Dead Poets Society: Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to another episode of Too Much Information, the
show that brings you the secret histories and little known
facts behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows, and more.
We are your prep school poets of pop culture podcasts,

(00:22):
your comparrees of karpe DM, singing the song of ourselves
because no one else wants to, and sounding our barbaric
yops over the streaming platforms of the world. My name
is Jordan run.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Tugg and I'm Alex Heigel. You very nearly hoisted yourself
on your own potograph that one, my friend.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
I got it out there. You did, you did it
was I'm very proud.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
We're all proud of you.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
I would stand up on my desk for you. And
today we are celebrating the thirty fifth anniversary of a
classic of the crinkly eyed cinema, Cannon, a movie that
helped transform Robin Williams into the crown Prince of poignant dramas,
introduced an untold number to the joys of poetry and literature,
and hopefully encourage many more to listen to their inner voice,

(01:06):
pursue passion in its many forms, and suck the marrow
out of life. We are talking about dead Poet society.
It's a movie whose charms have not diminished with the
passage of time. Some writers and educators have their understandable
issues with it, which we'll talk about later, but to me,
it remains beautifully idealistic and hopeful, both of which are
hallmarks of the adolescent age that it spotlights, and qualities that,

(01:30):
for my money, should be cherished and protected at all costs.
The movie explores themes of conformity, rebellion, and the pursuit
of individuality. But more than that, it's a movie about
people learning to feel. Are you getting choked up talking
about this?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
No? That spit in my mouth?

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Or is that bile? I don't know, so hard to tell, higl.
What are your thoughts on this movie? I can see
it being far too treaquily for you.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yes it's that, and yeah you're correct, and.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Man. I Well, this was, first of all, this was
like a parent movie for me growing up, Like I remember, like, yeah,
it's like a very parent movie, and so I ignored
it on principle.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
But also I don't give it about this world.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Uh sure, I couldn't care less like autumnal tweed bow tie,
mid century lit cannon well, I guess pre mid century
lit cannon uh in bred homo erotic hazing rituals, you know,

(02:44):
buggering in the in the yacht rowing club, locker rooms
like crew, private school crew. Sorry yeah, yeah, anyway, I
don't care about humanizing those people. I simply don't, and
I'm not going to watch a film that does that.
They are like chinless ghouls to me, Like did everyone
in this movie not grow up to be like a
Goldman Sachs banker, or like like a racist senator with

(03:06):
a secret family, Like that's what this socioeconomic class begets,
and I will not cotton to their cinematic rehabilitation.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
This is all very interesting to me because you have
this amount of spite and bile towards them, yet you
didn't have to endure them like I did.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, So, I mean that's fascinating to me. In a
more generous reading, is that I get all of my
mid century malaise through like people who wrote for The
New Yorker like her Raven Carver and John Cheever and uh,
you know, like John Berryman is one of my favorite
poets and.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
I was very much. It's really sad.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Uh, you know, all those guys and surely some women
just kidding. So yeah, I don't care about it in cinema,
but you so were you Where did they show me
on the doll Jordan what your boarding school experience was like?

Speaker 1 (03:59):
So you know, it's funny. I don't think we've ever
talked about this. I'm a veteran of the New England
prep school experience. I'm a prep school dropout actually, which
is a title that I wear with some degree of pride. Yeah,
you know what I mean. I guess to start the story,
I should just say, I mean, it really all gets
back to me being a very weird kid because my

(04:19):
parents could not have cared less about me going to
any kind of prep school situation. They just wanted me
to be happy. It was all part of my very
you know, stern, serious minded. I was like Alex p.
Keaton of my household. I had had it in my
head at age eleven or twelve, for god knows why,
that I was going to go to Harvard, be a historian,

(04:41):
wear a bunch of tweed jackets, and that was going
to be my life. And so I thought the best
way to do that was to go to one of
these prep schools and it would guarantee me some kind
of spot at one of these places. And as soon
as I was old enough, you know, seventh grade, the
end of seventh grade, I applied to the nostodgiest one
I can find, which I'm not going to name because
I bet you there in down it includes a sizeable

(05:01):
portion set aside for lawsuits. Presidents went there. It was
the British boarding school system with instead of grades, they
had forms and they had It was a boarding school.
But I lived down the street, so I didn't actually
board there. But they had older boys who were the
prefects and that were like, yeah, it was just a
weird but so you dodged a buggering. I well, let

(05:23):
me put it this way. My first day of school, it.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Alarms me that you hesitated so much to me making
that joke. You okay, buddy.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
On my first day of school, there were news crews
out front because twenty twenty had just done an expose
on a sex abuse case from one of the older
boys to one of the younger boys.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
So was shot in the dark riffing and I am,
you know, the shotgun approach boar fruit there.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
So yeah, that was on my first day of school,
which was September tenth, two thousand and one, and it
got worse from there. Well, I mean, well, okay, to
explain in between the time that I applied there and
gained entrance through scholarship and financial aid and all these
things to which I'm immensely grateful to my parents. Over

(06:09):
the summer, I fell in love for the first time,
if you must know, on a family trip, and it
was like it was like a psychedelic experience. It completely
changed my life and my view and completely reprioritized everything
in my life. And then so when I came back
to school to this very like dark, hardwood, scary kind

(06:32):
of place with just very like it was dead poet society.
I mean it looked like it. The teachers were like it.
Everybody spoke in this weird like mid Atlantic accent they did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sports was mandatory, which sucked. We lost a game once
really badly, and then the next day for practice it
was raining and the coach made us go outside anyway,

(06:53):
and he had us line up and he said, I'm
going to have you run into your crawling and your
own vomit, don't stop and do hear this whistle? And
he followed us on the scooter as we just ran
laps for I swear it was several hours.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Was this like a Rascal mobility scooter or yeah, he
had weight issues, so he was on a Rascal scooter.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, same was OJ too.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
This kid's more and more colorful, Like as we go on,
can we just cancel talking about the movie and just
talk about your prep school experience?

Speaker 1 (07:24):
It was very I mean and the whole like having
older boys like as your prefect, which I don't even
know what the equivalent would be like they could boss
you around basically if you were sitting somewhere, they could
point and say get up. And I refused once and
a teacher called me over and I thought he was
going to say, good for you for standing your ground.
They said, no, it's tradition. You're supposed to give the

(07:47):
upper class in your seat. They did when they were
your age, and when you're their age, you'll be able
to boss people around too.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
And I was like, I don't want to do that.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yeah, it was just I don't want to as well
on it too too much. But yeah, it was a
very very very strange, antiquated and lord knows, I like
my throwback stuff, but antiquated in a bad way environment.
And what did they call you? Did?

Speaker 2 (08:10):
They haven't been nicknamed for you, like Jordie or button ups.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Trust me. The dress code there was super strict, like
blue blazers and brass buttons, and for formal occasions you
had like straw boaters and ties and that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, it was straw boaters.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, it was a lot. Dude.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
How do you take a man in a straw boater
seriously unless he's like guiding you down the canals of Venice.
I'm sorry. That's that is the most I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
So, yeah, it was pretty wild and I left.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
And so that's why you like this movie?

Speaker 1 (08:46):
No, but I feel a certain sense of kinship to
it because I sort of get it in a way.
I mean, everybody gets it, anybody who's stuck. Well, let's
catch people up on the plot of this movie.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
For those I haven't seen it in a while.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
It's set in my beloved nineteen fifties, and it follows
the journey of seven young men at a very rigid
all boys New England prep school and their lives are
changed by an inspiring, free thinking English teacher named John
Keating played by Robin Williams, who sparks their latent love
of literature and encourages them to yes seize the day
and make their lives extraordinary. There's the painfully shy Todd Anderson,

(09:20):
who's played by Ethan Hawke, who grew up in an
emotionally neglected household and struggles to find his own voice.
There's the troubled Neil Perry played by future House star
Robert Sean Leonard, who struggles to escape the expectations of
his strict father. And then there's the hilariously named Knox
over Street played by future Sports Night star Josh Charles,

(09:41):
who's a hopeless romantic who struggles to summon the courage
to ask out the girl of his dreams. The passion
provoked by Robin Williams's character inspired these boys to revive
a secret society, the Dead Poet Society, which was co
founded by Keating himself when he was a student at
the school, and each meeting, held in a cave in
the woods, which rules that's super Cool, is opened with

(10:02):
a quote from Henry David Throws Walden I went to
the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front
only the essential facts of life and see if I
could not learn what it had to teach, and not
when I came to die discover that I had not lived.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, I mean, in a way, that's like the perfect
thing for this prep school because thorough went to town
all the time and like picked up cookies from his
mom's house, and I didn't know that. Yeah, he could
like walk back to town, which also occurred not far
from my house where I grew up. And this school
Walden Pond. Yeah, a bunch of people were hung there,

(10:40):
right or hanged I have to I have to assume.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
I would guess, so, yes, hang on, I mean it's
New England. There's a fifty to fifty chance as somebody
was hanged wherever you happen to be.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
That's very true.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, well, I'm going to try to steer this back
towards the inspirational land right now. Sure, most of stirring
Robin Williams quotes from this movie are endless. Aside from
Carpe DM, A personal favorite is the following. Here, let
me know what you think about this here, this will
interest you. We don't read and write poetry because it's cute.

(11:13):
We read and write poetry because we're members of the
human race, and the human race is filled with passion
and medicine, law, business engineering. These are noble pursuits and
necessary to sustain life. The poetry, beauty, romance, love, these
are what we stay alive for. I appreciate that he'd
be brought in the scope to all sorts of passions,

(11:35):
not just poetry.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, I mean, I appreciate with that articulates and I
found myself becoming like a tremendous fan of Ethan Hawk
as like a personality in recent years. Like he's just
like constantly advocating for art in a really cute way.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
For like, there was one reason that.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
Was making a rounds on Twitter where he's like, people
say they don't need art. You don't need art to survive.
It's not shelter or what have you. But everyone has
certain universal experiences like when you love dying or heartbreak
or you know whatever, and when you are looking to
make sense of the world, that's when you need art.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
I'm angled it, but you know, I you know, I've
always I think we've talked about this a lot of times.
How I find it interesting that when we look at
remains of ancient civilizations from times when we were just
struggling to eat and survive, we always see remnants of
musical instruments and you know, cave paintings and these things
have been a part of the human experience from these

(12:31):
early early moments. And I think that's one of the
cool mysteries of art, is like it's just always been there,
and this is something that's innate in all of us,
and it's probably a line in Dead Poe society. It's
part of what makes us human. And for me, the
crux of this movie is a line that's said by
Robert Sean Leonard's character. For the first time in my life,

(12:52):
I know what I want to do. And I think,
if you're lucky enough to find that thing, and it
doesn't matter if you do it professionally or just for yourself,
that's really rare and special moment. And you know, if
you haven't found it, keep looking and if you have
nurture it in whatever way you can. Heigel, have you
ever had any teachers who helped you discover your passions
or nurture your gifts? Are there any folks that you

(13:14):
would have stood on your desk for.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
M No, really, I mean I had teachers I liked,
like I had teachers in like high school, especially two
teachers I really liked. But they were just like chilled,
middle aged men who didn't really give a about anything

(13:38):
and just like enjoyed teaching their subjects and congratulated me
when I got grades and like kind of talked to
me on a more adult level. But they weren't.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
I was just thinking about this. I've never had any mentors.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Really. The closest might have been one of my like
my high school based teacher.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
But say their names, stand on your desk, say their name.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Jim Miller, the most central PA name ever. Yeah, But
like you know, I never had someone like guide me
through a really profound realization about my life or career
in so many words over the course of a semester
or years. You know.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
I took most of it from like books. But did
anybody show you those books?

Speaker 2 (14:22):
No? I went to the library a lot by myself.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
M same, Yeah, But I hit the jackpot when it
came to amazing teachers. I just got so spoiled with
teachers who just went above and beyond for really all
of us. I graduated from a place called in the
Showba Regional High School in the town called Bolton, Massachusetts,
and I say that in case there any parents listening
from central Massachusetts, please try to school choice your kids

(14:46):
over there, because it is the best. I feel like
there's probably two dozen names that I could think of off
the top of my head who are just incredible educators
and incredible people. I mean, a big one that comes
to mind for me is Kara Roach, who was my
English teacher my freshman year of high school. And before
I was in her class, I had no inclination of

(15:08):
being a writer or really even being a creative person whatsoever.
And she was just so enthusiastic about my assignments. She
just always encouraged me to go for it and then
would have me read whatever I had done for the class,
and you know, I'd do these little personal essays or
perform little monologues or have these little goofy scripts, and

(15:28):
it was like my first audience. And I was the
new kid at school. I just left this private school
situation and I was the new kid. So it was
kind of the way that my future friends got to
know me through sharing these creative things I never would
have done had they not been assigned. And then somebody,
an adult, said hey, this is really good, you should
share it with the class. And yeah, she gave me

(15:50):
my first platform. And I have no idea what my
life would be like without her. I can say that
pretty definitively. I'm really grateful to her. And yeah, just
so many great people at this school. The awesomely named
Leonidas Sacalarian, who always looked like a Civil War reenactor.
He worked nights at the Outback steakhouse. I don't know
when this guy slept, so we'd always get our papers

(16:12):
back with like burger grease splattered all over it. But
the most like he what was he?

