Robin's Wish (2020) - full transcript

The instant high that
you get from when, you know,

10,000 people are laughing
their heads off.

What's your brain doing?
What are your neuro transmitters doing?

The human brain is, you know, an
extraordinary three and a half pound gland,

that is like quantum... it's quantum
neurology, it's quantum physiology,

that the moment you think
you understand that it,

it comes up
with something else.

Because I don't have an act per se,
but more a cesspool of consciousness,

just, you know, ideas.

Moments when I'll be on a roll or
something will happen that I'll fire off,

and you can't have... it's like being
possessed. It's like channeling.



When it works it's great,
and when it doesn't, it's painful.

But when it's working,

it's that, it's that weird
thing about you're surfing,

and kind of like you're in, you
know, that thing athletes describe it

as the same thing
of being, "Oh, it's working."

My name
is Susan Schneider Williams,

my husband Robin Williams...

Two sentences, Leonard.

It all happens in two sentences.

We had unknowingly
been battling a deadly disease.

A disease for which
there is no cure.

Robin's... The devastation on
Robin's brain from Lewy Bodies

was one of the worst cases medical
professionals have ever seen.

Yet throughout all of this,
his heart remained strong.



Unchosen path.

When Robin started acting
out of character,

nearly every region of his brain
was under attack by Lewy Bodies.

Can you imagine the pain he felt as
he experienced himself disintegrating,

and not from something he would
ever know the name of or understand.

So, um,
I hate to have to report this.

The breaking news
just in to CNN

is that actor Robin Williams
is dead at the age of 63.

We have just received
word from the West Coast.

Tragic, devastating word.

Robin Williams has been
confirmed dead.

They believe that the Bay
area resident committed suicide.

We do know
that at 11:55 this morning,

Marin County communications
received a 911 telephone call,

reporting that a male adult
had been located unconscious,

and not breathing
inside his residence,

in unincorporated
Tiburon, California.

I felt... tremendous remorse,

and guilt that, "Gosh, I could have
done more. I should have done more."

I know that something
must've been terribly wrong

for someone as brilliant as Robin to
just, you know, jump ship like that.

In the immediate
aftermath of Robin's death,

the confusion and information
was constantly changing.

Robin Williams'
battle with addiction

and mental illness
was no secret.

Before the coroner's report
came out,

there was a lot
of media speculation.

People who are
assuming the worst,

that he's broke, or he's
depressed, or is just given up.

The highs are highs
and the lows are lows,

and there's nothing sadder than
when a comedian is by himself.

They painted him
as the sad clown.

Those close to Williams
believe he had bipolar disorder.

They thought
he just committed suicide

for something related to
unhappiness, drugs or depression.

And of course,
none of that is true.

...on Robin Williams'
mind before his death, money.

- While it may seem strange...
- People fill in the blanks,

um, so a lot of that
was going on.

That last evening
I spent with him, he was...

he was completely sober
and not on drugs,

but just most, uh, troubled
by what he was going through.

I think it's important
that the truth comes out

because there were so many affirmative
things that Robin stood for,

and we want to believe
in all of them.

We want to believe in him.

And there's a danger that his suicide
could occasion people to think,

"Oh, well he wasn't
what we thought he was.

"We didn't know him
after all."

Um, but we did.

I felt like I was somehow
being loyal to him

by not speaking about
the struggles that we saw.

I think we felt that wasn't
anyone's business.

And so the story is one of
Robin being at the mercy

of something
that you could not control.

And even worse than not being able to
control it, not even knowing about it.

It was not till October,

I was called in to sit down to
go over the coroner's report.

There were no surprises about
what was in his toxicology,

I knew my honey
was clean and sober.

They sat me down and said,

"Essentially Robin died
of diffuse Lewy Body Dementia."

"What is that?"

They started to talk about
the neuro degeneration.

He wasn't in his right mind.

He described how these
were these Lewy Bodies

that were in nearly
every region of his brain.

It makes sense why he was
experiencing what he was experiencing.

Cognitive moods, movement,
they were all affected.

Depression, a fear,
anxiety, hallucinations,

delusional thinking, major sleep
disorders, insomnia, paranoia.

I remember walking out
of that facility,

down the steps outside
and feeling,

"Now I have the name of it."

It was the beginning of understanding
what had really gone on.

I was talking to someone
I'd met at UCSF,

and she said, "Send me the last
two years of the medical records,

"I'll get them to Dr. Miller and
I know he'll be happy to see you."

Lewy Body Dementia
is a devastating illness.

It's a killer. It is fast.
It's progressive.

I'm looking at how Robin's brain
had been affected.

I realized that this was
about as devastating form

of Lewy Body Dementia
as I had ever seen.

Almost no area
was left unaffected.

It really amazed me that Robin
could walk or move at all.

The disease is devastating,

but even more so
when you realize that

Robin did not have
a diagnosis.

He did not know where these
new symptoms were coming from.

The disease becomes
progressively irreversible,

unstoppable, uh,
and always fatal, always fatal.

But cures, we're far away
from those.

It affects many people and sadly
one of the outcomes is suicide.

If we'd had the accurate
diagnosis of Lewy Body Dementia,

that alone would have
given him...

some peace.

His soul thrived here.

He grew up here.
His roots were here.

I mean, he... he started
in Detroit,

but he went to school here
in Redwood.

Robin could live anywhere he wanted
and chose to live in a neighborhood.

Living in Marin,
which is kind of like, you know,

north of San Francisco

it's like, it's the idea of, "This is it.
I don't need to live...

"I can't. I mean, I don't do well in LA,
if I was living in a gated community."

And he said, "I want to live
with people. I love people."

He liked Marin, it's a wonderful,
beautiful place to live.

He would ride his bikes
every day.

You ran into him
walking his dog outside

and you're like, "Oh,
he's a totally normal guy."

You know, really not that different,
people walking dogs, saying hello.

He's just trying
to be normal.

But then on the flip side,
like, he's lived a crazy life.

You would never know
he was a superstar.

The Throckmorton
Theatre in Mill Valley

started doing the Tuesday
Night comedy nights.

It was just comedy.

Yet it exploded and partly because
Robin Williams lived down the street.

