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INTRODUCTION

The first time I ever heard the name Robin Williams was in September 1978 while I was on assignment for Time magazine in Thurmont, Maryland covering the historic peace meetings at Camp David with President Carter, Israeli Premier Menachem Begin, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

During the endless waiting around for a photo op, one of the photographers started talking about this crazy guy, Robin Williams, who was in a new TV show called Mork and Mindy. He kept raving about how funny this character Mork was and how he did this “nanu-nanu” thing and kept saying the most off-the-wall stuff. Another photographer quickly seconded the motion, telling everyone that it was the funniest program he had ever watched. Being a huge fan of comedy who had enjoyed a brief moment doing stand-up during my “formative” years (that would be the hazy days of the late ‘60s), I made sure I was in front of my television the next week to catch the show. It had me laughing almost the entire time and I became a major Robin Williams fan. I had never seen anyone like him before and had never laughed so hard in my life.

Eight years later, in 1986, I found myself standing at the curb of the US Airways passenger pickup area at the Pittsburgh Airport waiting to meet Robin Williams. Newsweek had sent me on assignment to shoot photographs for a cover story by their film critic, David Ansen, titled “Funny Man: The Comic Genius of Robin Williams.” I didn’t know it at the time, but Robin’s brilliant performance co-hosting the Oscars that year was the catalyst for the story.

Right on time, the car I was looking for pulled up to the curb, and there, sitting on the passenger side riding shotgun, was a smiling Robin Williams. I threw my bags into the empty trunk of the rental car and hopped into the backseat. Both Robin and David Steinberg, his manager, quickly turned around to shake hands and say hello. As we pulled away into the traffic, it seemed completely surreal that I was now “on tour” with Robin Williams.

A few moments later, David glanced at Robin and asked if he had heard that a certain show-biz acquaintance of theirs had died the day before. Robin looked straight ahead and said in a deadpan tone, “Ahhh death . . . nature’s way of saying, ‘check please!’” I immediately burst out laughing, as much by his delivery as by the joke itself. Robin turned around and smiled, apparently pleased that he had me laughing. A while later, I said something completely inane about Ronald Reagan and Robin let out that staccato, protracted laugh which I soon learned is what he always did when he found something really funny. I figured we were off to a good start, but I knew better than to push my luck on the comedic front. I kept hearing in my head the standard admonition from countless TV shows and ads before something dangerous was about to be shown: “Don’t try this at home, folks.”

As we drove toward the hotel on that day thirty years ago, I never could have guessed that it was the beginning of a ride that would span three decades and become the most extraordinary trip of my life. Looking back, it was one of those rare times when a chance meeting unexpectedly grows into a real friendship. Robin and I simply hit it off from the start and everything progressed from there. We were always comfortable in each other’s company, and even when months would go by without us seeing each other, the minute we met up again, we picked up right where we had left off.

I was never one of Robin’s closest friends like Billy Crystal, Bobcat Goldthwait, or Eric Idle. However, over the years, when not laughing about something or other, Robin and I did manage to get in quite a few serious, in-depth conversations about his business and my business, family, politics, friends, and the state of the world. To be sure, if Robin and Marsha hadn’t respected my work and trusted me as a friend, this book would never exist. I will always be grateful to them for letting me hitch a ride on Robin’s fascinating, roller-coaster life and, most importantly, for giving me the opportunity to photograph it without restriction.

I‘m not a reporter in the conventional sense. As a photojournalist, I am a self-proclaimed “trained professional observer.” What I have written about in this book comes from personal observations and shared experiences with Robin.

Anyone who knew Robin will tell you that the first question someone would usually ask if they found out you were Robin’s friend was something like: “Is he ‘on’ all the time?” or “Is he always that wound up (crazy, manic, etc.)?” The answer, of course, is a definite no, as the photographs in these pages make clear.