Speaker 2 (16:16):
It was a chef.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
He was a chef. He was a chef. By day
he was a social studies and history teacher at my school,
and then by nights he was working as a chef
at the outback.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
And retreat teachers so in this country.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
He was just so brilliant. And of course, I mean
one of my all time favorite teacher's favorite people. One
of my dearest friends is the great DJ jbj. He
was my principal in third grade. I would wander into
his office sometimes after school and we'd talk and he
taught me how to play chess, if I recall, and
generally intimated that it was okay to be passionate about things,

(16:54):
which you know, when you're a little boy is not
always encouraged. And you know, I think the logical extension
of that is this show right now. He's sort of
the patron saint of this show for me. And we
fell out of touch for years after third grade, and
we reconnected when I was in college, and he just
was the most still is the most brilliant talented guy.

(17:15):
He's the trivia host at a local landmark called the
Old Timers Pub, which was the you know, like Kennedy
went there on the campaign trails, this really cool local
place and it was the most eagerly anticipated night of
the week where I grew up, and he would DJ
weddings in the summertime, and he would always have me
go with him to assist, which was extremely generous because
he didn't need the help. So we'd be driving all

(17:38):
over New England at all hours, and you know, because
we'd just come from a wedding, we'd usually have these
long talks about life and love and the future, and
he was just like a big brother to me, and
he just taught me so many things about music and
showmanship and writing and especially what it meant to be
just a good friend and a decent person with integrity. Yeah,

(18:00):
and we used to dj this week long seminar at
the University Connecticut for teachers of gifted students and it
was so cool. I mean, you'd have hundreds of like
the most motivated, brilliant, enthusiastic educators in the country converging
at this one place for a week every summer, and
just to be around them. I was already out of

(18:20):
school by that point. I was, I was almost done
in college. But just to be around them was just
so rejuvenating. And I met some incredible people there, doctor
Brian Angela, Griffy V.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
I think some of them listening, are you shaking these
up at this point, like are you just monologuing? And
they're Jones, Jones, go Crow, my old pal squirrel. No.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
So I just thanks, sorry for letting me go off.
I just feel like these's the least we can do
to honor these people. And I think that you know,
they're they're really amazing. They've been amazing in my life
and so many others.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
No, I mean I'm jealous. I had most of the
people in my high school sucked. I'm in judge with
any of them.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
Oh man, all right, we should probably dive in right
about now. From a hilarious aborted start to this movie,
which resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars of sets
being torched after Robin Williams failed to show up, to
the sweet bonds that form between Robin and Ethan Hawke,
the lost ending that would have made this movie even
more tear inducing, and the real life teachers who inspired it.

(19:26):
Here's everything you didn't know about Dead Poet Society. We're
gonna start this episode with a real m Night Shamalan
worthy twist. Dead Poet Society was written by Tom Schulman,
who would later pen in the screenplays for Honey I
Shrunk the Kids, which he turned from a drama into

(19:48):
a comedy in seven Days. And what about Bob? This
is where you insert the Tim Allen I can't do it.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
That's very good, good, nicely tomb.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
When I was in back in Pennsylvania, we were watching
a tree get trimmed in the in the backyard.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
It was Friday night and we were watching a tree
get trimmed.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
My dad and I were just sitting out on the
back porch with our hands in our pockets watching it.
It was just like, Yeah, this rules. I would show
up in that tree with a chainsaw. It was like
the closest I've gone to, actually tim out. I'm a
simple man. Just give me a tree and a chainsaw
and a cherry picker.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
And that's amazing. This Tom Schulman guy. After writing Honey,
I Shrunk the Kids and What About Bob, he would
later write esteemed films such as Holy Man with Ednie Murphy,
Welcome to Mooseport, also known as Gene Hackman's last film role,
and he directed Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag and

(20:52):
executive produced in Decent Proposal and Me Myself and Irene
So from the Halls of Higher Learning two eight Heads
in a Duffel Bag. This man's career is interesting, but
Dead Poet Society was the first screenplay he ever sold
in Hollywood, and an early version of this was written
while Shulman attended the Actor's Lab in Los Angeles, which

(21:13):
is sort of a creative workshop that, to my surprise
still exists. Would have thought that capitalism would have killed
that by now, A graduate of one of the schools
I meant to would have killed that by now. The
actor's lab class would occasionally by visited by the teacher's mentor,
a guy by the name of Howard Klerman, who was

(21:34):
a longtime theater director and drama critic. Clerman would inspire
the students with rousing speeches on the beauty of creativity,
and Schulman would later say, it was as if Howard
Clerman had been everywhere on earth throughout human history. I've
never seen or met a human being who knew so
much about everything. He was volcanic in his presentation. He
starts small and get huge. As a student, I was

(21:57):
so completely wowed by him. So as a student, I
think I thought, got to write something about this guy.
He was so enthralled that he wrote a story about
a thinly disguised version of Clerman. But a screenplay about
an inspiring screenwriting professor seemed a little bit on the nose,
so Shulman decided to put the script away for a
number of years. It would be close to a decade
before he revisited it. After telling his girlfriend about his

(22:19):
days at a Nashville prep school called Montgomery Bell Academy
in the late sixties. Schulman's girlfriend, whose name has sadly
been lost to history, suggested that he rework his former
script about an inspiring educator and said it at an
all boys prep school rather than a screenwriting camp.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
Which.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah. This proved to be the Eureka moment that he needed,
and the script began to take shape. An early version
was mostly just the teacher in the classroom talking to
his students, but eventually he shifted the focus to the
students themselves. Many of the characters were based on boys
he knew at school. For example, in an interview with
the University of California Television, Shulman said knocks Over Street,

(23:01):
played by Josh Charles, was based on a friend from
college who was in love with a girl named Chris.
Schulman used himself as the model for Ethan Hawk's character
Todd Anderson, saying, I had short sighted thoughts of terror,
just like the Ethan Hawk character Todd, who's modeled after
me in high school. So in a way, this movie
brought me out of my shell, just like the way

(23:23):
Todd had to be cajoled out of his own repressed introversion.
In addition to the arts lab teacher Howard Klerman, the
real life John Keating, Rober Williams's character was a sophomore
English teacher, Samuel F. Pickering. Junior Tom Shulman would tell
scripts dot com. I went to an all boys high school,
and I had an antique sophomore English teacher who was charming,

(23:44):
and he loved his students, but he was an iconoclast.
When we came back for our junior year, he wasn't
there anymore. Rumors spread that he had an affair with
the headmaster's daughter and or the headmaster's wife. The ant
or is mine. I'm not sure if it was. The
rumor was both, which would be impressive.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
That's a real private school hat trick man. You get
like the principal's wife in there, or like the you know,
or the head master's the principal secretary in there. What's
the prep school? What's the prep school? Hetero hat trick?
Headmaster's daughter, headmaster's wife, head master's mom.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
We were all too scared to ask what really happened.
Had we done so, we would have learned that he
simply got a better job. Print the legend, but because
we never knew that, it left an opening in my
imagination to write a whole other story around an eccentric
teacher than what.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Happened to him.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
The idea of resistance traditional thinking bubbled up is a
part of that. When that'sked why the teacher in a
script top poetry rather than English, Schulman explained that it
was the influence of his father, who was a big
fan of Alfred Lord Tennyson and James Joyce. His father
would often quote the Ulysses line, come, my friends, tis
not too late to seek a newer world that do

(24:53):
anything for you?

Speaker 2 (24:54):
Do you like the modernist writers of Joyce?

Speaker 1 (24:59):
I don't you know. It's sad, and I'm embarrassed to
say this, especially given how much I like this movie.
My literary tastes are not very well developed. I'm mostly
a nonfiction guy and a history guy.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yeah. There's a great bit in the rom com from
the Steak Guys called they Came Together? Did you ever
see that? The who guys know? It's like the Wet
Hot Crew. Oh yeah, yeah, it's it's so funny. And
they have a whole bit where Amy Poehler's character likes
fiction books, and so like it's like a cough. Like

(25:34):
when she meets up with the guy before she meets
the good guy, he's like, I don't know, why would
I read something that's not true? And so when she
meets the man of her dreams, he tells her he
likes reading fiction, and she's like, you like reading fiction too.
It's I don't know, kills me everything. Why would I
read something that's not true? Paying someone to lie to me?

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Now I feel bad that I privately sort of feel
that way. Yeah, I don't know, man.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
I am more interested in the writing of people who
grew up idolizing those guys and then make weird fractured
crisis of America, American masculinity stuff out of it. Like
all of the guys I mentioned in the.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Intro interesting what draws you to them?

Speaker 2 (26:22):
I bet well A lot of it is sort of
like era related jealousy, like, uh, okay, can you imagine
being like a poet these days? And then like the
level of poet that John Berryman was, where you teach
like one class a semester and you're hammer drunk, having
a fit, screwing anything on campus that moves, And then
you still wind up with a Nobel Prize and the

(26:44):
cover of Time magazine is comprehensible to me. And just
like this, I mean, like all the John Chiever like
it's just like the stories of the idol rich. I'm like,
what an incredible world. Like you're drunk by like four pm.
You have nothing to do but take the train back
upstate and then continue to get drunk. Your wife is
having all kinds of like pill addictions or like existential

(27:06):
crises up in an empty house. You don't know your
children's names. Like it's it's incredible. I don't know, I
just eat it with a spoon. I think it was
like I just got in a Salinger all his like
Franian Zoe all that stuff at an early age, and
I was just like, oh, this is hilarious. And the
world in which I lived I wish I lived, you

(27:27):
know why?

Speaker 1 (27:30):
And I say this as a guy who worships the
fifties and sixties, like that sounds like all the bad
stuff about it. Yeah, but it was just easier back then. Okay, sure, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Mean like I love John Chiever and I love Raymond Carver,
but that's not like, you know, Finnigan's Wake or like
Moby Dick. You can bang those out like three times
a week, live on live, on that for the rest
of your life, like come on again. If John Berryman
was able to score the cover of Time magazine and
a Nobel Prize while having like the bac of your

(28:01):
average why know, how hard could it have really been?
Like life on easy mode if you were a straight
white guy at that time.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
There's something about the false promise that appeals to you.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Yeah, well, you know, I'm like not that good. I'm
a good writer, but like I'm not that good of
a writer, But like back then, I would have been
a fucking star. Same as I'm like, not that good
of a bass player, but not true. Eh, it's just easier. Man.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Getting back to why Tom Shulman made the teacher teach
poetry said, from my father's perspective, poetry suggested better ways
to live. And I think there's a lot of truth
to that. How do you feel about that? I disagree.
I knew you would be like I was curious, Well.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
I don't think. I mean what I get out of
poetry is like new maps of interiority, wow, frameworks of feeling.
And then Separate from that, I find like the formal
strictures of poetry really interesting, like in the aforementioned Berriment example,
like reading it aloud or scanning it without it. I
should mention some women poets like and Sexton, but like

(29:17):
the structure of it is is once you see what's
being done with the scanchin and the meter and the
line breaks, like it really is like a sculpture with words,
And that's what I find really beautiful about it on
the page. Listening to it read aloud is embarrassing and
nothing that slam poetry should not exist, Like it's just a.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
Stupid that's really interesting for a musician who's in a songwriter,
that's fascinating for me to hear.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
They're different art forms to me, you know. And yeah,
I mean I don't think there's anything. I don't think
there's any form of writing that achieves that, you know,
other than you're like really wildly experimental novels or something.
But yeah, I don't know, it's cool. I like poetry.
I like the Confessionals because they were just talking about
how how bad their life was.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Yeah, I wish I knew more about it. I really
don't other than like Sylvia Plath and Ted Heath and
the poets that have stories behind them that.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Dud John Berriman's got some stories.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
He waved to someone on the way off the bridge. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
I recall reading that after he jumped. What bridge was
it again?

