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Richard Jeni Ends His Life
The AP via MSNBC reports that stand-up comedian Richard Jeni died from what appears to be a suicide. His girlfriend called 911 saying: “my boyfriend shot himself in the face.”
The sad clown… Sometimes it appears to me those who want to get other people to laugh, are the most depressed people in their own, private lives; when they are alone, by themselves, and without distraction.
Jeni “was a regular on the ‘Tonight Show’ and appeared in movies.” He was also a “friend of and writer of comedian Chris Rock.
May he rest in peace.
Macsmind has a video up of Jeni in action.
13 Responses to “Richard Jeni Ends His Life”
I have no idea who this guy was – his name doesn’t even sound familiar!
Truly A sad thing.
It leaves one wondering what his last thoughts were. I hope he was just looking for peace.
Doma, I think that people who commit suicide tend not to be “looking” for something as much as they are looking for a way out of something. They’re not looking for peace, they’re looking for an end to the problem(s).
Sounds the same but it’s not.
I know who he is, and back in ’93 he came to Villanova. Good act, and he did destroy a heckler who just happened to be in the Astronomy dept with me. He peaked in the 90′s but was still around making jokes, at least until now. I’m sad to hear his of his death, and especially its cause.
> I have no idea who this guy was – his name doesn’t even sound familiar!
I never heard of him until today. It’s a sad thing, of course. The same is so for the vocalist of Boston (a band that made great music), who was recently found dead at home.
I never heard of him, but, damn, why? He had a girlfriend and a job. He wasn’t down and out yet. Really, some people seem to give up to easily.
Just to get this into perspective: Leslie Nielson was 62 when he finally had the great, worldwide success with ‘The Naked Gun’. For god’s sake, even a quick google search shows that Jeni was a respected, successful professional in his job, what else did he want? Is it really a rational reason to give up because you didn’t make it to the ultimate top? Or at least an emotional one?
If this were so, what arguments do average Joes have to not follow his example? Grrr.
I mostly quit watching TV by the mid-90s and have never been a fan of the late-night shows.
Hmm, who cares, Holly? Your TV habits aren’t the topic here.
|-(
Gray,
We don’t really have any idea what he wanted or didn’t want. Everyone has their own goals and if he wasn’t feeling that he was meeting his, that would lead to depression.
But the more important point is that a lot of depression and suicidality is biochemical, and has not much at all to do with what is going on externally in one’s life. People can sometimes “have it all” and still feel depressed; in fact that can be even worse because the person then feels that he is crazy for feeling that way and that just makes the depression worse.
Bipolar disease is common among performers and artists, so that is a possibility here too. The point is that we really have no way of knowing and he is just one among many tragic cases. We need to do a lot more to understand mental illness, to recognize it and become more able to treat it.
“But the more important point is that a lot of depression and suicidality is biochemical, and has not much at all to do with what is going on externally in one’s life.”
I know, CS, but thanks for weighing in. It’s just that I lost two good friends to suicide. They shouldn’t have given up, there was reasonable hope that their problems could have been solved. They were far from the end of the line, and this makes me angry. I miss them.
Sorry to hear that, Gray. I do think that most (maybe all?) cases of suicide probably involve some imbalance of brain chemistry because what you mention here is often true: objectively looking at the circumstances it’s hard to imagine that the person should have felt so hopeless. And certainly you can almost always find hundreds of examples of people who truly are/were worse off, but still held on to hope and kept working to improve their situation. And I don’t say that to point out suicide as an option of people who are weak in character because I don’t believe that at all; I just believe that there is something going on that causes them to lose perspective, and that this something has a physiological basis rather than a moral one.