It's a life and death experience. You go up there, you take your life in your hands. My stomach hurts. Uh-huh. Badly. And, er, I've been nauseous all day. You're overthinking what you're wearing, how you're going to say the first thing you're going to say. MARIA BAMFORD: I feel terrified. I wonder, 'Why tonight? 'Why again?' Ladies and gentlemen, Robin Williams. Patton Oswalt. Richard Pryor. RICHARD LEWIS: When I walk on stage, I'm riddled with fear and excitement because I have no idea what I'm going to do. Holy shit, this was the... What? Oh, no... You idiot. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. EXCITING MUSIC MUSIC CONTINUES Subtitles by Ericsson. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Able 2018 PENSIVE MUSIC I despised myself from... pretty much close to getting out of the womb. I was always wrong. Let's start with that. When you're always wrong, you seek an audience to disprove that theory. I was just hell-bent on having to prove myself. 'I know I'm right, I can't be always wrong,' you know, I was the victim. My father was a very strange man. He was kind of a performance artist that was fuelled by beer. I was very shy and at home I was always quiet and didn't get to speak very often just cos other people were jibber-jabbering a lot, you know? Some people wouldn't clam up. Mom. When I did different voices or different noises, people would say, 'That's weird,' or, 'Shut up.' I feel like there's a fear of seeming crazy. A lot of comedians are people that are very introverted, very shy, very sensitive to humiliation. A little narcissistic, a little damaged, and so, the only way to combat it is to go to the one place where you ARE stripped bare. The big sea change for comedy was the '60s. People's own neuroses and foibles... were being addressed in the routines. The routines became more personal. I don't know if anyone here knows group analysis. It's a group of very neurotic types that meet in a room a couple of times a week and sit around and twitch or something. LAUGHTER And, this is an adorable story - two of the kids had gotten married. And it's really cute cos it's what you'd call a mixed marriage or an inter-marriage in that the boy was paranoiac and the girl was schizophrenic. LAUGHTER There was a big conflict about which way they'd bring up the children. LAUGHTER Started in school with, er,... drinking and, er... MAN LAUGHS Really, I was like a real depressed kid, you know. Seven, eight years old, I'd really get juiced... LAUGHTER 'I can't be a wife, I can't be a writer, I can't be everything. 'I can't, I can't, I can't.' And Edgar said, 'You're right.' LAUGHTER He said, 'You're right, I understand this completely.' He said, 'Tomorrow morning, Joan, first thing, 'we're going to go out tomorrow and hire a woman 'to come in and be a wife.' LAUGHTER That period was the start of all the stand-up comedians that came after who were experimenting with stand-up comedy as a form of personal expression in all sorts of different ways. When I first saw him before the show, he was still trying to decide whether to be a drunken Eskimo, the Queen of the Vikings or a doorknob. LAUGHTER I'd rather he came out simply as himself to begin with because when he's Johnny Winters, he cannot be imitated. The wild, wild man, my friend, Jonathan Winters. APPLAUSE When I was 12 or 13, one of my best friends called me up once, it was like a drug deal at 12, 'Come over.' 'What, what have you got?' 'You gotta hear this.' Do something with the stick. Watch him do a routine with the stick. You can give him anything. HE IMITATES FISHING LINE REELING, LANDING Well, that was a pretty good cast, wasn't it, Bob? I think we're on to something this time. Mm-hmm. I'm sorry, Margaret. Try to swim in. LAUGHTER HE SINGS A TRIBAL-LIKE SONG LAUGHTER The routines are ridiculously brilliant. It was endless riffing. And I'm going, 'Whose brain can do that?' The United Nations... now recognises the delegate from Masai-land. LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE To be as genius as Jonathan Winters,... you have to think differently than normal people. He's working within his mind at a very high level, a very fast level. By thinking that way and being that untethered to the rest of us, you can lose your mind more easily. Jonathan was a profoundly troubled guy that had drinking issues, that had depression issues that were clinical, that were deep. Verbally, my mother, my dad, they were on me