Robin Williams Reacts to NBC's Mork Movie
Earlier this month, NBC aired its TV-movie Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Mork & Mindy, which portrayed Robin Williams as both a cokehead and a star tripper on the set of his classic sitcom. Since the actor who played Williams told TVGuide.com he was unsure of how Williams felt about the film, we decided to ask the man himself.
First off, did the 54-year-old funnyman even bother to watch it? "No," Williams answers. "It's weird. If they're going to make a bad movie about your life, then [you should] wait for the Cartoon Network [version]."
Williams admits to having some slight curiosity when he first heard the Mork movie was in the works. "I knew something was up when I asked [NBC] for a script," he says. "They said, 'No, we don't have that.'"
Speaking of TV controversy, the former Mork from Ork is far more irked with ABC than NBC these days. Yes, he's still mad that his humorous ditty about SpongeBob SquarePants and homosexuality was nixed from the Oscar telecast. "This is the same network that has Desperate Housewives, [a show] where a woman has an affair with a high-school kid," Williams rants. "They're worried about [me singing lines like] 'Pinocchio gets his nose done' or 'Casper's in the Ku Klux Klan'? What they wanted to censor had nothing to do with words, but everything to do with corporate logos.
"Now [the government] is trying to censor cable television," he adds. "Cable is not bound because people pay for it. It's literally a choice; that's the operative word. If you don't like the language, or if [bleep] offends you, then turn it off."
Fortunately, Williams lightens up when our discussion turns to his current film, House of D. Written and directed by X-Files alum David Duchovny, D stars Williams as a mentally challenged janitor who befriends a 13-year-old boy. While he found the role appealing for many reasons, it was really all about location, location, location.
"I met with David [and] he had written it, so I wasn't worried about how he was going to shoot it," Williams notes. "When he said that we'd shoot in New York, I said, 'I'm in.' If you're going to do a movie about [Greenwich] Village, it's pretty nice to shoot in the Village and not be in Toronto.
"Not that shooting in Toronto is bad. Nice people, eh?" he cheekily adds. "But shooting in New York is the shiznit, if I may be so bold. New York is a character. People who live there know that."
