Robin Williams--suicide RIP

I'm not completely shocked, it seemed to me that sometimes his goofiness hinted at some sort of mental instability.

More than cowardly, suicide is utterly selfish. The only one's who suffer are those left behind.

Williams legacy is now tainted, as choosing to not deal with life's problems

The fact is, if everyone in this country who battles the same things he fought committed suicide, we've have millions dead every year.

That is no way to deal with one's demons, and only sends a message of hopelessness to others who are in the fight.

If you’ve ever heard Robin Williams’s stand-up, you know he loved the word “Fưck”. He used it as punctuation, he used it to get the audience’s attention, he used it to differentiate himself from his cuddly TV personality at a point when he was famous exclusively for playing a goofy alien who wore rainbow suspenders.

And so, to honour Williams:

Fưck depression. Fưck addiction. Fưck mental illness. Fưck chemical imbalances. Fưck the black dog. Fưck everything and anything that drags a person down into that dark hole from which death seems the only possible escape.

Robin Williams is dead at age 63, reportedly a suicide, and Fưck that too.

The news of Williams’s death spread across Twitter Monday night with equal parts incredulity and denial, which harmonized almost immediately into another kind of incredulity and denial: not “this isn’t real” but “this shouldn’t be.”

Williams was that kind of figure to pretty much everyone who’d seen him over the last 40 years – Mork & Mindy, and the movies he made for families, guaranteed that children grew up with him in their lives; his stand-up work inspired at least two generations of comics, and the movies he made for adults offered a truly impressive range of feeling and complexity.

He won an Oscar for Good Will Hunting; he probably should have won another one for Good Morning, Vietnam, the role best tailored to his strengths, and for The Fisher King, my pick for his single greatest screen performance. (And if anyone had seen World’s Greatest Dad, written and directed by Williams’s old stand-up pal Bobcat Goldthwait, he might have had a shot at another.)

In the days to come, the focus will surely be on Williams’s comedy work, and that’s entirely understandable: they’ll talk about Jumanji, and his voice performance as the Genie in Aladdin, and maybe even bring up Robert Altman’s misbegotten Popeye.

But his dramatic work is where you find the real Williams – someone who was always searching for that expressive part that would break through to the audience and make them see what else he could do. There were key supporting roles in Dead Poets Society and Awakenings, which paved the way for his Good Will Hunting triumph as a sympathetic listener, and that fantastic guest shot as a suddenly bereaved father on Homicide: Life On The Street – a favour to series creator Barry Levinson, who’d directed him in Good Morning, Vietnam and needed an A-list movie star to draw viewers to his show.

There was that short run of schmaltzy prestige projects that cast him as the most feeling man on Earth – Jack, Jakob The Liar, What Dreams May Come, Bicentennial Man – but as soon as Williams realized those weren’t working for him, he pivoted into a period of grim, complicated projects: One Hour Photo, Insomnia, The Night Listener. And then he nudged back into comedy: Barry Sonnenfeld’s RV, the Night At The Museum films, License To Wed, Happy Feet and its sequel.

I’m trying to figure out where Mrs. Doubtfire and The Birdcage fit into this. They were clearly commercial decisions – and neither looks particularly progressive or sophisticated two decades later. But he gives his all and audiences clearly responded.

Talk of a Mrs. Doubtfire sequel was rattling around the web earlier this year, either because Williams wanted something to do after his TV show The Crazy Ones was cancelled or because a couple of Fox executives who grew up with him thought they could make it happen by sheer force of will.

I guess I can understand that. People wanted to see Robin Williams doing the things they loved watching him do best. And now he’s gone, that won’t happen.

No more Oscar gigs, no more surprise stand-up sets, no more unexpected appearances in his friends’ movies. We’ll see him again in the new Night At The Museum picture this Christmas, and with any luck we’ll be able to enjoy him for a few moments.

And that is the point. Fưck you, depression. Robin Williams will still be making people happy.

"Sounds like another cowardly suacide." I don't think it works that way.

Fưck depression. Fưck addiction. Fưck mental illness. Fưck chemical imbalances. Fưck the black dog. Fưck everything and anything that drags a person down into that dark hole from which death seems the only possible escape.

Robin Williams is dead at age 63, and Fưck that too.