So all of a sudden,

you've got an open mic
more or less on Tuesday

that's drawing 250 people,
on Tuesday. Every Tuesday.

The audience would go crazy.

And Robin would come up
after I already had a show,

and we would do another
two hours of improv.

And this would happen
all the time.

And he literally would just
get up at the end of the night,

and he would just
crush it with no content.

Nothing got him off as much as
being in front of a live audience,

and getting to just free float
and let his brain take him

where he's going
and react with the audience.

If someone throws
something in from there,

or just take what he's saying
and do 300 rifts on that.

His mind was just so fast.

Look out there,
there's a little kid out there.

I saw a three-year-old kid who
could barely use a fork or spoon.

He's eating, he's eating
blueberries with his hands,

and all of a sudden someone handed him
an iPhone, he was like...

When you're playing
with Robin Williams,

you're not known for how
you neck and neck with him.

You're not known
for how you beat him.

You're known for how you
just barely keep up with him.

Look up here Rick, there's people on the Hills.

Hi, everybody on the Hills.

Screaming on the mount.

- Did Jesus have comedy day?
- Jesus had comedy day.

I'll be back.

There'd be improvs
where I'm on stage with Robin,

and we would sync up,

and to see that in his eyes,
that twinkle that means we made it.

It's impossible to describe genius
or comedy really. You can analyze it.

But I went with him to two days of Aladdin
recording sessions on the Disney lot,

and watching him
go back and forth,

and do all of these characters.

Let's blow this popsicle stand!

A doorstop
would be a fabulous career.

Not bad, goodnight, Alex.

Out of all of every pore
of his being,

and he was so happy
and joyous.

Hey. Go get him here, you little crazy guy.

I don't care
what I am, I'm free.

Offer void or prohibited by law.

He goes, "Let's do that again,
I could do that better."

And they go, "What do you mean
you can do it better?"

He goes, "No, just let me, just run it
again. I think I have an idea, you know."

"You think you have an
idea, good Lord. Oh my God."

I think the man has to flow.

He has to be able to come in
there and go against the magic.

He's got his own magic, and he just
hasn't found it in himself yet.

Unnecessary use of reptile,
500 year penalty.

Watching these technicians
desperately laughing and crying,

trying to keep up with him
and not screw up the dials

while they're witnessing
true brilliance.

Enough about you. Talk about her.
She's a honey.

Come on.
Talk about the features.

Her hair, her eyes, her shoes,

bee-guiling, bee-witching,
bee-utiful.

When you're in the room
with Robin, it is full go.

- Um, thank you.
- Not at all.

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president
of these United States of America,

at your service.

He was a constant spark,

comedic spark, idea spark,
throwing in lines,

improvising a ton.

Some of the biggest laughs are things
that Robin invented on the fly.

I remember many, many days where Ben
Stiller and I would look at each other

because we're just watching Robin Williams
off the top of his head just go off.

And that kind of manic,

wildly creative,
bottomless pit of ideas.

Um, that mojo, that ability,

which was like a superpower.

I'd never seen anything like it.

Let go.

The thing to know about
the brain is that it's not static.

The connections
are always changing.

We call it neuroplasticity.

So you have someone
who has a stroke,

a part of the brain is damaged,
it's not coming back.

Some of those patients
get completely better

because the brain rewires,
it has this resilience.

And the determinants of resilience,
we don't quite understand.

But high intellectual abilities
to begin with,

seem to go along
with that kind of resilience.

People who have
great brains,

who are incredibly brilliant,
can tolerate degenerative diseases

better than someone
who is average.

The concept of reserve,
Robin Williams was a genius.

Robin was brilliant,
he just knew things.

But besides that, his...
his extrasensory perception

of life and of people
and of me,

he was a master at that.

You could track it back
to two years before he left.

We'd go to the Throckmorton
all the time.

He always had
an open invitation to go on.

And what started to happen
at around two years

is he started to feel, um,
like he didn't want to go on.

He just wasn't as eager

to, uh, meet with people
backstage,

or hang out too long
in the green room.

It was getting a little bit
briefer and he didn't, um,

he just... there were more insecurities
cropping up for him about going onstage.

There were a couple of shows where
I was expecting Robin to be there,

and he didn't make it
for one reason or another.

So that... that confidence
that he had,

and the ability
to go on and play...

He just wasn't willing to go there as
much anymore, it was starting to lessen.

That was concerning.
Something's off.

Someone is seemingly performing

just as they had, you know,
for years and years,

and then all of a sudden there's
some very strange thing that happens,

uh, and that raises concern,

but then the next day
they're okay again.

And then over time those dips
become deeper and deeper,

and we have these fluctuations,
especially in the beginning.

The last thing they probably think of is
that it's a degenerative brain disease.

After that, things were...
just, life was busy, you know.

He was working so hard
on The Crazy Ones at that time,

and it was getting
more and more difficult for him

to remember his lines,

and he was getting more and more
insecure about his performance.

Mark!

I know that he was
sometimes having trouble with his lines,

and stuff up front,

but he was really always able to
power through and be that guy.

And once you hit editorial,

you'd find the Robin Williams that
you know and love was always there.

I proposed we redo
that 1972 spot,

and take a chance
of making people feel.

For my projects, we... we really
stick to the script,

but when you have
Robin Williams,

it would be folly not to let
him do whatever he wants to do.

- And take.
- Boss.

Secret sauce.

♪ Drive through lovin'

♪ Drive Drive through lovin' ♪

Booty shake, booty shake,
booty shake, booty shake.

You didn't give me
enough ketchup...

- Packets.
- Oh, my God.

So every take
would be different.

Uh, ad libs
and these comic nuggets

would come from Mars
or somewhere in Robin's head.

But a lot of them were gold.

So, I think that he was
maybe a little slower out of the gate,

but he finished strong.

He'd managed to, kind of,
power through it.

He'd get up
and he'd become this guy

that you knew,
remembered and loved.

- Can you be serious?
- Well, maybe for a second.

No, see... Sorry.

It's not easy
to do a network television show,

on top of that
he had Night at the Museum,

and you know,
he's, he's doing double duty.

The third movie,
the last movie,

I would say, a month
into the shoot,

it was clear to me, it was clear
to all of us on that set

that something was going on
with Robin.

