Naming Robin Williams' greatest role is a nearly impossible task. He was in so many wonderful movies, and he put forth numerous outstanding performances, but by at least one metric, the answer to the question is easy. Williams best role was in Good Will Hunting, as that was the movie that won him his (long overdue) Academy Award. Now, one of his co-stars from that film, Stellan Skarsgård, has opened up about the comedic legend and why he had to be "funny to survive."
Many have spoken in the past about the incredible impact that Williams had on making Good Will Hunting the movie it became. During a recent screening of the film (via EW), Stellan Skarsgård talked about his experience off camera with Williams, which was apparently very different depending on how many people were around. The actor explained…
As a person, when you were alone with him, he was calm and he was nice, and he was lovely, and he could talk about anything. But then when a couple more people came to him, he suddenly would get up — to save himself, in a way. And I think it's a thing he had from school. He had to be funny to survive.
“Had to be funny to survive” is a pretty rough statement to hear, honestly. Most fans probably never saw Robin Williams as anything other than “on” as his interviews and talk show appearances frequently became a stream of consciousness madness as Williams fired off every joke he could think of. It often made for hilarious television. However, the way Stellan Skarsgård describes it makes it sound like Williams felt like he didn’t have a choice but to perform when people were around. He either wasn't able to turn it off or simply felt an obligation.
Williams' lack of “choice” in performing did lead to some interesting work on the set, however. Skarsgård indicates that if his co-star had a great idea for a scene, he felt compelled to try it, just to get it out. He also had a desire to do many more takes of any given scene, and the differences could be quite stark. He continued…
It was fantastic because, as you said, he wanted to do new takes. And he also had a thing that was kind of a necessity for him because… he'd get an idea about a joke, for instance, and he had to produce it and get it out of the body. He couldn't live with it inside. And I felt all the time that he had three parallel brains working, and very fast! The good thing was that he did different takes and they were really different. Some were very dark, and some were very funny. And all the other actors, we were hanging in there. We were playing different kinds of scenes with him.
Williams' desire to do multiple takes is well known. It's what led to a fabled, though not entirely accurately reported, NC-17 cut of Mrs. Doubtfire. He would throw every joke he had to see what worked.
Traditionally, multiple takes of a scene are done just to make sure that all bases are covered or that the best possible performance gets captured. The Dead Poets Society star, however, would drastically change his performance between takes, which in turn forced his co-stars to react differently as well. Williams, who was as good at dark roles as he was comedy, would sometimes try wildly different takes on his own performance. Skarsgård indicates that director Gus Van Sant (who was also at the screening) had so many very different Williams performances that the role could have been edited together in any number of ways.
Good Will Hunting didn’t win an Oscar in 1998 for Best Film Editing (though it was nominated), but perhaps it should have, considering the movie had so many scenes to choose from, and found the right ones to make Good Will Hunting a fantastic film.
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