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More lessons and stories I cut from the Robin Williams deep dive.Subscribe to the Artwell newsletter: https://jacobkelly.substack.com/

Robin Williams is an Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy award winning actor and comedian. He first rose to prominence for his breakout role as Mork in the hit '70s sitcom, Mork and Mindy. Following Mork, Robin received praise for his dramatic turn in films such as Dead Poets Society, Awakenings, and The Fisher King. In the '90s, Williams became one of the highest-paid movie stars in the world thanks to films like Hook, Aladdin, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Jumanji. In 1998, after three prior nominations, he finally won an Oscar for his performance as Dr. Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting. Despite a slowdown at the box office into the 2000s, Williams received Best Comedy Album nominations at the Grammys for his final two standup specials, Robin Williams Live (2002) and Weapons of Self-Destruction (2009), with a win for the former. In 2011, Robin starred in a Broadway production of Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo to much praise. However, many consider his exclusion from the Tony Awards to be a snub, denying him the opportunity to achieve an EGOT before his passing in 2014.In part two of our deep dive into his career, we will discuss his time as a movie star, his final two standup specials, and his passing.Subscribe to the Artwell newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://jacobkelly.substack.com/

Robin Williams is an Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy award winning actor and comedian. He first rose to prominence for his breakout role as Mork in the hit '70s sitcom, Mork and Mindy. Following Mork, Robin received praise for his dramatic turn in films such as Dead Poets Society, Awakenings, and The Fisher King. In the '90s, Williams became one of the highest-paid movie stars in the world thanks to films like Hook, Aladdin, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Jumanji. In 1998, after three prior nominations, he finally won an Oscar for his performance as Dr. Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting. Despite a slowdown at the box office into the 2000s, Williams received Best Comedy Album nominations at the Grammys for his final two standup specials, Robin Williams Live (2002) and Weapons of Self-Destruction (2009), with a win for the former. In 2011, Robin starred in a Broadway production of Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo to much praise. However, many consider his exclusion from the Tony Awards to be a snub, denying him the opportunity to achieve an EGOT before his passing in 2014.In part one of our deep dive into his career, we will focus on his rise to fame with Mork and Mindy, and his first three comedy specials.Subscribe to the Artwell newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://jacobkelly.substack.com/

My guest today is Howard Bloom, as a music publicist in the 1970s and ‘80s he worked with talent like Michael Jackson, Prince, Bob Marley, Queen, Joan Jett, and more. In 1979, New York Magazine put him in their "Hot 100 plus" list as one of its "Big Dealmakers"This is Howard’s second appearance on this podcast, in our first interview back in 2023, we discussed his time in the music industry as I tried to understand what made someone a star.When I reached out to Howard for this interview, it was with the intention of continuing our conversation about the music industry, however, he told me his new book, The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature Is Wrong was set to release and he was only taking interviews about that.That may seem like an odd book for a former music publicist to release, but one thing you have to know about Howard is you can’t put him in a box. You see, Howard left the music industry in the late 80s after suffering a debilitating illness, and after overcoming it in the early 2000s, he returned to his first love of science.And Howard believes, as Einstein believed, that in order to be an original scientific thinker, one must be a writer, and not just a good writer, but a great one. And so while an in-depth conversation around Howard’s scientific theories would not make sense for this podcast, I was interested in exploring the process of a polarizing writer who is striving for greatness.And so now without further ado, I am very excited to present to you, my second interview with Howard Bloom.Get a copy of Howard's book: https://www.amazon.com/Case-Sexual-Cosmos-Everything-Nature-ebook/dp/B0F92TTVND/Subscribe to the Artwell newsletter: https://jacobkelly.substack.com/

What I learned interviewing writer and filmmaker Baron Ryan.Get a copy of Baron's short story collection, A Comedy of NobodiesWatch Baron's debut feature film, Two Sleep People: Coming Soon

Baron Ryan, also known as @americanbaron on ⁠TikTok⁠ (2.9M) and ⁠Instagram⁠ (1.3M) is a writer and filmmaker who rose to prominence making short films on the internet that wrestle with life, love, and the meaning of it all.At the end of 2024 Baron released a collection of short stories called ⁠A Comedy of Nobodies⁠, his fiction debut that traces a fall semester in the lives of four typical but unforgettable university students.This interview was recorded on Saturday, April 19th, 2025, exactly one week before Baron premiered his debut feature film, Two Sleepy People, at the Camp Film Festival in Austin Texas.---⁠Subscribe to the Artwell newsletter

What I learned interviewing Veronica Cartwright, actor, The Birds, Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Witches of Eastwick.Subscribe to the Artwell newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠https://jacobkelly.substack.com/

Veronica Cartwright has been acting for over six decades. After appearing in the William Wyler film "The Children's Hour", Alfred Hitchcock requested to meet her and cast her as Cathy Brenner. After navigating the tough transition from child actor to adult actor, Veronica went on to act in films like Alien, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Witches of Eastwick, Goin' South, and more.In this exclusive interview she reflects on her career and shares stories of the incredible collaborators she's had in her career including Alfred Hitchcock, Donald Sutherland, Jack Nicholson, Ridley Scott, George Miller, and more.

I wanted to try my hand at film analysis and I stumbled onto some interesting connections when watching the 1999 film Bicentennial Man, so figured I'd give it a shot.

An update on what to expect from Artwell this year.