constantly... Your dad, too? Oh, yeah. And, er, it just never let up. When you were younger, did you find yourself trying to get away from them in your head? Yeah, yeah, I, naturally, and, er, it got to me. He was doing The Hungry I in San Francisco and, later that night, Jonathan Winters left his hotel room and the police found him on the wharf. He was climbing the mast of a ship, yelling that, 'I'm the man in the moon.' I was in the middle of a breakdown, no question about it. How do you know when you're in the middle of a breakdown? Well, you begin to hallucinate and, er, seeing things that, er... And, not boozing, I wasn't drinking. You know, a lot of people say, 'Well, Jonathan, how do you feel?' And I say, 'Man, I'm out, I'm out.' That's what counts, you know, cos when you're in there, (GOOFILY) 'Hello. Is it sunny today?' 'Stay back!' (GOOFILY) 'Oh, yes, sorry.' LAUGHTER If you're going out on stage and you're being Jonathan Winters and you're being really honest about it, at a time when no-one else is doing that, that's 100% the edge. APPLAUSE My hair is grey. My coat is tan. My pants are black. If you're not seeing these colours, there's nothing wrong with your TV set. You're just watching the Steve Martin special, A Wild And Crazy Guy. By the time we get to the '70s, comedy started to get away from punch lines. Steve Martin was poking fun at the whole nature of comedy, taking the standard conventions and turning it on its ear. Sorry, just lost my mind just for a minute. LAUGHTER Steve Martin had fun with making fun of taking yourself seriously and the schmoozy, 'We're going to have some fun tonight!' Like, it seemed to mock what everyone else was doing. Steve Martin was just so goofy and beautiful writing. I mean, I don't know if I appreciated that as a kid but now I appreciate it, just the succinctness. He had very good ta-ta-ta-timing. That's another thing. SHE CHUCKLES Oh, no, I'm getting... Happy feet! Whoa! APPLAUSE, CHEERING No stand-up comedian was ever more successful at a given time than Steve Martin. But, in real life, he was a quiet, intellectual kind of guy and he didn't really take to that superstardom. BLUESY MUSIC He was such a popular comedian and then he just stopped. And I was there on a night that I think, in my mind, had something to do with it, where he had this routine about how he blames himself for his girlfriend's death. He's laying all the material to get to the punch line and right before he got to it, some guy, out in this huge audience, in the very back of the auditorium, gave away the punch line, and you could tell he was pissed. Today, I realised that I misunderstood what my last year of stand-up was about. I had become a party host, presiding not over timing and ideas but over a celebratory bash of my own making. If I had understood what was happening, I might have been happier, but I didn't. I still thought I was doing comedy. Comedy goes in waves that way, where what we accept as normal or offbeat is within the parameters of our time. But there are people that upset the norm and there is something to be said for being different in comedy. 'MIGHTY MOUSE' THEME TUNE PLAYS # Mr Trouble never hangs around # When he hears this mighty sound LIP-SYNCS: # Here I come to save the day # That means that Mighty Mouse is on the way... # My favourite thing about Andy Kaufman was that he annoyed a lot of comedians who didn't have a sense of humour. The joke was ON stand-up comedy. I love my wife very much but she don't know how to cook. You know, her cooking is so bad... AUDIENCE MEMBER SHOUTS CHUCKLING CHUCKLING Her cooking is so bad... It's terrible. LAUGHTER When I was starting, up until then, the only performers you had were either straight singers or comedians. I've never told a joke in my life, really. I've never really done what they call straight comedy. Wow. Andy Kaufman was just the most fun you could ever have. I've never, in my 44 years of watching, I've never seen someone take an audience through the kind of emotional rollercoaster that he was able to do. I would say Kaufman was the only one I ever saw truly work without a net. Well, how many people want me to stay? APPLAUSE, CHEERING And how many people don't, don't want me to stay? SCATTERED BOOS, CHEERING Thank you very much, you've shown me where I'm at tonight. And I'm sorry that I brought you all down at this party. All of his intentions were different than every other comedian. He was trying to get a