That's an experience
that I've not spoken about,

um, publicly ever.

We saw that Robin was struggling
in a way that he hadn't before.

To remember lines,
and to combine

the right words
with the performance.

You know, when Robin would call me at
ten at night, at two in the morning,

at four in the morning saying,

"Is it usable? Is any of this usable?
Do I suck? What's going on?"

I would reassure him.

And so I said,
"You are still you.

"I know it, the world knows it.
You just need to remember that."

My faith in him never left.

But I saw
his morale crumbling.

I saw a guy who wasn't himself and
he thought that was unforgivable.

Lewy Body Dementia
is particularly tragic

in the way that
it increases anxiety,

increases self-doubt,
causes delusions,

misbeliefs that have never been
present in someone.

And imagine how hard
that is for someone

who doesn't even realize
that they're suffering

from a degenerative disease,

something that is slowly
taking away

the function of neurons
across the brain.

I think the thing
that made Robin most special

about this spectrum
of abilities he had,

was the solid guy
in the middle.

That's who you are in the middle
of all that other stuff.

These things come and go,
who are you?

Do you stay you?

You know, what will you become?

We met on the day
he arrived in New York City.

I remember really he was different.
I could see the beginnings.

Robin and Christopher Reeve
came into my third year class

at Julliard
as advanced students.

Christopher was my roommate
and Robin became very quickly,

my very best friend
that I ever had.

Yeah, we're hippies from space
and he's an Ivy League preppy.

But I'm telling you,
the three of us had some good times.

He wasn't a comedian back then,
he was a very serious actor.

I went to New York,
and went to Julliard,

which was, you know, classical training,
but very much to be a thespian.

For me it was a wonderful thing,
number one to be in New York,

the training and also to get
that type of training

where you get the combination
of classical and the hardcore.

And he was
so believable, visually,

but it's the way he used
his voice, man, he was amazing.

And it blew the faculty's mind
as well as the students.

But he was always funny.

We'd be rehearsing lines,
and he would go off,

"My liege, thou a coxcomb,
thou knowest not."

And he would make up lines
in iambic pentameter,

but of course, you know, R rated
lines, X-rated lines. It was hilarious.

It was hard for him

because there was a lot of politics
going on at Julliard in that time.

He left at the two-thirds
of the way through that year.

I would go back
to San Francisco,

and try and find acting work,

and then took up
stand-up comedy as a...

- Right.
- 'Cause I couldn't find acting work.

The Holy City Zoo was the
club house for all the comedians.

If you could get on a set,

when Robin was promising
to be there that night,

you were gold.
They packed the place.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Robin Williams.

He drained every scintilla
of laughter out of that crowd.

When he did that
crazy stuff he did on stage,

I think it let everybody else
say, "Well, heck!" you know.

Told everybody else, "Yes.
Crazy stuff is acceptable."

Robin is doing
this in the '70s.

I mean ten, 15, 20 years
in some cases

before some of this
is happening elsewhere.

He even came down to
Hollywood and got up on stage

at The Comedy Store
and the Improv

and it was like a landmine
hit them, yeah.

I am not a tuna.

I am not a tuna.
Is anyone here tonight on drugs?

- Yeah!
- Okay.

A quick test right now if you
are it's okay.

Come here just a sec,
dear brother.

The Reverend likes this stuff here.

He was performing
at the Comedy Store,

and he was hilarious.

And I just watched him
and I walked backstage,

and he was sitting on the steps
behind the stage.

I saw him sitting alone.

It seemed so extraordinary
to watch a guy

completely demolish
an audience,

and then seem so distanced
from what he had just done.

No celebration,
just, like, exhausted

from pouring out
so much energy.

I got a phone call.

It was Robin.

He was up in Vancouver and he was
working on Night at the Museum 3,

and he was...
he was having a panic attack,

and he could not
calm himself down.

He's having such a struggle...

remembering just one line.

- Your life depended on me.
- Say that. It wasn't enough that you took a...

He got very frustrated.

I remember him saying to me,
"I'm not me anymore.

"I don't know what's going on.
I'm not me anymore."

His mind was not firing
at the same speed.

That spark was diminished.

Uh, the joy was sometimes
not there.

I had to work harder
editorially,

to create it on screen

because it wasn't always there
in the same way on set.

And I didn't resent that,

it was more taxing, it took
a lot more time and energy,

but if that's what
my guy needed,

then that's what
I was gonna give my guy.

The one thing
that did bother me was the arm.

I'd frequently see him clutching his
hand close to his chest a little bit,

or he'd put it in his pocket
and kind of mask certain things.

We knew that he was fragile,

and the deal was sometimes
we had to let Robin be alone,

take a minute, catch his breath,

particularly at the end
of shooting.

Uh, the last time
I was with him, I was on set.

We were doing, shooting
a, uh, scene in a church,

it was called Glory of Love.

Thought I saw the box move!

And we had a room for him where he
could, uh, go between takes,

and I went into that room,

we talked a little bit
about the scene,

and, um, he asked
a few times, um,

"How's it going? Is it working?"

Um, but the subtext of it was,
"How am I doing? Am I working?"

His sense of security
and confidence,

and who he was
and what he was,

it was something
eroding within him.

We didn't know why.

- You know, you got to give a little.
- Yeah.

'Cause we knew
he was getting tested.

He was feeling, um, infirm,
or not himself,

and he was getting tested,
and I think

that those tests included brain
scans and nothing was showing up.

It wasn't like
he's my son, and I can say,

"All right, timeout.

"I'm going to pull you out of
this because you're getting sick,

"and you need some rest.
And I don't care what the teachers say."

No, no, no.

He's signed up.
These are contracts you don't break.

This is this, this
and the other thing. There's...

What can I do?

And Robin,
he aimed to please every day,

every minute,
he aimed to please.

If the studio or the network
came begging

for more interviews and more publicity,
he would always give it his all.

His intellect and his mental
acumen were so beyond ours

that it could be compromised
a great deal probably,

and he would still be playing
a step ahead of the rest of us.

- How much of the script in the show is you...
- 23.5% improv.

- Good. That's exactly what I wanted...
- 23.5.

- She hasn't finished the question here, Robin.
- But I knew where she was going.

- Oh, okay.
- You dancing? There's one dance number and it's a ballet.

