Friday, August 15, 2014

Robin Williams becomes a douchebag to avoid being loved too much




Robin Williams didn’t even give the world the 90 minutes notice his character got in “The Angriest Man in Brooklyn,” still on video kiosks.
Thanks to the digital world his admirers, and those curious about why his death caused such pain and drew so much attention, can binge and find out what was going on with this Muse.
It is especially useful for those who shied away from him at times because of his intensity.
Paraphrasing Alexander Pope, you won't be able to drink deep without tasting the Pierian Spring that was sacred to Muses.
It doesn’t matter where you start, this isn’t a Netflix job, no “House of Cards” or HBO “Game of Thrones” that can be watched in two or three nights. It is almost like trying to go through Mozart or Bach’s music. Some may be better than others but all worth hearing.
New to me this week were “House of D” and “World’s Greatest Dad.”
In the former Williams played a Greek-American “retard.” As the movie advances he goes from being a “retard” to being “mentally handicapped” to being “mentally challenged.” As in many movies there is plenty of sadness as well as the standard Williams humor.
The star of the movie, David Duchovny, turns life support off for his mother after she over doses on sedatives. The faces assumed by Williams are worth the price alone. How can laughs be avoided when the retarded “Pappass” first gets him into “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” when he is underage, and then on to a flight for a new life in France.
Duchovny, as “Tom Warshaw,” loses his scholarship to a New York City Catholic school when he takes the blame for Pappass stealing a bike he covets. The priest asks Warshaw what color the bike was, to see if he really knows what occurred. The priest wants to know precisely what color green it was. Warshaw says “Al Green.”
Over and over in the Greatest Dad, Williams character “Lance Clayton” repeats the mantra that suicide “is a permanent answer to a temporary problem.” Of course some problems are not merely temporary. But I digress.
Clayton has just found his son dead from asphyxiation while masturbating. It was not intended to be a suicide but Clayton rearranges the body and writes a suicide note to avoid the community learning what may be the only thing more disturbing than an actual suicide.
Suddenly his “douchebag” son “Kyle” is loved and people want to read the made up diaries his father created. A library is dedicated in Kyle’s name in a ceremony that rings too closely to Columbine for the comfort of anyone with more than a passing memory of it.
It’s no surprise that Clayton cannot go through it without blowing the whistle on himself, becoming instantly a douchebag himself to most who suddenly loved Kyle.
Lance, on the other hand, strips naked, except for his socks, and jumps off the high dive into the school swimming pool and seems born again.
His son’s best, and only friend, “Andrew” becomes his new son, and they eat marijuana brownies with the Claytons next door neighbor, Mitzi McCall.
If Williams needed any help on planning a suicide he only had to re-read this script.































































































































No comments:

Post a Comment