reaction and it really was art more than straight stand-up comedy. Well, I'm going to get off. So, thank you. AUDIENCE SHOUTS DISAPPOINTMENT TEARFUL: You really showed me where I'm at tonight. CHUCKLING I'm just trying to... HE SOBS And (SHRIEKS) you! You ruin everything. I,... DRUMBEAT STARTS, HE ULULATES HIS CRYING BECOMES RHYTHMIC RHYTHMIC CLAPPING CHEERING Thank you. HE SHOUTS LAUGHTER My worst fears are confirmed. I'm going totally under their heads. I was really influenced by Andy Kaufman. I was self-destructive but I was also kind of infamous. My earlier stand-up was like, 'Oh, I'll show you crazy,' you know? What a sweet... I love Jay very much and I thought, 'Well, what if I, I dunno, what if I...' What are you doing? '..set his furniture on fire?' Don't set that on fire. AUDIENCE LAUGHS IN DISBELIEF, CLAPS Now you have to sit in this. Now, sit down, sit down. Sit down, sit down. I'm not sitting in it. Sit in that chair... I set the Tonight Show on fire, actually I just set the CHAIR on the Tonight Show on fire. And I am a convicted arson because I brought lighter fluid, that made it pre-meditated. I learnt a LOT about the law. BOOING I would just do stuff and I would think, 'Well, this is funny to me,' and genuinely be surprised when things didn't go well. APPLAUSE, CHEERING Oh! I used to think that the mind of a comedian... was like that of an addict. Big ego, insecure, driven. But I do believe now that we are susceptible a little bit to madness. APPLAUSE, CHEERING CONTINUES We'll be right back! We'll be right back. There are things about you that you just don't like, that you wished you could change - you wish you were smarter. You wish you were better looking. You wish you were, um, had more confidence. But, but you don't. HE LAUGHS HEARTILY I had to be funny, I had to be likeable. I was a bed-wetter well into my teens. You know, there's a lot of humiliation to overcome and being the funny one at camp is a really good deal if you're also the one that smells like pee. If you're a comedian there is a part of you that is unhinged and, more importantly, unhappy. I'm friends with mostly comedians, and, like, most of us are on anti-depressants. And I don't think that's a coincidence. As you see in the news, comics can mess up. You know, we do everything from shoot at our cars to OD and we're the people that make people happy, you know? BLUESY MUSIC Richard Pryor grew up in a very unusual situation. His, er, grandmother ran a house of prostitution and, er, his mother had worked in it and his father was a pimp. And he was very aware of that situation growing up. I grew up seeing my mother... go in a room with a man, and my aunties go in a room with men. Who believed in you? Who cared about you? Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor III. You. And magic dust. My dad's humour came from life. And I don't think Dad had a choice. I think you either laugh your way through it or you die through it. Thinking about death, though, I'd like to die like my father died. Right? My father died fucking. LAUGHTER He did, my father was 57 when he died, right, and the woman was 18. My father came and went at the same time. LAUGHTER Richard's comedy was funny, it was also therapeutic, it was almost like this guy was using the stage the way a therapist would use their couch. My grandmother is the lady who used to discipline me, right, you know, beat my ass. You know, 'Get your ass out... Put your hands... 'Don't you run from me, don't you run... 'from me... 'As long as you black, 'don't you run from me.' What people took from him was a lot of the attitude and the over-the-topness and the profanity. The thing that people don't give Richard Pryor enough credit for is what he brought to stand-up comedy was vulnerability. APPLAUSE, CHEERING For me, the best night was having a woman who was sitting close to the stage beg me to stop. She was looking at me, going, in pain, her face was in pain. She was in pain, she went, SQUEAKS: '"Please. HE COUGHS '"Please, stop. '"Please stop."' You can't beat that. The one thing about Hitler that I admired is that he wouldn't take any shit from magicians. You know. LAUGHTER It brings out the best parts of your personality. It brings out 'your best self'. Hello. It does. You like yourself when you're up there. You like yourself. Thank you. Seriously, thank you. You have no idea what a good mood I'm in right now. CHUCKLING Fuck, this went so well. OK, um... APPLAUSE, CHEERING It wasn't that things went so well for an hour, it was, for an hour you kept a potential disaster from being a disaster. THAT'S where the high comes off of. APPLAUSE, CHEERING The worst is when you are trying out new material and you think you're in a safe space because nobody in the audience knows who you are, the stakes are very low and you just eat it... and then you discover that Louis CK has been in the audience the entire time. