The one genre Robin Williams always wanted to try but never did: “That would be fun”
Such was the comedic force of Robin Williams as an actor that it was hard for the industry to picture him as anything else.
“It was gratifying but pretty surreal because the Oscar has about the shelf life of a week,” he once said, of his Academy Award win for Good Will Hunting. He continued, “For that first week, it’s like: ‘Way to go, Robin on winning an Oscar!’ And two weeks later it’s like ‘Hey Mork!’”
His comedy endeared him to the world, and so, audiences were hesitant, in fact, slightly scared to see him take on a more dramatic turn, and it was akin to seeing a close friend spiral into a goddamn pit of despair, for his laughter tricked us into thinking we knew him so well, but confronting that was what made his performance in Good Will Hunting so compelling.
There was a nuance to how he delivered the subtle desperation of his character. The pain would be expressed in muted eye movement or slightly pained smiles that quietly said “I’m fine,” when he, in fact, wasn’t, and we understood this because of how contradictory it was to the expressive and elaborate nature of his comedy.
With that performance, Williams told the world that he could pretty much do anything. And while the entertainment world largely allowed him to do that, there was one project that slipped from between his grasp in the noughties.
This was a time when nearly every comedic idea was being commissioned by the big studios. Williams himself starred in a string of comedies from Licence To Wed to Night At The Museum, while his younger contemporaries were smashing the box office with the likes of Dodgeball, Superbad and Anchorman.
But it was another Will Ferrell film that got Williams’ creative juices flowing and had him searching the internet for a leotard that might just fit. After watching Ferrell’s turn as Chaz Michael Michaels in Blades of Glory, Williams felt compelled to hit the ice.
“I want to dance on ice,” he defiantly claimed in 2007. “After seeing Blades of Glory, I believe that I could, or a musical? I’ve done those in cartoons. I could do a musical, that would be fun.”
He continued to riff on his ideas, stumbling on something suitably bizarre. “A musical of Freud’s life called It’s Your Mother, line two, ‘Jung At Heart’. You could do musicals based upon pretty much anything. I don’t know. Pick a subject. You could do a musical on it. Gandhi: The Musical. That’d be fun. ‘The Gandhi Man Can’.”
Williams’ pitch showcased the sort of quick wit he became so beloved for in the film industry. However, despite his enthusiasm, none of those projects got off the ground after 2007 – especially not the psychologically inspired comedies, nor a simple musical for Williams to get his teeth stuck into. But the filmography he did leave behind showcases an actor who was more than just a comedian and instead someone who could encompass all the weird and wonderful aspects of everyday life.
