Court Jesters: Robin Williams, Gene Wilder and Bill Murray

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(cassette squealing) (light music) - I was miscast in my first big part on Broadway. One night after a show, there was Mel Brooks wearing a merchant marine pea jacket. He looked striking in it. I said, hello, hello, how nice to meet you. My goodness, you look so wonderful in that pea jacket. He said, yeah, they used to call them urine jackets, but they didn't sell. (audience laughs) When I was seven and a half, or eight years old, my mother had a heart attack. This heavy-set doctor brought her home, told her some things while she was lying in bed, and them came out to see me. And he grabbed me by the arm, it was summer, hot day, and the sweat was dripping off of his face and falling onto my cheeks. He said, "Don't ever get angry with your mother, "because you might kill her." (audience laughs) He was not very psychologically oriented. (audience laughs) But the other thing he said was, "Try to make her laugh." And that was a huge thing, although I didn't realize it at the time. For the first time in my life I tried consciously to make someone else laugh. I knew I was very successful when she'd run to the bathroom and say, "Now look what you've made me do." When you please your mother by doing something it gives you confidence that you can please other people. And I think that's where the courage to make people laugh came from. But I didn't want to be a comedian. I wanted to be an actor, maybe a comic actor, but an actor. And that's what got me into acting, this putting on an act because in life I wasn't funny. I felt onstage, or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to, I was free. (upbeat music) When I was 18, and the hormones were raging, and I was at school, University of Iowa, I suddenly felt the overwhelming compulsion to pray. And I must've prayed for 20 minutes or so. I didn't know what I was praying about, but I was feeling guilty about something. The next day or two it was 30 minutes, and then it was an hour, then two hours. To skip ahead to the end of the seven and a half years of analysis, I was so afraid to feel free to enjoy my own life if my mother was sick and suffering every day of hers, and I didn't think I had the right. If you ask an actor why do you want to act, I don't think most of them know the real reasons. After seven and a half years of analysis I have a fairly good idea why. (audience laughs) My analyst said, "It's better than running around naked "in Central Park, isn't it?" (audience laughs) (light orchestral music) I was offered the part of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and when the director came to my house I said, "Well, I like the script except "when the audience sees Willy Wonka for the first time "I wanna come out of the door with a cane "and limp my way to the crowd." And they're all, "Oh, Willy Wonka, he's a cripple. "Oh my god, who thought, I never knew this." And they quiet down, quiet down, quiet down, and then Willy Wonka's cane gets stuck in a brick, and he starts to fall forward, and he does a forward somersault then jumps up, and the crowd cheers and applauds. And the director said, "What do you wanna do that for?" (audience laughs) And I said, "Because from that time on, "no one will know whether I'm lying or telling the truth." And he said, "You mean if I say no, you won't do the picture?" I said, "I'm afraid that's the truth." (audience laughs) (light orchestral music) (cassette squealing) - You know what the format is with this interview? - It's not Q and A? - It is. - [Bill] Oh shit. Felicia! - What do you got against Q and A? - [Felicia] Yeah? - Can you make some more coffee? I had to do one the other day and I was a little sloppy for it. And I saw this guy going... Just realizing he would have to make me sound coherent. (T.J. laughs) How'd you get that away from me? Get out of here. That's my mopping my brow material. What the hell? These were Italian trousers. (growls) Jackie, can you take this dog away? (upbeat music) I realize it's impossible to have any sympathy, true sympathy, for people that are famous. People usually go through a bad period when they first get successful. When you're new, when your hot things go wrong. So you're not really used to all the attention, people treat you differently. And what happens is you start taking that seriously and then you start becoming an asshole, then they treat you like an asshole. - [T.J.] Was there a period like that for you? When things were a little out of control? - Right now. (upbeat music) One of my favorite things used to be when in traffic in New York, and there's a Cadillac honking or something, Mercedes honking, I used to do this all the time before I was famous, I would jump in the middle of the street and say "Excuse me there's a Mercedes "that's gotta get through here." You know and I would push people outta the way "Get outta the way! "Let him through!" Smacking their cars and stuff. Just like, whack, you know you just jump into it. And you can't do it because now when you do it and they go "Hey, hey, hello, hey, Meatballs." And the whole thing is lost, the point you were trying to make or whatever fun you were trying to have is sort of on your cock. So the money thing is sort of the Elvis Presley thing of buying your mother a car is great. My mother has learned how to spend money. She used to call and say, "Bill, we really need a boiler." Just for the hell of it I would say, "Well, why don't you shop around and see which one. "Don't blow a lot of money, just get a bargain." Like a boiler in the house to keep the house in the winter in Chicago. So finally I bought her an American Express card. And the numbers she puts up are geometric, every year. I mean, the first year, I think, she bought a tow when her car broke down. The second year she went to dinner on her birthday or something. The third year, she rented a condo in Florida for the winter, and took a couple of cousins, some friends down. So, she's figured it out. - [T.J.] Wow. - She had nine kids. Technically she could commit murder and get away with it, so whatever numbers she runs up on me is not even a misdemeanor. I know it could have been anybody, it's just a weird, lucky thing, really. Could have been any actor. There are a lot of actors that are more