It isn't just the overwhelming admiration and respect I had for his craft, it's deeper than that. Robin Williams had been a part of my life since I was seven years old, thirty-six years to be exact, and frankly it feels like I've lost a member of my family.
I can still remember that first time I saw him as Mork the Orkan on that February 1978 episode of Happy Days. He played a space alien that Richie interviews and eventually brings back to the Cunningham house. Clad in an unforgettable fire-engine-red suit and spewing joke after joke in an uncanny rapid-fire delivery, the then-unknown comic with the shaggy hair and boyish face stole the entire episode from the seasoned likes of Ron Howard and Henry Winkler.
Mork was such a hit that just seven months later he had his own show on ABC. Once a week for four wonderful years, I religiously watched him try and assimilate himself into human life with hilarious results. Williams' Mork was unlike any character anybody had ever seen before. He was a powder keg of ideas, satire and mimicry. You lit the fuse, stood back and waited for something wonderful to happen. And you were never disappointed.
The show's success lead to film roles and I was there for his first one opening weekend in 1980. The iconic, muttering, spinach-chomping sailor Popeye was tailor-made for Williams. While the character was a bit more subdued than Mork, it still required that bundle of creativity and mimicry that only Robin Williams could translate to the screen.
A more-subdued Robin Williams would become the norm through most of the '80s as he found a niche playing the loveable-yet-caustic everyman in films like The Survivors, The Best of Times and Club Paradise. It wasn't until Good Morning Vietnam in 1987 that Williams found a role that allowed him to combine that everyman persona with his powder-keg comedic ability. The result was a box-office behemoth and earned Williams his first Oscar nomination.
Williams would teeter back and forth between both personas, sometimes combining them, for the next decade
with films like The Fisher King (one of my personal favorites), Aladdin, Toys, Mrs. Doubtfire and The Birdcage. It wasn't until 1997 that he finally found Oscar glory, playing a sympathetic-yet-tormented psychologist to a brilliant underachiever in Good Will Hunting. The performance is pitch-perfect Williams: likeable and funny, yet raw and combustible.
Williams would never receive another Oscar nomination, although his menacing, against-type performance in Christopher Nolan's 2002 film Insomnia should have warranted serious consideration. His later roles were always worth a rental but were never anything to get excited about. I have to admit by 2004 I had lost a little bit of faith in Robin Williams.
But then I caught one of his earlier films on cable, one that I had been too young to see upon its initial release in 1982. Williams' portrayal of T.S. Garp in The World According to Garp reinvigorated my admiration for my old friend. It's a performance full of grace, heart and that trademark acerbic wit. As the closing credits began to roll, I remembered what was so special about Robin Williams.
The simple fact is Robin Williams never stopped being special. Whether it was TV, movies or stand-up comedy, no matter if he failed or succeeded, he was always relevant and worth tuning in for. He had the mind of a genius and the heart of a little boy. And there will never be another soul like him.
