Steven Spielberg told the audience at the Tribeca Film Festival’s 25th-anniversary screening of “Schindler’s List” that Robin Williams would perform stand-up comedy over the phone to help him get through the emotional film shoot.
Steven Spielberg has Robin Williams to thank for getting him through the “trauma” of filming “Schindler’s List.”
“Robin called me. Robin knew what I was going through,” Spielberg shared at the Tribeca Film Festival’s 25th-anniversary screening of the Oscar-winning Holocaust drama.
“Once a week he called me on schedule. He knew exactly what time it was in Poland, what time it was in San Francisco… and he would do 15 minutes of stand-up on the phone, and I would laugh hysterically because I had to release so much.”
Williams and Spielberg became close while working together on 1991’s “Hook,” so Spielberg knew his sense of humor.
“The way Robin is on the telephone, he’d always hang up on you on the loudest, best laugh you’d give him,” Spielberg recalled, laughing. “That’s it. He’d never say goodbye.”