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Bullshit! Bullshit. My dick. HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER This is... SHOUTING Shut the fuck up. Hey. LAUGHTER , APPLAUSE I got hit with Bibles and boots. You know, I got hit with a teenager once. All these little fried shrimp started hitting me. They threw these, like, they looked like Subway tokens, these like... I just got pelted with 'em. I've had a glass thrown at me. The shot glass comes at a much faster speed. I've also been punched on stage. It's like street fighting and performing combined, because you get people so loaded they can't see... And you're fighting for your life up there. Oh, yeah. That's where you learn real quick lines. You have to start... It develops. You get real tough cos I saw a lot of friends who are very funny but gave it up after one or two times. CHATTER ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, Home Box Office and the Roxy are pleased to present... Robin Williams. CHEERING Hiya. I guess most of my stuff is just madness. It's a totally different perspective. It's a combination of writing and acting at the same time, which work wonderfully. Ha-ha, I'm doing fantastic. GERMAN ACCENT: 'No, you're not, you fool, 'you're not doing essence, just pure pee-pee ka-ka. 'No reality, no truth, 'no discussion on the nature of man.' Both of you be quiet. Shut up. I'm the rational mind. We'll have to release the subconscious. He'll be the arbitrator. HE SQUEAKS HE BREATHES HEAVILY, LAUGHTER CLAPPING I totally think Robin Williams had a pinball machine head. I just think, you know, he would pull his tongue and then the ball would get launched and it would just bounce off everything. There was definitely stardust and magic. It was self-expression and Robin went anywhere that the words and the informality of thought, the madness, I guess, the harvested madness would take us. And I loved that. Look, toys, all over the set. Can we...? Don't be afraid. Come on, Mr Camera, we're going crazy, come on. LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE When he would just take these flights of fancy that might go on for 10 minutes or 20 minutes, you know, that was, that was the magical part of watching him. HIGH-PITCHED: Mother gave this so I could write my new book. LAUGHTER Buddha, no, an ode to Fred Silverman. LAUGHTER SASSILY: 'Take two, let's go. 'Let's start from the beginning again. Otto? Clap, let's go.' LAUGHTER, CLAPPING But like a lot of comedians, when he was offstage, he was full of fear. Full of anxiety. About what, who knows? He himself said he was full of dread and he didn't know why. He just was overwhelmed with anxiety. But he definitely used the stage to be free... to be comfortable... to be himself. I'm being grotesque but you've got to be. You see what I mean, you've got to be crazy. It's too late to be sane. Too late. You've got to go full tilt, bozo. Cos you're only given a little spark of madness. And if you lose that... you're nothing. APPLAUSE, CHEERING GROOVY MUSIC After performing, if it's a good show, there's that high that you'll get from that... but then you walk off the stage... and I could see why a lot of performers would want to do drugs and drink, just to keep some kind of high going. LAUGHTER When you're famous, people give you drugs because they just, number one, it kind of gives them a little control over you and they like knowing that, you know, 'I got him high, 'I got him loaded, he-he-he-he! 