quote: Lyle Romer

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I know I'm going to come off as an ass but I'm going to say this anyway. I don't really care when celebrities die. It is sad when anybody dies.

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That's sort of the point. If a celebrity death from something that isn't well understood and affects a lot of other people as well leads to it being slightly better understood, then maybe the attention given to celebrity deaths isn't totally pointless.

I can also understand people feeling personally affected by the death of public figure whose work or achievements they particularly admired. But I agree with you that it's weird and unhealthy when people react to the death of a celeb they never met as if it was the death of a family member of close friend. Why everyone went so overboard with Princess Di I'll never be able to get my head around (and after being subjected to that abysmal Elton John ditty umpteen times I started to suspect that there'd be a celebrity homicide pretty soon, too). The manager of the theater where I worked at the time was on the verge of putting a "Morbid f***ers keep out!" notice in the window on the day of the funeral, if only to discover if he'd become the first person since Lord Haw-Haw to be tried for treason...

Depression and suicide appears to be a high risk among comedians, paradoxically. One example that sticks in my mind is Tony Hancock. As a kid I thought the re-runs of his TV shows were some of the funniest things I'd ever seen. I couldn't understand it when I was told that he eventually killed himself as the result of long-term depression.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-11-2014, 10:01 PM:
 
Robin Williams' death is indeed news worthy, particularly here in a forum whose interest is centered on the movie industry. Williams was in a lot of qualified hit movies, both in terms of box office performance and critical acclaim.

Now, I'm not sad over his death the way I would be if a close friend or relative died. However, I will miss his acting and comedic work. It's a shame his career has reached a sudden, tragic end. He entertained millions of Americans for nearly 40 years in both TV and movies, not to mention countless millions of people across the rest of the world. His work did have an impact on people's lives, whether those viewers knew Williams or not.

I didn't personally know Robin Williams, but I did see him in person at a live taping of the Late Night With David Letterman show back in 1989 when it was still on NBC. Williams was promoting Dead Poets Society.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-11-2014, 10:56 PM:
 
Gonna sound weird, but one of my favorite movies of his was "RV." He could take even mediocre material like that and make it funny.

I think the biggest crowds we ever had for one of his movies were for "Mrs. Doubtfire." Lots of huge laughs in that movie. Comedies aren't funny like that anymore.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 08-11-2014, 11:36 PM:
 
To learn that a person who gave me inspiration and strength to keep from committing suicide has, himself, committed suicide is pretty damned depressing.
 

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Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 08-12-2014, 02:15 AM:
 
{quote]I know I'm going to come off as an ass but I'm going to say this anyway. I don't really care when celebrities die. It is sad when anybody dies.

Unless somebody is a friend or family it just doesn't matter to me. Especially in cases of celebrity drug overdoses or suicides.

I'm not happy to hear the news but I am indifferent. If some person 2 neighborhoods over dies it is the same thing to me as Robin Williams. [/quote]
You're not indifferent enough to stop from commenting on his passing.

I don't think I've been as upset about a celebrity passing before his time as much as I was when John Belushi died. Williams was the greatest comedic mind of his time, and his passing will leave a hole in the lives of many people, myself included.
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-12-2014, 02:24 AM:
 
Very sad to hear. I never cared for his spastic humor like in Good Morning Vietnam, but he really was a darn good actor capable of a wide range of genres. Just watch One Hour Photo or Insomnia.

quote: Bobby Henderson

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I didn't personally know Robin Williams, but I did see him in person at a live taping of the Late Night With David Letterman show back in 1989 when it was still on NBC. Williams was promoting Dead Poets Society.

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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Anyway, watching Williams live just in an interview was pretty amazing. The guy had such a lightning fast wit and imagination. He could literally walk out onto a stage with no material at all and still do a great show based off interacting with people in the audience.

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quote: Frank Angel

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I certainly can understand when people feel a personal connection with celebs, it happens with all of us, if it didn't, we wouldn't listen to their music or watch the movies they create or laugh at their jokes.

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quote: Steve Matz

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Just goes to show you that all the Money,success,etc. in the World and all the materialist things you possess won't make you neccessaryly Happy. Look at Howard Hughes. Had everything in the World but piece of Mind and Happiness;became an utter recluse and died a Lonely Man.

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quote: Richard Hamilton

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It sucks that he died, but I won't lose any seep tonight, unless the tv stations keep the story alive for the rest of the week.

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quote: Richard Hamilton

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You have a connection with their character in that role, not them in real life.

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...Which is why, when I meet a star like Robin Williams, I make it a point to remember two things.

1) You have thirty seconds or less to tell them how they inspire you or why you like their performance. They've probably heard it all, a thousand times, before.

2) Finish by politely shaking hands, or if the person is shy about contact, simply wave and say, "Thank you for being... (their character's name.)" The rationale being that we convey our understanding that the real-life person is different than the fictional character they portray on TV and in movies.

