s hard when you read it and you think: “Do I want to go there, to go to those places?” But what is extraordinary is the vision of a very subjective heaven and hell.’