So Lewy Body Dementia,
like all degenerative diseases

is a problem
of plumbing and circuitry.

These degenerative diseases
are caused

by misfolding of proteins
within neurons,

or the parts of the brain that
allow us to move, think and feel.

We have 70 billion neurons.

They slowly disintegrate.

This bad protein alpha-synuclein
relentlessly picks off neurons

in a specific neighborhood,
spreading through that neighborhood,

and then moves into different
neighborhoods in the brain.

And then finally it's swept
across the entire brainstem,

almost every neuron
in that circuit

with sleep, mood, anxiety,
cognition has been affected,

and that is really the late stage
of dementia with Lewy Bodies.

The stage that no one
can get out of.

Soldiers have
very refined bull detectors,

and to see that
instantaneous connection

that Robin was able to make.

Good evening, Baghdad!

Thank you.

What he understood
about the American soldier

was where they came from.

Some of these kids are dying,
they're getting wounded.

He had a way of connecting
with them

that just made them
feel so good.

He was there for them,

and they understood that.

There's combat, hardcore stuff
and then it's a lot of waiting around,

and it's that stuff
where people need

things just to fight the boredom,
and that is most important.

And I think most people are just shocked that
someone showed up. Like, "Why are you here man?"

Afghanistan, six times,
Iraq, five. Yeah, it's crazy.

And you haven't fixed it yet. That's disappointing

You know, from going there,
that's the best audiences in the world.

I do have a story.

I've...
I've got a ton of them.

A young man
was very seriously injured,

and his girlfriend had decided
it was just a little bit

too much for her to handle,

and she had just left
and she was not coming back.

She was on her way
to the airport.

So we walked in and you could tell
that he was in, um, in despair.

And how afraid
that he was, in going forward,

that he would never
have another girlfriend,

you know, about what his life
was going to be like.

And, um, Robin pulled up
his chair right beside his bed

and started talking about fear.

He went into some
very personal things.

I think we probably
stayed an hour and a half.

And, you know, we walked out,

and, um, Robin actually said,

"Boy, that was a tough one."

He said, "Because for all of us,
confronting our fears

"is a very difficult thing
to do."

And he said, "I'm sure nobody ever
thinks I'm afraid of anything."

That was a big topic
of conversation.

Was their spouse
going to stay with them?

Were people going to be
looking at them differently?

He actually talked
about those kinds of things.

He was willing to sit and talk
about some of his own fears.

And, um, I'll never forget
one day and he said,

"Oh, Elaine,
that was a tough one."

And he said,
"He doesn't know that,

"but I have been so close to what
he was talking about myself."

It was early May
and he came home,

and it was like a plane
coming in with no landing gear.

His resources
were just... spent.

We were supposed to go
to some friends and, um,

Robin couldn't,
he couldn't get out of bed.

It was becoming more
of a normal that,

"Robin is not feeling well.

"And I can't tell you why.

"We're just gonna stay home."

His delusional looping

would just kick in at night.

We'd gone to a birthday party, um,
our dear, dear friend, Mort Sahl.

That night,

Robin was up,
and he started talking about,

he was so afraid that Mort was not
going to make it through the night.

You know, so we started
to have this discussion again.

It's like 12,
one o'clock at night,

and it goes to like
3:30 in the morning.

And I mean, it goes,
we're covering all the bases

because he's convinced that he
should go to Mort's house right now,

and make sure he's okay.

That night
he was texting Mort, like,

"Are you okay? Are you okay?" And
Mort's asleep, most likely, you know.

And so because he wasn't getting
a response from Mort

at two o'clock in the morning,
he wanted to go there.

So this was a typical night
for us.

There is something wrong.

There is something
not right here.

And he said, "I just want
to reboot my brain.

"I just want
to reboot my brain."

We started to see some physical
things happening to him,

and he was trying to hide it with
his arm and things like that.

So we started to see it.

One point,
he came up and he was in a tee shirt.

His ribs were actually showing.

I grabbed his skin.
"Robin, you're really getting thin."

He said, "Yeah, boss,
I've gone to the doctor,

"but I don't know what it is."

When he came to a party,
and we were all there,

the comedians were,
they were flummoxed,

they were overwhelmed.

And he was off lurking
in the corners alone.

I mean, can you imagine, you're at
a party and you're, "Where's Robin?"

And you look and he's over in the
corner fiddling around with a bush,

or something like,
well, this is not good.

He was suffering
and you could tell it.

I tried to get him to go
to a James Taylor concert with us,

and he says,
"I don't think I can."

I go, "I mean, I know you're tired,
but I'll drive and I'll come get you.

"And we have the tickets
and it's on me."

And he goes, "No, I don't think
I can leave the house."

And that kind of, scared me
a little bit, you know,

'cause he was serious
and I go, "Okay."

And I didn't really press him on it,
but I mean, he was leveling with me

that "I don't think I could
leave my house right now."

And his speech patterns
changed a little bit

that I don't know how to...
It's hard for me to talk about it.

I knew there was something
going on.

I spoke with Robin almost
every day or text and stuff,

I witnessed
his processing reality

completely different
than the way everybody else.

And it just, the only reason
I talk about that

is his brain
was giving him misinformation.

Complete misinformation.

Going from where Robin
and I had our world together,

that was our sanctuary.

Oh, it's so lovely to see
that you're so happy and everything.

How did the two of you meet?

Seriously,
outside an Apple store.

It was a busy Saturday.

I had to go to the Apple store,
and I start heading to the back,

and I see this man
dressed in camo.

He was just smiling at me and I thought,
"I think that's Robin Williams."

And I thought, "All right,
I'm just gonna go and say hi."

I had camo pants on and she said,
"How's that camo working for you?"

"Really good, obviously,
you saw it."

We just started talking and we
had the connection of 12 step stuff.

You know, we both had crazy drug and
alcohol days earlier in our lives.

He knew enough information
to be able to find me,

if he wanted to, you know,
I'm one of the regular 12 step meetings.

The next Tuesday night,

I was at my regular thing.

I looked around the room, I didn't see him.
I thought, "Oh, well."

Midway through the meeting
I turned around,

and, uh, there he...
there he was in the back of the room.

Then I turned around real quick and
thought, "Oh my God, he's here."