Speaker 2 (30:25):
One of the ones in Minneapolis? And supposedly the worst
part about that. I think I've actually mentioned this on
this podcast. He missed the water hit like the Rocky shore,
broke both his legs and died slowly of exposure, yes,
and blood loss.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
I thought this would have been like a real saccharine episode,
and I was worried about how this was gonna go.
But I'm glad that.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
We really now.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
I'm just here to plumb the depths. I suppose that's
the flip side of these kinds of you know, they
tell you to listen to your inner voice, and sometimes
your in a voice.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Uh mine, screaming all the time, sometimes crying coughs a
lot too.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
You stare into the abyss, and the abyss stares back
of getting back to Tom Schulman's high school English teacher,
much like Robin Williams's character in Dead Poets Society. This
teacher Samuel F. Pickering Junior had a very unique teaching style.
He would occasionally teach classes while standing on his desk,

(31:28):
just like keating or in a trash can, for reasons
that I don't understand. One student remembers Pickering making him
stand on a chair and flap his arms every time
the class said the word never More. While reading Ed
Graham Poe's The Raven, Pickering would say, I did such
things not so much to awaken students as entertained myself.

(31:50):
If I had fun, I suppose I thought the boys
would have fun too, and maybe even enjoy reading and writing.
You know what, I think the.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Real problem with this movie is is that it did
not anticipate adorable.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
Oh wow, please elaborate. It did not anticipate twee.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
I believe adorable is actually traced back to like the
marketing department for the show New Girl starring Zoey Desh.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah, I think you're right.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
I think you're right. But like it is shorthand for
like a certain kind of bowler hat wearing, flower bedecked
bird enthusiast, usually of a female persuasion uh, who's just
like quirky and just like so random or I guess,
like also Natalie Portman in like Garden State, Yeah, so
likely it goes all the way back. Well I guess

(32:38):
that's true. Yeah, but I guess I didn't.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah, are you conflating manic pixie dream girl with adorkable
because I think those are different.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
I'm just I want to zoom out and not even
get into the archetypes. And I just want to say,
like quirk like quirk, you know, quirk used to could
mean like a I feel like eccentric was quirky, and
eccentricity is like not necessarily cute, like eccentrics can be weird.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
Sort of dangerous.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Yes, And then it somehow morphed into this, as you
put it, twinkly eyed brand of just like a little
bit random, like get up on your desk and flap
your wings and like. And somewhere along the line, the
cultural perception of that, and I'm including myself of this
became like revulsion rather than enthralled with the whimsy of

(33:28):
the world. Okay, no batter, I'm shooting a lot of
hot takes out of here to make up for my
lack of familiarity with this.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
So uh, pickering Shulman's high school English teacher, was surprisingly
bashful and somewhat self deprecating when journalists interviewed him in
the wake of Dead Poets Society's success. In an interview
with The Times Daily, he said, whatever of me is
in that character has got to be small. I was

(33:55):
a kid, and he was a child. The writer Tom Shulman,
twenty three years ago. How much of me can there
be in that movie? It's gonna sounds like a real
piece of work. Dead bo Society is rife with literary references,
both obvious and obscure. Keating tells the boys to sound
their barbaric yap from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. He
quotes Henry David Throw's line from Walden the mass of

(34:18):
men lead lives of quiet desperation, which I'm sure resonates
with you.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
I ain't the truth.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
The boys chant lines from Vashal Lindsay's almost forgotten poem
The Congo. Then I saw the congo creeping through the black,
cutting through the forest with a golden track. There's Shakespeare,
Robert Frost offered, Lord Tennyson and Lord Byron, and of course,
the most memorable literary reference is the use of Whitman's
lgy for Abraham Lincoln. At the end of the movie,
after Keating's been fired, the boys famously climb on their

(34:46):
desks and declare their loyalty by saying, oh, captain, my captain,
this is wild to me, shockingly for such a twinkly eyed,
crinkly eyed or twinkly eyed. I think it's twinkly twinkly Okay,
twinkly eye delicate drama. The geniuses at Disney initially wanted
to transform this character study into a musical in the

(35:10):
style of Fame, which was a huge success at the time.
Fame takes place at a performing arts high school, so
at least those people who sing and dance diegetically there.
I don't know how you could have a musical with
a bunch of kids writing yeah, so that's that's hilarious

(35:30):
in a factoid that almost seems like it was a
joke added to a listical many years ago and has
been taken as gospel. The working title for this aborted
musical version of Dead Poets Society was The Sultans of Strut.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Do you really know you?

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah? I mean I'd like to see the script for that,
I don't think it got that far.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Who decided to go with that title? Like, have you
ever seen a writer strut?

Speaker 2 (35:56):
Maybe at the time, but I feel like nowadays they're
either limping you're in the fetal position, or have stooped
shoulders and computer screen narrowed eyes like.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
You have good posture, reminding me, everyone take a stretch break.
It's gonna be a long episode. Okay, there we go,
All right, there we go.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
I was hoping I get the sound of a crack
get picked up in the microphone, but I guess not.
Some of the proposed leads for this early version of
Dead Poets Society were pretty wild. Disney's Touchdown Studios considered
Mel Gibson, Dustin Hoffman, Liam Neeson, and of course the

(36:45):
King of the Twinkly Eyes himself, Tom Hanks for the
part of John Keating. I'm not mad at Liam Neeson.
I could see him pulling that off.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
No, but what would what would leam Neeson have been
in in the time? I don't know, because this was
eighty dark Man, not familiar eighty nine. Yeah, man, he no,
he wouldn't have been in dark Man yet the mission.
He would have just come off doing the mission.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Oh wait, track factoid for later when they were filming
the famous you know, standing on desk scene the movie
that director Peter Weir played on the set to kind
of get everybody in the mood when they were filming
that scene. Was Anio Marconi's theme from the mission or
a soundtrack from the mission.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
Oh Gabriel's obo I think so yah the haunting main
theme from that.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yes, well, we'll get.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
To the Mendi's work.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
Robin Williams became the front runner, though, for the lead
of Good Poets Society, following the success of his dramatic
turn in nineteen eighty seven's Good Morning Vietnam, which is
a favorite of mine. But there was a snag. Robin
was not enthusiastic about working with the director attached to
this early version of Dead Poets Society, Jeff Kanu a
Canoe I don't know you say his name, who had

(37:55):
recently found success as a director of Revenge of the Nerds.
I'm sure he's good at what he does, but his
prior work really does not bode well for what they
had in mind for Dead Poet Society. Oh, it's another
movie about a bunch of nerds got it. Yeah, I
can't imagine that he would have played this straight, but
I don't know. He's a professional. Apparently, Robin Williams shared

(38:20):
my concern because he was bizarrely noncommittal about this project
in a way that seems like something that couldn't happen
when you have major studios involved. As Shulman relates, the
studio wanted Robin Williams, and Robin wouldn't say no, but
he wouldn't say yes to working with that director. In fact,
we prepped the movie and built the sets. It was
going to be shot outside of Atlanta, and Robin just

(38:43):
didn't show up for the first day of shooting. He
never said he would, but Disney kept trying to pressure
him by moving things forward. After the first day he
didn't show up, they canceled the production and burned the sets.
We actually, we actually have dailies of the sets burning.
Did they salt the Earth? A Civil War reenactment that

(39:08):
is priceless? Yeah, yeah, we couldn't.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
That sounds like a like a like a Reynolds Like no, it.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Sounds like a real cigar chopping executive moment.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
Or I was gonna say, like Norm McDonald doing Burt
Reynolds like, uh, yeah, we uh couldn't find the league guys,
so we uh we burned the set.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
How long did you wait for him that day? That day?
I thought you'd like that?

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Why?

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Why is that the default mode of set?

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Like, surely they could strike it in a way that
wouldn't be cartoonishly wasteful.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
A transspectacle.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
I have to imagine the union guys. Should we bring
in the union guys to take this down? No, dowsn't
gasoline and burn it like creative thrust your middle finger
against God.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
I have to imagine there was rage involved, or or
it was a new England prep school built in the
South and the southern Union guys were like, torch it
the South, or.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Simply that I mean the probably we're dodging here is
the simplest solution, which is that they did not feel
like paying union rates to get it torn down properly.
They're like, it's gonna caut that's a cigar trupy. It's
gonna cost me how much to take down the prep
school set? Burn it?

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Incredible? My favorite factoid about this I thought you'd like that. Yeah, uh,
after this debacle, I guess Somewhat predictably, jeff Canou retire
from the production. Dustin Hoffman reportedly signed on to direct,
as well as play the role of John Keating the
Robin Williams part, but there were scheduling conflicts and arguments

(40:57):
about when the shooting would start. Finally, the studio gave
the movie to six time Oscar nominee Peter Weir, who
would later direct The Truman Show and prior to that,
he directed The Year of Living Dangerously and the Harrison
Ford Tour de Force Witness. You described that movie as
a tour de force.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah, it was a good movie, Okay, just checking Amish
people in peril. It's mostly puppy mills and meth farms now.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
As Nancy Griffin wrote in a onset profile for Premier magazine,
Peter Weir's style combines the visual lyricism and mysticism of
an art filmmaker with commercial sensibility. The only true auteur
among his generation of Australian directors, Weir as only once
before agreed to take on a studio assignment Witness. Both
times it was Jeffrey Katzenberg who dangled the offer he

(41:43):
couldn't refuse. Last year, nineteen eighty eight, we are met
with a Disney boss. As the director was on his
way out the door, Katzenberg said, I got just the
film for you, and slipped him a copy of Dead
Poets Society. Weir was hooked at once by Tom Schulman's script.
It's the finest piece of writing I've ever worked with.
He said, Wow, I know he's the official enemy of

(42:06):
the Pod, but Jeffrey Katzenberg was actually kind of cool
to Peter Weird during the shoot.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
I mean, he you know, he has some heaters. He's
Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
We're I guess you know. Disney's very famously tight with
the purse strings. And Weir pushed himself to the point
of exhaustion to keep this shoot on schedule, and finally
he blew up and called Jeffrey Katzenburg. And according to
his version of the story, he says, jeff says, why
didn't you call me sooner? And he was fixed up
within twenty four hours, and yeah, we like that. Yeah,

(42:36):
where we go on to say that his relationship with
Disney added up to a very good experience, which is
a very diplomatic way of saying all this, so that
was how they got Robin Williams as the lead, But
what about his students, As director Peter Weir told People magazine,
the boys were all very young. I was determined to
cast them at the true age of the characters they

(42:56):
were playing, so high school age. Seventeen eighteen. Oscar winner
Sam Rockwell auditioned for the role of Charlie Dalton, but
he couldn't nail the part because quote, I looked so young,
but I wasn't always good at playing young. Peter Weir's
favorite was a young Josh Charles, who would later go
on to act, most notably in Don't Tell Mom, The
Babysitter Is Dead, Sports Night, and the CBS legal drama

(43:19):
The Good Wife. So ouch, he seems like a nice guy.
Yeah he does, he does. He's not Ethan Hawk, but yeah,
he was apparently Sam Rockwell or Robert Sean Leonard. I'm
a big House fan, so it was weird for me
to see him in here, right, Yes, I always forget

(43:41):
about that. Yeah, Josh Charles was cast as the love
struck romantic knocks Over Street, which is the most screenwriting
class name I have ever heard.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
That's bordering on pinchinn.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, yeah, he was just seventeen and he only had
one prior credit, acting in John Waters' Hairspray.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Hell Y.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Charles grew up in Baltimore, and his godfather is supposedly
the real life inspiration for Mickey Rourke's character in the
movie Diner.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Is that nuts it is?

Speaker 1 (44:11):
Remember the popcorn scene and Diner? He said that that
really happened to his godfather. Remember at the movie theater,
Baltimore's Yeah, Baltimore's weird. Yeah. Google it, folks, google the
popcorn scene from Diner. The popcorn scene from from Diner.
Josh Charles was inspired by Kevin Bacon's performance in the
movie Diner. The aforementioned diner sang, I saw him on

(44:33):
the screen.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Did you ever see diner?

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Stop saying stop saying the diner saying. When I saw
him on the screen, I said, now that guy is cool, okay, man, Yeah,
I forget how.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
I always forget how much of juice old Bake's head
in the head in the nineties man like or around
this time? Really yeah, I mean I like him because
of tremors, but yeah, you forget. He was like the
hottest property going around at one point, right, It used
to be easier. I left Roadhouse the other day and
it's like Patrick swayzey was considered like drop dead gorgeous

(45:08):
and like he's I.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
Mean he's built.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
I mean, yeah, he's like, well, he's got kind of
a weird face, but more to the point, he's built
like a slight elf. Like nowadays, even poor Hugh Jackman,
who's like seventy years old, has to go on you know,
hormones and get unnecessarily swollen for his eighteenth attempted wolverine.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Do you think Patrick Swayze is a weird face?

