How did Robin Williams help Steven Spielberg complete ‘Schindler’s List’?
When trying to find a way into the movie industry, it is important to know who you are and what you offer. Branding starts at the very beginning, and that extends way beyond the movies you are making. Steven Spielberg has always pushed himself as a filmmaker capable of telling the most powerful stories and able to bring some of the most baffling cinematic visions to the big screen as a result.
From creating a giant lifelike shark for the revolutionary blockbuster Jaws to piecing together a fabulous set piece that sees Indiana Jones evading a giant boulder in a booby-trapped tomb in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the filmmaker constantly pushed himself to the limit. It was a lesson he learned from inspirational directors John Ford and David Lean. No concept was too big or too powerful to be unable to go up on the screen with the right team behind it. It often led Spielberg to take on some of the most complex or challenging stories in Hollywood history, and he did it relatively unscathed until his cinematic ventures in 1993 almost broke him.
Testing himself physically and emotionally, Spielberg released two very different movies in the same year of the early ‘90s that would change the world of cinema forever: Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List. The former was an innovative, special effects-heavy wonder that recreated the spectacle of seeing dinosaurs for the very first time; it was a family-friendly venture that smashed the box office and garnered even more mainstream praise for Spielberg. Things were a little different for the second picture, which was a deep, introspective drama about the true horrors of the Holocaust.
The immense post-production demands of Jurassic Park in the early 1990s forced Spielberg to juggle completing the groundbreaking thriller while simultaneously shooting the emotionally harrowing war drama Schindler’s List. The contrasting tones of these two projects made the workload unimaginably taxing.
On the one hand, Jurassic Park was a thrilling and lighthearted blockbuster; on the other, Schindler’s List required Spielberg to confront the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust every day on set. The emotional strain of balancing such disparate projects nearly proved too much for the director to endure.
Searching for some kind of relief from the physical and mental exhaustion, Spielberg reached out to his good friend and collaborator Robin Williams, who had worked with the director on the 1991 movie Hook. Regularly calling the actor while he was shooting Schindler’s List in Poland, Spielberg would get in touch with Williams purely for some light humour and an escape from the stresses of his filmmaking life. Though now more recognised as an actor, Williams spent a lot of time on the comedy circuit and was more than capable of turning a phone call into a yuckfest.
Speaking about this in a Q&A for the 25th anniversary of Schindler’s List at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival, Spielberg stated: “Robin knew what I was going through, and once a week, Robin would call me on schedule, and he would do 15 minutes of stand-up on the phone. I would laugh hysterically because I had to release so much”.
Having built a close relationship with the actor after the release of Hook, Spielberg knew that Williams would be the perfect person to call to lift his spirits and alleviate some of the gloom that inevitably enveloped his days while working on the tragic story. Trusting his instincts, the director further added, “The way Robin is on the telephone, he’d always hang up on the loudest, best laugh you’d give him. He’d never say goodbye, just hang up on the biggest laugh”.
With the help of Williams, Spielberg was able to release both Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, making 1993 the director’s most celebrated year in quite some way. This can be illustrated by the fact that these ‘90s classics took home a total of ten Oscars at the Academy Awards, including the statuette for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Original Screenplay’ for Schindler’s List. It would prove worthwhile for the director, not only for the accolades but for the increase in desire for education around the subject that naturally followed.
Meanwhile, Robin Williams would only work with Spielberg one more time, lending his voice to the character of Dr Know in the 2001 sci-fi AI Artificial Intelligence before tragically passing away in 2014. The actor did a tremendous amount of good in his time in the film industry, with some of his very best contributions coming from spreading laughter and cheer to those around him.