Well, it was, kind of sweet
and then I was like off and running.

It was wonderful.

He told me he met this girl,
and she knocked him out.

Well, he told me
he was in love.

You know, men don't usually
say that to each other.

My partner in crime who we've been
walking clean and sober together,

and enjoying all the rawness and
authenticity of life together.

Like here. This is Susan and
Robin and it was great you know.

It was like a, "I'm going to raise up.
Let me lift myself up to love."

We just had a theme, a way of
approaching life that was so in sync.

We just were like
two little kids.

We were looking
at the world together,

you know, almost like
through each other's eyes.

That was like having
a best friend, you know,

where you could really
explore life together.

Yeah, we dated
for about four years.

We'd had promise rings that
we'd worn for a year already.

Doesn't everybody do promise rings?
I don't know.

We knew we wanted
to get married.

October 22nd, 2011,

it was storybook.

Wow. I'm just picturing him.
Um...

He sure looked good.

A part of my wedding vows
was really all about...

loving him as he is.

I've no desire
to change this man.

And you had
your honeymoon in Paris?

- Oh, it was wonderful.
- Yeah?

The great thing is in Paris,
all the paparazzi

are like wildlife
photographers.

Obviously you look over there
like, Robin, kiss her.

Lift up her skirt.
No, get away from me.

Kiss her, kiss her,
do it now.

The comedian will now attempt
to kiss the tall woman.

He had
come home from

A Night at the Museum.

He was basically home
for a week.

He was absolutely exhausted.

We were looking
at a week of testing.

The calendar
was just booked.

So, we had this day
at the beginning of it all.

I said, you know,
"Why don't we go out

"to Tennessee Valley,
go on a walkabout there,"

which we loved.
We just loved our walks.

This is when I realized

my honey had never
ever been on a picnic.

It was a pretty
windy day.

But as we got out there,
there weren't a lot of people

and, um,

it was so nice

to have space around us

in nature.

We went over
to the rocks and, um,

ate our sandwiches
and it was just us

and it was peaceful.

It was one of those moments
in the midst of this

frenzy of trying to find out
what's going on.

Like the drum beat
was getting more and more.

And he was depleted.

He was so...

so depleted.

And, uh...

he just put his head
down in my lap,

you know, and I just,
I just stroked his hair and...

He just laid
in my lap for like,

couple hours.

Well, the guy was tired.

So, the first time
that Robin came into my shop,

it was in 1983

and it was shortly after
John Belushi died.

When John Belushi
passed away...

it devastated Robin.

John was crazier
than anybody,

and, but man,
did he pay the price

and, and, you know,

it hit him like
a sheet of cold ice.

He pulled out
of a dive.

He stopped everything,

but white wine
for one year

and he didn't go to AA.

And I mean, "Wow how are
you doing this?"

And he goes, "Just because
I have to," you know.

He didn't want to die.

Then of course,
he'd always been

really physical, you know,
he was an athlete,

he was a good athlete.

He took up cycling.

And he started riding
more and more

and we started seeing him
more and more.

You are a keen cyclist?

Yes, sir.
I am a bike sexual.

Yes, sir. I like
to ride the bike.

I mean for me,
it's my meditation.

It's what I do.
I can, uh,

get on my bike
and ride about,

sometimes 20 miles,
sometimes 40, or 50 miles

and it's great.
It's beautiful.

He said that,

you know, cycling was
the closest thing to flying

and it allowed him

to free himself

from all the things
that went on in his mind

because his mind
was so active, right?

Robin and running
and biking

was always in struggle.

You know, you have
to push yourself,

you have
to challenge yourself.

And Robin as an artist,

challenged himself
to do roles

that were like,

stretching himself.

He wanted to prove that
he wasn't just a comedic actor,

he was an actor.

When you're improvising,
you're going out looking.

I'd be going and talking to flowers
and how are you doing? Please cough.

You know, when you're playing
like that, you're going out.

But by stopping that,
you force the energy to implode

and you find,
you can explore yourself.

Either memories
or different emotions.

Oh, Captain,
my captain.

Sit down, Mister...

Dead Poets Society
almost didn't happen

because they really
just wanted him to do it.

The writer asked me...

"How could we get Robin

"to reconsider this
and maybe do this?"

I said, "Well, you need
to involve him

"in the creative process

"and at least
give him a voice

"in choosing the director."

I said, "Make him
a short list."

But Peter Weir
was at the top of it

and he said, "I'm in,
if you can get Peter Weir."

And it happened.

Thank you, boys.

Yeah, he gave me
a sweet gift and, um,

and I mean...

When he's looking
at the yearbook

from when
he was a student.

Gentlemen.

We were just looking
in your old annual.

Oh, my God.

- Then the kids...
- No, it's not...

...show him this yearbook.

He gets down on his knees
and just...

No, it's not me.

Stanley
"the toll" Wilson.

Stanley "the tool" Wilson.

Which was his
nickname for me.

What was the dead
poets society?

So, I'm sitting with him
at the premiere

next to the heads
of Disney

and he was smiling
and he wouldn't look at me.

But I started crying
when this came on

and that was his
thank you to me for helping.

And he was brilliant.

Invincible
just like you feel.

The world
is their oyster.

He always wanted
to push himself. He did.

And I think that's
incredibly admirable

because you don't
have to do that.

When you're wealthy
and famous

and people,
the world over love you

and want you
to make them laugh.

We liked to go
play basketball

with a local group

that helps develop
mentally disabled adults.

His neurologist,
who also attends that,

had, um, not seen him
since December,

when the suspicion
about his, uh...

the shaking of his hand was,
you know it was...

keep an eye on it,
but at that point

it was so minimal maybe it's because
of this previous shoulder injury.

Well, basically
that night, um,

that doctor made
a visual diagnosis

from way across court.

All he knew was that we were going
to be going in to see the GP.

When he was told
he had Parkinson's...

and they're saying
it's early to mild

and, you know,
that's great.

So, okay, we get
on medications,

we'll figure this out, you know,
you'll get it adjusted.

They were saying
ten good years.

I could see
he wasn't buying it.

Robin got to ask

these questions, um,

which at the time
seems like...

you know...

He asked,
"Am I, um...