Speaker 2 (45:31):
He's getting out a real rubbery face. I mean, you're.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Measuring him against your beloved Kurt Russell, which I understand,
but again even.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
Kurt Russell like Kurt Russell and like, you know, it's
just I don't know. Male beauty standards are just so
much funnier now in for leading men.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
Okay, who is it for?

Speaker 2 (45:47):
You? Currently?

Speaker 1 (45:48):
Are past both? Either I'm curious Patrick Swayze's a weird face.
You're Messo messol on Kurt Russell, I'm curious.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
I'm not matso mattso on Kurt Russell. I just mean no,
I just mean, like their physique, it's not about face
at all. It's just about like when they take their
shirt off. There no no one back then was like
a rippling mass of you know, growth hormone and like
seventeen days in the gym, no carbs, diet. They just
look like dudes, just refreshing.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
I watched a lot of martial arts movies as a kid,
like body image issues, so I'm like sensitive about this
kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's bad to
expose young boys to Bruce Lee and be like, that's
a body type you could achieve, or even John Glad
Van dam Man. We should do blood Sport. There's such

(46:38):
a hilarious moment in that movie where the camera like
obviously and lovingly lingers on his butt. This is so
goddamn funny to me what we were talking about.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
This is an episode about boys talking about feelings, and
gee golly, y'all are gonna hear a lot We were
talking about seventeen year old Josh Charles, who was kind
of poised to be the breakout star of this movie.
You can kind of tell from all the press attention
around this when it came out. He was the one
that a lot of the profiles were focused on there

(47:11):
as a profile on him and People magazine in this
movie came out, but the distinction for chief breakout Star
of this movie went to Josh Charles co star and
friend Ethan Hawk. The pair met when they initially auditioned
for the first director of the film, The Revenge of
the Nerds Guy, and they've remained friends to this day.
It's adorable. Ethan Hawk is still close with like everybody
in this movie.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
It's great.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
We'll talk more about that later. Ethan who had auditioned
with a monologue from Shakespeare's Richard the Third because he's
a nerd and I love him boy. He dropped out
of Carnegie Mellon to take the part, and his parents
were kind of a lot like the parents of the
doomed Neil character in this movie. Hawk would recall them
telling him, what I think you're gonna be Clint Eastwood.

(47:52):
That's never gonna work out. Never underestimate the power of spite, yeah,
I mean, to their credit. The only other movie that
he appeared in at that point was My beloved Explorers movie,
which tanked, and the failure was so bad that he
retired from acting for a time. When he was like
a tween, so I get it. He would later say,

(48:13):
I would never recommend that a kid act because the
experience was so brutal.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
I mean, yeah, you got to.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
Watch Explorers Man. It's directed by Joe Dante who directed Gremlins.
It has an industrial light and magic to all the
special effects. Rob Boutin, who did the thing, and I
forgot what else he did, does all the special effects makeup.
Jerry Goldsmith does the soundtrack. It's got a lot going
for it. You would really like it. But despite the

(48:42):
horrific experience of being an Explorers, Ethan Hawk knew that
his role in Dead Poet Society was something special. In
the DVD commentary for the film, Hawk said, I was
eighteen years old and I thought getting this part would
change my life. I had instilled it with that kind
of importance. Narrator voice was right, So he initially planned
to go back to school and be a writer. He

(49:04):
decided to stick with the whole acting thing after getting
offered a string of quote interesting parts in the wake
of Dead Poet Society's success. I actually we talked about
this earlier. I really like Ethan Hawk, and I think
he's a cool guy and he comes across great in interviews.
I just want to note that he split from Uma
Thurman in two thousand and five and married the family
nanny who looks just like Uma Thurman.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Yeah. Yeah, that was like the middle road of his
career that I was like, we hate him, right, and
then he just became like ultra sincere and just super
sincere talking about movies all the time. We're like, yeah,
but you did you did that weird thing that middle
aged men do. Looks just like Uma, just like Uma.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
It's really weird.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
I mean that was Jude Law with Sienna Miller and
was married.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
Yeah. Also, did you know that Ethan Hawk is distantly
related to Tennessee Williams.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
I did not.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
It's like second cousin once removed or something. Which good
for him. Yeah, I know, isn't that cool. I'm sure
he loves that. He loves that kind of thing. There
was a really cute uh whatever the Criterion collection thing
is where they go into the closet whatever that special thing.
Oh y yeah, yeah, And I just came out the
other day with Ethan and Mayahawk, his daughter, and it
was really sweet, like watching them interact and the movies

(50:23):
they picked were good. I seem like exactly none of them,
but they all seemed really good. My hawk seems cool. Yeah,
you can decode that any way you like, how would
she she's like twenty six.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Okayh yeah, okay, she's a reasonable age. Oh not like
a Drake Millie Bobby Brown situation.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
Oh is that a thing? Oh yeah, dude, you didn't
know that. No, I missed the whole discourse on Drake
and Kendrick.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Oh no, this is back before this is this predates
that it was ammunition in the disc track certainly, but
it was like, you know, revealed that Drake had like
a texting relationship with like an underage Millie Bobby Brown.
Oh she's like barely of age now yeah. Oh yeah, no,
it was like she was like fourteen or fifteen. Oh no,

(51:10):
it was like peak Stranger Things stuff. Yeah, he was
like hardcore.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
Is he gonna get like put away?

Speaker 2 (51:17):
One can hope.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right
back with more too much information in just a moment. Wow.
We also got to talk about Robert Sean Leonard, who
is best known to me as doctor James Wilson on

(51:43):
House the Watson to Hugh Laurie, Sherlock Holmes. Did you
realize that House and Wilson were at Holmes and Watson Analog?
Because it took me way too long.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
To figure that out.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Oh, you don't watch House, you didn't care.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
No, The only episode I remember is when Ella Cool
Jay's on there and yeah, it's like a prison guy
and he gets put in the MRI machine, it pulls
out all his jailhouse tattoos. Yeah that was gross.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Yeah, and you're a heavily tatted man, so I can
imagine why that would that would stick with you.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't ever say tatted again. By the way, Sorry,
is that bad for the community or is it just
bad coming from me? Booth Robert Sean Leonard played Neil Perry,
the central tragic figure of Dead Poets Society. He's the
I just want to be an actor, dad kid. To

(52:30):
end all, I just want to be an actor, dad kids.
We will talk more about his fate later. In the
DVD commentary, Leonard said filming Dead Poets Society was to
me life changing. No word on whether or not he
felt that way after filming nineteen ninety three Swing Kids,
which is a truly bizarre movie. Higel tell us about
the Swing Kids movie and this bizarre underground Nazi subculture.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Thank you for throwing to me for that.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Yeah, Swing Kids, I think is mostly like I only
became aware of it when people started dredging up like
the Christian Bale stuff, because yeah, yeah, I came of
agent for like the Nolan Batman stuff, and everyone's like, yeah,
you're grim dark.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
Batman was like tap dancing and singing extravagantly. Where's Nuzzies? Oh?
Are they not the same movie? One is a bunch
of newsboys in New York City. Others are children in
Nazi Germany who love swing music.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
Huh, they'd morphed together. I think I knew that, but
they'd morphed together in my mind.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
Oh yeah, they're very, very different. But I would like
to see some kind of a cinematic mashup. Was Christian
Bale in it?

Speaker 2 (53:49):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (53:49):
In Swing Kids?

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Yeah? So he was in Swing Kids and Newsies.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
Yeah. That's the gret thing about actors is that that
explains my confusion. Don't give me for that. How many.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Read comedies musicals? Even read the thing I wrote for you?
It's got swing right there in the title is set
in Berlin in the late nineteen thirties, and it explores
the subculture of teenagers who are obsessed with British and

(54:20):
American pop culture, specifically swing music. These Hitler Youth were
some of them.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
In Hitler Youth, surely there was an overlap, No, there
was not. There was form as a reaction, there was
a parody of Hitler Youth.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Okay, well, they loosely structed themselves to clubs with name
like the Harlem Club, the Okay Gang, that's the name
of my gang, and the Hot Club. Hot Club is
actually I think I think traces to gypsy jazz because
that's what like every single jazz manute group was called
at one point, and people still named them that, Like
there's like a Hot Club of Detroit, but all of

(54:58):
Django and Stephen Grippelli's bands were called like the Hot
Club this, but I guess it also goes back to Yeah,
they probably got it from Louis Armstrong because Louis Armstrong
had the Hot fives and sevens. Anyway, they were known
as the swing youth or swing Yugend, a parody of
Hitler Youth. They also referred to themselves individually as swings

(55:21):
or swing henees, swinginnys, swingineas, swing, will we swing right,
swing heins or swingety. Members were called swing boy, swing
girl or old hot boy.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
You gotta do it on the Matt Berry voice, My
Sweet Cheese by good Time, old hot, old hot.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
Boy, swingety, and those we're called swing boy, swing girl
or old hot boy. Participants were mainly from the upper
middle class, as swing culture required the participants to have
access to the music, which was not played on German radio,
so extensive actions of imported or bootleg phonograph recordings were essential. Similarly,

(56:04):
to understand the lyrics of the predominantly American songs like
the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company six or whatever,
the garbage was, yeah twenty three sixty nine a train,
and they had to have a rudimentary understanding of English,
which was not taught in the Volks school. The working

(56:27):
class high school relative wealth also fostered a distinctive style
among the swing kids, which was in some ways comparable
to the zoot suit style popular in the United States
at the time, which I will remind everyone was a
racially motivated riot when all the sailors were going around
the Hispanic sections trying to beat people up, immortalized by
Brian Setzer. Oh no, my brother, Cherry Poppins still in

(56:49):
short sell cherry pop and that's disgusting all the time.
Oh my god, those guys, uh, oh my god, just
think you about it makes me so mad. Um boys
usually wore long jackets, often checkered shoes with crep soools

(57:10):
for dancing, and flashy scarves. So they were like rude
proto rude boys and like SKA guys. No teddy boy,
it's like almost to a tee, what scars fast. They
almost always carried an umbrella and smoked pipes and added
a dress shirt button with a semi precious stone. Girls
generally wore their hair long and loose and added excessive makeup.

(57:30):
Well that's a value judgment. Predictably, these groups were frowned
upon by the Nazi regime since their America philia extended
to hating Nazis like Indiana Jones. They hated those guys,
and the movement became a sort of underground, non violent
protest of Nazism. When these clubs and parties were busted
in the midst of a war, some of these swing
kids were deported to concentration camps, which is not a

(57:53):
punishment that fits the crime of.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
Liking Benny Dudman.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
Anyway, Sweet Kids, and with Robert Shawn Leonard's character getting
hauled off to prison while shouting swinghile, So that's weird.
And Christian Bale is in it. He's also in Newsi's
which is not the film Swing Kids.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
Wow. I learned so much today about you, about.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
Prep schools, about Nazis, about Nazis, about Christian Bale. Speaking
of evil Nazis, we must speak to the bad guy
of Dead Poets Society, doctor Gail Nolan, the headmaster of
Welton Academy, played by veteran character actor to end all
veteran character actors, Norman Lloyd, who has the distinction of

(58:40):
being the oldest male actor from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
You're implying that he's still alive. No, he just died,
oh three years ago. He was born in nineteen fourteen
and died in May of twenty twenty one at the
age of one hundred and six. I wonder if they
showed him only fans. That's probably what killed them. I
was going to say. He lived through the First World

(59:02):
War and COVID and Twitter. He was seventy five by
the time Dead Poets came around, and he didn't want
to put up with bullsh like auditioning. He'd just done
six seasons on Saint Elsewhere and as he said in
the tenth anniversary Making of DVD special said, they have
six years of film if they want to look at
and make a decision from that. What a crustier age

(59:24):
of actor like Jackie Coogan watching his dad die in
a car accident.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
Did he like always suit his own mother? Yeah, that
was what it was. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
He eventually caved into being in the film after winning
a tennis match, a game he used to play with
Charlie Chaplin. That's how old this guy is. Since he
was on a winning streak, he felt this would yield
a good audition, As he said during his interview for
the DVD special feature, if I hadn't won that match,
we wouldn't be sitting here.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
Legend model for us all. Shooting for Dead Poets Society
began in November nineteen eighty eight and continued until January.
They originally intended to film in Rome, Georgia. You recall
that's what assests with Torch for the aborted beginning, but
director Peter Weir wanted to move the film to a
place that had snow to achieve that authentic New England
prep school feel, so they moved up to Delaware, where

(01:00:15):
snow would be more plentiful and free. After filming was complete,
some actors complained that they found the city of Wilmington, Delaware,
a little bit tedious. Robin Williams said at the time
that quote, staying in a hotel room in a town
that shuts down at five o'clock at night can't be boring.
They rived there several weeks early so that the boys
would be able to bond, and the hope was actually

