The circumstances around Robin William’s death and the causes of it are not really anyone’s business outside of his friends and family; no doubt the toilet papers and other media will disagree and use the spurious claim of ‘public interest’ as an excuse to appoint themselves arbiters and investigators of his death. No doubt also there will be tributes paid to Robin Williams on social media and elsewhere which will fit a pattern of well meaning stock phrases.
My tribute to him is too avoid any sentimentality or mawkishness and salute him as the man who got away with writing a character called ‘Mr Wanker’ into ‘Mork and Mindy’, who made a reference to Pam Dawber sitting on his face in the same show and who in his films acted as an unknowing and unwitting mentor to all who might feel not quite comfortable with the expectations placed on them by their environments and those people around them. I also salute him as being the man who, along with others, gave lie to the fantasy that ‘Americans don’t get irony and who once, during a scene in ‘Good Will Hunting’ when he talked about his wife, made my then girlfriend laugh so hard in the cinema that she farted. If you know the scene I’m referring to you will also appreciate that particular irony.
In my working life I have been, at various times, a DJ in clubs and on radio, a poet and teacher of poetry and literature and have mentored troubled youths. At times all three have crossed over and all have had one thing in common and that is Robin Williams has played characters which did all three jobs in three of my favourite films; ‘Good Morning Vietnam’, Dead Poets Society’ and the aforementioned ‘Good Will Hunting’.
As a poet and teacher I loved DPS in particular not for its overall message which unfortunately told us that ‘the man’ or ‘the establishment’ always wins in the end but for the improvised scene in which Williams and Ethan Hawke play the teacher and reluctant pupil respectively and Williams’ character of Mr Keating uses prompts to enable Hawkes’ character to open his creativity and prove to himself that he could write and perform poetry despite his own innate shyness and perceived ideas of what is ‘right and proper’ classroom behaviour. I have used and adapted the methodologies in that scene many times in various forms and to various age groups and ability levels in different poetry workshop and classroom settings and found those adaptations fruitful in proving my belief that ‘everyone can write’. Apropos I use that strapline for my creative writing organisation ‘The Mighty Pen’ and apropos nothing inspired my own poem ‘Carpe Diem’.
On watching that scene again this morning after hearing the sad news of the death of such a brilliant comic and actor I was reminded of just how powerful the performances of Williams and Hawke are in it. Furthermore I would posit that it is a powerful scene because, as with GMV and GWH Robin Williams took a character from a script and made them all extensions of his own sense of ‘the outsider’ or of ‘the other’ and by doing so made what could have been mawkish and sentimental films into films that gave some hope to those of us who might not feel that we quite fit in.
I want to let his demons lie and not get caught up in how and why he died but am happy to pick through his stand-up and his brilliant comi-tragic acting ability to find those moments where some funny bloke from America brought a bit of joy, laughter and intelligence into the world.
Bob Hill
