“Each film has had its endearing moments”: Vincent Canby, “Film: ‘Good Morning, Vietnam,’” New York Times, December 23, 1987.
“so blazingly brilliant that he detonates the center”: Michael Wilmington, “Movie Review: Robin Williams Is Solid Gold as the Deejay in ‘Good Morning, Vietnam,’” Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1987.
“Why don’t we just check and see how the movie’s doing?”: Author interview with Barry Levinson.
Robin had a number one movie: Box Office Mojo, http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=goodmorningvietnam.htm.
“It was a huge relief for him”: Author interview with Barry Levinson.
“open-heart surgery in installments”: Glenn Collins, “In Robin Williams’s World, Delight Is a Many-Sided Thing,” New York Times, January 25, 1988.
“the type that goes, ‘I am now at one with myself’”: Zehme, “Robin Williams: The Rolling Stone Interview.”
Oprah Winfrey asked him … if he had any insecurities: The Oprah Winfrey Show, January 13, 1988.
a future, sixty-year-old version of himself: Saturday Night Live, season 13, episode 9, January 23, 1988.
CHAPTER 11. O CAPTAIN!
effusive notes of congratulations: RWC, box 13, folder 3.
Steven Spielberg wrote to thank Robin: RWC, box 13, folder 13.
It remained the number one motion picture at the box office: Box Office Mojo, http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=goodmorningvietnam.htm.
it spent thirty-five weeks on the Billboard chart: Billboard, April 2, 1988. Archived at http://www.billboard.com/charts/billboard-200/1988-04-02.
sold more than one million copies: Archived at https://www.riaa.com/gold-platinum/?tab_active=default-award&se=good+morning+vietnam#search_section.
another Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album: Associated Press, “A List of Winning Music-Makers,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 23, 1989.
Charles Joffe decided to retire: Heller, “The King of Comedy.”
the only Oscar nomination that Good Morning, Vietnam would receive: Michael Cieply, “No Oscars for U.S. Directors,” Los Angeles Times, February 17, 2017.
a feature article in People magazine: Darrach, “A Comic’s Crisis of the Heart.”
“I was so angry and horrified”: Grobel, “Robin Williams: The Playboy Interview.”
Gene Siskel … wrote to him: RWC, box 13, folder 3.
Robin and Valerie publicly announced in a statement: United Press International, “Williams, Wife to End Marriage,” Fort Myers (FL) News-Press, April 1, 1988.
“That award was so close! All those calls to Entertainment Tonight”: 60th Academy Awards, ABC, April 11, 1988. Archived at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eZliygf7QI and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhvFVuWVHmQ.
not technically a Broadway show: Though Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater is formally regarded as a Broadway house, Waiting for Godot was presented at the facility’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, which is not.
Nichols had met with his two lead actors: Mervyn Rothstein, “Nichols Tries to Put the Fun Back in ‘Godot,’” New York Times, September 13, 1988.
Nichols wrote to Robin a few weeks later: RWC, box 13, folder 2.
filling his copy with enthusiastic annotations: RWC, box 4, folder 2.
“they asked him, ‘What are you doing in this play?’”: Rothstein, “Nichols Tries to Put the Fun Back in ‘Godot.’”
“the play has not been abused”: Denis Donoghue, “Play It Again, Sam,” New York Review of Books, December 8, 1988.
George Roy Hill … wrote to him to tell him: RWC, box 13, folder 3.
“A brilliant mimic, the actor never runs out of wacky voices”: Frank Rich, “‘Godot’: The Timeless Relationship of 2 Interdependent Souls,” New York Times, November 7, 1988.
“during previews, everybody loved us”: Patricia Bosworth, “There’s a More Somber Side to the ‘Wild and Crazy Guy,’” Fame, August 1989.
final performance on November 27: Archived at http://www.lct.org/shows/waiting-for-godot/.
“We were a little shell-shocked”: Frank Rizzo, “Seize the Day,” Hartford Courant, June 9, 1989.
“We put our ass out and got kicked for it”: Grobel, “Robin Williams: The Playboy Interview.”
The first reports about their two-year relationship: William C. Trott, “Price of Love,” United Press International, April 28, 1988; and Morning Report (column), Los Angeles Times, April 28, 1988.
Robin filed a legal cross-claim of his own: “Starwatch: Marriage on the Ropes”; and Morning Report (column).
“Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring”: Walt Whitman, “O Me! O Life!” Leaves of Grass. Archived at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/51568.
“It turns out he has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma”: Author interview with Tom Schulman.
“It did more than it was supposed to do”: Author interview with Steven Haft.
“I don’t know, I might wait on that one”: Author interview with Dana Carvey.
“As soon as the gates were open”: Dead Poets Society: Special Edition, DVD, Touchstone Home Entertainment, 2006.
“It talks about something of the heart”: Grobel, “Robin Williams: The Playboy Interview.”
“It all started going wobbly”: Author interview with Steven Haft.
“The first thing you do is, you shoot the script”: Author interview with Mark Johnson.
“Peter Weir said to me, ‘That’s got to go’”: Author interview with Tom Schulman.
The casting of the Poets was started over from scratch: Author interviews with Steven Haft, Dylan Kussman, and Gale Hansen; Mandy Bierly, “Josh Charles Shares ‘Dead Poets Society’ Memories, 25 Years Later,” Entertainment Weekly, July 3, 2014.
“He was like, ‘We have a lot in common’”: Author interview with Gale Hansen.
“It was a way of deconstructing my own position as director”: Dead Poets Society: Special Edition, DVD.
Robin started filming on December 12: RWC, box 10, folder 5; and Associated Press, “Disney to Film ‘The Dead Poets’ Society Entirely in Delaware,” Easton (MD) Star-Democrat, December 6, 1988.
the first classroom scene: Tom Schulman, The Dead Poets Society, draft (dated November 11, 1988). Archived at RWC, box 10, folder 5.
“Uh-uh, this is too much’”: Author interview with Tom Schulman.
“We were able to get about a half day ahead of schedule”: Author interview with Alan Curtiss.
“He’s a kind of writer, without a pen”: Dead Poets Society: Special Edition, DVD.
“It just didn’t work”: Rizzo, “Seize the Day.”
the more modest tweaks that he scrawled in his script: RWC, box 10, folder 5.
“They’re not that different from you, are they?”: Schulman, The Dead Poets Society, draft.
“He’s not playing on obvious emotions”: Dead Poets Society: Special Edition, DVD.
“Carpe per diem”: Q, CBC Radio, September 11, 2014. Archived at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT4xjhPD9fs.
“I’m going to challenge him”: Author interview with Gale Hansen.
a group field trip into New York: Dylan Kussman, “Dead Poets in NYC.” Archived at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1eOYkQpifk.
“when I mean act up, I mean not in a bad way”: Author interview with Andy Weltman.
“Robin and Marsha at that point were pretty hot and heavy”: Author interview with Tom Schulman.
“She was a sweet, generous person”: Author interview with Gale Hansen.
“He and Marsha were very private”: Author interview with Lisa Birnbach.
“Dead was a bummer, Poets was too effete”: Author interview with Steven Haft.
“‘they can retitle
the movie’”: Author interview with Tom Schulman.
“It was a tremendous bonding experience for us all”: Author interview with Lisa Birnbach.
“Keating turns to look at Todd. So does everybody else”: Schulman, The Dead Poets Society, draft.
Ennio Morricone’s main theme from The Mission: Bierly, “Josh Charles Shares ‘Dead Poets Society’ Memories, 25 Years Later.”
CHAPTER 12. DREAMLIKE PARTS, WITH PHANTASMAGORIC ASSOCIATIONS
Robin and Marsha got married on April 30, 1989: Blaise Simpson, “The Insiders Are Out-Of-Towners,” Los Angeles Times, November 21, 1993.
About thirty people attended the wedding: Ross, Reporting Always, p. 31.
“He kept that marriage very separate”: Author interview with Zak Williams.
“Zak loves Marsha, and Marsha loves Zak”: Carson Jones, “The Truth He Wants Known,” Redbook, January 1991.
Marsha and her growing belly: Lisa Grunwald, “Robin Williams Has a Big Premise!” Esquire, June 1989.
“I replied, but they said I was too late”: Grobel, “Robin Williams: The Playboy Interview.”
a “dim, sad” movie: Vincent Canby, “Shaking Up a Boys’ School with Poetry,” New York Times, June 2, 1989.
“the most exciting performer in American movies”: Michael Wilmington, “‘Poets Society’: A Moving Elegy from Peter Weir,” Los Angeles Times, June 2, 1989.
