Rest In Peace, Nanoo, Nanoo, Robin Williams

We lost a national treasure on August 11 with the death of Robin Williams. :( I share the same birthday, July 21, and that connection always made me smile.

That Williams chose to take his own life is a horrible tragedy, yet how can we judge him? Not only was he suffering from depression, but also from the early stages of Parkinson's disease, a malady he knew all-too-well after making the film "Awakenings," in which he played a caring doctor who dealt with the most desperate form of that disease. He knew that any cure was a stop-gap measure at best.

Michael J. Fox, another actor stricken with Parkinson's had this to say:

Stunned to learn Robin had PD. Pretty sure his support for our Fdn predated his diagnosis. A true friend; I wish him peace.

— Michael J. Fox (@realmikefox) August 14, 2014

To some, Robin Williams will always be the inspirational teacher from "Dead Poets Society," or the caring psychiatrist in "Good Will Hunting." Some choose to recall his more hilarious moments, such as "Mrs. Doubtfire" or "The Bird Cage." My kids loved him as the aging Peter Pan in "Hook." But for my 70s generation, Robin Williams will forever be Mork from Ork, the whimsical alien trying to understand humanity while falling in love with Pam Dawber in "Mork and Mindy."



Williams was an entertainer first and foremost. Yet like many actors and comedians he put on a jovial face to mask his depression and anxiety. Whatever lesson we get from his death, one thing we have to understand - every human being has pain of one kind or another, and all the success in the world is often not enough to kick depression.



Sarah Michelle Geller, his costar in the recently cancelled comedy "The Crazy Ones" made this statement via People

"My life is a better place because I knew Robin Williams," Gellar said. "To my children he was Uncle Robin, to everyone he worked with, he was the best boss anyone had ever known, and to me he was not just an inspiration but he was the Father I had always dreamed of having. There are not enough adjectives to describe the light he was, to anyone that ever had the pleasure to meet him. I will miss him everyday, but I know the memory of him will live on. And to his family, I thank them for letting us know him and seeing the joy they brought him. Us crazy ones love you."

From CNN

Actor Robin Williams was cremated and his ashes were scattered in San Francisco Bay, according to his death certificate.
Williams was found dead in his Northern California home August 11 from what investigators suspect was a suicide by hanging. The certificate, obtained by CNN on Thursday, says his ashes were scattered off the coast one day later.
It also says the cause of death is "pending investigation."
According to Marin County Assistant Deputy Chief Coroner Lt. Keith Boyd, investigators believe Williams used a belt to hang himself from a bedroom door.
Boyd would not confirm or deny whether Williams left behind a letter, saying that investigators would discuss "the note or a note" later.
The coroner's investigation "revealed he had been seeking treatment for depression," Boyd said.

From NBC

Robin Williams was sober but struggling with early stages of Parkinson’s disease at the time of his death, his wife said Thursday.
“Robin spent so much of his life helping others. Whether he was entertaining millions on stage, film or television, our troops on the frontlines, or comforting a sick child — Robin wanted us to laugh and to feel less afraid,” his wife Susan Schneider said in a statement.
. . . “Robin's sobriety was intact and he was brave as he struggled with his own battles of depression, anxiety as well as early stages of Parkinson's Disease, which he was not yet ready to share publicly."
. . . Parkinson’s is caused by the loss of brain cells that produce a message carrying-chemical, or neurotransmitter, that is important for movement. Symptoms can start with a barely noticeable trembling but worsen to difficulty walking and talking, depression and other disability. There’s no cure and the drugs used to treat the condition usually stop helping over time.

Smashing Premieres for Geller and Whedon

Both "Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D." on ABC and "The Crazy Ones" on CBS had great premieres this week! As long as they don't put the shows up against each other, I guess we will be okay. :) And lets not forget online watching through cable TV, and future marathons via Netflix. It's just good that these shows exist.

From Variety

Nielsen estimates that the extended, seventh-season premiere of “The Big Bang Theory” did a whopping 5.6 rating/17 share in adults 18-49 and 18.9 million viewers overall from 8 to 9 p.m., funneling plenty of eyeballs into “The Crazy Ones,” which opened well with a 4.0/11 in the demo and 15.6 million viewers overall.

“Crazy,” in which Williams plays a Chicago ad exec, is the season’s No. 2 new series in demos (behind ABC’s “Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD”) and No. 1 in total viewers.

The combo of “Crazy Ones” at 9 and veteran “Two and a Half Men” in its new timeslot at 9:30 (2.9/8 in 18-49, 11.5 million viewers overall) provided CBS with nice timeslot improvement in key demos over last year’s drama, “Person of Interest.”

The Eye carried the night in key demos and won easily in total viewers.

Entertainment Weekly Inside Television

ABC’s Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — a show so big it takes two company names to officially describe it — delivered 11.9 million viewers and a 4.6 adults 18-49 rating. That makes S.H.I.E.L.D. TV’s highest-rated drama debut in nearly four years (since ABC’s V premiere in November, 2009).

