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Joe Boyd
Sometimes the death of someone you’ve never met can suddenly rock you. I tried to write some things last night about the passing of Robin Williams, but I found myself staring at a blinking cursor for 20 minutes. Then I read my long-time friend Matt Donnelly’s post on Facebook. I felt like he wrote what I couldn’t write. I asked him if I could share it here and he graciously agreed. He uses some words you can’t say on network television. If cursing offends you, you can stop reading now. But it will be your loss. Here’s the post:
Am I really sitting here feeling like my body weighs a thousand pounds, looking at pictures of my own kid for comfort over the death of Robin Williams …? Yes. I am surprised how hard I am hit by this, but I am. It could be how closely tied he is to the word “improv” which is one of the most important and influential words in my life. But it starts way before I ever knew that word.
It starts when a 9-year-old me hauled a bulky old TV from my garage up two flights of stairs to my bedroom with the hope my dad wouldn’t notice. Fashioning my own antenna out of a hanger and tin foil, I would set my alarm to wake back up at 11:30pm every night to watch Johnny Carson. I only liked the comedy parts, so I flipped over to WPIX 11 to watch Honeymooners reruns in between the opening monologue and the stand up at the end. There weren’t many guests that would make me stay and watch. Penn & Teller and Robin Williams who were my favorites from Comic Relief (man, how I used to beg for Whoopi and Billy Crystal to go away so Robin Williams could do his thing). So I knew their names when Carson would announce them and I was psyched! Robin was on quite a few times and I’d ache for him to go off the rails, leave the chair, make it hard on the cameramen, make the show radiate like it rarely would with so many other famous people … at least in the eyes of 9-year-old me.
As I got older, I’d hate to admit how much I watched Aladdin just for him. Good Morning Vietnam, The Bird Cage, yes even Mrs. Doubtfire—shit I actually watched Club Paradise too many times. When he turned it all around in my head with Fisher King and then kicked me in the jaw with Good Will Hunting, I remember beaming as he got the Oscar. I thought—they are giving the Oscar to a comedian. (I know they had done this before now, in hindsight, but not at the time).
Sometime after that, it got cool to shit on Robin Williams. It became status quo to dismiss him in conversation. A very clear divide was put in place. The rule became: say “old Robin Williams” when saying something nice about him. I played by that rule.
Then a funny thing happened. Last year, when I was in NYC, Molly Austin knew the musical guest who was going on David Letterman and invited me to the taping. We were sitting in the best seats of the Ed Sullivan Theater, when we watched Dave finish his monologue and go into announcing his guests for the evening. “Robin Williams” comes out of his mouth and I light up like a Christmas tree. I am 9 years old again and I cannot believe I get to be in the room for a Robin Williams interview.
My comedy snob brain tries to temper my excitement and apply the “old Robin Williams” rule. I let this “watching-an-athlete-play-past-his-prime” anxiety fill my body only to have it ripped away from me as Robin Williams comes out as the beautiful, amazing, and incredibly funny man he always was. He leaves the chair, the cameras scatter, the feeling of something unique, some treat, some dazzling fun show of a conversation happens and Molly and I laugh to tears. They go to commercial, and just like I thought when I was 9, Robin doesn’t stop. He goes past the cameras right to the audience and starts screwing with all of us in the theater. It was a dream come true.
Now, I’ve been lucky enough to meet Penn & Teller and tell them my favorite bits from when I was a kid. Things that still crack me up and influence me to this day. The fact that I will never meet Robin Williams, shake his hand, and tell him what millions of artists want to tell him right now—”you are amazing, you have had a huge impact on who I am and who I think I could be as an artist”—hurts me so very deeply.
Death is rough. Suicide is just fucking awful. A man I never met will be so greatly missed.
Follow Matt Donnelly on Twitter at @SweetMattyD.
Photo (Flickr CC) by BagoGames
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Joe Boyd
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