Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind 2018

A somewhat rudimentary bio-doc that isn't especially insightful, but which features excellent archival material

I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy. Because they know what it's like to feel absolutely worthless and they don't want anybody else to feel like that.

• Robin Williams

I can remember the night my friend George Miller, who was a very funny comic, and I were at The Comedy Store, and they introduced Robin Williams. And for some reason in the beginning, he was introduced as being from Scotland; for some reason they said he was Scottish. So now we're stumped. There's a Scottish guy? Really? Coming to the United States? So we're feeling pretty smug about our position right away, because it's going to be haggis and that kind of crap. So we're relaxed. All of a sudden he comes up on stage and you know what it is, it's like nothing we had ever seen before, nothing we had ever imagined before. We go home at night and are writing our little jokes about stuff, and this guy comes in and we're like morning dew, he comes in like a hurricane. And now, the longer he's on stage, the worse we feel about ourselves. Because it's not stopping. And then he finishes, and I thought, "well that's it, they're going to have to put an end to show business, because what can happen after this?" We get to see this night after night after night, and we didn't approach him because we were afraid of him. Honest to God, you're thinking, "Holy crap, there goes my chance at show business because of this guy from Scotland." [...] But beyond being a very talented man, and a good friend, and a gentleman, I'm sorry, like everybody else, I had no idea that the man was in pain, that the man was suffering. What a guy, Robin Williams.

• David Letterman; Late Show with David Letterman (August 19, 2014)

The brilliance was astounding, the relentless energy was thrilling. I used to think that if I could just put a saddle on him and stay on for eight seconds, I was going to do okay [...] Well, as genius as he was onstage, he was the greatest friend you could ever imagine - supportive, protective, loving. It's very hard to talk about him in the past because he was so present in all of our lives. For almost 40 years, he was the brightest star in the comedy galaxy. But while some of the brightest of our celestial bodies are actually extinct now, their energy long since cooled, but miraculously, because they float in the heavens so far away from us now, their beautiful light will continue to shine on us forever. And the glow will be so bright, it'll warm your heart, it'll make your eyes glisten, and you'll think to yourselves, "Robin Williams, what a concept".

• Billy Crystal; 66th Primetime Emmy Awards (August 25, 2014)

When Robin Williams was found dead on August 11, 2014, there was an unprecedented outpouring of grief, not just from those in the industry who knew him, but from fans in general, most of whom had never met him. The shock at his passing, however, was dwarfed by the incomprehensible fact that he had hanged himself. Even taking into consideration his well-documented history of substance abuse and bouts of depression, and even as it emerged that he had been diagnosed with "diffuse Lewy body dementia", it just seemed impossible that this man, so full of life, so vibrant, so joyous, could have died at his own hand. His death was personal to so many people, but the manner in which he died, even now, some five years later, is impossible to reconcile. How could it have ended this way?

Directed by Marina Zenovich (Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired; Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic; Fantastic Lies), Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind is a fairly rudimentary bio-doc that fails to live up to its subtitle; the Robin Williams presented in the film is no more knowable than Robin Williams the stand-up comedian or Robin Williams the Academy Award-winning actor. The film opens with a clip from his 2001 appearance on Inside the Actors Studio, with host James Lipton asking him about his "mental reflexes", wondering if his mind simply works faster than the rest of us. This prompts Williams to leap to his feet and launch into an improvised tour de force of jokes, puns, wordplay, double entendre, accents, characters, meta-commentary, and sight gags. Getting a standing ovation, he sits back down, but he never actually answers the original question, and Lipton doesn't press him on it. Come Inside My Mind essentially reproduces this exchange – it asks questions about Williams, gives him a platform, marvels at his on-stage energy, but never manages to elicit or elucidate much in the way of genuine psychological insight. Perhaps a little too respectful of her subject, although Zenovich avoids, for the most part, hagiography, so too does she tend to gloss over some of the darker aspects, although it's certainly laudable that she refuses to allow the manner of his death become the defining moment of his life. What the film most definitely does have going for it, however, is the superbly chosen archival footage, much of it not seen in years, which shows Williams at the absolute height of his powers, exuding an on-stage mania that makes early Jim Carrey seem sedate. And, ultimately, the quality of much of this footage offsets the film's failure to offer anything resembling a deep dive into his thought-processes or private life.

