Robin Williams - When the Laughter Stops 1951-2014 Read Online Free PDF Page A

garage with room for 25 cars, barns, and there was a very wonderful old English man, Mr. Williams, who looked after the gardens,’ he told the
Detroit Free Press.
‘We didn’t own it; we just rented it. Then we moved to Chicago, and when we came back to Detroit a few years later, we just lived in an apartment. And it was very different, you know. But the first house, it was so wonderful, so peaceful. There was no one for miles around. Only this giant golf course with people named Tad whacking the old ball.’
    In actual fact, this was Robin embroidering the tale, whether deliberately or not, for the truth is somewhat less rosy. Surrounded by his giant toy collection, he had a whole floor to himself in the attic but he didn’t enjoy it. He was rather frightened of the shadows and dark corners. It was a solitary existence for a little boy and, as Robinplayed on his own, he started to make up stories and characters. At that stage no one had a clue that they had a comic genius in their midst, however: all they saw was a little boy wanting to be loved, having been uprooted from a previous existence and now starting over from scratch. ‘My only companions, my only friends as a child, were my imagination,’ he once said.
    Church was a part of his life. His mother was a Christian Scientist, although Robin was brought up as an Episcopalian. Indeed, he played a very active role in the church for a time and it, too, would become the source of some of his comedy, as well as the inspiration when he starred in the 2007 film
License to Wed
. ‘Having been a choirboy, and I’m not Catholic, just going back to the old days when I was into going to church and remembering, as a Protestant, which is Catholic light once again, the idea of somebody that could really advise and has something [to] offer,’ he told
Canmag
around the time of the movie’s launch. ‘It was just remembering those guys that I grew up with in the Episcopal Church, which is there is no purgatory, just spiritual escrow. That was [the] beginning of that. And then the idea that he’s pretty much hands on as much as you can be without being a priest.’
    Robin enrolled at Detroit Country Day School, a private school where he did well in some respects but also had some very unhappy times. He became president of the class, played soccer and joined the wrestling team, and one of his teachers is said to have been the person upon whomhe based his role as John Keating in
Dead Poets Society
. ‘I loved school, maybe too much really,’ he told the
Washington Post
in an interview that coincided with the release of
Jack
(1996), a film about a boy who ages four times faster than everyone else and which painted a much sunnier picture of his early days than was the reality.
    ‘I was summa cum laude in high school. I was driven that way. I can’t say it was easy to fit in. I just went out of my way to fit in. It was a private boys’ school, Detroit Country Day, and I played soccer. I was on the wrestling team. Mr. All-Around, you know? But I think what made me want to play Jack was that innocent time before all that, riding bikes, friends in treehouses, all those things that loom on the boundaries of child and boy. When you’re ten, you are still a boy, and that time right before puberty, which hits at twelve – or eleven if you live somewhere the milk is different – is so incredible. A boy is still so vulnerable then. Boys that age don’t have a lot of chops in terms of hiding feelings. What they feel is right there on their faces.’
    In fact, what some of those boys felt was malevolence. Robin might have loved school, or at least he had come to think he did, but he had a fair few problems to deal with when he was there and it was this, combined with seeking out his mother’s attention and his relative isolation in the family home, that really began to lay down the foundations for the comedian he would one day become. In another interview, this time with