Looking for sense in suicide is a fool's quest.

More than cowardly, suicide is utterly selfish. The only one's who suffer are those left behind.

Williams legacy is now tainted, as choosing to not deal with life's problems only instills in those that admired him (especially young people)who may have similar battles, the thought that this may be an option for them.

My heart goes out to his family and friends. I pray they may find peace in spite of such brutality being inflicted on them.

Wow. Been there buddy, I understand why you did it. RIP Robin.

good by mr. williams.
i enjoyed your stay.

thank you for your marvel.

good by mr. williams.
i enjoyed your stay.

thank you for your marvel.

“First he was my idol, then he was my mentor and amazing friend. I'll miss him huge. He was my Comedy Buddha. Long live the Buddha.”

this thread is NO eulogy. It has the word SUICIDE in the title...ok?

The fact is, if everyone in this country who battles the same things he fought committed suicide, we've have millions dead every year

Slobmonster, Cragman is actually a very nice and gracious guy, works really hard on a variety of charity organizations and has been rescuing people for decades, and has a big family up in June Lake. Very generous guy.

The Fisher King

It begins with the king as a boy, having to spend the night alone in the forest to prove his courage so he can become king.

Now while he is spending the night alone he's visited by a sacred vision. Out of the fire appears the holy grail, symbol of God's divine grace. And a voice said to the boy,

"You shall be keeper of the grail so that it may heal the hearts of men."

But the boy was blinded by greater visions of a life filled with power and glory and beauty.

And in this state of radical amazement he felt for a brief moment not like a boy, but invincible, like God,
... so he reached into the fire to take the grail,
... and the grail vanished,
... leaving him with his hand in the fire to be terribly wounded.

Now as this boy grew older, his wound grew deeper.

Until one day, life for him lost its reason. ... He had no faith in any man, not even himself.
... He couldn't love or feel loved.
... He was sick with experience.
He began to die.

One day a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. And being a fool, he was simple minded, he didn't see a king. He only saw a man alone and in pain. And he asked the king,

"What ails you friend?"

The king replied,

"I'm thirsty. I need some water to cool my throat".

So the fool took a cup from beside his bed, filled it with water and handed it to the king.

As the king began to drink, he realized his wound was healed. He looked in his hands and there was the holy grail, that which he sought all of his life. And he turned to the fool and said with amazement,

"How can you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?"

And the fool replied,

"I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty."

Any chance we can keep the suicide debate off this thread out of respect for the deceased?
With so many judgmental folks around here, this is the last place I want my demise announced.

In 2006, after 20 years sober, he checked himself into rehab for alcoholism. He opened up about his struggles with addiction to alcohol and cocaine in a powerful interview with The Guardian and on "Good Morning America."

"It's not caused by anything, it's just there," he said. "It waits. It lays in wait for the time when you think, 'It's fine now, I'm OK.' Then, the next thing you know, it's not OK. Then you realize, 'Where am I? I didn't realize I was in Cleveland.'"

"...it was clear that Mr. Williams was one of the most explosively, exhaustingly, prodigiously verbal comedians who ever lived. The only thing faster than his mouth was his mind, which was capable of breathtaking leaps of free-associative absurdity....Robin Williams was an irrepressible performer, on stage and off. Onstage, Mr. Williams’s speed allowed him to test audience responses and to edit and change direction on the fly. He simultaneously explained and acted out this process in “Come Inside My Mind,” a two-and-a-half-minute tour de force of manic meta — “I’m doing great! I’m improvising like crazy! No you’re not, you fool! You’re just doing pee-pee-ca-ca, no substance!”

Why does this hit so hard??

"To those he touched who are sending kind words, know that one of his favorite things in the world was to make you all laugh. As for those who are sending negativity, know that some small, giggling part of him is sending a flock of pigeons to your house to poop on your car. Right after you've had it washed. After all, he loved to laugh too..."

More than cowardly, suicide is utterly selfish. The only one's who suffer are those left behind.

Williams legacy is now tainted, as choosing to not deal with life's problems only instills in those that admired him (especially young people)who may have similar battles, the thought that this may be an option for them.

My heart goes out to his family and friends. I pray they may find peace in spite of such brutality being inflicted on them.