'And you know what he did? He looked out the window the whole time.' Comedians are a lunar profession, not a solar profession. You're going to end up getting irregular sleep, really bad food. It has the same rhythms as combat, where it's a lot of boredom and then incredible tension and either victory or just crushing failure. There's no in-between. Oh, er, hey, now I need it. LAUGHTER They tell you marijuana smoking makes you unmotivated. That's bullshit. When I was high, I could do everything I normally could do just as well, I just realised it wasn't worth the fucking effort, man. That was it. People say pot smokers are lazy. I disagree. I'm a multi-tasking pot smoker. I was walking down the street, I was putting eye drops in my eyes, I was talking on my cell phone AND I was getting hit by a car. LAUGHTER, CLAPPING All comedians, nine out of ten, seem to be potheads. There's something about the playfulness of marijuana, the thought process, the giggle aspect that is similar to the comic mind, in a way. I like to have a puff of pot when I get off stage because it's just so hard to come down after. Yeah, I'm watching MTV and the lead singer from Motley Crue comes on and he tells ME not to take drugs?! HE SCOFFS, LAUGHTER Motley Crue's idea of a drug problem is not finding any after a gig. LAUGHTER I did too many drugs, is what I'm saying. I did too many drugs and when I say I did 'em, I fucking did 'em. I didn't 'experiment' with them. You know when people say, 'Oh, yeah, when I was in my late teens 'and 20s, I experimented with drugs.' No, you fucking didn't. You're not a scientist. LAUGHTER The desire to feel OK can manifest itself in performance, it can manifest itself in drugs and alcohol, it can manifest itself in any number of behaviours. But it's not necessary to be a drunk or a drug addict to be a good performer. It's not science to blow a dealer for crack. That's not science. LAUGHTER, CLAPPING That's ART. LAUGHTER When they'll talk about John Belushi or Chris Farley, they'll say, 'Well, you know, there was the great side of him, the side that 'would just take his clothes off and hang off the ledge of a building. 'That was the fun side. 'But then there was the bad side, the drugs and drinking.' And you go, 'Hmm, maybe the two have something in common here?' HE SIGHS I'm a drug addict and an alcoholic. I didn't know for a while, I was in denial for years. I said, 'I'm not an alcoholic, I'm not an alcoholic, I'm not an alcoholic.' I was a mess, I didn't know what was going on. I think my dad and his friends did more cocaine than was ever in the movie Scarface. That became the thing that, for a moment, got rid of the pain. Until you're clean and you're like, 'Oh, I'm just me.' I did it so bad, dope dealers tried not to sell me nothing. LAUGHTER Now that's doing it when dope dealers say, 'Man, I ain't 'gon' give you no more of that shit. 'I'm sorry, brother, I can't see you do it to yourself.' Now that's... Dope dealers don't give a fuck about nothing, usually, people think. These motherfuckers refused to sell me cocaine. Said, 'No, motherfucker, you killing yourself.' What?! LAUGHTER Here's a little warning sign if you have a cocaine problem. If on your tax form it says '$50,000 for snacks,' Mayday. LAUGHTER You got yourself a cocaine problem, smartass. He-he-he. ROCK MUSIC PLAYS HE SHRIEKS I met Sam when he was about to become huge. He kind of took me under his wing to a degree. He neutered my ability to... to function through drug use and draining me by making me party with him for hours on end. So, I'm trying to be, like, I'm trying to live up to the image, 'Oh, get out of my way! 'Watch me! Argh!' And I would sniff all this shit up. About two minutes later I'm walking around the party going... HE BEATS HARD, FAST RHYTHM 'Hey, man. Hey, man, have you got any shoe polish or something 'I can drink to slow this down? 'Listen, you guys keep partying, I'm going to go ahead and lay down 'and beg God to live for a while, all right?' Sometimes, drugs and alcohol have led to some amazing comedy. Amazing music, amazing literature, amazing sculpture and painting but, in the end, the drugs and alcohol always beat art. Move back. REPORTER: John Belushi died today at 33 years old. Belushi died in a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Hollywood. Sources have told Eyewitness News that the night stand in Belushi's bungalow contained what was described to us as a fair amount of white powder, believed to be cocaine. When you get to that level of fame and you've got the money and you've got a lot of enablers around you, it's easy to keep going and keep on a self-destructive path and it's hard to stop. The actor-comedian Chris Farley was found dead in a Chicago apartment today. Farley followed his idol John Belushi's path of success and along the way, friends say he succumbed to the same excesses - food, alcohol and drugs. When you have that kind of brain, and I don't want to get into that stuff except that you're wired dark. You