(01:00:36):
feel like students. They block book rooms at the Radison
Hotel in Wilmington, and where described their domicile as quote
the infamous floor seven. Go there at your own peril.
I don't think they ever slept.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
I haven't eaten any dinner yet, so I gonna need
a bunch of saltwater taffy.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
If that's cool with you, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
Oh a fawn, Oh that was your peanut butter and jelly.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
One Together, they basically did acting games and studied the fifties,
which sounds like my personal heaven. Rob Ryder took a
similar approach with the young male leads for the production
of stand By Me. A few years earlier, Peter Weirs
schooled his young charges on the pop culture of the
fifties by giving them books detailing the biggest movies and

(01:01:26):
TV shows of the decade and making them mixtapes of
top forty songs, which I find absolutely adorable. As Ethan
Hawk says, and the making of DVD feature, we really
wanted to start getting us divorced from any kind of
behavioralism that was locked into the late eighties. It's the
most complex way of saying a very simple thing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
You think they You think they had a circle jerk
at the Beatles.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
Oh that was one of the best headlines I've ever seen.
I think it was your former employer, page six.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Beat the Meedles.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
Yep, yeah, I save that classic.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
Yeah, right up there with headless Botts.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
On the topless bar.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
Classic. This is somebody's job who just writes headlines, specifically
those headlines.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
Yeah, they have like they have like headline specialists there.
It has to go so far up the chain to
become a post headline. So funny considering how lazy half
of them are.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
When you say headline, just like the front page headline
or did they do all headlines? Yeah, that's so funny.
It's like you right upon a day.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
I think there's like a tiered system.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
I'm sure there's a lot of tears. Oh yeah, I
never cried at that job. This begs the question we
never cried at people? That's good jobs.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Have I cried at probably a Blockbuster? God? People were
so fucking mean to me, man, Oh no, what happened?
I mean, I was there during the decline. Like a
month after I quit, they were literally selling the fixtures
out of the store like crazy, and it was but
you know, admittedly it was tough because they were changing
the hours all the time, they were changing the rules

(01:03:06):
for renting, and people would just tear into me. It
was like it was like I overdrew my account getting
an egg sandwich this morning, like please have pity on me,
and they would not Retail sucks, dude, anybody. It should
be mandatory. You gotta work a year of retail. You
got to work a year in a restaurant, and then
you are allowed to be in society.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Yeah, fair, What are we talking about the boys on
their lessons of the nineteen fifties. I love this. Director
Peter Weir suggested that the young actors, in order to
get into the whole fifties mode, stop using shampoo and
instead use soap on their hair because that's I guess
what kids had to do back then, which seems incorrect

(01:03:48):
unless he just means like prep school kids, or and
he's from Australia, maybe it was an Australian prep school thing.
I don't know. They didn't get soap until last week.
Did they use real c Yeah? They did? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
I wonder if he was like, start using slurs again. Boys.
We just have Frankie Avalon on the Paul Anka talk
show that I produce, and he still uses bro cream,
and I'm like, how do you find it?

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
Did you have it special ordered? Maybe?

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
Speaking of hair, Grector Peter were made all of the
young actors in Dead Poets Society get era appropriate haircuts,
which many of them hated. What was it is a DA?
Did they get a DA that wouldn't have flown at
a prep school? They got like flat tops? I think
I got a flat top And I don't know what
the other terms were just like shortback and sides.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
Maybe that's an English term, but da for anyone who's unfamiliar,
is it ducks ass? Popular haircut of the era, the.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
In greaser haircuts, the Elvis sort of right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
It was, I mean it was popularly associated with Elvis. Yeah,
ducks ass.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
On a slightly more wholesome note, director Peter Weir asked
a young actors to write their own poetry in order to,
as Ethan Hawk says, opened our minds and wake us
up to what the characters would discover over the course
of the movie Obligatory. Time is weird note. Dead Poets
Society was set in nineteen fifty nine and released in
nineteen eighty nine. The equivalent of this is a movie

(01:05:21):
set in nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
You love doing this.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
It's so weird. Time is so weird.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
They've already started doing that, isn't me? That Snackshack movie
that came out that's like set around like early nineties.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
I saw a trailer for it, Penn fifteen. That TV
show is set in like two thousand or something. Okay,
like in middle school. Yeah, probably around the time I
was sticking it out of that prep school. The cave
where the titular society meets, sadly wasn't an actual cave,
but a set piece made out of latex. It was, however,

(01:05:53):
based on a real location Wolf Cave in Delaware. Yeah, here,
this will interest you. There's a scene where students are
running through the woods towards the cave. It's been noted
that their silhouettes resemble the Dance of Death scene in
the Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman. As Peter Weir would say,
it was absolutely an homage. I wanted to capture a

(01:06:16):
moment as if the boys were running through the ages,
a kind of pagan pre Christian mythology where they were
crossing into another zone in which lies the mystery of art.
This couldn't have happened in the basement of a building
or on the horse stables. It really had to be
a cave or in the slave quarters. It really had

(01:06:40):
to be a cave, which was writer Tom Shulman's idea.
It was my job to illustrate that. Costume designer Wendy
Style suggested dressing the boys in sub mariner jackets with hoods,
as if they were like primitive monks engaged in some
sort of ancient rite of passage. The story was so
pregnant with metaphors, you didn't have to try hard to

(01:07:00):
unearth them.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
They just sprang to life. Jesus Christ, get a little
thick in here.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
The scenes at Welton Academy were filmed on location at
real prep schools in the area. Director Peter Weir reportedly
considered more than one hundred schools as the shooting location
before laying eyes on Saint Andrew's Academy. Producer Stephen haftwould
recall when we first saw the place quote, his eyes
got big as saucers. He turned to me and said,

(01:07:28):
this is it. The movie was filmed primarily during Thanksgiving
and Christmas break, so the production wouldn't disrupt the school's
actual classes.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
Two generations of Loud and Wainwright attended that private school.

Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
Oh laudraiin Wright, the third the singer songwriter in Rufus's Dad,
and Laude Rainmright, the second was a Life magazine editor.
If I re call nailed it, h God, I love
the wind Rights another episcopal We either go to chapel
every morning at my school. My school six days a
week and on they had Sunday off.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
That's awful.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
I was an altar boy.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
I was not molested. Really dodged a bullet there.

Speaker 1 (01:08:06):
Naturally, the students at St. Andrews Academy were extremely excited
to catch a glimpse of Robin Williams. An extra named
Rob Ellis, who was a senior at Saint Andrews, told
the News Journal of Delaware at the time, he Robin
never stops acting. He's always cracking us up. But I
don't get a sense of who he is. Oh I
call that foreshadowing. Though he'd been nominated for an Oscar

(01:08:30):
for his work in Good Morning Vietnam two years earlier.
Dead Poet Society was one of Williams's earliest forays into
his strictly dramatic role, where he was forced to dial
down as trademark improvisation somewhat. Director Peter Weir estimated that
roughly fifteen percent of Robin's dialogue was improvised, which still
sounds pretty high to me for a drama. To help

(01:08:50):
Robin Williams settle into the role, we are set aside
an afternoon of filming just to abandon the script entirely
and let Robin quote do his thing. He felt the
need to hide this from Disney executives. Peter Weir recalled
the script magazine. We set up three cameras in the
corner of the room, and I told the boys, Robin's
coming in after lunch to do a scene that isn't

(01:09:11):
in the script. Just remember he's still your teacher, mister Keating,
and you wreck the scene if you laugh like you're
watching a stand up comic. So act the muse, but
don't overdo it. And that's the scene, tough man Williams. Yeah,
peak peek. It's the scene where mister Keating introduces the
kids the Shakespeare by pulling in impressions of John Wayne

(01:09:32):
and Marlon Brando. Amazing to me that not only was
Robin Williams able to riff like this off the cuff,
but he also kept the riffs period accurate, Like that's
just to have that restraint is so wild to me.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
I mean, except for all the tragedy, Like they really
should have studied that guy's brain. It just moved faster
than like it is a weird analogy to grasp for,
but it must be similar to like, really the good
freestyle rappers just being able to come up with language
and and but it's different, Yeah, and on a different

(01:10:09):
you know, but on a different scale because he's he's
acting as well, like facially and everything. But yeah, how
does the human brain move that fast? Cocaine must have
slowed him down.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
I mean, he might have been one of those people
that you know, has the brain chemistry where it actually
did like relax them. Because isn't that something that a
lot of people self medicate with when they're undiagnosed. I
don't know, I'm adhd or.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
Should I start be good next chapter of my life?
I feel like, yeah, I have a very good friend
from from high school, my beloved high school, who's a
stand up comedian, Chris Fleming, who's absolutely brilliant. I mean,
I think he's gonna be the next Robert Williams. I
think he's absolutely a genius. And I don't use that

(01:10:56):
term lightly, and he would say that being on stage.
I mean, it's just it's it's like bullet time in
the matrix, Like everything seems to slow down. It's not
that you're thinking faster, just everything else almost seems slower. Yeah,
I get that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
It's definitely some kind of time dilation, because like all
the best shows that I've played, all the best sets
I've ever played, it's like you kind of like wake
up and you're like, what just happened? Like forty minutes
went by and I have no memory of them.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Did that happen with you? Or was I just bullying
you too much for you to enter that story. That's
how I know I'm not a real artist or musician
is that I was always very much in my body
and those moments, and I was very much focused on
trying to not make mistakes and try to get it right.
And so you never bullied me. What do you tell
you never bullied me? You had me in your band
as a bass player when you yourself are a classically trained,

(01:11:47):
extremely accomplished bass player, And I was just holding on
for I had a bass and I wasn't and I
wasn't doing anything. And my only reason I had a
bass was the cosplay as Paul McCartney. So it's basically
a prop that I had on my wall that you
were like, Hey, I need somebody, can you just do
like watch my fingers and do this? And you did
and I did, And I'm proud of myself for being

(01:12:09):
able to slightly keep up with the parts that you wrote.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
But hey, man, I didn't write anything easy.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
Narratively, he did not. Oh it's so much fun.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
I miss it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Yeah, But getting back to Robin's riffing, as weird would
add the Script Magazine. When Robin's improvising, he gives off
an electric charge you can feel, and you can see
it in the reaction shots of the students too. I
mean it's definitely like you could tell they're not acting.
It's really sweet. The kids on set predictably loved Robin

(01:12:41):
with one exception which we'll get to, and he made
everyone laugh with Popeye and Richard Pryor impressions.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
Part of the reason why he's like, really the only
celebrity death that's like hit me so hard, except well Bowie.
But another maybe a little Tom Petty too, because you know,
I listened to a lot of Tom Petty growing up
in Central Pia. Brother, but he's one of those guys
where you could actually feel the chemistry of the room change. Oh,

(01:13:09):
he was like around him, even like in filmed performances,
you were just like, actually, it's like when I saw
Nick Kve for the first time, there was this woman
being crowdsurfed up towards the stage, you know, and he
because he's admittedly from himself, he's he can't see to
the back, so he owned he talks about how he

(01:13:29):
only plays to the crowd immediately in front of him,
and so he like gets up on the railing and
he's like touching people and singing directly to him. And
I got this like intensely set like this sense of
like primal ritual where I was like, oh God, like
if she touches him, she will die. I was like,

(01:13:50):
she's being sacrificed right now. And it was like this
lizard brain part with like this instinctual throwback to like
tens of thousands of years ago buried in my lizard monkey,
where I was like, don't don't let her touch him.
But it's really, I mean, those are the geniuses, man,
When you can even just like through a screen from

(01:14:11):
fifty feet away whatever, you can just feel the air
around them change.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
I felt that way about Amy Winehouse, which I know
you probably have different feelings on, but I felt that
way watching her saying too, yeah, I mean I get it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
I've never found her personally that magnetite mag but that's
the beauty of subjective taste. Man, you know what are
we talking about?

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
Knocks Over Street lamming with a thud played by Josh
Charles knocks Over Street. Technically we're talking about the actor
who played him, Josh Charles. He was especially charmed by
Robin Williams. He would tell the Hollywood Reporter. I was
most struck by how kind he was, Robin, and how
nice he was to these seventeen or eighteen year old kids.

(01:14:55):
And while he was clearly the star of the movie,
he made great effort to just be one part the ensemble.
But despite all the laughs, it was apparent to everyone
on the set that Robin was going through a tough time.
Ethan Hawk would tell CBC Radio. Even to me at eighteen,
it was obvious that he was in a tremendous amount
of pain. Anybody who was watching knew. Norman Lloyd, who

(01:15:17):
played Keating's nemesis the Headmaster, said to the Hollywood Reporter
when we were doing Dead Poe Society, Robin's first marriage
to Valley of the Larsie, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
A divorce, right, like the worst thing that happened in
his life.