That adult demo number is particular impressive given the show’s time slot. S.H.I.E.L.D. had to self-start at 8 p.m. — no lead-in — and ran against huge competition: NBC’s The Voice and CBS’ NCIS are two of the most popular shows on television. And how did it stand up? S.H.I.E.L.D. (recap here) actually managed to tie the two-hour The Voice overall in the demo (4.6) — and beat it head-to-head during the 8 p.m. hour — while trouncing the return of NCIS in the demo (3.4), though obviously losing among total viewers (19.4 million).

. . . S.H.I.E.L.D. co-creator Joss Whedon, who previously launched modestly rated culty dramas like Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, told EW that ratings for the new show don’t really matter — except for when they do. “I mean, I want it to be a hit because people who I work for have invested in it, and people I work with are in it, and writing it, and I want it to continue,” Whedon explained. “We have the opportunity to do something special. If it’s not special, hopefully it will go away. I think we’ll be okay there. But I can’t measure it in those terms. It doesn’t seem useful to me.”

Buffy Saves CBS from Time-Warner Cable

What better way for Buffy star Sarah Michelle Geller to return to television than to immediately kick some ass of the corporate kind?

Time Warner Cable was refusing to pay CBS for broadcasting in major markets such as New York and Dallas, but pressure from both football fans and especially Buffy fans anticipating a new Geller series, "The Crazy Ones," they backed down.

From Businessweek

The month-long staring contest between CBS (CBS) and Time Warner Cable (TWC) is over, now that Time Warner has blinked first. The cable giant agreed to pay significantly more than its prior rate for the right to beam CBS signals in New York, Los Angeles, and Dallas, though not quite as big an increase as the network was seeking. It’s “hard to believe this isn’t a CBS victory,” Richard Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG in New York, said in an e-mail to Bloomberg.
. . . With CBS airing its first pro football games of the season on Sunday, including Chicago’s beloved Bears, Time Warner Cable was in store for some serious ire if it didn’t get the network back on its platform.
CBS, however, had an additional programming ace up its sleeve in recent negotiations: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. More precisely, Sarah Michelle Gellar, who stars in The Crazy Ones, a CBS comedy about an ad agency that will premiere on Sept. 26.
In large part because of the seven years she spent hunting the undead, Gellar still carries a cultish fan-base, according to Networked Insights, a New York-based data-analysis shop that helps such big companies as General Electric (GE) deploy advertising dollars. Buffy vanished from the airwaves in 2003, yet Gellar still sparks more conversations on social-media platforms than any of CBS’s actors. That’s a group that includes Robin Williams, who headlines Gellar’s new show, Will Arnett, Carrie-Anne Moss, and all kinds of other top-flight talent that wasn’t in Scooby-Doo 2 or I Know What You Did Last Summer, as Gellar was.

Behind the Scenes with "The Crazy Ones"

Funny new behind-the-scenes trailer for "The Crazy Ones" TV show starring Sarah Michelle Geller and Robin Williams.

Fall 2013 on CBS.



I haven't seen it confirmed anywhere, but the title of the show seems to come from the "Think Different" ad campaign in the 1990s from Apple Computer. Below is the quote and the video, with a voice-over by Richard Dreyfus

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine.
They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world,
are the ones who do…

From Wikipedia

"Think different" was an advertising slogan for Apple Computer (Apple Inc. as of 2007) in 1997 created by the Los Angeles office of advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day.[1] It was used in a television commercial, several print advertisements and a number of TV promos for Apple products.

. . . The words "think different" were created by Chiat/Day art director Craig Tanimoto. The text of the various versions of this commercial was written by Rob Siltanen and Ken Segall. Music was composed by Chip Jenkins for Elias Arts.

The one-minute commercial featured black-and-white footage of 17 iconic 20th century personalities. In order of appearance they were: Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Branson, John Lennon (with Yoko Ono), Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Ted Turner, Maria Callas, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Henson (with Kermit the Frog), Frank Lloyd Wright and Pablo Picasso. The commercial ends with an image of a young girl opening her closed eyes, as if making a wish. The final clip is taken from the All Around The World version of the "Sweet Lullaby" music video, directed by Tarsem Singh; the young girl is Shaan Sahota, Singh's niece.[4]

Sarah Michelle Geller in New TV Comedy

Exciting news: Sarah Michelle Geller will co-star in a new comedy for CBS called "Crazy Ones." This will be her first acting gig since giving birth in September to her second child, a baby son named Rocky with actor Freddie Prinze, Jr. The couple have been married for ten years and also have a young daughter, Charlotte Grace.

Entertainment Weekly

Gellar is set to co-star in the CBS pilot Crazy Ones, a single-cam comedy about a father (Williams) and daughter who run an advertising agency together. The former Buffy the Vampire Slayer star will play Sydney Roberts, the intense and driven daughter of Williams’s Simon Roberts.

Gellar last headlined CW’s one-season drama Ringer, a role that was billed as her post-Buffy return to television and was part of the 2011-2012 TV season.