Robin was like anybody else who works hard at what they do. He needed time for rest, relaxation, and recuperation. The only difference was that he needed it more than most. The amount of energy he expended performing was often otherworldly, as anyone could attest after watching his HBO specials or attending his stand-up shows or comedy club surprise appearances (or even having a long dinner with him).

On stage there was always a small table with a stack of white hand towels and rows of bottled water to keep Robin semi-dry and hydrated. After he finished a live performance, he would come offstage totally drenched, his shirt clinging to his skin. He would immediately grab a towel and started drying himself as he drank bottled water and headed straight for his dressing room. The first thing he did when he walked in was to deposit his soaked shirt into a plastic bag held open for him by his longtime personal assistant Rebecca Erwin Spencer. The shirt would later be sent out to the dry cleaner (but not before Rebecca tossed it in the shower).

For Robin’s downtime, he had private spaces in his home in San Francisco and at his ranch in Napa where he could completely withdraw from everything and everyone. In San Francisco his retreat was a hidden room behind a movable bookcase, while in Napa, it was a separate watchtower with its own staircase. Inside were computers, monster models, Star Wars spaceships, rows and rows of toy soldiers, and stacks of video games. There was also invariably a pile of scripts.

NEWSWEEK COVER SHOOT, LOS ANGELES, 1986

On one visit in 1993, I walked into his lair in San Francisco and saw a military video game on his computer screen. He explained that it was a new air-to-air combat game with the latest US and Soviet fighter jets and that he had just finished an aerial dogfight with Steven Spielberg, who was in Los Angeles. Robin smiled, and proudly said he’d smoked him.

As long as I knew him, Robin was in love with video games, and took them seriously. Sometimes he would even drive over to Electronic Arts and meet his friend Bing Gordon, the Chief Creative Officer, to beta test new products (pages 178–179). When Robin was engrossed in any action video game, you quickly learned that the area around him became a “no-fly” zone. I made the mistake of penetrating his air space on more than one occasion and got scorched.

Robin had an incredible number of friends who were highly accomplished in a wide variety of fields, not just in the entertainment business. He knew glassblowers and painters, politicians and authors, scientists and scholars, athletes and musicians. Whenever I would meet up with Robin in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or just about anywhere, I would be introduced to an array of fascinating and intriguing people, a lot of them famous, but many I had never heard of.

That’s how I wound up meeting Oliver Sacks for dinner one night in Robin’s suite at the Carlyle while Robin was shooting Awakenings. I had no idea who he was, but by the end of the meal I was as captivated by Oliver Sacks as Robin, who was playing him in the movie. Another time at a studio shoot in New York for a Premiere cover to coincide with the release of Good Morning Vietnam, Robin introduced me to a petite, older woman named Lillian Ross, who had a reporter’s notepad and pen in hand. I wasn’t familiar with her, but during a break, Robin informed me of her legendary status and stellar reputation as a writer. She was doing a piece on him for The New Yorker. As the years passed, I would see Lillian with Robin at various events and family gatherings, and they became good friends. She found him fascinating, but she also liked to laugh, and Robin never disappointed in that department.

That was the thing about Robin that seemed so obvious, but most everybody took for granted, including me. You were really lucky to be around him because at some point you knew you were going to laugh your ass off. And that was a real gift from him. When Robin was riffing, it became a transcendent experience for anyone lucky enough to be within earshot. Even from long distance Robin could throw you a good laugh, especially if something was going south in your life. Right after he heard about my divorce in 1999, he gave me a call and proceeded to tell me in an earnest voice how sorry he was for me and also for my wife. Then he paused a beat and asked, “Would it be OK if I slept with her?”

ELOPEMENT DINNER PARTY, NEW YORK, 1988

As private a person as Robin could be, out in public or in private settings, he was always approachable. He had a well-deserved reputation for being down to earth and nice to everyone regardless of their economic or social status and ethnicity. I never saw him say no to anyone who asked him for an autograph, except one time in a restaurant when he had a fork full of food halfway into his mouth and was interrupted by a fan who wanted his autograph. Robin put down his fork and politely told the lady that he couldn’t do it just then because he was eating (in case she hadn’t noticed), but promised to do it before he left, which he did.

