“It’s a good country on top…if you watch the ‘b’ movies and don’t blink”-;)…”…we think too much and feel too little…the poetry of the theater has been lost… Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot… Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone.”- Charles Chaplin
The NYT ran a piece last week suggesting Robin Williams’ (1 year anniversary death) un-sung great movie hits. They are ALWAYS stealing my copy;) And to think:….I know: don’t think just write! What the NYT are JUST not braver enough to argue is that Robin Williams was not a great actor but a greatest actor! Some may think Patch Adams sentimental whatever, whatever. But WHO is the greater actor? Philip Seymour Hoffman or Robin Williams? They ALL (or many) have sat in the chair of the Actor’s Studio (that’s New School not ‘Brando’ studio). I actually sat in one of those Marilyn Monroe/Brando seats and heard the greatest advice an actor could ever have from a coruscating Ellen Burstyn: what do you actually observe? When the action is pitch perfect then and only then will an audience feel.
I’ve been indulging and watching some of the Robin Williams performances missed over the y/tears. And another great mentor’s advice struck me (he directed a baby Kevin Spacey alongside Jack Lemmon) in London. Dr Jonathan Miller wrote (Subsequent Performances) and spoke of how, in his opinion and experience as a theater director, actors shone at their best when playing ‘relatives’ to themselves.
That truth may well have been true for Robin Williams. Who better than a comic to show how horrible and tormented life is when you believe in a different world than most around you.