can go dark real fast. Dad couldn't take it any more and he wanted it to stop. He just was like, 'I want it to stop.' Richard Pryor, the comedian and writer, was badly burned in an accident at his home in California last night. The burns cover the upper half of his body. They are severe enough to endanger his life. (INTRIGUING MUSIC) (SNORES) Ron, what are you wearing? WHISPERS: I didn't know we had to get dressed up. WHISPERS: We're not going to bed, Ron. We're going out. (ROLLER DOOR RATTLES) (INTRIGUING MUSIC) (IGNITION CLICKS, CAR WHIRRS) (MAN SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE ON VIDEO) Hit it! (CAR POWERS UP) (EXCLAIMS EXCITEDLY) (WHOOPS) # Lazy days... # (MEN LAUGH) Oh my Gawd! Hey! (SCREAMING) Yes, yes, yes. I don't feel well. BOTH: What?! (TYRES SCREECH) (WOMEN LAUGH) There you go. (BOTH LAUGH) (ENGINE REVS) What have you got under the hood, bro? You wouldn't believe me. (TYRES SCREECH, MEN EXCLAIM, CAR WHIRRS) (BOTH LAUGH) (RELAXED MUSIC) You think I could drive back? Nah, mate. (CLICKING) (LOUD CLATTERING) (DOGS BARK) WHISPERS: See you tomorrow. WHISPERS: It is tomorrow. Finally tonight, comedian Richard Pryor is feeling better. Doctors at his Sherman Oaks, California hospital have taken him off the critical list. Pryor is responding well to skin graft treatments for burns he suffered at his home three weeks ago. You've gone through a tragedy, you're a comedian, you're going to go up on stage and talk about that tragedy. That's what the comic mind does - you're compelled to tell your experience. I'm going to tell y'all the truth tonight. APPLAUSE, CHEERING OK? All right, now, all my friends know this to be true cos everybody knows me but usually before I go to bed I have milk and cookies. LAUGHTER, CLAPPING And one night I had some low-fat milk... and some pasteurised and I mixed them together. And I dipped my cookie in and shit blew up. APPLAUSE, CHEERING My dad wasn't afraid to bare his pain. He made jokes about that because he knew YOU were going to do it, 'so let me do it.' You know, Dad had some steel balls, man. Well, I'll tell you one thing, man. When that fire hits your ass, that will sober your ass up quick. LAUGHTER And you know something I found out? When you're on fire and running down the street, people will get out of your way. LAUGHTER Except for one old drunk, right, who's going, 'Hey, buddy, 'can I get a light? LAUGHTER 'How about just a little off the sleeve, OK?' LAUGHTER When Pryor did talk about his personal life, it's harrowing. And it's funny because of the courage of it. But does everyone relate to setting yourself on fire with a pipe or shooting your car so your wife can't leave in it? You have to grow to accept that people may be laughing with you, they might be laughing AT you or they might be laughing cos they're shocked. You know, if I hadn't have done this, I'd be in great despair. But I've done it and it's out there for everybody to see, regardless of what the reaction is, it's out there and I did it. And I'm glad I did it. If you want to put someone on a pedestal that is unattainable by anybody else, it has to be a guy who ran a mile and a half on fire, who did coke,... crashed cars, drank, and then took it to the stage and made everyone laugh. This is incredible. How do you get to the Met? Money, lots and lots of money. LAUGHTER, CLAPPING Goddamn! I wonder if Pavarotti's at the Improv going, 'Two Jews walk into a bar...' 'Yes.' LAUGHTER 'For me, it's therapy. It's another world for me. It's so much... It's such a great release.' It was such freedom. It's wonderful, it's great, it's a whole other world. This is when I knew I was in bad neighbourhood. You only see this in the worst neighbourhoods. Remember, it's three o'clock in the morning. It was a fucking baby standing on a corner. LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE When I'm on stage,... I get real happy up there. Maybe that's the only time in my adult life that I feel like myself. You're standing up there, you know what I mean, like a gladiator. And them lights is on you and you look down and everyone's looking up at you, like... LAUGHTER Doing comedy, it's needing to express, needing to expose yourself. Sometimes I find myself telling audiences my deepest, darkest secrets, you know, it's this odd confessional. When I moved to LA, I had an eyebrow. And... LAUGHTER My roommate at the time was like, 'Hey. Let's go make this into two.' And so I went to her waxing lady, I'd never been to, like, a waxing lady, and the lady called me in and I'm like, following her into her room and she turns around and she goes, 'What're we doing today, just the moustache?' LAUGHTER I did have OCD, I had difficulty making eye contact with people for, about until the age of thirty... two. And so stand-up was so great for a way to connect with people that felt very safe. I was a bit of a dark kid. I'd occasionally stage my own death - for fun. CHUCKLING 'Mother, I've taken a whole bottle of pills.' 