7 Things We Learned From HBO Documentary Williams | Place

Filmmaker Marina Zenovich, who also made films about Roman Polanski and Richard Pryor, interviews several of his high-profile friends like Billy Crystal, David Letterman and Whoopi Goldberg, as well as his first wife, Valerie Velardi, and one of his children, Zak Williams.

Most of the two hours of the film are told through audio clips of interviews with Williams

. ] The documentary does not linger very long on the exact circumstances of Williams' death in 2014. According to an essay by his wife, Susan Schneider Williams (who is not in the film), Williams had Lewy's disease and died of suicide "at the end of an intense, confusing and relatively quick persecution at the hand of the symptoms of this disease and pathology."

On the contrary, several people in the documentary note that "the spark was gone from his eye" during the time Williams was working on his 2013 sitcom, "The Crazy Ones". Crystal remembers seeing Williams for the last time when he revealed that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. "When he told me, I never heard Robin be afraid except for this moment," says Crystal.

Here are five other things we learned from "Come Inside My Mind":

– He was a classic actor Williams first realized the power of comedy when his father, who did not laugh easily , "lost" watching Jonathan Winters in "The Tonight Show".

Improvisation theater because it was the only course offered to his college of all men who also had female students. Williams then went on to join Julliard in New York, and plunged into comedy in California after he could not get a serious acting job.

In his first paid comedy concert, the microphone is dead. So he went straight to the public, doing crowd work and improvising songs. Thanks to his theatrical training, he could project his voice without problem

. Many years later, Williams was exposing his actor registry with dramatic roles in which he was slowing down and exposing his vulnerability.

– David Letterman was suspicious at first

Williams first met David Letterman in the comic scene of Los Angeles in the 1970s. The two will come together as they get older.

"When we saw Robin for the first time, we were skeptical of a project to keep his eye on him," Letterman recalls. "In my head, the first look at him was that he could fly because of energy, it was like watching an experiment. "

– He made a big break thanks to" Star Wars "and a child of 8 years.

The creator of "Happy Days", Gary Marshall, noticed that his 8-year-old son, Scott, was no longer watching his TV show. "There is no astronaut" , recalls Scott Marshall in the movie.

So, dad Marshall asked the writers to work in a space character. Scott's aunt, Ronnie, was in charge of casting and suggested a street artist comic for the role.And boom: Williams came to "Happy Days" as Mork, an episode that earned a standing ovation from the studio audience.

Finally, ABC has reunited a pilot by combining the Mork episode with another failed television show, and "Mork and Mindy" was born.

– It's the reason behind the four-camera sitcom

Before Williams starred in "Mork and Mindy", multi-camera sitcoms relied on three cameras. But then came this kinetic actor who ran around the stage and improvised, and the cameramen failed to capture the antics that came when he did not reach his predetermined markings.

Gary Marshall has found a solution: Add a fourth almost hand-held camera to follow Williams. Since then, four cameras have become the norm for sitcoms.

– The death of John Belushi had a huge impact on him

Williams was one of three people with the famous Belushi the night he died after an overdose of cocaine and heroin .

According to the documentary, Williams learned that Belushi died the next day on the set of "Mork and Mindy."

His sudden death led to Williams, who had been drinking and drinking drugs, "Here's a guy who was a beast, who could do anything and he left," says Williams

– He left voicemails hilarious to Billy Crystal

Perhaps the most intimate aspects of documentary. are the stories of Williams' close friends and family members His friendship with Crystal began in New York after the comedian had Williams's baby arrested.

"Everyone wanted something from him," says Crystal. "I had no agenda, I just loved it." Over the years, Williams was calling Crystal in character, as the time he called Ronald Reagan while Crystal was watching the funeral of the former president. The film includes old voice messages from Williams performing for an audience: his friend

– Comedy was a refuge, and an addiction

One of the sons of the documentary is why comedy has become so important for Williams.

After the cancellation of "Mork and Mindy", Williams returns to stand-up comedy as a refuge and survival mechanism. Even on serious movie sets, like "One Hour Photo", Williams had to crack costars.

"The urge to be funny and make people laugh was so innate in him and almost like breathing for him, that he was not doing it." To get him out of his system , he would have mismanaged his performance, "says director Mark Romanek." So I let him go as long as it was reasonable for the time of day, just to get him out of his system. "

" It's a very powerful thing for a lot of comedians. Crystal adds, "This acceptance, this thrill, is really hard to replace with anything else."