The film covers all the major biographical beats that you'd expect – Williams's birth in Chicago on July 21, 1951; his father's work as a senior executive for Ford, which kept him away from the family for long periods; his enrolment in Claremont Men's College in California to study political science, although, hoping to meet girls, he subsequently switched to theatre; his appearance as Tranio in James Dunn's Wild West-themed production of The Taming of the Shrew at the College of Marin and subsequently at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1971 (a production that has been revived almost annually ever since); his 1973 scholarship to The Juilliard School, where he and Christopher Reeve were the only students selected by John Houseman to join the Advanced Program; the beginnings of his stand-up comedy career in San Francisco, before he moved to LA and began performing at The Comedy Store and The Roxy Theatre; his cocaine and alcohol addiction; his casting as the alien Mork in a fifth season episode of Happy Days, where his largely improvised performance was so well received, it unexpectedly led to a spin-off show, Mork & Mindy (1978-1982); his 1978 marriage to Valerie Velardi; the death of his friend John Belushi in 1982 from a heroin overdose, which led to Williams getting clean; his legendary stand-up performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1986; his Oscar-nominated performance in Barry Levinson's Good Morning, Vietnam (1987); his celebrated appearance alongside Steve Martin in Mike Nichols's 1988 production of Waiting for Godot at the Lincoln Centre; his divorce from Velardi in 1988; his Oscar-nominated performance in Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society (1989); his marriage to Marsha Garces in 1989; his appearances in Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1990), Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King (1991), for which he received his third Oscar nomination, Steven Spielberg's Hook (1991), Chris Columbus's Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Gus van Sant's Good Will Hunting (1997), for which he won Best Supporting Actor, and Mark Romanek's One Hour Photo (2002); his divorce from Garces in 2008; his appearance in Bobcat Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad (2009); his 2009 open heart surgery; his 2011 marriage to Susan Schneider; his return to television sitcom with The Crazy Ones (2013-2014); checking himself into rehab in 2014 to treat his remerging alcoholism; his diagnosis with early-stage Parkinson's; and ultimately, his suicide.

Interviewees include Valerie Velardi (first wife), David Letterman (comedian and talk show host), Bennett Tramer (writing partner), McLaurin Smith-Williams and R. Todd Williams (his half-brothers), Elayne Boosler (comedienne), Scott Marshall (actor), Pam Dawber (Mork & Mindy co-star), Eric Idle (actor), Arthur Grace (photographer), David Steinberg (manager), Billy Crystal (actor and Williams's closest friend), Zak Williams (Williams's son), Steve Martin (actor), Whoopi Goldberg (actress), Mark Romanek (director), Cheri Minns (make-up artist), and Lewis Black (comedian). The obvious absentees here are Marsha Garces and Susan Schneider (his second and third wife, respectively), and Zelda Williams and Cody Williams (his second and third child, respectively, both of whom he had with Garces). Their absence is never mentioned and it leaves a significant lacuna in the narrative, especially towards the conclusion, where Schneider's insights would have been invaluable (her article, "The terrorist inside my husband's brain", which was published in the September 2016 issue of Neurology, is an absolute must-read).

As you would expect, and much as the improvised chaos of the opening scene suggests, a major area of interest is Williams's hyperkinetic brand of comedy. Whilst David Letterman recalls how the various young comics at The Comedy Store were both in awe of Williams and envious of his insanity, Lewis Black states, "he was like a light that never knew how to turn itself off." The film's great strength, however, lies not in the talking head interviews, but in the archival footage, some of which will probably be familiar (such as the outtakes of his improvisations explaining the uses of a stick from his 1991 appearance on Sesame Street, where, upon Elmo calling him "Mr. Robins", an unimpressed Williams improvs, "I'm taking the stick back Elmo"). The vast majority of footage, however, is not especially well known, certainly not to fans who knew him only as a film actor. In one of the first pieces of footage, we see him on the Late Show with David Letterman, as he tells Letterman, "we didn't have water when I was growing up. My mother and father would have to take hydrogen and oxygen and shove them together." We also see footage of his 1986 performance at the Met Opera House, including one of his most famous bits;

a nuclear bomb - it's basically a man's way of saying, "I'm gonna fuck up the Earth, yeah." A woman would never make a nuclear weapon. They would never make a bomb that kills you. They'd make a bomb that makes you feel bad for a while. It'd be a whole other thing. That's why there should be a woman president. Don't you see? That'd be a wonderful thing. Be an incredible time for that. There would never be any wars, just, every 28 days, some intense negotiations.

Other outstanding moments, feature his hilarious improvised "acceptance speech" at the 2003 Critics Choice Awards, where he was nominated for Best Actor alongside Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis, and the result was declared a draw between Nicholson and Day-Lewis. Invited on stage by Nicholson (who actually takes his sunglasses off after Williams jokes about him wearing them indoors), he launches into an increasingly bitter (and increasingly funny) speech ("thanks for nothing. It's a tie with three people! It's so nice to have nothing leaving here, I don't have to thank anybody. You pretty much said, "Fuck you, Robin!" Thank you, I hope that's televised!"). His speech culminates when Nicholson and Day-Lewis give him the envelope with their names on it, and he says,

I want to thank Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis for giving me this piece of paper. It has their names on it, not mine, and I'm glad to be left out of this incredible group. I want to thank Jack, he is to me, the greatest actor, and Daniel Day-Lewis, also the greatest actor. And I'm just a hairy actor. It's been a wonderful evening for me, to walk away with nothing; coming here with no expectations, leaving here with no expectations. It's pretty much been a Buddhist evening for me.