Every professional photographer I ever spoke to who had worked with Robin always said the same thing: how easy he was to get along with and what a great guy he was. And of course they all had fun hanging with him. Robin liked photographers, and from time to time on a studio shoot, he would entertain everyone by putting on his best Annie Leibovitz impersonation, pretending to be asking him to go along with some crazy setup, like hanging by his legs nude from a tree branch with a banana in his mouth.

Everybody knows that Robin was an incredibly generous man who gave both his time and his money to various public causes and charities. I also saw the small ways he showed his generosity. There never was a time when I was with Robin that he didn’t stop for a panhandler or a homeless person and hand them some money. When a mutual friend of ours came down with a tropical disease while traveling in Asia, Robin flew her first class back to San Francisco where she could get the proper treatment. When a good friend of his from Julliard needed money to finish his feature film, Robin lent a financial hand. When a local teaching hospital was in need of a piece of medical equipment, Robin and his wife Marsha quietly bought it for them. He once offered to charter a jet for me so I could get home in time to be with a terminally ill family member. The list goes on and on.

I’ll never forget what Robin did for me when I eloped in October 1988. When I called him that afternoon from DC to tell him that I had just gone down to city hall and tied the knot, he immediately said I had to fly up to New York that afternoon so we could have a celebration dinner with some of my friends who lived in the city. The timing was perfect, he said, because it was a Monday night and the play he was doing with Steve Martin, Waiting For Godot, was dark. Amazingly, everything came together without a hitch. We had a rollicking dinner party for sixteen with Robin Williams as the entertainment. After dinner he and Marsha surprised my wife and me by putting us up at the Carlyle for the night with a great bottle of chilled champagne waiting in the room.

Less than a year later, I was able to repay Robin in a much smaller way. He and Marsha were getting married in Lake Tahoe in a private ceremony with only a small number of their good friends in attendance. I had a dual role as guest and wedding photographer and took the photographs of their late afternoon ceremony on a wooded path by the lake. Afterward, there was a fabulous dinner then gambling late into the night. I woke up early the next morning and was the first person in the door when the local one-hour photo place opened. During the group breakfast, I hustled back to the photo store and picked up the envelope of color photos and negatives. When I said good-bye to Robin and Marsha a few minutes later, I handed them their wedding present. They were genuinely surprised and appreciative that I’d managed such a quick turnaround (this was way before the instant digital era). As my taxi pulled away, I watched them standing on the sidewalk looking animated as they checked out their one-hour wedding album.

ON THE SET OF JAKOB THE LIAR, PIOTROKOV, POLAND, 1997 ©ROBERT STALEY

It should not come as a surprise that artists like Robin are sensitive individuals. Behind all the projected stage and film confidence, there is always a degree of insecurity, and Robin was certainly no exception. There were times, especially having to do with the entertainment business side of his life, that I saw genuine disappointment, anger, or sadness over something that was going on in his career.

The worst episode that I remember was in 1988 as Robin’s film career was taking off. He told me the story right after it happened. He was sent a script that he absolutely had to read over the weekend to give the studio an up or down answer by Monday morning. He was also told that no other A-list actors would see the script until he weighed in on whether he wanted this highly coveted role. At the end of the weekend, Robin’s answer was an enthusiastic yes, and he waited for confirmation. It never came. Unbeknownst to him, two other top-tier stars had also been given the script over the same weekend. The movie was Batman and the part was The Joker. Jack Nicholson got the role.

Sure, Robin was angry, but the hurt and bewilderment in his voice as he talked to me about it was palpable. He couldn’t fathom that he’d been lied to and set up like that. I’m sure that episodes like this one help explain why Robin lived in San Francisco, putting a lot of distance between himself and Hollywood.