Speaker 1 (01:15:28):
Yeah, well you got divorced twice.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
Oh, Yeah, that's true. But the first one was the
one that he was like, because what other movie we
were we talking about? Where he was just like shattered
coming to the Sun?

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
Oo might have been Hook would have been not long
after this, Yeah, I think yeah, I would have probably
been Hook. His first marriage, the value of the Lardie
was breaking up, and it was then that he began
to go with and then married the babysitter of his kids,
Marcia Garci's I think say you say her name. He
masked the whole thing very carefully. It was never evident
in the work. It was all kept under control, thankfully.

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
Though.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Robin himself would recall the shoot fondly and cite Dead
Poets Society as one of his favorite movies that he
ever worked on, to which I say, thank God, I
really want you to see this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
I'm curious what you'll think of it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
Did I ever actually see it? I feel like through us,
like on T and T, like some afternoon that would
make sense. Yeah, God, I missed T and T afternoons. Yeah,
just channel surfing and being.

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
Like, what the hell is this? God, I missed channel
surfing just period.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
Yeah, you don't get that weird passive discovery anymore, No times.
An equally beloved presence on the set was.

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
Director Peter Weir.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
I keep getting him confused with Bob Weir, the guy
who played RoboCop Peter Weller.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
Uh, I kept thinking Bob Weir, which makes us small?
These anecdotes so much funnier it is, man, it is crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
You know, Bobby Weir was like a child when they
started The Grateful Dead.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
He's like seventeen.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
Not a good environment for no child. Do you know
that Peter Weller has a PhD in Italian Renaissance Art
history from uc LA. No I did not. Yeah, it
is incredible, incredible RoboCop as an advanced advanced degree in
art history.

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:17:26):
Oh Captain, my captain. Ethan Hawk would describe Peter Weir
as a little folk hero which little condescend in there,
Ethan who instilled in them visions of art and a
sense that what we were doing was important and mattered cute,
just as their characters do. The kids in the cast

(01:17:47):
referred to Weir as, oh, captain, my captain. According to
Josh Charles, everything that Robin's character is to us in
the film is everything that Peter was to us.

Speaker 1 (01:17:56):
As actors in the film.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
That's cute. After this, I know he did the Truman Show.
I don't know what he did immediately after it, though. Okay,
let's check. This may have been partially but design. As
Robin Williams would recall, I don't know if it was symbiotic,
but when we're picking out clothes, Weir picked out one
school scarf for me and one for himself. He would
wear the scarf like I wore it. Weir had a

(01:18:19):
unique but effective way of working with the kids. Once
the camera was rolling, I would throw a bald up
piece of paper at the head of the person who
was supposed to speak first, and I instructed them to
say their line when they felt that paper hit the
back of their necks.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
That does not seem like the best way to get
a performance out of somebody.

Speaker 2 (01:18:36):
No, that's uniquely byzantine and borderline like brainwashy.

Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
I mean, it's very prep school.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
Yeah. On a similar note, instead of yelling cut at
the end of a shot, Weir would wrap the side
of his coffee cup with a teaspoon, which is literally
the scene from get Out, which helped eliminate the sanctity
of the situation and reduced the historical weight of making
a movie.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
His wording, are you want to know what he did
after Dead Post Society?

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:19:11):
Yeah, A thousand guesses you will you will never know
Roadhouse Green Card, which is a romantic comedy starring Gerard
Depardue American woman who enters into a marriage of convenience
with a frenchman. That old, that old Saul.

Speaker 2 (01:19:31):
God, that's so sad.

Speaker 1 (01:19:35):
Wait a minute. He wrote it, he directed it, and
he produced it. This was his This was his blank
check movie. Oh my god, depart doo want a Golden
Globe for Best Actor for this? The film won the
Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture. Is going On? It
was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Could
this be good? Actually?

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
I shuddered to think.

Speaker 1 (01:19:58):
The Deparduo of it all suggests no. Oh, there's no
way it could be. I know everyone thinks for haters,
but come on, depart you you can't be in a
movie and with druid depart do and get away with it.
He looks like a bad bagette, like a lumpy stone.
Uh weird.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
Strategy for working with his ensemble was to quote create
an atmosphere where there was no real difference between off
camera and on camera that they were those people. Once
shooting started, they were not permitted to see their own
dailies so that they could live it rather than make
a movie. Weir was also so invested in making the
growing bond between Keating and the poets realistic that he
made the unusual choice to film the movie in chronological order.

(01:20:39):
They did have a Planet of the Apes.

Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
The original.

Speaker 2 (01:20:44):
No I'm kidding, ah, it seems strange in retrospect, but
the kids were really the star of the movie. Mister
Keating is the unifying link. Robin Williams is actually not
in this as much as you'd think. Can you pause it? Yeah?
Is it anywhere near the like Hannibal Hannibal or like
oh wow Ledger Heath Ledger in a joker loved role

(01:21:05):
of being in the movie for like ten minutes aggregately.

Speaker 1 (01:21:08):
Ooh, I haven't timed it, you know what, I'm gonna
check this right now, because why would you?

Speaker 2 (01:21:14):
Why would anyone do that?

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
John Kenny, I would appear a mere thirty three minutes
in a two hour, eight minute film.

Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
Okay, that's that's reasonable, But it's still not like Hannibal.
Elector's on screen for twelve minutes or whatever. It's the
third Well, yeah, that's a quarter, that's true. There are
four main narratives among the students. Charlie Dalton's transformation to
the rebellious Nuwanada.

Speaker 1 (01:21:44):
Is that?

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
I what is with that?

Speaker 1 (01:21:47):
Explain that to me? It's a it's a persona that
he embraces for himself, a sensual, passionate persona. I know
it's hard to explain. And where do you get the name?

Speaker 2 (01:21:59):
I forget?

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
I don't please, don't do this to me and not
in front of people like this is this is not
all it was meant for. This was not meant to
be scrutinized. He made set in fifty nine. The mistakes
were made.

Speaker 2 (01:22:20):
His favorite album was what was the Drums of Passion?
One of the most like formative albums for like a
certain generation of musician. Oh yeah, I think Ginger Baker
talked about shooting up Heroin to that for the first time.
Did you ever see the Devil in mister Baker or whatever?
That movie is, how he's like the worst guy in existence.

Speaker 1 (01:22:43):
It opens with him like being chased off the property
by Ginger hating the documentarium with his cane.

Speaker 2 (01:22:49):
Todd ethan hawk coming out of his shell and overcoming
his shyness. Neil Perry's tragic story is the one to
be actor whose ambitions are thwarted by his overbearing father
and the romantic Knocks over stre trying to summon the
courage to confess his love to Chris the cheerleader. Jordan,
how did you relate to to Knocks?

Speaker 1 (01:23:07):
Oh? I was cute. Yeah, it was like my favorite
threat of the movie. Knock seizes the day, if I recall,
by trespassing into this girl's school to read her a
poem that he wrote for her, which reminds me of
that Onion headline romantic comedy behavior gets real life man arrested,
But well, what'k that? Off to the side for now
reads the poem, and then in the next scene is

(01:23:28):
him returning to his school and all his friends are like,
what did she say? Nothing? Nothing?

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
Nothing? But I did it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
It's cute. It's very cool, hand Luke. It's like, you know,
it's not about anybody else, It's about you. It's about you, like,
which is sweet, except in romantic comedy situations, when the
situation you're putting somebody else in you should really consider that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:54):
So it's tough. It reads both list. Yeah, also like
what teenage boy is like? That not on shan about romance?
That was sure rushed to me.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
Oh yeah, no, I would have gone to bed for days.

Speaker 2 (01:24:10):
One of the more memorable scenes of the movie was
not in the original script. You will recall that Todd
Ethan Hawk gets sent a desk set for his birthday
from his parents, identical to the one he'd gotten the
year before and possibly the year before that. On top
of being a sort of soulless gift, it's meant to
telegraph how thoughtless it is and apparently how little the
parents care about their son. Some people have real problem,

(01:24:33):
but it's still a gift, and yeah, so I won't
to recognize that. In the original script, Ethan Hawk delivers
a lengthy monologue to Robert Sean Leonard four twenty eight?
What's for twenty eight? That's what all the chemicals in
my body would be worth if you bottled them up
and sold them. That's what my father said I was worth.
That's a crazy thing to say.

Speaker 1 (01:24:54):
Four dollars and twenty eight cents or four hundred and
twenty eight dollars I think four hundred and twenty eight
dollars nineteen fifties money. Let's say it's like four grands.
I think it's about four grands.

Speaker 2 (01:25:04):
I'd be ecstatic if someone put that value in my body.
My liver is worth like two cents in a crumpled io.

Speaker 1 (01:25:14):
U organ transplants procedures were in their infancy.

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
Yeah, what's four hundred and twenty eight dollars in nineteen
fifty nine money? Now?

Speaker 1 (01:25:22):
All right, prices, right, rules, I'm gonna say it's about
it's about five. I musa say five grands. I'll say
four four, five hundred and forty three. Does that mean
I win? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
I went over. Oh yeah, that's all that matters to me.
But on set, everyone agreed that this exchange was too
flat and unbelievable. Simply put, it felt like a scene
Ethan would say. I'd never be this self pitying in
front of a guy my own age. So we're tasked
them with coming up with something better, and the result
was an authentic dose of male teenage expression. They suggested

(01:25:56):
throwing the desk set off the roof, and to their shock,
we're agreed. I remember Bob and I and the van
ride home afterwards, were like, is he really going to
put that in the movie? Hawk recalled it was too
much fun to be sitting there and we were just
making up these lines and he was writing them down hilariously.
Robert Sean Leonard snuck into David Letterman impression, presumably because
one of Letterman's early bits was throwing stuff off the

(01:26:18):
roof of buildings.

Speaker 1 (01:26:19):
It's pretty good. I mean you hear it. It's like,
oh yeah, that's he's totally doing David Letterman the.

Speaker 2 (01:26:22):
World's first unmanned flying desk set.

Speaker 1 (01:26:26):
Yeah, oh my, remember you would like to throw stuff
off in the that we'd close off, like the street
by the studio, and he dumped stuff off the roof
like super balls and tinball machines.

Speaker 2 (01:26:42):
And I did not watch Late Night as a kid. Interesting,
I love to sleep too much. Oh my precious hours
of unconsciousness. I thought you would have made up for
him in the day though. Now that's when the screaming started.

Speaker 1 (01:27:01):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
Hawk is still close with John Charles and Robert Sean Leonard.
He formed a theater company with Leonard New York, and
he appeared in a Taylor Swift music video with Charles.
We'll get to that later begrudgingly. During the production of
Ted Dead Poets, Ted Poets Society.

Speaker 1 (01:27:16):
That's funny, Ted Hughes, Ted Bundy, what are some good
Ted Templeman, I can't believe that's where he went.

Speaker 2 (01:27:25):
There's a baseball player named Ted right that people love
Teddy Williams.

Speaker 1 (01:27:28):
Oh yeah, right, Ted Williams. Yeah, Austin ghost Socks.

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
During the production of Dead Poets Society, the Seven Poets
took a weekend trip to New York, sitting together accompanying
Hawk and Leonard as they auditioned for the same role
in the film Dad, which Hawk ended up getting. There's
a little mini documentary on the YouTube channel of actor
Dylan Cussman the Turncoat Richard Cameron's taken from camcorder footage

(01:27:53):
taken that weekend. It is adorable and a must watch
for fan of this movie.

Speaker 1 (01:27:58):
That's really great.

Speaker 2 (01:27:59):
We mentioned earlier that they there's one person on the
set of Dead Poets Society who wasn't amused by Robin
Williams antics, and that was sweet baby Ethan Hawk. This
was Ethan Hawk's second movie ever, and as such he
had that new guy seriousness, mostly because he was nervous
and deeply focused on doing the best job he possibly could.
In the DVD extras, he explained, I was eighteen years

(01:28:19):
old and I thought that getting this part would change
my life. I had instilled it with that kind of importance,
and as a result, Robin being Robin threw him in.

Speaker 1 (01:28:27):
A big way. He'd had.

Speaker 2 (01:28:29):
I really wanted to be a serious actor. I'd read
Stanislavsky that should be banned before sir as. I had
read Stanislavsky, and I had what was supposed to be
in my pockets, and I really wanted to be in character.
And I really didn't want to laugh. The more I
didn't laugh, the more insane Robin got. He would make
fun of me, Oh, this one doesn't want to laugh,
and then more smoke would come out of my ears.

(01:28:50):
He didn't understand I was trying to do a good job.
I wanted to be Montgomery Cliff over here. You're trying
to be Zero Mostel or something that is a far
and away reference, Jordan, do you want to explain to
to We don't have any younger listeners. Should we explain
who Zero Mostel is?

