Robin Williams's suicide has touched the national soul, a tribute to how intense and intimate each performance of his was, how broad his reach was, and how long his career was. Williams' manic energy and verbal fluency made him a star who shined brilliantly on television, in the movies, and on stage. His comic riffs were so rapid-fire, his body motions so fluid, his impressions so spot-on, he entranced toddlers and golden agers alike. He made it look so easy, yet anyone who tried replicating his monologues, his motions, or his mimicry, realized how hard it was -- and what a genius he was.
Robin Williams became a household name with his breakthrough comedy series in 1978 Mork and Mindy, a Happy Days spinoff. Williams played an alien mixing his hilariously childlike innocence on earth with other-worldly wisdom. Many of his bits were old Borscht Belt routines. When "Mindy" suggested he order a businessman's lunch in a restaurant, "Mork from Ork" replied, "Why would I want it, if he didn't?" Yet delivering these lines so zestfully, punctuating them with such beautifully choreographed moves, Williams made stale jokes sound fresh.
The series' wildness and joy anticipated the go-getters 1980s, which were just beginning when the series ended in 1982. Robin Williams' ascent into the Hollywood heavens cost him. Feeling pressured to maintain his newfound success, he succumbed to cocaine's lure, which fueled his comic franticness while ruining his personal life, wrecking the first of his three marriages.
Sobered by his friend John Belushi's death, Williams became the rare small screen star to thrive on the big screen. In 1987, he helped Americans work through their lingering Indochina trauma with his breathtaking performance as a radio DJ in Good Morning Vietnam. Williams's call "Gooooooooood Morning Vietnam," soon became as iconic as his Orkian greeting "Nanu Nanu" and his Orkian curse "Shazbot." Williams' radio riffs captured the war's absurdity, allowing Americans to laugh at their pain, 12 years after Saigon fell.
"What is a demilitarized zone?" he asked in his most famous radio riff, answering with a medley of Wizard of Oz voices:
"Oh-we-oh Ho Chi Minh Oh," echoed the Wicked Witch of the West's army.
Then, "Follow the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Follow the Ho Chi Minh Trail."
And, of course, "Oh, I'll get you, my pretty!" .... It's the wicked witch of the north. It's Hanoi Hanna!"
Five years later, in 1992, Robin Williams became immortal -- and popular with kids -- just by lending his voice to Aladdin's out-of-control, relentlessly entertaining Genie. The Genie pops out of the lamp. Then Williams, in machine-gun succession, mimics an Old Jew, a TV announcer, a Scotsman, a black hipster, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ed Sullivan, and a dozen other voices in about three minutes. The exhilarating, exhausting, mostly improvised performance helped brand modern animated movies as adult-friendly too.
Although Williams deserved an Academy Award for Aladdin, he finally won it as the therapist who cures a working class genius, played by a then-unknown Matt Damon, in Good Will Hunting (1997). Williams challenged "Will" -- and increasingly technology isolated Americans -- insisting that true living requires more than book learning; art, war, love, must be felt, smelled, suffered.
His character's Zen balance obviously eluded him in real life, thanks to his manic-depression. "You'll have bad times," Williams wisely proclaims, "but it'll always wake you up to the good stuff you weren't paying attention to."
Ultimately, the Robin Williams character which affected me the most, from more than 80 movie roles, was his larger-than-life, out-of-the-box teacher, John Keating, in Dead Poets Society (1989). Keating challenges his young Prep School charges: "We don't read and write poetry because it's cute.... poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for." Quoting Walt Whitman, he teaches, "The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse," then wonders: "What will your verse be?" He urges his charges: Carpe Diem, "Seize the day ... make your lives extraordinary."
As a freshly-minted Ph.D., I took that challenge personally. I have tried to be as bold, passionate, value-driven and non-complacent about my teaching and my life as he was in the movies. I don't know if I have succeeded, but I know he did.
Robin Williams made his life extraordinary. His "verse," his mission was, in Walt Whitman's words, to "Sing the body electric," to invest both "body" and "soul" in stretching people not just entertaining them. Entertaining us as a brilliant comedian, he helped us laugh at ourselves. Inspiring us like an amazing teacher, he forced us to think. And feeling like a wacky, delightful, off-the-wall super-fun friend, he pushed us to live life as fully, as zestfully, as zanily, as he did. He will be missed - while his legendary performances will live forever, digitally and in our collective consciousness.