I saw that photo, which may be his final one. I was at first drawn to similar conclusions, but now I wonder if it is just a bad picture of him. Had he been looking more directly been caught right, he might have looked fine.
I get the feeling that the public almost expects its clowns and comedians to be secretly depressed, as if it’s some law of nature. I wonder if there’s any more depression among comics than among any other trade or profession. Now we find that Williams was facing Parkinsons, enough to shake any person and force them to contemplate a quick exit, comedian or trucker, lawyer or Indian chief.
Seems to me that despite all the hot air generated Williams wasn’t some kind of tortured soul forced to make the world laugh but a well-balanced, happy, generous individual who got thrown a curve ball and looking into the future decided that he didn’t want what was coming. And I don’t blame him one little bit.
It does seem like comics are more prone to depression Or maybe I should say people with depressive inklings tend to go into comedy more.
Here’s a cracked article about it.
and here’s the article Cracked cites in the article.
He looks pretty down to me, even had I not known the tragedy that lay ahead.
I’m not sure how your comments are different than mine. This is the part of the article I was noting:
My comments were about his comments that might have shown his frame of mind, not about his objective situation. But even your comments about his objective financial situation has some amount of conjecture in it. It’s not possible to know if he felt able to work steady going forward. An optimistic person might see the possibilities of a positive future. He may not have been in that frame of mind.
I later saw an article that quoted someone as saying that Robin Williams’ coffers were full:
It might be the bankruptcy quote was made a while ago. The time frame isn’t that clear, but when I saw it, I thought that his thoughts of bankruptcy might have impacted his frame of mind. Given his (now disclosed) diagnosis of Parkinson’s, thoughts of money and his future earning power might have been weighing on him.
Yeah I should have said it better. There was a line about him saying he was close to bankruptcy but it was not a quote and there was no attribution or context. Then the article went on to paint a picture that did not look too bad.
And yes when I then saw the Parkinson’s story I thought that he may have feared that his earning days were over.
I wonder, too. We do expect to find sad clowns and there were a hell of a lot of thinkpieces along those lines in the last few days, but are comedians more likely to be depressed? I don’t know. I think it’s plausible, but he’s not proof by himself.
That’s far too convenient a 180 for me. He was open about being an addict, and if you’ve heard with WTF interview with Marc Maron, he’s pretty open about his struggles with mental health.
For that matter his wife’s statement says he “struggled” with depression and anxiety on top of his history of addiction. It doesn’t paint a picture of a happy guy.
I don’t know about the general public, but I’ve heard more than one comedian say that it is very common for people to become comedians because of depression or other mental illnesses.
Cracked just ran this column — “Robin Williams and Why Funny People Kill Themselves” — Robin Williams and Why Funny People Kill Themselves | Cracked.com —
It wasn’t a function of survival. Everything he worked for was about to be yanked out from underneath him. Instead of retiring to enjoy his dream house he was handed a debilitating disease and a retirement that necessitated he work in order to reconstruct a more modest lifestyle.
I’m guessing that was a bitter pill to swallow on top of any depression.
I just downloaded and watched What Dreams May Come. Very poignant, and also a little chilling, but I doubt Robin was thinking any of that in his moments before the end. He was so good in his dramatic roles.
Apropos of … well, pretty much everything … my favorite Robin Williams film is the underrated The Survivors, with the underrated Walter Mathau and Jerry Reed, who are both also dead.
I am not a psychologist, but Williams didn’t seem to be the type to enjoy retirement. He always seemed to be driven, he was always “on”, and always sought the audience’s approval. To stop performing, to stop working, probably would have been hell for him. He might have kept going into his 70s. If he stopped working, he might have killed himself out of sheer boredom because he always had to have that spotlight. It wasn’t about the money. Even if he didn’t have cash flow problems, he always had to be doing something. He always had to have his audience’s approval to validate himself.
Yes but there’s a difference between working because you want to and have to.
He was losing his estate at the same time he was losing his health. He was in the process of losing everything he worked a life time to build and having to work to reestablish a fraction of it while in poor health.
Agreed, “They wouldn’t love the real me” is a core issue
I’m saying there’s a difference between having to work to make a living and having to work because you don’t know any other way to live and are unable to relax. He could have had $200 million in the bank. Williams probably wouldn’t have retired to play tennis or ride horses for the rest of his life. He was that driven and always craved some kind of high, whether chemical or the high of performing. He didn’t know what to do with himself without the approval of others.
If you don’t know what “it’s time to go” means in this context, then thank whatever God you pray to. “It’s time to go” is what the voice in a depression sufferer’s head says upon waking, throughout the day and instead of counting sheep at night. I’ve lost some friends to suicide, and I am truly sorry to not have them in my life anymore, but I am thankful that they never again have to go though another day hearing that damned mantra. Rest in peace funny man.
As noted above I wrote that before I saw the Parkinson’s story.
BrainGlutton didn’t say “it’s time to go.” He said “maybe it was time and he knew it,” and somehow this contradicts the idea of his death being “a mistake.” I don’t know what that is supposed to mean, which is why I asked him to explain. Maybe he meant what you were saying, but I can’t tell.
Joel McHale mentioned him the other night on the Soup, which is now a live show. He said he had the chance to meet Robin Williams years ago and he that every single nice thing said about him…is absolutely true. Joel said that while people tell you to “never meet your heroes”, this was one time where that was not true. Williams lived up to every expectation and was a great guy.