Speaker 1 (01:29:08):
Almost like a proto Jack Black, but skewing a bit older.
He was in uh in the Original Producers, a funny
thing happened on the way of the Forum. A rotund
comedian with very expressive face, not very subtle.

Speaker 2 (01:29:25):
M M, that's just so funny. He was like, you're trying.
I thought he hated me because he would constantly lay
into me. Despite this one sided friction, Williams did indeed
see something special in Hawk and personally got him his
first agent, which came as a total surprise to young Ethan.
The young Hawk just start calling him. One day, he

(01:29:45):
got a call out of the blue by an agent
who told him how Robin had hyped him up. He
called saying, Robin Williams says, you're going to do really well,
and that agent still works with Ethan Hawk to this day.
Helped him get roles in increasingly bigger movies like White Fan,
A Midnight Clear, Reality Bites, and then of course he
going to win OSCAR nominations for roles in Training Day

(01:30:06):
and Boyhood. The big moment between Robin and Ethan in
the movie and real life occurs in the scene where
mister Keating tries to get the reserve Todd Anderson out
of his shell by asking him to come to the
front of the class and unleash his internal barbaric yop
by reciting an impromptu poem. He's terrified at first, but

(01:30:26):
Keating gets him to close his eyes and share free
verse that provides an insight into his psyche. It's a
little shop that this kid is being forced to lay
bare his interiority in front of his teenager boy peers
in the nineteen fifties.

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
But it's a movie. This whole scene is not as
cringey as describing it makes it sound.

Speaker 2 (01:30:49):
No, but it's a realized That's a valid point, man,
I mean like, yeah, well, you have to recite free
verse in front of your nineteen fifties male teen classmates.
You'll be strung up at up preps school. Yeah, sodomized
and strung up. The powerful scene is captured in a
single shot what we in the industry call a wanner,

(01:31:10):
with the camera circling Williams and Hawk as I have
this breakthrough moment. Hawk would later tell CBC Radio it
was the first time in my life I ever experienced
the thrill of acting and the thrill of losing yourself.
You know, there's this whole thing in the public that
acting is this huge celebration of personality and ego, of course,
and the irony is that whenever it's any good, it's
devoid of ego. It's a high I've chased my whole

(01:31:32):
life since that day of Robin. It's this way of
losing yourself where you lose yourself inside a story, a
story that's in service of something way beyond you. And
I felt that in Dead Poets.

Speaker 1 (01:31:41):
Society Dun dun dun dun, dun dun dun, dunt dun,
dun dun dun dun dun. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:31:50):
Uh, he would add to can you imagine Dead Post
Society with Denzel from training day as Robin Williams.

Speaker 1 (01:31:56):
It would almost be like Dangerous Minds where he's just
like trying to get through to like the tough kids. Yeah,
the inverse, the inverse of that.

Speaker 2 (01:32:04):
Yeah. He would ad to Script Magazine that it remains
one of the most significant days of my life professionally
for sure. He added that because he's married and has children.
Ethan also theorized this was the moment when he and
Robin clicked creatively. Robin made this joke at the end
of the scene, he said, saying he found me intimidating.

Speaker 1 (01:32:22):
I thought it was a joke.

Speaker 2 (01:32:23):
As I get older, I realized there is something intimidating
about young people's earnestness, their intensity. It is intimidating to
be the person they think you are. Robin was that
for me? That's a good insight.

Speaker 1 (01:32:35):
I think that's really yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:32:37):
You know, while we're on the topic of Robin Williams
changing young people's lives with poetry, we're gonna throw it
back to hook the very first episode of this podcast
we ever taped nearly three years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:32:52):
It's not some violent math.

Speaker 2 (01:32:54):
I'm sorry, screaming started again. Robin took the actor who
played Rufio Dante Basco under his wing during the production.
The two used to speak at length about Dead Poets Society,
as this film had been highly influential on Basco, who's
an aspiring poet at the time, and as a rap present,
Robin Williams gave the young Rufeo actor a limited edition

(01:33:15):
copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, a work heavily
featured in Dead Poet Society. Basco added. Consequently, I ended
up opening a poetry venue out of my living room,
which is now the largest open mic poetry venue in America,
called the Poetry Lounge. So all things considered, it was
a wash. It's a cute story. Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm

(01:33:38):
a bad person.

Speaker 1 (01:33:40):
Well we need to savor that cute moment for a
bit because we're about to talk about the saddest point
of this film, arguably one of the saddest moments in
eighty cinema, which you have not seen. So I'm spoilers.
I guess gives a shit. I actually think you would
like this movie. Is it sadder than the Horse Dying
and Never ending? Oh? It's up there, it's Oh. Here,

(01:34:03):
I'll explain the bright light known as Neil Perry, probably
the most popular of the kids in the Dead Poets Society.
He just made his debut as Puck in A Midsummer
Nights Dream when he was met by his disapproving father
played by the guy who played Red Foreman on that
seventy show, which is weird. I was in RoboCop. Oh yes, Oh,

(01:34:23):
that makes total sense.

Speaker 2 (01:34:24):
He's the guy who has the best line of the eighties.
Where he comes he's he's like a heavy and he
comes in to when the corporation one of their executives
is celebrating with a few ladies like doing coke off
their boobs and stuff, and Red Foreman walks in with
a gun and just goes. Bitches leave, Bitches leave. Transcendent.

Speaker 1 (01:34:50):
Oh, it's really hard to get back into the story
after that anecdote. They should do a sequet of Dead
Poet's Society, but it's like Debtor Poets. It's like Poet Harder.

Speaker 2 (01:35:04):
Good Poet Society. To the revenge, the return to go
back to the school to blow it up, and Red's
still alive, so the dad may have to join the
team and like avenge his son.

Speaker 1 (01:35:20):
Or whatever happens. On that Paul Anker show that I produced,
we had the second of our two part interview with
Frankie Avalon, and I sent the edit over to the
person who's going to mix it and master it, and
I was like, all right, here it is Frankie Avalon too,
Frankie Harder. A good day to Frankie. And I just
had this like series of like saying and I like,

(01:35:41):
I momentarily forgot it wasn't to you, and I got
no just crickets, no response whatsoever, Which was the one
that we had to add to it.

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
Recently, we filed it was an underrated Oh beneath beneath
the oh yeah, beneath the Planet of the Frankies. Actually
that's a good one. Beneath the Planet of Dead Poets Society. Yeah,
ooh yeah, all right, he kills himself or something. Yeah,
all right, fine, fine, fine, so okay. This guy even
wants to be an actor. He goes on stage, he's

(01:36:11):
really good. His dad sees him. His dad is pissed.

Speaker 1 (01:36:15):
His dad wants him to put aside his silly acting
dreams and to make sure this happens, he says he's
going to withdraw him from Welton Academy, take him away
from the Robin Williams teacher character, and send him the
military school. And this kid, young Neil, played by Robert
Shawn Leonard, He's so distraught that he takes his own life.
It's a very very upsetting scene in this movie. Director

(01:36:36):
Peter Weird depicts the tragedy in a very elegantly obtuse way,
with most of the action occurring off screen. I think
the most we see as a puff of gun smoke.
Weird knew that this was going to be the most
sensitive moment of the film, and he went so far
as to consult a psychologist to ensure that it didn't
look like he was glamorizing suicide, which I think is

(01:36:57):
very responsible.

Speaker 2 (01:36:58):
Yeah, it's more than I would have given him for
as an Australian.

Speaker 1 (01:37:03):
Excuse me, friend of the pod fills in Australia, and
we have to be nice to our Southern hemisphere brethren.

Speaker 2 (01:37:09):
Opinions differ.

Speaker 1 (01:37:11):
We're asked a psychologist, how could I shoot this in
a way that made it clear that Neil wasn't making
a heroic choice by shooting himself. The psychologist suggested providing
Neil with quote a moment where he has the opportunity
to speak up where you should speak up to his father,
but he can't find the courage. That's more depressing.

Speaker 2 (01:37:31):
Yeah, yeah, having your your suicide elucidated by a moment
of cowardice.

Speaker 1 (01:37:40):
Yeah, I didn't make this decision.

Speaker 2 (01:37:43):
Sorry, I'm for you in so many different ways. You
were so sincere about loving it. I'm just sitting here
poking holes and everything about it. I mean, I do
have like three pages at the end.

Speaker 1 (01:37:54):
They're all like taken from articles saying that this is
a movie that's irresponsible. Uh, I give you you can
read those You can read that section. Go here. As
I'm finishing this, like authentic stuff, go scroll down and
scan that section. The section is called the blowback.

Speaker 2 (01:38:12):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:38:13):
We're accentuated this effect by keeping the camera angled hide
during the conversation with his father to.

Speaker 2 (01:38:19):
Make him look diminished and small.

Speaker 1 (01:38:22):
Jesus, because worse and worse. I'm gonna make this.

Speaker 2 (01:38:27):
Uh this is not glorify suicide. Shoot it so he's humiliated.
Really lay into him, make him move like a total pussy, right,
I could do that.

Speaker 1 (01:38:46):
No, I don't think that was the intent.

Speaker 2 (01:38:47):
I think that.

Speaker 1 (01:38:49):
Okay, okay, okay. Man. This plot point, as you would expect,
was a controversial one. Script writer Tom Shulman said, Peter
told me that Ingmar Bergman once said that if you
kill off one of your lead characters, the audience will
hate you. So I asked him what we should do,

(01:39:10):
and he said, hope Bergman is wrong. Shulman adds, I
think the suicide does turn off a lot of people.
It's a tough one. Robert Sean Leonard, the guy who
played Neil, would recall woman coming up to him at
a theater once and berating him for supposedly showing suicide
in a heroic light. Ethan Hawk played Neil's roommate and

(01:39:30):
close friend in the movie, and the scene where he
learns of the suicide was to be one of the
anchors of the film. The script called for him to
be informed by his friends while still in bed, and
then run to the bathroom where he would throw up
and deliver a monologue blaming Neil's dad for this drastic,
terrible act. But then the morning of the shoot, the
cast and crew drove to the set as snow was

(01:39:51):
coming down. Peter Weir decided that it would be much
more realistic to have Ethan's character flee his dorm and
head out into the snow to have his emotion catharsis.
The only trouble was due to the snow, they could
only shoot at once, otherwise they really wouldn't have time
to cover up the footprints. Don't worry, Ethan can do
it in one take, Peter declared, which left Ethan immensely

(01:40:13):
proud but also terrified.

Speaker 2 (01:40:15):
No pressure, Yeah, we will burn the set down after
this take.

Speaker 1 (01:40:20):
The other problem Ethan had was that he objected to
this lengthy speech which Peter Weir happened to love. He
just felt again it read like a scene. It didn't
seem like something that would be real. You know, when
you're in a moment of grief and catharsis, you're not
really delivering fully formed paragraphs and having definitive thoughts and
opinions on why something like this would have happened. You're
just reacting. So we're to his credit, let the young

(01:40:44):
star do the scene his way, saying you cannot say
the speech, but you have to make me think you
said the speech. Hmmmm. Ethan was like, well, great, now
I have all this pressure on me and I have
to decode this cryptic comment. For my director, all was
the half coherent, largely ad libbed result that you see
in the final film, which I feel accurately depicts a

(01:41:06):
grief stricken teen boy in a state of shock. It's
a very, very affecting scene as you meditate on that.
We'll be right back with more too much information after
these messages. The original version of Dead Poets Society very

(01:41:37):
nearly ended with another death, that of Robin Williams's character
John Keating. The original version of Tom Shulman's script included
a scene of Keating dying in a hospital after being
diagnosed with Hodgkins's disease, christ, which was revealed to be
the driving force behind his Seize the Day Mantra. As

(01:41:57):
Shulman would explain, when I got to a later stage
of the screen play, around page seventy or eighty, I
started to feel a need to explain why Keating had
this carpe dm philosophy that was so important to him.
So I decided he'd have a fatal disease, but wasn't
like Handrey's lymphoma, where you can live twenty or thirty years,
but it'll ultimately shorten your life and you'll die prematurely.

(01:42:17):
So I wrote a scene where the boys come to
class and Keating isn't there, and then they find out
he's in the hospital. They go see him, and that's
when they learn about his disease. Then the next day
he's back in class after surviving his latest acute attack
and back to his old self. Weir hated this ending
for many reasons. It's cliche, it's trite, it's manipulative, plus

(01:42:39):
it cheap. In the message of the movie, The Seas
the Day Lesson is arguably much more impactful without this
dramatic catalyst. Weir hated the scene so much that he
initially passed on directing this movie because of it. When
Katzenberg asked him why he didn't want to direct the movie,
he explained, because you go through the whole story and
it's about seizing the day. You have this wonderful, inspiring

(01:43:01):
teacher who I would have followed and I would have
definitely become part of the Dead Poets society. But then
you come to the scene with Keating in the hospital
and you realize he's got leukemia and that's why he's
saying sees the day. Well, who wouldn't under those circumstances,
And as Peter Weir remembered it, Katzenberg said, well, why
don't you just cut the cancer out?