I find that the stars I have met were much friendlier when I spoke to them that way.
 

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Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 08-13-2014, 03:00 AM:
 

quote: Edward Havens was the last to post

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I know I'm going to come off as an ass but I'm going to say this anyway. I don't really care when celebrities die. It is sad when anybody dies.

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With all the shit going on in the world everyday, it's hard for me to really mourn the loss of a single person too.

Still, there is a distinct difference if a great artist dies. For me, it's not so much the personal aspect, but the simple fact that there will never be any more original work from this person. This, I guess, is a loss for society in a whole and also why it is still newsworthy and not just for the biggest fans.
 

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Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 08-13-2014, 07:12 AM:
 
Miss him. That said, he always had all the markings of a bi-polar person. Probably consumed him trying to remain high-functioning. Sad.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-13-2014, 10:25 AM:
 
The wife of one of my closest friends has a very severe form of bipolar disorder. If she is not on a spectrum of medication her doctor keeps adjusting she can go into a manic phase and get little if any sleep at all for several days. Days and nights would be spent on house cleaning marathons, cooking, running errands in the middle of the night and all sorts of other stuff. She would just go and go and go until she crashed. Near the end of the manic phase when her brain is almost cooking itself she would be hallucinating and doing illogical and dangerous things, like putting some non-food objects in the oven and setting it to cook. When she finally crashed she would sleep for long periods and be lethargic when awake. The cycle would go up and down like this without medication.

My friend's wife wasn't like this 10 years ago. She still had bipolar disorder, but the condition was more manageable, even without medication. She was an office manager at a chiropractic clinic doing all sorts of tedious book keeping stuff. When her disorder worsened she was no longer able to concentrate hard enough to do task oriented work. She had to quit. My friend & her had to fight for 3 years to get her on disability.

I'm only bringing up that personal case because there are lots of people who ignorantly think mental health problems like depression and bipolar disorder are excuses to be weak, lazy, do self-destructive things, etc. They act like the person suffering from the condition can merely re-adjust his attitude and snap out of it. If only it were that easy.

 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-13-2014, 08:25 PM:
 
If only such dolts could snap out of their moronic, Dark Ages notions that easily.

They call it mental illness for a reason -- no one CHOOSES to feel like crap, constantly depressed and in mental anguish, which is why so many fall into substance abuse because that alcohol or coke or oxycontin or whatever, at least it temporarily dulls the omnipresent pain. And if the pain is bad enough...i.e., if their illness is bad enough and painful enough, they won't care about whatever the nasty side-effects of those drugs will be sometime in the future.

And in the most extreme cases, a person in that much anguish can thing that suicide is a preferable alternative.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-13-2014, 11:50 PM:
 
Agreed. I think a lot of people who actually go through with committing suicide are in so much pain they're willing to do anything to make it stop, even if it means death. Some people find themselves in situations they don't see any way to survive.

Some people do act out and use a suicide attempt, or what amounts to a mock suicide attempt as a cry for help -or more selfishly as a manipulative plea for attention. Some of those attempts accidentally succeed, with the crying for help person dying. Obviously, Robin Williams was not in that camp. Unfortunately he really felt like he had to kill himself. He went through with it in a manner where there would be little if any chance for anyone to intervene.

One of my friends in high school killed himself on a September evening after school. He walked a few hundred yards into the woods out of sight from the Lyman Park base housing neighborhood in Quantico, VA. He hanged himself from a tree. I had just started my Junior year. I wasn't a total nerd, but had only a few of what I felt were real friends -friends you could be "uncool" around. He was one of them. It took a long time to get over the hurt and even anger about my friend's death. I learned he tried killing himself before using pills and went through some therapy for it. It wasn't until I went through some really painful life experiences that I felt like I could relate to why he ended it all.

A couple of media personalities made complete ignorant asses of themselves when throwing in their 2¢ about Robin Williams' death. One called him a coward for ending it, but promptly apologized and the apology sounded genuine. Another one turned it into a political football, attaching suicide and depression to a certain political party and ideology -showing he knows as little about mental health issues as he does in how the birth control pill works.

It's just this kind of crap that keeps the stigma alive in having anything less than perfect mental health. Suicide would probably make the top 10 causes of death list more often if it wasn't deliberately kept so hush hush. Suicide is obviously under-reported. Some suicides are ruled accidents either by mistake or for deliberate reasons, like protecting a person's reputation or making sure a life insurance policy pays off.

If anything good can come from Robin Williams' death it would be society getting a lot more serious about treating mental health issues. I'm not very optimistic that's going to happen since well known people have been killing themselves for a very long time. I remember when Freddie Prinze killed himself. He was a talented comedian and the star of the hit TV series Chico and the Man. He shot himself in the head. I was just a little kid at the time, but I remember it being all over the news. The 1970's didn't stop its "LET'S GET HIGH" culture over that.
 

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