The legendary comedian Robin Williams compared to a shark: “He knows where the blood is”
In the 1980s, Robin Williams began his movie career in earnest, after rising to fame in the late ’70s thanks to his riotous stand-up comedy act and a beloved sitcom role in Mork & Mindy. However, for someone with such an intrinsic ability to make people roll on the floor with laughter, it often baffled industry types that he didn’t choose to make outright comedy films in his early Hollywood days.
During his nascent forays into the movie business, Williams played the cartoon character Popeye in a misguided live-action adaptation, before settling into a run of comedy-dramas that always balanced any laughs with serious themes. The World According to Garp, Moscow on the Hudson, and The Best of Times all fall into this category, while 1986’s Seize the Day saw Williams abandon comedy altogether as a failing salesman whose life begins to unravel at the seams.
Indeed, it wouldn’t be until 1987’s Good Morning, Vietnam that Williams finally embraced his manic, rapid-fire comedic roots on film – and the world rejoiced. Why did he wait so long to do what he was good at, though? “I’ve had an odd habit of choosing projects that were the opposite of me, sometimes to the detriment,” Williams admitted to Rolling Stone in 1988. “I wanted to go against what I was doing on TV — not just with Mork & Mindy, but the cable stuff as well. I was saying, in effect, ‘I’ll act. I’ll show you I can act.'”
To Williams’ chagrin, while he spent the ’80s determined to prove to Hollywood that he had dramatic chops, one of his comedy contemporaries rocketed to the top of the industry by choosing movies showcasing exactly what audiences wanted from him. Williams was stunned by Eddie Murphy’s ability to pick projects like 48 Hrs, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, The Golden Child, and Coming to America, all of which hit big at the box office and made audiences scream with laughter.
“He’s instinctual, like a shark who knows where the blood is,” Williams marvelled. “He’s only made a few mistakes. He knows what his area is and what he does. That’s why he’s on top of the script food chain.”
Indeed, in this era, Williams claimed that this food chain was painfully real, at least when it came to comedic actors. Every hot comedy screenplay would do the rounds in Hollywood, but Williams theorised that it had already crossed the desks of Murphy, Bill Murray, and Steve Martin by the time he saw anything. Tom Hanks and John Candy may have also turned it down before it wound up at his door – all because he spent the better part of a decade struggling to show Hollywood he was “more” than a comedian.
Obviously, Williams and Murphy went on to enjoy extremely different Hollywood careers, despite both making their names in comedy. Even after lamenting his late ’80s status on the comedy ladder, Williams continued to balance funny roles with drama, starring in acclaimed movies like Dead Poets Society, The Fisher King, and Good Will Hunting, for which he won a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Oscar, in between crowd-pleasing laugh riots like Mrs Doubtfire, Nine Months, and Aladdin.
Murphy, by contrast, has only attempted drama a couple of times in his career. Dreamgirls and Dolemite is My Name are very much the exceptions in a career that has featured several dizzying highs and catastrophic lows. Still, Murphy’s shark-sense for comedic blood has still kicked in many times over the years, helping him make beloved flicks like Dr Dolittle, Shrek, and The Nutty Professor – a movie that features, for Williams’ money, the most hysterical scene he’s ever witnessed. Yes, really.