"Do I have Alzheimer's?

"Do I have dementia?

"Am I schizophrenic?"

And the answers were,
no, no and no.

The real depth
of these symptoms,

he only knew,

the rest of us were working
with what we could.

In Robin's case,
there was a focus on his movement.

But I think internally
for Robin,

this was only
a tiny part

of the symptoms that he
was experiencing.

Another very early
feature of dementia

with Lewy Bodies
is visual hallucinations.

They often believe
that these

hallucinations are real.

So, for Robin learning that
he had Parkinson's disease

was not enough.

He's an
old friend of mine

and a former classmate
at Julliard School in New York,

Robin Williams.

- You gotta keep that. Here you go.
- Looky there!

Or is somebody's fantasy.

Robin and Christopher
were very good friends.

Christopher was a preppy
from New England, and that was our

slightly younger brother.

And the three of us were,
you know, brother Williams,

brother Wilson
and brother Reeve.

Christopher, we went to see him
when he first had this accident.

He just had
the accident and...

there were people making decisions
whether or not to keep him,

you know,
on life support.

Robin went in disguised
as a doctor

in the emergency room.

I said, I was
a Russian proctologist

and most of the other doctors,
"Oh, no."

and he looked up at me going,
"Hey, brother, what's up?"

And I said, "Would you mind,
I'm just going to do a brief exam,

"like what you said if you feel
two fingers, it's your luck."

You know,
and he laughed

and he said, "Hey, brother,
what's happening?"

And it was that idea of even
in the face of that.

And it helped.
I mean, he,

you know,
he's an extraordinary guy.

First one to show up down in
Virginia when I was really in trouble.

He came here to Kessler
one afternoon and just...

Thank God I wear
a seatbelt on this chair

because I would have
fallen out laughing.

When Christopher, we went to
see him when he first had this accident,

we both talked and said,
"I never knew he was strong,"

and Robin didn't either.
And he says,

"I don't think
I could go through that"

"and I wouldn't want to,"
you know.

He looked very frail

when he came back
from the museum picture.

He used to come over like,
every afternoon.

He'd sit in the chair
right at the corner.

He'd mumble along

about it but...

he never described
the severity to me

of losing everything.

I'd trick him even when
he got depressed,

I'd say,
"Well, a lot of times

"I want to jump off
the roof."

"Really?" He'd say.

But I said, "Yeah."

I said, "You can't jump off
the roof because...

"you can't leave
Susan alone."

And as soon as I got anywhere
near saying that and he would go,

"Ooh. Ooh."

Admiration all the time,

that's the thing
he kept getting

over to me all the time
and saying,

"Now, I finally got it right."

So, he saw
a tremendous irony...

in getting sick.

He had these
introspective moments.

And a lot of depression

as it approached,

but he didn't verbalize
that to me

and, uh...

he just wasn't
laughing a lot.

People believe that
there is psychology

and then
there's neuroscience

and they're not
the same.

But in fact
it's all related

to how our brain circuits
are working.

This is very hard for our society
to understanding and grapple with

because we have
a different way of thinking

about psychiatric disease.

There's not a realization

that the chemical changes
in the brain

are responsible for
the psychiatric symptoms.

Lewy Body Disease,
it is brain circuits

that cause troubles

that people assume are,
you know, behavioral,

not potentially related
to a disease.

Someone has Parkinson's disease
and they have shaking

and they can't walk.

Then, oh,
that's clearly a disease.

But in fact
it's pure semantics.

There's no difference.

It's just different circuits
are being affected.

It flows over
someone like a massive wave,

no matter how moral,

ethical, good,

brilliant someone is.

When they get,
you know, disease

of the magnitude
of dementia with Lewy Bodies,

they get very sick

and they change enormously
in a psychiatric way.

It affects sleep
very early.

This is another very hard part
of Lewy Body Disease.

When they're asleep,
they suddenly act out their dreams,

we call REM behavior.

They can strike out
during a dream

and actually hit people
at night.

The lack of sleep
had been building

very intensely
since December.

He's thrashing
at night now,

which is a Parkinsonian
type symptom.

So, now,

what was happening,
you know when you first fall asleep,

like, you start to go deep
pretty quick if you're tired?

He would go,

"Honey, what did
you think about..."

Like in a daytime voice,
he was loud.

No one was getting sleep.

It was impossible
because the delusional looping.

And then the degree
to which the paranoia

came in,
it was so drastic.

He's just going
from room to room,

literally watching me,

he's making a lot
of phone calls

and texting people
and questioning.

I'm sure. I know it was
a lot about questioning

my loyalty to him.

And then I'm like
back in the studio

and he's watching me

and he's standing there
in a frozen stance.

And he wasn't moving.

And then he'd
come out of it

and he was so upset
with himself.

There were other scenes
going on for him.

There were other
ideas about us.

What part of this is...

is freewill?

He had this awareness

of what he was doing
and that pained him

because he knew it wasn't us,
it wasn't right.

There's that core
of that person

that is still
completely maintained

and they struggle
with this

and they struggle
with how they're changing

and, you know,
they often don't

have a good logical
conclusion about it.

So, it's very hard.

Robin is, um,
not getting enough sleep.

The therapists are like, "Not getting
sleep can be really dangerous."

When we were told
to, um,

to sleep apart because
he needed to get sleep

he came to me
and he said...

"Does this mean
we're separated?"

For someone so brilliant
to say something like that.

Such a mismatch
of reality.

Five minutes later...

he was back

and he realized,

no, we're in love
and we're married.

There's no...

I'm not leaving him.

Robin was in
the house visiting and...

he wanted me to look out
the back window,

look at our boat dock
and our boats

and get a different view.

And so, he looked out
the back window,

here, out of our sun room,

he stood there
and stood there,

and stood there

for about 10-12 minutes
motionless.

Didn't say a word.
Just stood there and looked.

For the longest period
of time. Way too long.

I finally said, "Robin,
let's go back outside."

In the middle
of the storm,

we kept trying to stay
in the center.

By now though, we were seeing
the therapists every day,

it's bike rides,
it's 12 step work.

Meditating together
helped a little bit.

We went to
a hypnotist at Stanford.

And God bless the man,
he did everything.

