NEW YORK – Jamie Masada, the owner of the fabled Los Angeles-based comedy club the Laugh Factory, vividly remembers a warm exchange with comic Richard Jeni of the two sharing words of encouragement and gentle ribbing.
“The next day I heard he put a gun in his mouth and blew his head off,” recalled Masada of Jeni’s 2007 suicide. “At that point I said, ‘God, could I do something to somehow prevent that?’”
A few years later, having watched his “family” continuously depleted, Masada did do something: He began having a psychologist at the club several nights a week, offering stand-ups the opportunity for free sessions.
Robin Williams, a frequent Laugh Factory performer who committed suicide Monday, marked only the latest comic genius to be plagued by demons of depression and addiction. But seldom has the gulf between the bright buoyancy of the performer and the inner pain of the man seemed greater or more unfathomable. How did someone who suffered such demons summon such starbursts of generosity and glee?
Like countless others last week, Conan O’Brien remembered Williams’ great capacity for thoughtfulness and kindness. When O’Brien was feeling down during the “Tonight Show” debacle, a bike arrived out of the blue from Williams, outfitted for maximum ridiculousness. Said O’Brien: “It’s particularly courageous for someone to be that generous of spirit in the face of that kind of depression.”
The magnitude of the shock over Williams’ death has been matched only by the outpouring of grief for his loss.
“I’ll never, ever understand how he could be loved so deeply and not find it in his heart to stay,” said his 25-year-old daughter, Zelda Williams. “He was always warm, even in his darkest moments.”
Williams’ publicist has said he had recently fought severe depression. Williams himself had occasionally spoken about his struggles (“Do I get sad? Oh yeah. Does it hit me hard? Oh yeah,” he told Terry Gross in 2006) and funneled his fights with alcoholism and addiction into his act. He largely won his battles with substance abuse – except for several relapses quickly followed by rehab, including a stint at Hazelden in Minnesota last month. His widow, Susan Schneider, added Thursday that Williams also was suffering from the early stages of Parkinson’s disease.
Comedian Jim Norton responded to Williams’ death with an essay titled “Why the Funniest People Are Sometimes the Saddest,” in which he noted in his 25 years of performing stand-up, he knew eight comics who killed themselves.
“When I find a comedian I admire, my first thing is: What’s wrong with this person?” Norton says. “Guys that I’ve admired the most always had that cloud. And it wasn’t a purposeful or a pseudo-artist thing. It was a real thing that they were constantly combating. It was kind of a way to keep sadness or depression off of you, to be funny.”
Improv and sketch comic Chris Gethard has been particularly vocal about his own struggles with depression with the hope of helping others. Following Williams’ death, he posted a picture of himself taken after an earlier day spent crying in bed, labeling it: “This is the face of my mental illness.”
