Robin Williams, 1951–2014

Wrote this on my Tumblr after Robin Williams died in 2014. Reposting here on the two-year mark of his passing.

A professor once asked my class what the first movie we could remember seeing was. I took a minute, flipping through some scattered memories, and landed on the answer: Jumanji. I’ve always recalled the experience clearly because I was four years old, afraid of bugs, and, thus, bawling and screaming at the top of my lungs in the theater, terrified. But Robin Williams, the familiar funny guy on the screen, was a comforting presence.

Flipping through channels one day, I found Jack on TV, and watched as he sat dejectedly in a playground, so odd but so heartfelt. For one of the first times, a movie was making me sad.

Flipping through DVD cases on the shelf at the store, I would go home with the movie I’d been waiting to watch since seeing the TV spot for it. I turned on One Hour Photo and found myself creeped and chilled by the subtly sinister ‘Sy’. He made the character menacing but intriguing and wholly entertaining. For, again, one of the first times, I was enthralled by a performance, having never before known that a comedic actor could go so dramatic; that a man of lightness could go so dark.

But these memories are few and far between. I don’t think I can actually recall too many other specific instances of watching Robin Williams act, and maybe it makes sense that way. He wasn’t “that guy from that thing”; he was a guy who did everything. He wasn’t just present in entertainment culture; he was ingrained in it. He’ll show up again and again in the lives of kids and adults flipping through DVD cases, channels, and memories. And he’ll make them feel, and he’ll make them wonder, and he’ll make them happy.

I’m looking at his filmography and realizing that I haven’t seen most of his work, yet I’m flooded with that feeling of familiarity when I think of him. You know someone won’t be forgotten when you’re not too sure why you remember them in the first place.