I would come in the room,
and he would be sitting there

doing this thing
and it was part of the deal

to like, hypnotize yourself.

Kind of worked, a little bit.

But it would always
be temporary.

But he would keep trying.

He was a freaking warrior.

The way that he was able

to battle the inner turmoils,
the inner fears.

He was blessed with what
his heart was capable of,

in the midst of fear.

You go your whole life
never knowing how you look

and then, there you are.

You get hungry,
you get stupid,

you get shot
and die.

Then you get this quick glimpse
of how you look to others,

to the world around you.
It's never what you thought.

He could do what
nobody else could do.

He'd do what very few artists
have ever been able to do.

He was just...
he was beautiful.

I remember, the day
I found out I was thrilled.

Robin Williams is going
to come do

Bengal Tiger at
the Baghdad Zoo.

He's the tiger.

The fact is,
tigers are atheists.

All of us unabashed.

Heaven and Hell, these are
just metaphorical constructs

which represent hungry
and not hungry.

I would see him waiting
after the play,

after we'd come out from
a two hour and 20 minute show

and he's waiting for
every single person

to get their picture
and to sign their playbill.

And I learned patience,
and I learned compassion.

He's everything you want
from a fellow artist.

- Hey, Kellen.
- Looking hot in the green room.

He'd go in and extend
these mercy calls

to the comedians in
the green room.

They all looked upon
him as a hero,

and he's more than generous.

Wait, can we get you doing
the guy who hit our car today?

- Please?
- No! Dude! No.

- Nothing.
- Dude, you hit my rental car, man.

No, dude. I did but nothing happened.

- That was like before and nothing happened.
- That's so silly.

Do you have
insurance, maybe?

Oh, not at all, thanks.

That last
bike ride with Robin,

I asked him at the beginning
of the ride, "You look beat."

"Are you sure you're okay
for a ride? You look exhausted"

He said no, he needed it.
He really needed it

and was ready to do it.

But it was clear he was off,

off in a way he had not
ever been off before.

Much slimmer,
just sort of not there.

Couple of times he was over
in the lane way more than

he should have been. Way more
toward the center of the lane.

He asked
a lot of weird questions,

seemed oddly distracted.

Turned around and he'd say stuff
like, "What time you got, boss?"

Never asked me that on
a ride ever before.

I'd say, "I don't know, we left it
one, we're halfway through 1:30?"

"Thanks, boss."

Thirty seconds later.
"What time do you got, boss?"

Forty-five seconds later.
The same question again.

There were several other questions he
asked that were odd and didn't make sense.

Um, something along the lines, I think
we should maybe getting back and we took

one loop, we're getting back,
that kind of stuff.

Before you notice it,
he started to leave me,

he just was 20 yards
and then 40 then 100.

This has never happened
in the ride.

And all of a sudden he was a hundred
and some yards and I couldn't catch him.

I busted butt to catch up.

I couldn't do it.
But he pedaled all the way to the house,

and we get to the house
and he said,

"Hope you don't mind, boss,
but I got to get in today.

"I got stuff to do." And I said,
"Fine." And he hustled in the house.

Uncharacteristically,
around 9:30 in the evening,

Carol noticed Robin and
Leonard standing out front,

I went outside and I asked
if everything was okay.

And he said, "Yes, I'm okay."

Just sort of a pat answer.

And then he said,
"Boss, I really need a hug."

And so I gave him a hug.

And he started to cry at
that point, put his head down.

So I put my arm around
his shoulder, but then

I asked him, "Robin, Robin,
are you okay?

"Is anything wrong
that I could help?

"Are you in pain?"

He said, uh, "No, boss."

He talked about family
and what was going on

in his life and some
things that

I think he felt I would
keep private.

It took about 15 minutes.
He said, "Bye, boss."

I said, "I'll see you tomorrow."

And he walked home.

We were going to try and
get to bed at a decent hour.

And we stayed up for a little while,
which is what we did that week.

When sleeping apart it's like,
well,

we'd stay in our bed together
until it was time to go to sleep.

Again, I'd read to him,
then it was just time for sleep

and he, uh...
he went into his office,

which is right by our room and he went
back there a couple of times to get things,

and I saw he had his iPad
and I thought,

"This is really good because
he hasn't wanted to read

"or do any, you know,
anything in a long time."

We just said good night to each other.
"Good night, my love."

"Good night, my love."

We'd been meditating
every morning together.

So, when I got up
and he wasn't up yet,

I thought, "Oh my God,
the door's still closed.

"He's sleeping, he's sleeping,
this is really good."

His assistant showed up because
they had some work stuff to go over

and I had to take off
and I just told her, I said,

you know, "Just text me
when he's awake."

Apparently he had
slept in.

And they couldn't figure out why he was
sleeping in because it wasn't him. Right?

And they tried to go in
the room and it was locked.

Then I got a text saying...

"He's not up,
what should I do?"

I knew... I just knew there
was something terribly, terribly wrong,

that wasn't right,
and I just texted,

"Wake him up immediately
and call me back."

She called me back.

Susan had just come back.

Dan and Rebecca were outside
the house.

The police were showing up and
they didn't know what was going on.

Sister came in the
kitchen and said, "How are you?"

And I said, "I'm fine." She goes, "Oh,
so you... Oh my God, you don't know?"

And then she told me, you know.

I was just sitting
with a tsunami of grief.

I'm driving back, on this day
three years ago. And a reporter

from a tabloid called me
on my phone.

I don't even know how
they got my number.

And they said, "Do you have
any comments about the death

"of your friend, Robin Williams,
by suicide?"

And I threw my goddamned phone
across the car and kept driving.

I remember very distinctly,
we were standing out front

and you could hear
a helicopter coming.

He said, "Okay, here they come."

The whole Bay Area
felt like a sledge hammer

hit it in the head that day and New
York too and Hollywood and everywhere.

It was like a war zone,
helicopter circling,

news vans pulling up their
big satellite dishes

and they're all setting up
cameras.

They're knocking on our
door asking for comment.

It got pretty crazy
around here.

The global media descended
on this little cul-de-sac.

How everybody just wanted
their piece.

We felt that it was
a huge invasion of privacy.

This was a horrifically
tragic event to happen

to normal
people that are our neighbors.

