John Harkness’s 1992 NOW cover interview with Robin Williams, who died Monday, is in itself an apt remembrance of the mercurial performer.
The comic/actor – the only stand-up to be nominated for three best-actor Oscars – was then opening in Barry Levinson’s film Toys, in which he plays the owner of a toy store set to be taken over by a general with dastardly plans.
Like its star, the pic was not just funny or gloomy, but both. Williams said that Levinson was the first director to let him shine as an actor without suppressing the comic.
He was brilliant during the interview. When one scribe asked whether there was a connection between his work and the Surrealists, he responded without missing a beat: “I went to Magritte Junior High. You walk out the door and you’re back inside.”
At others points during the scrum, he referenced Saul Bellow, Dostoevsky and Bulgakov (!), worried about boys’ relationship to video games, lamented Hollywood’s obsession with the bottom line, slipped into Scottish and Russian accents and was also, naturally, hilarious. R.I.P.
Read Norman Wilner’s obituary.
