Robin Williams: The muse or the madness? A tribute

This is my unfiltered, unedited thoughts about Robin Williams’ death and other related issues.

Let me just get this straight; I was never a devout follower of Williams’. I never saw all of his comedy and I wasn’t familiar with a few of his famous films or his improv work. It was because of this that I was surprised by exactly how affected I was upon hearing of Robin Williams’ suicide earlier this week.

Yes, it was quite a blow...I mean, the man was the voice of several films of my childhood; most notably Jumanji and Aladdin. As I grew up, I appreciated him in other things - the heavyhanded drama of Dead Poets’ Society, the uplifting Good Will Hunting, the dark and eerie One Hour Photo, the bright and jubilant Good Morning Vietnam, the dramatic Awakenings, the cynical World’s Greatest Dad...there was just a LOT of shit the guy did that was SO good. It struck me because I just hadn’t realized exactly how much, as a fan and consumer of film and comedy, Robin Williams had affected my view of both of those things.

I’m not going to spend too much time dwelling on his work, as many people have already done so who were more imbued with passion for it than I was when he was alive. While I love the stuff I have seen, I really want to talk about something I mentioned back when Philip Seymour Hoffman died last February. In my tribute to him, I wrote this:

“In a way it’s the curse of great artists though – can we ever have someone who could dive so fully into a role that isn’t self destructive? It seems to me that self destructiveness goes hand-in-hand with the kind of immersive, chameleonic acting talent Hoffman had. It was like he was trying to lose himself in his roles, trying to escape whatever demons drove him to drugs in the first place.”

It’s the same thing with Williams, though a bit of a different angle. We know now that Robin Williams was suffering from depression and had been for some time. He had drug problems in the past too. And yet he was a comedic genius; he knew exactly what made comedy work and was quick to make jokes and get a crowd laughing in a variety of ways. He was a fucking funny guy and he went after his passion and his art with a tenacity that most people would kill to have.

And yet he was so, so immensely troubled that he hanged himself this week. I just now read, before starting this piece, that he apparently tried to cut his wrist as well with a knife. I don’t need to point out that these are not the actions of a man of sound mind.

Genius of any stripe comes at a price. Many people who do art, write, act in movies or plays, play music, etc, etc, etc - are just fucked up inside. Whether it’s from a bad childhood, a wrong decision made in childhood turning to drugs or just that general emptiness inside, they aren’t perfectly balanced … something is off in them. Like a wire loose. There have been various studies and reports that justify that, and it makes sense. You get real deep into writing a book or making a movie or anything like that. Your brain goes to places most peoples’ don’t. If you’re really possessed with the kind of manic creativity that leads you to just keep doing it and doing it and doing it, it isn’t just a facet of your life you can turn on and off - it’s something that seizes hold of you and won’t ever let go.

And it does seem like there IS just such a price for that genius...people get depressed and they sink into that like a trench, like a black bog from which there’s no return. And they don’t tell anybody because they’re human and there are a thousand reasons why they wouldn’t - or maybe people just don’t notice. Suicide is tough and complicated and it’s not always a clear sign that you’ll see right away. It’s not really a strong thing to do or a weak thing to do. It just is - it’s a fact of life inevitable that some people just can’t go on anymore and they make their own choice. It’s not something to judge.

People can certainly create and be mentally alright and live full lives. Not everyone who makes great art kills themselves or lives a life full of nothing but misery. But I do think there’s a truth to saying that those with really unbridled, brilliant creativity do end up paying a price for it in their own ways. It’s like the chicken-and-egg question - which comes first; the creativity or the mental instability? The muse or the madness? They feed off one another really. You have a big wide crevasse in you and it can only be filled for a little while by making art and telling stories and telling jokes and singing - and that isn’t a catch-all cure and it doesn’t last that long, and you can’t beat it forever because to create great art, there’s always some part of you that’s coming unhinged. Art isn’t made by studied, focus-group-tested and balanced methods of creations...it’s made by a soul willing to reach into the abyss. And many of those souls are broken, lost and living on the edge even when they have millions of dollars.

I don’t know Robin Williams’ situation, but the whole thing made me think a lot about these issues in a broad sense and I think they deserve to be talked about. I’m not romanticizing mental illness nor am I suggesting that we tolerate it for the sake of art - I’m just saying it’s a thing that needs to be talked about.

As for Williams...R.I.P., you strange, crazy, hilarious man. We’ll miss you.

Stop Saying FX's 'Louie' Is A Drama

FX’s Louie is a great goddamned show. Everyone knows it by now; there’s no point in elucidating on that point. But when I talk to people about the show, I always hear one thing that kinda confuses me – people saying it’s a drama with no comedy whatsoever. I really think a lot of these people need to watch the show more closely.

I’m mostly going to talk about the latest season here, since it’s the freshest on peoples’ minds – and it’s the one I most recently watched. If you haven’t seen the whole season, you better just click on something else for now, because oh man are there gonna be some SPOILERS up in this shit. Don’t worry; this will still be around by the time you do finish the season. Unless my blog gets shut down or I die somehow. But those things are rather unlikely.