talented than me at Second City who quit it before they even got to a paying status. Weird luck. I had no other options. I'm still just like a punk kid really. I'm just an obnoxious guy who can make it appear charming. That's what they pay me to do. (upbeat music) I started going through some sort of spiritual change in the late 70s where I sort of saw there was some other life to live. It changed the way that I worked just having a different presence and a different attention. That's the reason I'm not the one that's dead. Because the attraction of the fast life is very powerful. Even today I could go at any time. Something wild could happen to anybody. And I caution anybody who walks down the street to settle your accounts before you leave the house everyday. (upbeat music) The only good thing about fame that I've gotten is I've gotten out of a couple of speeding tickets. I've gotten into a restaurant when I didn't have a suit and tie on. That's really about it. And you can talk to girls more easily. They will talk to you. You don't necessarily do any better with them. But they will talk to you. It's almost like being in the ladies room sometimes because they feel comfortable with you and they will say a lot of things they wouldn't talk to anybody they would think of as a potential suitor. They think of you as some freak. You may as well have an elephant on a rope, you know, for the way they deal with you. (upbeat music) (tape squealing) - [Lawrence] In the year 2020 you'll be 70 years old. - Oh my god. - [Lawrence] What will the world be like then? - It'll be one giant film corporation. There be no longer any governments. It'll be one nation, under God, indivisible, with circuits and VCRs for everyone. (Lawrence laughs) I don't know, 2020. There'll be cold-fusion. We'll actually be able to power our cars with our own feces. That's right, the emissions problem will be a little intense but just light a match. (upbeat music) Things that I see in the future, I see it could be quite incredible if we can master a few problems, like the air and the water thing might be nice. I see governments dissolving. These barriers are all falling down for economic reasons. They're all so inter bound. That's why when one market crashes it's almost like a world stock market. And this is a very long economic explanation something I haven't got a fucking clue about. (Lawrence laughs) - [Lawrence] Do you think that there's a role of the artist in society? - [Robin] Yeah, for a comic especially. To constantly never let it take itself seriously, to play with it, to fuck with the parameters. The premise that comedy is there to basically show we fart, we laugh, to make us realize we still are part animal. As intellectual as we think we are, you still trip, we still have human foibles, sexuality, all the different things to still make you aware of your humanity. And that's what we're supposed to do. It's just to keep us awake. Cut through the shit, peel off the mask and go, "Oh, you got a big nose." Or put on the big nose and make you realize, wait a minute, I don't have a big nose. All that stuff so you don't take yourself seriously and destroy the species. (upbeat music) - [Lawrence] You ever worry about running out of material or ideas? - [Robin] No, there's a world out there. Open a window and it's there. (upbeat music) Sex, if you view sex just go, "You look pretty ridiculous." Even the face. The face you make when you have an orgasm is pretty much (laughs) no one looks... Probably even Warren Beatty gets that kind of. (yells orgasmically). Everyone looks pretty fucking stupid at the moment they fire the spooge. (imitates animal noises) You get like the wind tunnel face. (yells) Oh baby, baby, baby. Oh baby. Oh baby, baby. Baby, baby, baby. Everything kind of goes (imitates farting). It's nature going, "You look like an animal." It's that one thing you got to know. You look a little silly. I don't care what type of lighting you use, whatever strap-on attachments, you still sometimes look like a poodle and someone's gonna get a fire hose. These are the things you wonder. (upbeat music) - [Lawrence] Let me ask yo about birth as a topic. You did do the birth of all three of your children? - I just remember it was like a magic act. All of a sudden they put up this little tent, and the next thing I heard this (gurgles). And they don't scream the first few seconds, they just kinda go, hey! Wait! It's cold! It's very cold! Then they wash them off and they suture them, and they put those little yarmulkes on, the little Teamster hat. The little longshoreman cap. Yo dad, yo. Excuse me. You want me to unload this ship? And then they handed her to me. (upbeat music) - [Lawrence] I don't think I asked you about your faults, if you have any and what they are. - [Robin] In comedy, not pursing things. Committing to an idea and going, have you taken it to its fullest extent? Because it started when I first started performing it was all kind of jumping around. Explore an idea until you've exhausted it. Really go to all the different parameters of it. I think another one is not working so much. (laughs) This is very interesting, look at what's bad about-- - [Lawrence] What's bad, yeah. - [Robin] Look in the mirror and go, nostril hair, the fact that I braid them. (Lawrence laughs) Sometimes, you know, keeping track of people. It's just a weird combination of worrying so much about the outside world and not... You have to be more aware of the inner circle, the folks that matter. It comes from performing, I always wanna make sure that everyone in the audience is taken care of. That constant desire to please all the time. That can get you in some shit. (upbeat music) - [Lawrence] You have or ever make any New Year's resolutions? - I haven't in a while. I haven't made any in, I think, since I was about a kid. I used to give up a lot of things for Lent too. Then I still got hairy. (Lawrence laughs) (upbeat Jazz music) (cassette squealing)
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Channel: Blank on Blank
Views: 42,573
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Bill Murray, Ghostbusters, Caddyshack, Willy Wonka, Robin Williams, Good Will Hunting
Id: itC4IBGmTUQ
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)
Published: Wed Jun 14 2017
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