'Oh, my God, what did you take?' 'Tums.' LAUGHTER 'Maria, those are your father's.' 'What, mother? I can't hear you. 'The calcium is coursing through my veins...' LAUGHTER From the very beginning I was going up there to find myself and to be myself and when I went through a divorce, when I was separated, I went on stage and, y'know, started working through it and I don't know if it was funny, it was profoundly uncomfortable. I am a panicky, angry man. LAUGHTER I make calls like this. 'Dude, I'm losing my mind. LAUGHTER 'No, I'm having a breakdown or something. I'm serious. 'Oh, you're tired? Take the day off, I'll call the other guy.' LAUGHTER, CLAPPING 'Dude, I'm losing my mind. No, for real. 'No, no, no, it's your day, it's your day. LAUGHTER 'So make me feel better, friend-o, do it.' You know, I take great pride in not ever repeating a problem in any special. LAUGHTER So, um, if you'll permit me. Er... My feelings were so deeply hurt in many ways that if I couldn't get it out with comedy, it was a waste of time. HE SIGHS You know, it's, basically, you know, what I really feel like I got from my family, er,... was low self-esteem. Which, er... It runs deep. It started with my grandparents. They lived in this condo in Florida, Death Wish Village, which they... LAUGHTER Laughs are a great healer of pain. But the laugh is over... and there's the pain again. POIGNANT MUSIC REPORTER: Comedian Robin Williams was found dead this morning inside his northern California home. His publicist says as of late, Williams had been battling severe depression. He was 63 years old. There's no more painful realisation that the other side of whatever comic genius is... is sometimes this. That with that sensitivity, that with that love, that with that mental agility, comes a heart too heavy to live. A heart that becomes so heavy... that it chooses not to go on. It's horribly sad. He beat depression because that's what comics do, we beat depression. But he had a disease called Lewy body dementia. His dementia is why I firmly believe the events happened the way they did. Him taking his life was not just a reaction to having that disease, I feel it was, er, because of it. It was misinformation that his own brain, his brain was attacking himself. There's a phrase you've used on a number of occasions to make us understand you. And that phrase is legalised insanity. Yes. Not that we need to ask now... LAUGHTER It may be superfluous but... LAUGHTER What is legalised insanity? Well... LAUGHTER The idea of just trying the things that other people wouldn't do. CHUCKLING Robin was so close to the source of where the thought was coming from, like dogs, you know, it's like, 'What?! Huh?! What?!' He was just brilliant. Here's the line and I'm going, 'Yee-hey!' LAUGHTER You know. That kind of helps, I think. Just to push the boundaries a little bit. Um... LAUGHTER This is so much fun. LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE, CHEERING I think they agree with you. This is nice. EXPECTANT MUSIC CHATTER GENTLE MUSIC The comic is a personal confessor, exposing himself in all sorts of ways. They help us process the sensitive subjects. Stand-up comedians are really important. COMMON ACCENT: 'OK, OK, so you have, like, psychological problems.' 'Yeah, I probably need to see a therapist.' (COMMON ACCENT) '"OK. '"So it's not something you can talk about with your friends?"' 'Well, I talk about it but they're like, '"Why can't you come out tonight?" And I say cos I'm filthy. They say, "Take a shower." 'I say, '"No, it's on the inside!"' LAUGHTER I'm all about talking about everything. It helps me feel that usefulness, that maybe I can tell somebody, 'You're not alone and there is help and you don't 'have to suffer from this any more.' GOOFILY: '"Well, I don't get it, apparently she's supposed to be funny, '"I just think she is schizophrenic."' Well, clearly that is not my mental illness. Um, schizophrenia is of course hearing voices, not DOING voices. CHUCKLING Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to La Quinta, because I have faces to make in the bathroom mirror. SHE RETCHES SOFTLY Being on stage, I found out, slowly but surely, that I wasn't crazy and always wrong, that I was having the same fears and trepidations and insecurities as most people. 