‘That Laugh Is a Drug.’ HBO’s New Documentary Explores Robin Williams’ Relationship to Comedy and Addiction

Substance use loomed large over Robin Williams’ life. But a lesser-known addiction of the late entertainer may have been comedy itself, suggests HBO’s new documentary Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind. Come Inside My Mind, directed by Marina Zenovich, offers a two-hour glimpse into Williams’ psyche through audio clips, archival footage and interviews with his friends and family. In doing so, it paints a vivid picture of the extent to which Williams, who died by suicide in August 2014, devoted his 63 years of life to making others laugh. Williams describes the passion he felt for comedy almost as a compulsion. “There’s a real incredible rush, I think, when you find something new and spontaneous,” Williams says in an interview excerpted in the film. “I think your brain rewards that with a little bit of endorphins — going, ‘If you think again, I’ll get you high one more time.’” Williams — who by all accounts could go from zero to 60 in seconds, flipping a switch from quiet and pensive at home to a ball of energy on stage — became known for that need. “The urge to be funny, and to make people laugh, was so innate for him. It was almost like breathing for him,” Mark Romanek, who directed Williams in One Hour Photo, said in an interview in Come Inside My Mind. “When he used to make people laugh that hard, he used to kind of get high from it.” Fellow comedian and close frie...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized documentaries onetime Source Type: news