Robin Williams Remembers the Wild, Unforgettable Chaos of Popeye
Robin Williams called his breakout film Popeye a "crazy-ass movie," recalling a production filled with chaos, rampant drug use, and a studio that ran out of money before filming wrapped.
There are moments in every career when you pause and wonder, “How did I end up here?” For Robin Williams, those moments seemed to come with the territory. Comedy, after all, is a business built on absurdity, and Williams was no stranger to pushing the limits of what’s possible—or reasonable—on set.
Whether he was donning prosthetics and voices for Mrs. Doubtfire or soaring through the air as Peter Pan in Hook, Williams often found himself in situations that bordered on the surreal. Acting alongside invisible CGI creatures in Jumanji or Flubber, he had to embrace the bizarre, talking to thin air and trusting the magic would come together later. His job demanded a willingness to surrender to the madness, no matter how outlandish things got.
Setting the Stage for Mayhem
Williams’ early career set the bar high for on-set chaos. His role in the 1980 film Popeye, where he starred as the iconic cartoon sailor opposite Shelley Duvall, was a crash course in cinematic bedlam. He once described the experience as a
“crazy-ass movie, ”
and even that felt like an understatement. The very premise—Williams embodying a cartoon character in a live-action world—was wild enough, but the reality of filming took things to another level.
As production neared its end, the situation spiraled.
“Literally, near the end of the movie … the studio had pooled all of the money, so all the special effects people left. It was Ed Wood the last weeks of the movie,”
Williams recalled. The comparison to Ed Wood, notorious for his chaotic productions and personal struggles, painted a vivid picture of the atmosphere on set.
Behind the Scenes: A Culture of Excess
The chaos wasn’t just creative. According to Barry Diller, former CEO of Paramount Pictures, the set was awash in drugs.
“You couldn’t escape it,”
Diller said, calling it the
“most coked-up”
production he’d ever witnessed. He claimed film cans were used to transport cocaine, and
“Everyone was stoned.”
In the midst of this, the cast and crew had to keep the show moving. Williams described a particularly absurd moment:
“Shelley Duvall was in a pond, basically, with an octopus with no internal mechanism, having to drape it over her body like a feather boa. I’m in the water, and I’m kind of like sitting there.”
The production’s lack of resources forced everyone to improvise, adding to the sense of barely controlled chaos.
Improvising to the End
As the film stumbled toward its conclusion, the uncertainty reached a peak. Williams remembered producer Robert Evans wandering the set, searching for a way to wrap things up.
“How do we end the movie? How do we end the movie?”
Evans asked. Williams joked,
“We could walk on the water like Jesus.”
To his surprise, Evans seized on the idea:
“That’s the way! That’s how we’ll end the movie!”
It took a mix of improvisation, resilience, and a high tolerance for the absurd to survive the making of Popeye. For Williams, it was a trial by fire that set the tone for a career spent embracing the unpredictable.