Whenever I was in San Francisco with Robin, I was amazed that he could walk around in public and no one bothered him, other than to wave or say hello. When he went to Bike Odyssey in Sausalito, the sales people and the mechanics all knew him and would come over to talk. He was always greeted warmly by the proprietor of Heroes Club: The Art of Toys on Clement, where Robin bought Star Wars models and Godzilla monsters among other toys that he collected. They knew him at The Cheese Steak Shop on Divisadero, where he would occasionally take me for a Philly cheesesteak. San Francisco was home to him. He loved the city and the city loved him back.

For Robin, the best part of being home in San Francisco was that he was able to spend time with his kids—Zak, Zelda, and Cody. Nothing lit up Robin’s face more or gave him as much joy and relaxation as when he was around his children—whether it was putting a puzzle together with Zelda at the kitchen table, playing video games with Cody in the kids’ playroom, or snowboarding with Zak at Lake Tahoe. They relished their time with Robin, but unfortunately, his hectic schedule and location shoots on films meant he was away much more than he wanted. That’s why he would lobby for his films to be shot in the Bay Area, which is what happened with Mrs. Doubtfire, Bicentennial Man, and Flubber, among others. Even though he was on set all day, he was home every night. Gradually, as his kids grew older, they came to realize that they had to share their father with the rest of the world.

ROBIN PLAYS PHOTO JOURNALIST, FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY PARTY, LOS ANGELES, 1997 ©DIRCK HALSTEAD

Robin was a lucky man in many ways. He was extraordinarily talented. He had the love of his family and friends. He reached the heights of his profession and was richly rewarded, both financially and with prestigious recognition. He traveled the world and was loved by millions. He lived to make people laugh and succeeded at it like no one before him.

I was lucky just to be his friend.

ENDNOTE

I had always thought that when I was eighty-four and Robin was eighty, we would sit down someplace and collaborate on a book about the golden years of his career. He would look at my photographs and then reminisce about the events and his feelings at the time. Unfortunately, that book was never to be.

It took me a long time after his death to decide what I should do with all the photographs I had of Robin, both public and private, many of them never published. It made no sense to sit on them given the millions of fans he had around the world who would love to see more of Robin, especially between two covers in a book they could pick up over and over and keep around for years.

I truly believe that Robin would have found this book to be an accurate and singularly realistic “portrait” of his life during some of his most productive and joyous years. Most importantly, I hope Robin would have found this book to be a worthy representation of himself—for his family, his many friends and admirers, and most of all for his millions of fans.

Arthur Grace

Los Angeles

February 2016

IN PERFORMANCE DURING STAND-UP SHOW, ON TOUR, 1986

MUGGING FOR THE CAMERA IN HIS DRESSING ROOM BEFORE STAND-UP SHOW, 1986

ALONE IN HIS DRESSING ROOM BEFORE GETTING DRESSED FOR HIS SHOW, 1986

IN PERFORMANCE DURING STAND-UP SHOW, 1986

RESTING IN HIS DRESSING ROOM MOMENTS AFTER COMING OFF STAGE, 1986

LAUGHING WITH MEMBERS OF HIS ROAD ENTOURAGE OUTSIDE AIRLINE TERMINAL, 1986

SLEEPING ON PROP PLANE TO CHICAGO, 1986

ON THE TARMAC IN CHICAGO WITH FELLOW PASSENGERS, 1986

SIGNING AUTOGRAPHS AFTER HIS SHOW, 1986

CHECKING HIMSELF OUT IN HIS DRESSING ROOM PRIOR TO PERFORMANCE, 1986

IN PERFORMANCE, 1986

BACKSTAGE WITH SHOW PROP AFTER PERFORMANCE, 1986

IN DRESSING ROOM WATERING A POTTED PLANT WITH A SQUIRT GUN AFTER HIS SHOW, 1986

JOKING WITH SECURITY DETAIL OF LOCAL POLICE, 1986