The one movie Robin Williams knew he never should have made: “A sheer effort of greed”
No matter how you earn a living, it’s always hard to resist the lure of money. Actors get paid more than most, which is why they’ve become so susceptible to making bad decisions based on the dollar signs. It taught Robin Williams a harsh lesson, and he wouldn’t make the same mistake again for a long time.
Once he’d finally established himself as a Hollywood fixture, which took a little longer than he anticipated after he had to wait until his ninth feature outing in Barry Levinson’s Good Morning, Vietnam before he became a bona fide big-screen star, Williams was almost always paid millions of dollars per picture.
He’d take the occasional pay cut when the material was strong enough, as he did in One Hour Photo, or he’d forego his usual salary to lend a helping hand to a friend, as he did in Bobcat Goldthwait’s World’s Greatest Dad. For the most part, though, the comedian knew his worth, and he was compensated as such.
Performers need to work hard and prove themselves before they can make it to that level and stay there, which is why Williams was so aghast that he’d taken a money job so early in his film career. 1986’s Club Paradise was just his sixth movie, and he only landed the lead role because Bill Murray turned it down.
Despite a star-studded supporting cast that also included Peter O’Toole, Rick Moranis, Eugene Levy, and Twiggy, for some reason, not to mention a tropical shoot that saw the ensemble pitch up in Jamaica for the bulk of location filming, it must have been a lot more fun to make than it was to watch, because it was complete and utter rubbish.
“Club Paradise was a sheer effort of greed,” Williams confessed to the Los Angeles Times. “I just went for the cash and went, ‘Great, now make a commercial movie’, and I got creamed.” The picture flopped, failed to recoup its budget, and was savaged by critics, although it did find its most unlikeliest defender in Pauline Kael, who was the only notable figure to give it a passing grade.
“She raved about that movie,” the actor bemusedly added. “And I was like, ‘Pauline, sweetheart, darling, darling? Did someone else get a hold of your word processor? Talk to me.'” She’d described it as a “pleasantly offhand resort-club comedy that’s like those giddy, casual farces that Paramount turned out in the ’30s,” which was by far the nicest thing anyone had to say about it.
Williams only had a handful of feature-length credits to his name, and he’d already realised that chasing the financial dragon was a disaster waiting to happen. With the lesson well and truly earned, it would be decades before he copped to repeating himself.
The Academy Award winner copped to joining John Travolta in Old Dogs because he was fresh out of rehab and “it paid the bills,” and he used the exact same turn of phrase to explain why he’d agreed to make a small-screen return alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar in the short-lived sitcom, The Crazy Ones, but at least it took him 30+ years to return to his money-chasing ways.
