David Simon writes about Robin Williams in “Homicide: Life on the Street”

Yesterday David Simon, most well-known as the creator of the lauded TV series “The Wire,” wrote something on his website about his brief intersection with Robin Williams. An excerpt:

We were in the Maryland morgue on the given day, though the location had little to do with the sadness. Mr. Williams was guesting on an episode of NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street I had cowritten with my college-newspaper comrade, David Mills. It was the first attempt at a television script for either of us, and until Mr. Williams had agreed to sign on as a guest star, our attempt had seemed something of a miserable failure.

For one thing, we had originally written the episode for season one of the network drama. But NBC execs, reading a narrative in which a mother of two is shot to death in front of her husband and children and no warm victories follow thereafter, thought the effort too grim. Executive producers Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson pulled the script from that first season’s order of nine episodes, subbing another in its place.

So much for a career in television, we had assumed. Mr. Mills went back to the Washington Post; I remained on the metro desk at the Baltimore Sun. But after Mr. Fontana had somehow managed a paltry four-episode renewal of the show for a second season, the script was resurrected. Mr. Williams, then fresh off the triumph of Good Morning, Vietnam, directed by Mr. Levinson, had agreed to take the role of the husband.

It is an amazing slice of life story that is a must-read for any writer and provides yet one more star in the constellation of Robin Williams’ legacy: If not for his appearance in that episode of “Homicide: Life on the Street,” that spectacular HBO series “The Wire” would never have come to be.

Here is a scene from that episode of “Homicide” starring Robin Williams:

To read the rest of Simon’s post, go here.

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