Robin Williams: Full Tilt Bozo
This story originally appeared in the August 23rd, 1979 issue of Rolling Stone.
There is a deceptive air of chaos at the Mork & Mindy rehearsal. Robin Williams grabs his crotch and stomps around the room, mocking himself in a street-kid growl: “I gotcha shazbot, right here, buddy. Yeah, here’s your na-noo na-noo.” Rookie actor Jay Thomas returns the salute, and they play dueling punks for a minute: then Thomas pivots to face the full-length mirror and kisses his image. Tom Poston, who plays a greeting card writer named Bickley, dozes behind a stack of pink scripts, waking up long enough to deliver a sardonic comment or two. Pam Dawber (Mindy) fights the boredom with long phone calls.
This morning’s rehearsal, for obscure reasons, has been shunted from the usual Mork studio to a smoke-poisoned, fluorescent-lit hall in Paramount’s Los Angeles complex. The shift in locale is a hardship, because this episode will introduce a new set and two new characters – Remo DaVinci (Thomas) and his sister Jean (Gena Hecht). The DaVincis are transplanted New Yorkers who open a delicatessen in Boulder, Colorado, where Mork and Mindy live.
Director Howard Storm paces the floor, blocking the first deli scene. As he notices Williams and Thomas sitting together, he becomes a Little Italy restaurateur: “Whatzit, jus’ da two a yiz?” A minute later Robin is crouching outside the make-believe door, wailing pitifully, and Storm’s an old Jewish shopkeeper: “Go avay from here, dis is a place of beeznis, you kids.” Storm, a comedian himself, permits a free play of spontaneity on the set, but he calibrates his voice to stern levels when things begin to unravel. Robin brings out the loon in his coworkers, and a little taste of it can intoxicate some actors to the point where they don’t function well. Having directed most of the Mark episodes. Storm knows where to draw the line.
It’s Monday and the script’s raw; you can almost see the thumbprints of the writers on each page. The first draft contains a few snappy jokes, but mostly lackluster one-liners. The initial run-through is partly designed to pinpoint dialogue problems so that the most glaring ones can be repaired.
Script in hand, the actors begin the rehearsal. In each episode, Mork from the planet Ork discovers some new aspect of human behavior. In this show, he watches Remo fight with his sister. Mork doesn’t understand the purpose of arguments, but envies the warmth of the DaVincis’ reconciliation, so he decides to start a fight with Mindy in hopes of some vague erotic payoff. (Robin is the key ingredient, and without his contributions, all synopses of the show would inevitably sound like TV Guide encapsulations: “Watch the fun when Gilligan mistakes his nose for a nearby island and steers his canoe into his jugular vein!”) But it’s not a bad script premise, and the put-downs written for Williams are funny: “Sorry, kids, we can’t go to the zoo. Mindy ate all the endangered species.” But Pam Dawber is saddled with bad rejoinders. She has trouble hiding her frustration, and finally tucks the script against her hip and announces, “I can’t say these lines!”
“It’s all right, Pam,” the director soothes, “we’ll get them to plug in some zingers.” In television, this promise usually rivals the fabled assurance that “your check is in the mail,” but on the Mork set, there’s an attempt to patch up script holes right on the spot. Rehearsal stops while Robin suggests avenues of insult. “Maybe she could make fun of my hair,” he says, faking a grab at Dawber’s behind, which starts her giggling. It’s a unique work situation. Robin’s not only given a license to improvise that is unheard of in sitcoms, but he also takes partial responsibility for keeping the ensemble stimulated. His lunacy is balanced with theatrical smarts, and with director Storm overseeing it all, the cast gets through another tight squeeze.
(Later that night at dinner, Williams reflects on the rehearsal between forkfulls of zucchini. “We’re fighting through a script that has certain flaws,” he says, “and I want to make sure we don’t restrict ourselves, especially since we’re trying to create two new characters. I want to make sure they’re not just stereotyped New York Italians. The actors can do it – they’re both terrific – and I want to help them expand if I can.” Since he’s only starting the second year of an ironclad five-year contract with Paramount, Williams strives to keep the show fresh. “The first year of any show is mostly shooting in the dark,” he explains.)
While the Mork staff retools the script, Williams, having just completed six hours of rehearsal, heads for the Paramount gym, where he’s being drilled in acrobatics and dance for his upcoming title role in the film Popeye. Driving across the lot, he steers his white sports car past an immense oil painting of the sky. “This is where old clouds go to die,” Robin says, embodying the painted clouds as Jewish retirees: “Come on, ve’ll hang in deh sky, maybe float a little bit.”
The gym, hidden behind an old feed-store facade on an abandoned western set, has the gritty aura of a boxer’s hangout – sickly green walls, girlie calendars, air permeated with the sweat of generations of actors. Inside, Robin changes into workout clothes, completes a rapid-fire series of cartwheels, then steadies himself. He blinks twice. His face, he kind for which words like scamp and rapscallion are coined, goes red. After a while the gym stops whirling. “I’m fine,” he says to his trainer, Lou Wills, who grips him by the shoulders. “Let’s keep going.”
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