The Suicide Note Left By Robin Williams: World’s Greatest Dad

Contrary to what has been reported, Robin Williams did write a suicide note. Only that he wrote it 5 years ago and titled it World’s Greatest Dad.

Going through the avalanche of movies on Netflix last night my friend and I thought it would be fitting to watch a Robin Williams movie as a tribute. So as we went through the half dozen movies Netflix had of him we decided to watch the only movie neither of us had watched - World’s Greatest Dad.

We felt a deep sense of solitude and emptiness as we watched a man on screen that had just recently passed away. It was morbid and uncomfortable. We felt bad for him and pitied him just like many of you - he was too good, too strong and too smart to be looking so destitute and helpless in the eyes of world.

After watching the movie, I realized that this wasn’t just a movie that had too many coincidences to the actors self destined tragic death. This movie was much more. Robin Williams spoke to all of us through multiple characters in this deeply dark movie - explicitly telling us how he was feeling, what he thought of the people around him and what he thought of us.

Lets just say I wouldn’t be surprised if in reality Robin Williams pretty much wrote the script, directed and edited the entire movie himself. I don’t care what IMDB says. Robin Williams has to have been obsessively involved in every aspect of the production of the movie for every scene felt like his own. He was by far the most notable cast in the movie so I am sure he had no problem getting it his way. From every word on the script to every single frame Williams didn’t stop till it was perfect- perfect for him not you - this movie was a chance for him to tell us what he was feeling uninterrupted. It was his voice you would hear, his own voice speaking to us, mocking us and just plain fucking hating everyone around him.

If you think I am overreacting or jumping on the circus parading theories about his death, I don’t blame you. I am simply saying that Robin Williams was trying to give us a direct view into his mind and life and if we really give a damn about him, we should listen to what he has to say. Do yourself a favor and go watch the World’s Greatest Dad but this time when you listen to the narration and dialogue throughout the movie make a conscious effort to just listen to Robin Williams the man.

He details his dark life, his deepest anguishes and his cunning mockery of the world around him. It may seem obvious to state that he hated his life; but the debt of his hate and disappointment with the people in his life, all but with the exception for his children, can be felt throughout the movie.

Robin Williams was a complex man of genius proportions so for me to even try and dissect what he wove into every scene of the movie would be unreasonable. Watching the movie through the eyes and voice of the very ill Robin Williams I could hear him speak his last words – go try it yourself.

The fact that this was his darkest movie is by no accident. Throughout the release of the movie in 2009 he played it down, almost changing topics on talk shows to discuss his ongoing fight with alcoholism whilst forcing his sad face to smile on CNN. This movie would suggest he planned his suicide many years ago frame by frame, he was a deeply dark man who everyone thought was happy but really he hated us. An he told us time and time again throughout the movie, so it is not a surprise he didn’t want to show it off while he was with us, he wanted us to find the movie and in the process find him.

In the movie the son of Robin Williams’s dies of asphyxia – hanging from his closet, this was frame by frame Williams own death. Robin Williams in the movie fakes a suicide letter written by his son, which calls out on every person in his son’s life. The letter is of pure hatred, finger pointing, mocking and a depth of anger only Robin Williams could feel.

He was writing his own letter calling out the people in his life. I don’t know the people that consumed Mr. Williams life, all I know is that I could feel him so angry at them, and I suspect he knew they would know who they were.

His children where the noor of his eyes, both on screen and in real life. In the movie, he loved his son even with all his faults and extremely freak-like behaviors. Williams showed the consistent unconditional love only a father could give. In real life he time and again publicly showed his love and pride for his children, even till his last tweet. Yet he never showed us adoration for anyone else, not even his wives.

The movie continues as the character, portrayed as a struggling author never being able to publish anything, automatically reaches the echelons of Oprah Winfrey-esq show over his sons fake journal which he penned, becomes an instant blockbuster. Robin Williams uses the multiple characters to tell his own story; he carries on this blatant lie till the end of the movie before he confesses. The irony is that at the beginning of the movie we see his vivid dream where he walks to stage to accept an award for his writing, getting a kiss from beautiful woman as he walked through the crowd of adoring fans and speaking with authority and charm to an audience waiting to hear his every word. Though that dream comes to fruition he throws it all way and ends the movie with him using this very special moment to leave the audience with his own monologue full of disdain at how pathetic and fake they were to his son, postmortem – I suspect this was his way of predicting how we would act after his death so he wanted to let us know how he felt.

In the monologue, Williams shares his absolute hatred at the human condition to constantly have the need to be fake. The refreshing candidness of the character hinted William giving us a clue on what he thought would predictably happen after his own death. He was talking to all of us who now mourn him and pretend to actually know him. Williams wanted us to know, actually he insisted that we don’t know him. We think we know him with our tweets, articles, tributes but we don’t know shit about him.

He uses his son’s only friend’s mothers’ alcoholism at end of the movie to show his empathy for those suffering from alcoholism and those that get affected around them. He blatantly discusses suicide as TMZ reported here throughout the movie, calling it a “misguided solution to temporary problems”. But Robin Williams is too brilliant to just leave us looking at the suicide as the most obvious coincidence. Or maybe it was his genius that he knew the media and people would just run with that and miss the entire point.

Robin Williams was no doubt a very deeply disturbed man, no one is denying that. But even in his darkest most loneliest days he found a way to speak to us – share with us his secrets, his disappointments and his hope for all of us. As Williams spoke of Hemmingway in the beginning of the movie “all he [Hemmingway] wanted to do was write one true sentence”. Robin uses this film, a medium he is a master of, to tell us his truth about himself.

SKR