Hi folks,
The world has lost a great entertainer
and a wholly original genius. Robin Williams was without peer.
I never had the good fortune to meet him
personally, but I felt I almost knew him because of the dozens of stories my
friend Lisa Lieberman Doctor told me about him. Lisa was the person he chose to
head up his production company, Blue Wolf Productions, and she acquired dozens of
scripts for him, including MRS. DOUBTFIRE. In fact, one of the first stories
she told me about him was how they acquired that product.
Lisa said that she turned down the
script. It just wasn’t that well-written, in her opinion. However, Robin chose
to override her rejection of it—which he could because he was… well, the boss…
It wasn’t the script he liked, Lisa said, but the concept. She told me that
scarcely any of the original script made it to the screen. She said Robin
improvised virtually all of it.
She told me a funny story that happened
on the first day of principle photography on the set of MRS. DOUBTFIRE. When
the cameras begin rolling, large sums of money are being expended, and it’s
extremely important nothing slow up the shooting.
Well, Lisa said, everyone on the set was
worried when Robin didn’t appear immediately. True, it took several hours to
get him into costume and one of the main problems was that Robin was an
extremely hirsute man. She said he had hair everywhere and for the scenes he
appeared as Mrs. Doubtfire, it took several hours to remove the hair from his
shoulders, back, arms, legs… everywhere. His beard was particularly tough and extremely
difficult to render smooth.
Anyway, the tension was rising as he
failed to appear on the set, everyone getting more and more nervous, and then,
all of a sudden, he was in Lisa’s office, in full costume, and with a stricken
look on his face. “Lisa,” he said, “I’m supposed to go on camera right now but
I’ve got a big problem.” “What?” she said, imagining all kinds of horrible
scenarios. “Well,” Robin said. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve got to go on… and
I’ve got a woody.”
Now, Lisa is a tiny Jewish woman and I
could just imagine her looking up at this large man, dressed in a dress, and
lifting her hands helplessly, and saying, “Uh…what exactly do you want me to
do, Robin?” And then he laughed and all the tension went out of the room, and
the first day of principle photography went well.
Over the years of our friendship, Lisa
has told me literally dozens and dozens of stories about Robin. Nearly every
one of them made me laugh. Some made me sad. All were stories that couldn’t be
told about any other person. Robin Williams was truly a genius, truly a Renaissance
man. A true original and a national treasure.
He’ll be sorely missed.
Blue skies,
Les
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