Funny stuff. Also shown is his bit on the evidence that God gets stoned ("look at the platypus"), and Comic Relief VI in 1994, where he gives an improvised performance as, first, Billy Crystal's penis, and then Whoopi Goldberg's vagina.

The film also tosses out some interesting facts. For example, his father was a very stern man, and it was when a young Williams saw him laugh at Jonathan Winters, that he first began to consider a career in comedy, where he too could make people laugh. The film also features footage of Winters improvising with a stick on a 1964 episode of Tonight Starring Jack Paar, a bit not entirely dissimilar from Williams's own aforementioned stick-based improvisations on Sesame Street. Also fascinating is that when Williams started filming Mork & Mindy in 1978, all American sitcoms were shot with a basic three-camera set-up. Introduced by cinematographer Karl Freund when he began work on I Love Lucy in 1951, this set-up uses three cameras recording simultaneously at three different angles (one captures the wide shot, and the others capture close-ups). However, due to Williams's unpredictable improvisational style, when shooting Mork & Mindy, he would rarely stick to his marks, making it virtually impossible for close-ups, as the camera operators never knew where he was going to end up (he was a pioneer at doing on TV what theatre actors usually refer to as "exploring the space"). And so, the show's creator and executive producer Garry Marshall introduced a fourth camera, whose sole purview was to follow Williams as he moved about the set, fundamentally changing how sitcoms were shot.

The use of audio interviews with Williams, which essentially act as narration, see him more contemplative. In one clip, for example, he explains, "a character can be a comic actor more than a comedian. I don't tell jokes, I use characters as a vehicle for me. I seldom just talk as myself." Which is, of course, a key admission, and which is one of the main themes of the film – the public and private were not only differentiated, they were, in many ways, diametrically opposed. However, this brings us to one of the film's main failings - the lack of exploration of the dissonance between these two aspects of his personality (the manic public comedian and the pensive private man); it's touched on a few times, but it's never explored in any detail. Indeed, for a film which literally invites the audience into the subject's mind, there's very little of any psychological worth to be found here, little exploration of the rigid division between the performer and the man.

Another problem is Zenovich's (perhaps understandable) unwillingness to depict with any degree of completeness some of the darker aspects of his life. Lip-service is given to much of it, but nothing more. So, for example, Elayne Boosler talks about being his girlfriend whilst giving her blessing for him to be with other women; Billy Crystal explains that Williams was essentially addicted to audience reaction, which gave him a sense of validation, always needing "that one extra-special hug you can only get from a stranger"; Pam Dawber recalls telling him that John Belushi had died just hours after Williams and he had been doing drugs; Valerie Velardi explains that in order to maintain her privacy, she never corrected news reports that Williams had been having an affair with the maid, Marsha Garces, when in fact, he and Garces had not gotten together until over a year after he split with Velardi, and at a time when Garces was no longer working for him; and Steve Martin discusses how difficult Williams found it to stay sober. However, apart from these brief moments during the talking head interviews, Zenovich never examines any of the issues thrown up.

And there's nothing at all on Dawber's claim that Williams often fondled her and exposed himself to her the set of Mork & Mindy. Now, you're probably thinking, that's because she didn't reveal this until March 2018, only a couple of months before the film debuted on HBO. However, she initially made the claim when Dave Itzkoff interviewed her for his biography, Robin, an interview which took place prior to her interview for Come Inside My Mind. I can certainly understand why it's been left out of the film, especially insofar as Dawber herself has said she was never offended or threatened ("there was nothing lascivious about it, in his mind. It was just Robin being Robin, and he thought it would be funny"), but it's rather conspicuous by its absence.

The film's structure is also a little unusual, focusing on his rise in the 70s and 80s and the last few years of his life, without spending a huge amount of time looking at the intervening years. There's next to nothing, for example, on his film work; there are references to and a few clips from films such as Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, The Fisher King, and Awakenings, but little beyond that (Zenovich literally devotes only a few seconds to his Oscar win for Good Will Hunting). Because of this, when his 2014 suicide comes, it feels abrupt, with much of the narrative tapestry that brought him to that place skipped (so, for example, there's a reference to him not being himself whilst filming The Crazy Ones, but little about the years leading up to 2014).

Nevertheless, although these problems are significant, fans of Williams will enjoy Come Inside My Mind, with the archival footage very much the main attraction. Zenovich's refusal to allow his death be the characterising moment of his life is laudable, but the film undeniably lacks any kind of psychological depth, and although the argument could be made that Williams was notoriously difficult to know even in real life, hence we shouldn't expect a documentary to lay him bare, the fact is that Zenovich doesn't really try, relying instead on recalling his popularity and comedy prowess. However, I can't help but think that presenting some of the darker times with a more journalistic sense of objectivity would have been a more truthful approach. It wouldn't have tarnished his legacy, nor would it have led to anyone thinking less of him, but it would have made for a deeper film. In the end, Williams was consumed by his demons, but Come Inside My Mind has sidelined those same demons as much as possible, allowing us to remember the laughter, without dwelling on the sadness.

— Stephen Campbell