17 years of therapy - what has it done to me? Nothing. I masturbate to, I don't know, less destructive women, quite frankly. LAUGHTER When I finally, 22 years ago, admitted, 'Hi, I'm Richard, I'm an alcoholic,' my comedy was freed up. I mean, I was doing well, I was doing specials and Carnegie Hall and getting nominated for this and that but I still wasn't me yet. You know, and once I said, 'I'm a drug addict,' whoa, man, I just felt, like, great. To be honest with you, in the day and age we live in now, if someone comes up to you and says, 'I think you might be 'clinically depressed,' the proper response is, 'Thank you, thank you very much. 'That means I'm awake.' APPLAUSE, CHEERING I thought that stand-up comics had some higher purpose and I was trying to work through things and I was trying to find some truths and frame them in a way that would be new and exciting for me and then for the audience, that we'd be moving through that stuff together. Once, when I was at life's lowest ebb and I felt like no-one would ever love or accept me, I thought I'd kill myself and I checked into a motel room in the middle of nowhere and I was lying there in the dark when all of a sudden there was a warm glow of light and I looked up and Christ was standing over me like this and I looked up at him and he looked down at me and finally he spoke and said, 'Gilbert... 'am I fat?' CHUCKLING I always think of those two masks,... the comedy mask and the tragedy mask. They go together. So, if something terrible has happened to you, comedy is not going to kill tragedy but it'll get it to lose its grip for a while. I started... reducing my Prozac, day-by-day, trying to wean myself off of it. Then a month with no Prozac - oh... My depression was like a happy puppy just running through my body. I actually felt bad about going back on the Prozac because it felt like, 'Oh, I haven't taken him to the park in a while. 'I wanted to give him a couple of days just to...' 'Put on your bathrobe for eight days straight!' 'OK, depression, I... 'I know I haven't done this in a while. 'Does this feel better?' 'Watch The Princess Bride 11 times in a row!' 'OK, let's... 'watch The Princess Bride 11 times in a row. 'Oh, depression. 'This is the best day you've ever had.' LAUGHTER Either in small or big ways, comedy has kept someone out of depression or suicide or helped them cope with a loss and you remember that. If you can talk about something openly and you find the right way to do it, it takes away all of its power. And that's really beautiful. I find comics to be pretty honest people in terms of looking at stuff from both sides or ALL sides and presenting you with, like, 'Here it is.' In the process of looking for comedy, you have to be deeply honest, and doing that, you'll find out, 'Here's the other side.' You'll be looking under the rock occasionally for the laughter. Being a comedian who lives on making fun of everything around him and the ridiculousness of everything, to come through something horrendous and be alive, you've got to have a sense of humour. If you don't, you go mad. The stand-up comedian should be out there pointing out the flaws, basically saying to people, 'Hey, does this look right to you? 'You know, this is weird.' I'll hear somebody's metaphorical interpretation of an idea in a new way and my brain lights up and I'm like, 'Oh, I love it,' you know, it just feels so good and the relief of laughing together and the victory of a good joke, we're all responsible for the win. It's a team sport. The mind of a stand-up comedian is a... is a, is a scary, scary place. No, the mind of a stand-up comedian... It's really sweet of you to imply that there's thought behind what we do. What kind of person chooses to do that? A pretty independent person. Er, somebody who doesn't like, maybe, having bosses. I'm sorry, did I say comedians were a little narcissistic? They're a LOT narcissistic. We'll be right back. There's nothing else that we can do. There's no other skills, so it's either that or nothing. By the way, I like documentaries, I just don't like being IN documentaries.