“a collection of pious platitudes”: Roger Ebert, “Dead Poets Society,” June 9, 1989. Archived at http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dead-poets-society-1989.
“It was the last scene of the movie”: Author interview with Tom Schulman.
by mid-September it had taken in almost $90 million: Box Office Mojo, http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=deadpoetssociety.htm.
one from Fred Rogers: RWC, box 13, folder 4.
“Family is what you make of it”: Author interview with Zak Williams.
“She’s nine pounds, seven ounces”: The Barbara Walters Special, ABC, September 26, 1989.
“They tried it out on test audiences”: Donna Rosenthal, “‘Cadillac Man’ Finds a New Life,” Los Angeles Times, May 9, 1990.
“an astonishing, festive ‘awakening’”: Oliver Sacks, On the Move: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015).
“He’s not thought of as a dramatic actor”: Gail Buchalter, “You Just Have to Get Out There,” Parade, December 16, 1990.
“I won’t let that happen”: Tad Friend, “The Old Gang,” New Yorker, August 24, 2014.
“It’s depressing. Everything is caged”: Lou Cedrone, “Comic Tames Humor for Serious Movie Role,” Baltimore Evening Sun, January 11, 1991.
“There’s a lot of doors and only five keys”: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, NBC, January 10, 1991.
“Arnold Schwarzenegger and Albert Schweitzer”: Ibid.
“something that seems apparently dead”: Robin Williams Talking with David Frost, PBS, May 29, 1991.
“He had absorbed all the different voices”: Sacks, On the Move, p. 306.
“He was not imitating me”: Ibid., p. 307.
“an almost instant access to parts of the mind”: Kornbluth, “Robin Williams’s Change of Life.”
“My elbow went BAM!”: Robin Williams Unplugged, Nine (Australia), April 10, 1996. Archived at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qppqhzjWkn8.
“my nose was broken once before”: James Cockington, Today’s People (column), Sydney Morning Herald, December 18, 1990.
“Robin could make Bob laugh so hard”: Friend, “The Old Gang.”
“I think you made a perfect twosome with Bob”: RWC, box 13, folder 5.
“you—as actors, as dramatists—are also making worlds”: RWC, box 13, folder 13.
When he learned of the honor: The Oprah Winfrey Show, September 26, 1991.
Silver Foxes II, an exercise video for people over sixty: Beth Ashley, “The Active Life of Robin Williams’ Mom,” Gannett News Service, August 24, 1989.
“She wore hats, she wore turbans”: Author interview with Lisa Birnbach.
“the kind of support that I had”: 62nd Academy Awards, ABC, March 26, 1990. Archived at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT6QnJLxWxw.
he could be seen to flinch: 62nd Academy Awards. Archived at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z1E75hTtCA.
“He passionately hated it”: Author interview with Lisa Birnbach.
“like church and state”: Rosenthal, “‘Cadillac Man’ Finds a New Life.”
“Robin Williams has a secret dream”: Kathy Huffhines, “Robin Williams Is in Low Gear as ‘Cadillac Man,’” Detroit Free Press, May 18, 1990.
Robin and Marsha had purchased a house: Donna Rosenthal, “Robin’s New Life,” Palm Beach Post, May 28, 1990; and Marilyn Beck, column, Fort Myers (FL) News-Press, July 31, 1990.
“It did rescue the film”: Author interview with Terry Gilliam.
mythological figures like the Fisher King: Robert A. Johnson, He: Understanding Masculine Psychology (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), pp. 1, 11.
“Men in our society do that”: Author interview with Richard LaGravenese.
“He was, in fact, a total, psychotic”: Author interview with Terry Gilliam.
“It is about damaged people”: The Oprah Winfrey Show, September 26, 1991.
Bulfinch’s and Malory’s retellings of the King Arthur legends: RWC, box 10, folder 12.
“the thing that pulled Robin back”: Author interview with Terry Gilliam.
“He had maybe a touch of a dire, dour quality”: Author interview with Jeff Bridges.
which began in May 1990 and ran through early August: RWC, box 10, folder 12.
“this would happen once a week, probably”: Author interview with Terry Gilliam.
“Before I knew him better”: Author interview with Jeff Bridges.
Sheep Meadow in Central Park: RWC, box 10, folder 12.
