I owe Robin Williams.
So does anyone who has seen and enjoyed any of his movies, or laughed at his antics on stage doing stand-up or on a talk show or on TV. This encompasses virtually everyone in this country and a majority of many other nations.
We owe him for making us laugh, certainly. He did a lot to shape who I am as a person, the things I consider funny, and he helped steer my sense of humor as I grew up. I was 3 years old when "Popeye" came out, and I remember watching it on TV sometime later, laughing, becoming a fan of his. I have vague memories of "Mork and Mindy" and may have seen Mork on "Happy Days" through reruns.
Through my teens, he made movies like "Mrs. Doubtfire," where he offered a unique spin on what a good father should be, and I was in college when "Good Will Hunting" came out, and he taught me about being a good friend.
And he went dark too, exposing a side of himself in "One Hour Photo" and "Insomnia," and showed me the dark side of humor in "Death to Smoochy," a movie I have vociferously defended for years, where he played the dark flip side to Euphegenia Doubtfire, a man who entertained children but hated them. He was always good at recognizing the duality of people, and of himself, understanding the fine line between devotion and obligation and between fondness and contempt — swerving over those lines like a manic drunk driver.
And I'm sorry for using the drinking and driving metaphor, but it seems apt for Williams, who openly and publicly struggled with substance abuse. He showed us it is OK to be imperfect, but that we need to fight the battle, even if it's ultimately a losing one.
We all owe him more than we'll ever know — for the hours of enjoyment, the laughs certainly, but for the way he made us think about things. For me, his work offered an entirely new, broader understanding of the Vietnam War in "Good Morning Vietnam," where most of the people fighting the war knew it was unjust and the consequences of that knowledge.
He also taught me about bad movies. I've long written about how the "Robin Williams shtick" is lazy and tiresome, not an indictment of him as much as the filmmakers who hired him to take their garbage movie and make it pass as something enjoyable.
Now that he's gone, I feel like I've let him down. I haven't seen many of his movies, and I don't just mean those forgettable entries in his filmography. Sure, I've seen "RV" and "Man of the Year" and some of his lesser efforts, while there are others in that category I've missed. But I'm talking about some of his big films. I haven't seen "The World According to Garp," or "Moscow on the Hudson" or "The Fisher King" or "The Birdcage" or "Jakob the Liar." I honestly can't remember if I've seen "Awakenings," which leads me to believe I have not. I have also to date not seen "World's Greatest Dad," though many of us can say that. It'll be a hell of a lot harder to watch now.
I don't know what a world without him is like, and honestly I'm not sure I want to. I know the money I and my family spent on his movies, bad and good, is no recompense for the joy he's brought to my life, and that I, and generations who have watched him, owe him more than we'll ever be able to repay, more than he will ever know he provided to us.