We also had fans
of Robin's

that just wanted to come
and pay tribute

and they would stand peacefully
in front of his house and lay

flowers down and just
pay their respects.

You know, it's like really
having...

a limb or something ripped from you
and you can't heal it right away.

I remember walking out of that
facility down the steps outside

and feeling the last year
and a half

of really hard work that my
husband and I went through.

I had the beginning
of an answer.

I started digging in
for about the next year.

You can't come back
from Lewy Body Dementia.

There is no cure. Depression,
you can come back from.

He had come back
from that earlier in life.

Clumsy as it was, not in the right
state of mind due to the tricks

that the disease plays on you and
the lack of sleep and everything.

But I think he just probably
somewhere in his brain has decided,

"I don't want to bring
everybody down with me.

"I don't want to spend a year
or two going down this path."

Maybe he didn't have quite that level
of consciousness. But knowing Robin,

"I want to ride my bike. I want to be with
my beautiful wife. I want to do comedy."

These things will probably all be
off the books in a very short time.

I just know that
he finally one day said,

"I'm not going to go where
this is taking me."

But he's just so joyous. And then
there would've been no joy in his life.

No, he wasn't ready to go.
He wasn't ready to go at all.

And he stuck around longer than he
felt like it. I mean, I just know him

because he wasn't ready to say
goodbye to Susan or to life.

You know, when someone gets sick
like that because it's so confusing.

It's not their heart
that's sick.

It's the mainframe,
it's the computer,

and that's very different,

very different.

Lewy body gives
nobody a chance to prepare.

The psychiatry is the disease. It's the
manifestation of the disease in the brain stem.

I think in this country,
this is a big problem, that mental health

and neurology are seen
as separate.

In fact, it's all
abnormalities of brain circuits

when your brain is not functioning to
allow you to be a fulfilled human being.

So there's a tendency
to blame people for their behaviors

and their illness,
and a certain mindset around disease

that people are responsible for
their own disease. They aren't.

I think there's a blame-free world,
just like when someone has cancer,

no blame.

Robin Williams' widow is speaking
out about the beloved comedian's...

Speaking out for the first
time since he took his life...

Susan Williams is breaking
her silence.

It's been a year since his death. I see
you're still wearing your wedding ring.

- How're you doing?
- I'm doing okay.

It's been a year of grieving.

Uh, and it's been
a year of

really trying to get to the
bottom of what killed my husband.

Susan Schneider Williams wrote
an editorial for the journal Neurology...

For her first TV interview since
writing about Robin's health struggles.

People think your husband killed
himself because he was depressed.

Everyone thought that he died
from suicide,

from depression.
But that wasn't the case?

No, Robin did not die
from depression.

Robin had a deadly disease
and it's called Lewy Body Dementia.

Everybody deals
with grief in their own way.

The part that needs
the focus and attention is,

let's cure this disease.
No one should have to go through that.

No one should have to feel the
level of pain that Robin felt.

And he's one of millions.

But what she's done,
is educating

everyone that cares to know
what really happened,

the real story about
his last year.

Autopsy reports diagnosed
Williams with diffuse Lewy Body Dementia.

Lewy Body Dementia.

To a form of dementia,
he had what's known as Lewy Body Dementia.

Which was
discovered only after his death.

When you don't have a
diagnosis and you're going down

these trails of trying to find out
what's going on, that is scary.

The terror of where's
this coming from?

Robin asked, "Do I have
dementia,

"am I schizophrenic?"

And okay now, right?
Is that clear or not?

This is what other families
are going through.

An example of what's
going on in many of these lives.

Having a diagnosis...

would've meant everything.

Doing the press
for that last movie was really,

I mean, it was very
complicated emotionally

and to be really blunt,
I'm really proud of the fact that

there were 200 people
on that set every day,

and not one of them

spoke to anyone ever about the
struggles we saw Robin enduring.

But it no longer feels loyal
to be silent about it,

but maybe more loyal
to share without shame,

without secrecy that,
yeah, this guy was hurting.

He was going through something
that he didn't have a name for yet.

And it doesn't bring Robin
back, but it does give clarity.

Because a completely
new variable was entered

late into the equation of Robin
Williams' life, which ended his life.

The Robin that we watched
all those years,

the man who put himself
out there,

the man who went overseas
to entertain troops,

the man who would entertain
the crews on the sets,

the man who would hug
and hold on to his friends.

That was very real.

After he left, in his
bedside table there was a few items,

just a few things. And every once in a
while, I would pull that drawer open,

um...

when I missed him,
and just wanted him to tell me something.

I opened up that book
and I was like, "Wow."

And I remember that when we were
talking about what we wanted to

be able to leave
as our legacy.

And for Robin, it was that, that he
wanted to help people be less afraid.

When you get to know Robin,
just as our friend and our neighbor,

like all of us knew him.

That's one thing. But when you
actually, there's a realization

about the impact that he
had on a global basis.

The last scene for the
Night at the Museum franchise

is Robin and Ben Stiller
saying goodbye,

and knowing that they are probably
not going to see each other again.

That was the scene.

We didn't realize that
that was real life.

It's time for your
next adventure.

I have no idea what
I'm going to do tomorrow.

How exciting.

Goodbye, Teddy.

Farewell, Lawrence.

If you
saw his movies,

Robin's movies, you saw
one side of Robin.

But the biggest blessing
is who he was as a human being.

He was a loving soul
and that was who he was.

He was totally open, you know.

And he understood
the bigness of love.

Oh, man. This guy, I mean,
I feel him around all the time.

There'll be a moment when
I just burst out laughing.

I hear his voice
in my ear.

It's just one of the joys
of my life, if not the,

I mean, that was the best
friend I ever had.

You know what I mean?
Truly, it was just the time.

It was the ride
of a life, man

I just love
him so much.

Yeah, there's a sadness
and then you have to go.

Then there's also hope.
Sadness, it's always like

you wish they hadn't
happened, but they did.

And the purpose is
to make you different.

It's what they call
the Buddhist gift.

It's that idea of

you're back and you realize the
thing that matters are others,

way beyond yourself.

Self goes away,
ego bye-bye.

You realize there are a lot
of amazing people out there

to be grateful for,
and a loving God.

Other than that,
good luck.

That's what
life is about.