“his back’s to the camera”: Author interview with Terry Gilliam.
CHAPTER 13. FATHER MAN
another Rolling Stone cover shoot: Jeff Giles, “Fears of a Clown,” Rolling Stone, February 21, 1991.
“a series of insistent emotional climaxes”: Dave Kehr, “‘Awakenings’ Mugs at Our Hearts,” Chicago Tribune, December 20, 1990.
“pure and uncluttered, without the ebullient distractions”: Roger Ebert, “Awakenings,” December 20, 1990. Archived at http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/awakenings-1990.
earned about $52 million: Box Office Mojo, http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=awakenings.htm.
the award went to Jeremy Irons: David J. Fox, “A Golden Evening for ‘Dances with Wolves,’” Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1991.
Robin was overlooked: John Horn, “‘Wolves’ Leads Oscar Pack,” Associated Press, February 13, 1991.
“He was so proud of his performance in that”: Author interview with Terry Gilliam.
“I wanted to be home as a dad”: Joseph McBride, Steven Spielberg: A Biography (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), p. 409.
“He’s very representative of a lot of people today”: Ibid.
“play with your child”: Judy Gerstel, “Williams Swoops Through ‘Hook’ Interviews,” Detroit Free Press, December 6, 1991.
some reports put it at $60 million or more: Jeannie Park, “Ahoy! Neverland!” People, December 23, 1991.
share 40 percent of the film’s gross ticket sales: Nina J. Easton and Alan Citron, “So Happy Together … Then Sony Made Three,” Los Angeles Times, March 10, 1991.
“We will need to measure you for your flying rig”: RWC, box 12, folder 7.
twenty pounds lighter than he had been during the making of The Fisher King: Park, “Ahoy! Neverland!”
a month between mid-February and mid-March 1991: RWC, box 12, folder 7.
“there’s something scary there”: Sean Mitchell, “No-Holds Hoffman,” USA Weekend, December 6–8, 1991.
the film’s production spilled into late July: Marilyn Beck, Vanilla Nice, Says Rapper’s
Film Producer (column), White Plains (NY) Journal News, July 8, 1991.
a feisty working relationship full of one-upmanship: Park, “Ahoy! Neverland!”
“when you get to fly—whew!”: The Oprah Winfrey Show, September 26, 1991.
a cartoon musical set within the Arabic folklore: Author interviews with Alan Menken, Ron Clements, and John Musker.
“There was a policy that you really had to audition”: Ibid.
a positive experience on FernGully: The Last Rainforest: Tom Green, “Wild Child: Playful Role Fits the Boyish Soul,” USA Today, December 18, 1992.
“Tonight, let’s talk about the serious subject of schizophrenia”: Jeff Labrecque, “The Animator and the Animated,” Time: Robin Williams 1951–2014, 2014.
a file full of Goldberg’s character designs: RWC, box 13, folder 5.
Howard Ashman … died from complications of AIDS: Eleanor Blau, “Howard Ashman Is Dead at 40; Writer of ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’” New York Times, March 15, 1991.
Katzenberg rejected a storyboarded version of the film: Author interviews with Ron Clements and John Musker.
the character’s dialogue was written to sound like Robin: Ibid.
A production script dated September 18: RWC, box 1, folder 1.
sung by the Broadway actor Bruce Adler: “Arabian Nights” also contained the controversial lyric, “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face,” which in home-video releases was changed to “Where it’s flat and immense and the heat is intense.”
he would spend the evening seated at a piano: Author interviews with Ron Clements and John Musker.
“the Genie didn’t believe that Aladdin was going to use his third wish”: Labrecque, Time: Robin Williams 1951–2014.
Katzenberg himself devised a strategy for recording the film’s prologue: Author interviews with Ron Clements and John Musker.
“Look at this, it’s a double slingshot”: Labrecque, Time: Robin Williams 1951–2014.
“Your work in HOOK is flogging brilliant!”: RWC, box 13, folder 5.
in limited release on September 20: Bob Thomas, “Summer Sizzle,” Associated Press, April 20, 1991.
“a wild, vital stew of a movie”: David Ansen, “The Holy Grail in the Unholy City,” Newsweek, September 22, 1991.
“whenever its taste for chaos is kept in check”: Janet Maslin, “Film: A Cynic’s Quest for Forgiveness,” New York Times, September 20, 1991.