Robin Williams Dead.

[nofi]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/11/showbiz/robin-williams-dead/

[westen44]

He was one of my favorite actors.  I may have laughed at his wit more than anyone else I can think of.  But somehow I am not surprised by this and I really can't say why. 

[Dave W]

I'm stunned that somebody who was so popular for so long would be that unhappy.

[Nocturnal]

It's sad. He was quite talented.

[Basvarken]

Sad news indeed. Depression is a deadly disease.
RIP

[tore00]

A great actor. Very sad news. RIP

[rahock]

Very Sad RIP Robin
Rick

[drbassman]

I agree Dave.  Mental illness is so hard to understand.  Blessings to his family.

[gweimer]

There is often so much behind the artistic urge that people can't see.  Kim Novak once said that it was easy for her to pick the messed up roles because she understood them so well.  Normal was out of her range.  On hearing this news about Robin Williams, I couldn't help but think that his role in Insomnia may have been more him than we knew.

[uwe]

I'm not surprised at all. Unfortunately. In all his roles - the most blatant comedies included - his characters always had a streak of incurable sadness that went beyond melancholy. That is something he did not act, it was in him (as it was in Charly Chaplin). It's what made him special and not another screwball actor. Among his most brilliant roles was that rather late piece of work (and probably a career killer too, most of his audience didn't want to see him like that) where he played that guy in a super market photo shop who so much falls in love with a young family he starts wanting to play God when they are on the brink of separating. That character was both creepy and touching in his search for perfection. Jacob, the Liar was another great film of his (actually a remake of an East German movie from the late seventies).

If you had asked me for one Hollywood actor who is a severe depressive say a year ago, I would have named him. I'm surprised this didn't happen any earlier, the way he had shut himself off from everyone in the last decade.

Great loss and tragedy. Depression is vicious.

[westen44]

I can't believe anyone would try to make a joke about this.  Who is Richard Herring?  I have never heard of him.  Not funny, offensive.  If this is humor, then please count me out. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/richard-herring-offends-with-illtimed-twitter-joke-about-robin-williams-character-and-moans-about-pofaced-social-media-9664617.html

[Highlander]

I never did get my rainbow-braces; in the days before the internet you just could not find them here...

A long held obsession of mine that (sort of) - I used to regularly gig with a rainbow-coloured guitar strap

I'm stunned that somebody who was so popular for so long would be that unhappy.

Dave and Uwe, et al...
I have often pondered the comedian (including "The Comedian" - "It's all a joke..."), somewhat like the clown (who likes a clown in the dark?), forced to be the happy one but what lurks beneath...? Somewhat like the shark that must continue to swim or die... one of the UK's most revered funny-men, Billy Connolly, had a most tragic and awful childhood... The demons that they must have... RW just did not stop... the periods of silence must have been so frightening...

RW and BC were/are my favourite humourists, up there with the Pythons at their very best...

For that brilliant bright white-hot light that was Robin Williams, I will paraphrase... The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you burned so very, very brightly, Robin...
rip, now you have found it...

[uwe]

I can't believe anyone would try to make a joke about this.  Who is Richard Herring?  I have never heard of him.  Not funny, offensive.  If this is humor, then please count me out. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/richard-herring-offends-with-illtimed-twitter-joke-about-robin-williams-character-and-moans-about-pofaced-social-media-9664617.html

Let's not get carried away. I don't think that Robin W. himself, on one of his better days, would have minded a caustic remark like that.

You can regret someone's death or even be saddened by it and still make a joke. It's in us, it's like a conjuring of the unspeakable, eternal fear of death. A friend of mine lost her sister last year in a freak sports plane crash. She was loved by everyone, but when they were at the undertaker and he started describing a graveyard row as a "second-best" position, the husband in deep grief said: "My wife and second-best? That's not her at all, we take first row!" And the son, who deals in real estate, quipped: "Location, location, location, man!!!" Everyone cracked  up. 

The story gets even better: The plane crash happened a week before my friend's (and the deceased's) mother's birthday. And as the old lady was already alzheimering badly, the whole family conspires not to tell her about the tragic death of her older daughter who simply doesn't show up at her mother's birthday. The old lady doesn't seem to notice. A couple of weeks later, my friend is guilt-ridden for having done that, and when visiting her mother starts probing if she hadn't missed her older daughter at her birthday, ready to 'fess up. Yet the old lady, totally puzzled, goes, "What do you mean, "not there", your sister was standing behind me all the time smiling, didn't you see her?!"

My friend kept the (family) secret. And her mother died a few weeks later, peacefully.

[gweimer]

Ahhh...the Pythons....

Who, with great love and affection, placed Graham Chapman's "ashes" on the chair for their reunion, accused him of being a slacker and then knocked him on the floor.  Everyone has trouble. Everyone has darkness.  My mother suffered from mental illness.  She was institutionalized 4 times as I grew up, for 6 months each time.  I was relieved when she passed away.  She brought so much pain to those around her.  Still, she was my mother.  We remember what people brought in life, both good and bad.  Through many artists suffering, comes great joy and inspiration to others.

[Dave W]

I've never heard of Richard Herring, but there have always been jokes about any public tragedy or tragedy involving a public figure. It's a way of release. I remember Teddy Kennedy Chappaquiddick jokes and no doubt it goes back much further.

Was it a little too soon for Herring's joke? Maybe, but it's not unusual. You name a tragedy, the jokes start coming right away. Gilbert Gottfried's Japanese tsunami jokes, JFK Jr. plane crash jokes, even Space Shuttle Challenger jokes. It always happens.