Now, I won’t deny that it has some serious moments. It’s certainly not just lighthearted slapstick or goofiness all the way through. However, I don’t think the show has ever gone full into drama per se – not nearly enough to say it’s a drama instead of a comedy. I think watching this show and CK’s standup alternatively really brings out one great truth – the show is just an extension of the type of humor espoused in his standup routines. It’s a full-out comedy, with the dramatic elements only serving to enhance the comedy – after all, comedy and drama do not have to be mutually exclusive. We can find laughter in our most somber moments, and we can take our funny moments to mean something deeper and learn things from them. I think CK really understands this and it’s a big part of his show, his routine and why he’s so funny in general.

For those of you who watch the show and are not familiar with Louis CK’s standup, I’ll elaborate a bit: he has a very cynical, witty sort of style, not exactly based around going for big punchlines so much as just letting his jokes play out like run on sentences. When you think he’s about to stop and talk about something else, he gets this goofy grin on his face and just keeps running with the joke, adding more humor and contorting the joke – he’s good at getting a laugh by just taking a situation, playing it out for humor and then going “Hmm, what if…?” and taking it the extra mile. His humor is dark, self-mocking and somewhat underplayed.

The show is a reflection of the types of things CK finds funny – the stuff that inspires his stand-up routines. You get a real sense of his sense of humor and the way his mind works – a weird blend of odd, bad things happening to him, moral preaching (there’s a very feminist-centric episode this season about Louie dating a fat girl) and the absolutely random and bizarre. The show pretty much chronicles the life of Louis CK, except if he was a down-on-his-luck comic rather than a worldwide superstar like he is right now.

I think this last season has people confused because a lot of it was based around Louie’s romance with a woman named Amia, who doesn’t speak English. This is one of the points that I would say is very dramatic – as it actually has Louie’s character evolving over a series of episodes. He and Amia go through happy moments and frustrating ones, and through it they share a very realistic, touching – albeit bizarre – relationship. The scenes of the two interacting even with the vast language barrier – usually just making gestures and doing a weird kind of charades – are both affecting and romantic and very, very funny in a sweet, non-cynical way.

You can see humor in the little things – such as Louie’s reaction when he initially thinks he can’t be with Amia because she’s leaving. He goes back to his room, takes a baseball bat and begins hitting the keys of a piano with it – producing a rather jumbled musical sequence as he works out his rage. The effect is very, very funny. Of course a second later there’s a knock on the door and she tells him she’ll be around long enough to spend more time with him.

There’s also the biggest red flag of them all in terms of this show being a comedy: so there’s this whole really serious, really dramatic sequence where Louie and Amia sleep together, which is a problem because Amia is leaving and doesn’t want to get too attached. While this is all going on, there’s also a huge storm coming that Louie has to go save his family from – which results in some of the more interesting parts of the show from a visual aspect, as the storm makes everything suitably tense and dangerous-feeling. Louie has to leave Amia to save his family, but the two end up patching things up before she leaves with the help of a friendly translator from a restaurant. It’s a touching scene.

Next episode has Louie learning from his helpful doctor buddy that “loving someone means something only after they’re gone, because you can appreciate them more.” So what he does is move on immediately and start going after his old friend/possible thwarted love interest Pamela, recently moved back into town. After so much build-up and drama with Amia, the fact that he just IMMEDIATELY fuckin’ throws it all away and starts trying to get with Pamela again is funny. It’s realistic and relatable, but it’s funny as shit, and totally intentional the way they set up the episodes. If Amia had not been the subject of so many episodes prior, or if she and Louie hadn’t shared the most dramatic moments in the show thus far, it would have lost its comedic impact.

I think what confuses people is that they expect ‘comedy’ to be nothing else but non-stop laughs, and they think any remote infusion of something more serious qualifies the show as a drama. In reality, a big part of comedy IS real life stuff and drama – they’re two sides of a coin; yin and yang. Louie isn’t a comedy like Big Bang Theory where it’s just stupid punchlines made for canned audience laughter – it’s a show about real things and about finding the funny shit in your every-day life. Just because a show (or any kind of story in any entertainment medium) is billed as a comedy, or intended to make you laugh, doesn’t mean it can’t do other things too. A drama can have funny moments in it, and a comedy can have serious stuff going on in-between the jokes. The expectation that something ONLY has to stick to its prominent genre isn’t really an accurate one – ESPECIALLY in today’s very nuanced entertainment culture where things are blended together more than a fruit smoothie by a health and fitness nut at your gym.

I don’t think there’s a real case to be made for this show as a drama. It’s not, really; the closest it ever got to the character progression and development necessary for a drama was this season’s Amia arc – the first two seasons may have a bit of development here and there, but for the most part they’re just really surrealistic and wry vignettes to make you crack a smirk. It’s fine if you watch this show differently than me, and you’re welcome to have a different opinion. After all, variety is the spice of life and art is made to be interpreted differently – yadda yadda. You’re welcome to disagree.

But I think one thing we can all agree on is … “Of Course/But Maybe” should seriously become a party game.

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