Tag: mrs doubtfire

My Movie Comedy Influences As A Child

I didn’t simply wake up one morning and find a love for comedy, as I’m sure none of us did. It took VHS tape after VHS tape and countless viewings as a kid to form the love I have for it today. Now, I’m aware parents today would never let their children watch some of the movies I watched as a toddler, but my mom is cool….she also was studying to get her teaching degree and was in another room in the house. SO that being said, these are (in no particular order) the comedy movie influences I had as a child.

#1: Tommy Boy (1995)

Ok remember how I just said these are in no particular order? That was a lie because if anything influenced me as a kid, this was it. I was three years old and my aunt gave me and my brother a VHS copy of this movie and from that moment on, the movie was playing everyday. I had never followed a movie so thoroughly, for christ’s sake, I was three. This movie taught me a great deal of sarcasm, slapstick, as well as tug at my heartstrings at certain moments. It also taught me to keep my mouth shut sometimes, as I got in serious trouble for threatening a fellow preschooler with “wailing on him”. Oops.

This was the foundation for my love of Chris Farley and there’s no other movie that influenced my love of comedy quite as much as this one.

#2: Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

I know, I know, I’ve professed my love of Robin Williams plenty of times on this site before but….come ooooon! I can’t talk about childhood influences without him. As a kid who had divorced parents for the duration of my life, this movie held a special place in my heart for teaching me that it was ok. It taught kids that having separated parents didn’t mean you didn’t have a family. It showed the hardships of divorce and the nastiness of court hearings and custody battles, while also making audiences laugh away at a father’s determination to go as far as impersonating a British nanny in order to see his children.

To this day, I can’t watch it without crying.

#3: Young Frankenstein (1974)

I’m convinced this movie aged me by forty years after watching it so many times. Gene Wilder captivated me with his descent into madness, but it was Marty Feldman’s performance as Igor that had me acting out scenes to my mother. It gave me a sense of goofiness and a touch of insanity to my joke telling.

This is my favorite Mel Brooks movie and if the world worked my way, everybody would have seen this by the time they turn thirteen. There’s never been a parody movie like it since and in my opinion, none could top it.

#4: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

Another movie that aged me by forty years and left the kids in my classroom scratching their heads as I quoted it religiously. This movie is set in stone ridiculous. It’s a movie that can be quoted relentlessly and for good reason. Watching it now, it’s understandable to see a child watching this and laughing uncontrollably.

The gore of the Black Knight, the killer rabbit, Patsy being the pack mule of the group, this movie is always a refreshing and laugh-filled watch. It will never go out of style.

#5: The Mask (1994)

I’m surprised I didn’t ruin this VHS tape with how often I rewatched it. This was the movie that introduced me to the whirlwind that is Jim Carrey, and I remember being enthralled with this man’s physicality on screen. He is a ball of energy for an hour and forty minutes and you better believe I learned from him. Not to mention that great Cuban Pete musical number.

Those were some of my childhood movie influences into the world of comedy, but what about yours? I feel like nostalgia has always been a major component in the way we view media today, so I’d love to hear from you all about what movies influenced you and brought you into the world of comedy.

“He Seemed So Happy.”

I was sixteen when Robin Williams killed himself. I had spent the hot summer day in August swimming with my friends, followed by getting food at a friends’ family restaurant. It was there that the waitress, Linda, ran up to our table and asked us,

“Did you guys hear about Robin Williams?? He killed himself!”

I denied it immediately. There was no way that Robin Williams, one of the main faces in comedy for me and so many others, had done this. I looked it up, and low and behold, it was the truth. The time following the news is blurry for me. I fell into a slump, binge watched all of his movies, and bawled my eyes out to them. How could a man that seemed so happy even fathom with having the thought of ending his own life?

This is where many of us learned that happiness can easily be faked.

As his career began to take off, his drug addiction got out of control. In a recent HBO documentary, Come Inside My Mind, he discusses how there are days he would stay up all night, then go to work and he couldn’t remember any of his lines and his anger would increase over time as the bags under his eyes became more prominent.

According to Robin’s widow, he struggled nearly his entire life with drugs, but was clean for at least six years prior to his death. Not only drugs, she says he did struggle with depression for most of his life, but also claimed that depression did not kill him. In her own words, “Depression was one of let’s call it 50 symptoms, and it was a small one.”

Robin was also misdiagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He instead was battling Lewy Body Dementia, which in certain areas can have symptoms more severe than Alzheimer’s. Lewy Body Dementia occurs when protein deposits affect brain chemicals, making things like memory and behavior change over time. He struggled to learn his lines for roles and was extremely paranoid. He felt himself deteriorating before his own eyes.

This was a man that made a gorilla laugh.

The man that sent another man to the ER because he was laughing so hard, he got a hernia.

It wakes you up and forces us to realize that happiness on the outside isn’t happiness on the inside. Robin left behind him a legacy as one of comedy’s brightest and most talented faces. Movie after movie, classic after classic, Robin Williams has had a place in my heart since I would rewatch the VHS tapes of Hook, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Jack as a kid, a place that can never be replaced.

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(Me at sixteen on Halloween night…No one knew who I was.)

Comedy has a way of involving the complicated battles that people can go through every day. Robin was just better at hiding it.