Speaker 2 (01:43:23):
And so that's what they did.

Speaker 1 (01:43:25):
Took several days of back and forth with the screenwriter
Tom Shulman, but he finally convinced him to cut it.
Shulman would later admit that this was the right call
and heighten the emotional punch of the last image of
the movie, a student standing on their desks and tribute
to Keating in defiance of their rigid new English Teacher.
Now Shulman would admit, if Keating's not dying, then we

(01:43:45):
know they're standing up for the values he's taught them,
which is much more powerful.

Speaker 2 (01:43:50):
I agree.

Speaker 1 (01:43:52):
The only one of the seven members of the Dead
Poet Society who doesn't stand on his desk is Richard Cameron,
the weasel, who rated out Keating the same his own ass.
This was a choice by actor Dylan Cuspin, who made
this call during his audition. Of all places, Weird asked
him if there were lass ones on him I know.
Weird asked him if there was anything he didn't like
about the character, and Cuspin boldly confessed that he thought

(01:44:16):
it was not true to his character to stand on
his desk in salute.

Speaker 2 (01:44:20):
We are.

Speaker 1 (01:44:20):
Agreed and ultimately gave the kid the part as a result,
and now here's something to make hye will cry. As
I mentioned earlier, when they shot that scene, Peter Weir
blasted the set with Innio Marconi's music from the Mission
to get everybody in the mood we are, I guess,

(01:45:00):
playing a lot of Irish music on the set during
the production, and also when he was showing dailies, he said,
I use the music mainly to psych myself into the
company of the muse as a weapon against the overwhelming
ordinariness that surrounds the film set. And I found over
the years that music helps others. Ethan Hawk would recall
that whole day was I hate the Irish.

Speaker 2 (01:45:23):
Many years later, Ethan Hawk would require developing a searing
hatred of the Irish on this film.

Speaker 1 (01:45:32):
He would recall, the whole day was so exciting. The
back wall was filled with speakers cranking out the soundtrack
to the mission. It was all so emotional in that room,
and when Robin said is goodbye boys line, he had
tears streaming down his face. But Peter was like, no,
you can't cry. The audience will be crying, but not you.
You don't cry until after you leave and you're alone

(01:45:54):
in your car right now. You want those boys to
take care of themselves, so you keep it together for that,
Just say thank you and get out. Uh. There's nowhere
else to really put this, but apparently Laura Flynn Boyle
originally had a minor role in this film as the
sister of Chet Danbury, the football player who's dating the

(01:46:16):
girl that knocks Over Street is what Over heels for Ultimately,
she was cut from the film, and she learned about
this sad fact in the most brutal way imaginable. Boyle
told David Letterman that she wasn't aware her scenes were
cut until someone from Disney called her saying that she
might want to skip the premiere, which was occurring that night.

(01:46:36):
Oh to quote her, someone from Disney called up and
said I wouldn't want to go, and said I wasn't
in it anymore and adding insult to injury. The studio
representative offered no explanation for why her role was cut,
and making matters worse, she apparently decided to cheer herself
up by going to see another movie called How I

(01:46:58):
Got Into College? Should Just come out. When she got
to the theater, she recalled, they said it wasn't going
to be playing because Dead Poets was opening. There was
she in Twin Peaks at this time?

Speaker 2 (01:47:10):
Went in Twin Peaks. Oh, I think that was ninety
or ninety one.

Speaker 1 (01:47:13):
Yeah, that's what I thought.

Speaker 2 (01:47:15):
So, yeah, she didn't have a few money back there,
yeah at that point ninety Yeah, premiere in ninety oh Man.
Brutal Dead Poet Society was released on June second, nineteen
eighty nine in the United States, Hopes for it were
not exactly high. Premiere Magazine wrote, it is extraordinary to
ask a star who gets paid around four million a
picture for being one of the funniest people in the world,

(01:47:35):
to recite poetry instead of crack jokes. But there's very
little that isn't unusual about Dead Poets Society, the wild
card in this summer's shuffle of films a cat two
hour plus Boffo, a two hour plus drama. It is
a maverick for Walt Disney Studios Touchstone Pictures, defying two
commandments of the studio's development catechism, no rural settings and

(01:47:59):
no no The title scarcely conjures up the sort of
escapist entertainment that generally means hot weather, box office bucks boffo.
They didn't write Boffo. Weird's two time collaborator Harrison Ford
jokes darkly that the film would be harder to sell
only if it were called Dead Poets Society in Winter,

(01:48:20):
but Touchstone got the last laugh. Although it never hit
number one at the box office, Dead Poets Society grossed
over two hundred and twenty five million dollars internationally, making
it the fifth highest grossing movie in the world that year.

Speaker 1 (01:48:32):
That's crazy money for something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:48:35):
Absolutely for a movie that no longer gets made, it
gets shuffled directly to Hulu. Yeah, outgrossing Little Mermaid, Honey
Shrunk the Kids, and it picked up the studio the
subsidiary Touchstones first Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Peter Weir
was nominated for Best Director. Robin Williams was nominated for
Best Actor, and though Williams would lose it, it would

(01:48:55):
set him on a trajectory towards projects like Awakenings, The
Fisher King, and Goodwill Hunting, which would ultimately earn him
his one and only Golden Man Jersey Fisher King.

Speaker 1 (01:49:06):
Oh a long time ago. I remember liking it. I
want to resee it. Was that Terry Gilliam Yeah it
must yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:49:12):
And Jeff Bridge is playing like a obvious Howard Stern analog.

Speaker 1 (01:49:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:49:16):
It's a weird movie. It doesn't fully come off, but
it's got great stuff. Robin would later say about the
plot of Dead Poets Society, I can't describe it in
fifteen words or less. It would be like saying the
Bible is about a young boy. The only Oscar that
Dead Poets Society would win was for Tom Schulman's screenplay
that guy wrote, Holy Man. Obviously, this film has gone

(01:49:39):
on to become a beloved classic, but critics had some notes.
Vincent Canby, who reviewed the film for The New York Times,
wanted the film to center on Keating and less on
the students, saying John Keating is the most vivid, most
complex character in it, but he's not around long enough.
Roger Ebert disagreed, calling Keating more of a plot device
than a human being. He gave the film two stars,

(01:50:01):
writing it is of course inevitable that the brilliant teacher
will eventually be fired from the school. And when his
students stood on their desk to protest his dismissal, I
was so moved, I wanted to throw up.

Speaker 1 (01:50:13):
I love Ebert man so many heaters.

Speaker 2 (01:50:16):
Ebert was not alone in sipping hater ad for Dead
Poet Society in recent years. Read the early twenty ten,
before Robert William's heartbreaking death made it less fashionable to
his movies, there were a slew of think pieces that,
while not strictly wrong, do raise some interesting points. Some

(01:50:36):
pedantic some contrarian and some actually quite good. In an
article for The Atlantic titled I've never hated a film
quite the way I hate Dead Poets Society, writer Kevin
Detmar it must be said, a PhD in English lit,
criticized the film for being anti intellectual and popularizing poetry
fandom rather than the serious criticism and close readings that

(01:50:57):
students of literature practice in academia. Writer Stephen Marsh makes
a similar point in a piece for Esquire with a
similarly measured title, Dead Poets Society provided the fantasy that
the glories of literature amount to a huge prep school circle.
Jerk well done, Sir March writes, literature in Dead Poets

(01:51:18):
Society is essentially a type of collective narcissism. Look around
any group of white writers or scholars today and tell
me that view hasn't utterly triumphed. The real trick of
the movie, though, its most vital selling point, was how
easy it made writing and studying writing. Look, Understanding the
literary tradition was not a task. Nobody had to learn
foreign languages or philology. Nobody had to work at it.

(01:51:41):
What you really needed to be a writer was to
be sensitive and to overcome the traditional strictures of mom
and dad. You really just needed to be a rebel.
You needed to figure out a way to be yourself.
What Dead Poets Society and the vision of creative writing
that emerged in its wake offered was a simplified, fair
ground version of the act of reading and writing books.
Poets Society ends with all the students standing on their

(01:52:02):
desks shouting, Oh Captain, my captain. If they were smart,
they would sit down at those desks, shut up for
a while, and listen. March continues in the piece, accusing
Robin William's character of being a figure onto which the
screenwriter could project his quote writerly ego mania. I don't disagree,
he continues. Instead of having the students read interpretations of literature,

(01:52:24):
he begins his class by having them rip out the
pages of the introduction. He modestly suggests that they call him,
oh Captain, my captain, a title that Walt Rittman originally
intended for a murdered Abraham Lincoln martyred Savior of the Republic.
Keating is entitled to his student's adulation in the film
because he abused in them a sense of self worth
totally unrelated to their accomplishments. What do you think about

(01:52:48):
all this, Jordan.

Speaker 1 (01:52:52):
There's a fine line between let me let me put
it this way. I went to NYU for screenwriting and IO, so.

Speaker 2 (01:53:00):
You're just qualified. Why am i as well?

Speaker 1 (01:53:01):
No? No, no, I spent most of my time there
thinking I don't want to be taught anything. I have
my voice, I have my point of view. It's unique
to me, and I don't want it to be diluted
with everything that came before. I want you to give
me my piece of paper so I could move on
and like get my credentials and make whatever is in
my heart to make, which is a very young person
way to think. Looking back on it, I wish that

(01:53:24):
I had learned from these smart people who you know.
It's the thing that my dad would say to me,
I can't teach you anything. It's okay that you don't
know everything. Jordan. You know, and I you know it's yeah.
I definitely had a streak of that youthful maturity of
thinking that I knew everything. It was nothing I could
learn from anybody. And I think as a kid, I
would have loved to have had an adult be like, yeah,

(01:53:44):
you're right, yeah, just listen to yourself. But now that
I'm older, I do have that sense of, oh, I
would love for somebody who really knows what they're talking
about to like show me or teach me.

Speaker 2 (01:53:55):
It's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:53:56):
I see both sides of it, you know. I remember
being that age, the feeling that way, and I you know, yeah,
there is something that comes with age where you start
to you realize how little you know the older you get,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:54:08):
Yeah, I mean my take on it is in a
completely different trajectory, which is that I don't think writers
should ever be lauded because this is what will.

Speaker 1 (01:54:17):
Happen to them.

Speaker 2 (01:54:19):
I as much as I as much as I similarly
am enthused about the transformative powers of art, there is
really a point at which you do want to tell
every single artist to shut up. And this movie approaches
that and may or may not have like established that
in the Cannon. You know, I had a girlfriend once

(01:54:40):
who inserts him Allen. Yeah. She was French and we
we had a lot of overlapping taste and stuff, like
she introduced me to the recently departed Paul Auster.

Speaker 1 (01:54:52):
Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (01:54:53):
Yeah. She at one point was like, you know, you're
very American. In the sense that all of your are
or all the stuff that you're interested is in men
trumpeting about themselves.

Speaker 1 (01:55:06):
And that was so devastating that I broke up with her. No, no,
that's not true.

Speaker 2 (01:55:11):
But that's like the sense that you get about this film.
And I declined going into getting a higher degree. But like,
I do think that it does kind of short sell
the rigor that a lot of people put into academia
and studying this stuff. And it isn't like, you know,
it's not like a free ride, Like there is work involved,
and ultimately, like intense academics like that are responsible for

(01:55:36):
preserving and illustrating a lot of work in really essential
ways and boiling it down to like you just got
to have a free spirit and seize the day. Man
is like, I agree that that does a disservice to
actual poetry and writing. You know, I don't know what
do you think about that. Let's keep bandying this about.

(01:55:58):
We're gonna get to the bottom of it. Put a
pot of coffee, you and I are going to solve
this thing tonight.

Speaker 1 (01:56:02):
I mean, yeah, okay, here's another way of looking at it.
I mean, you know how much I love music, so
so much, and I do play instruments, but I have
never been able to write a song my entire life.
I've never been able to write a song for years,
and for the twenty plus years that I played piano
and guitar and whatever. And as a music journalist, I've
been lucky enough to talk to some really great musicians,

(01:56:23):
and a lot of times it's come up organically, like hey, like,
I have always wanted to write music. I love music
with everything, every five of my being, and I've never
been able to what's some advice for me? And they'll
all say, almost across the board varying forms of just
let go and do it.

Speaker 2 (01:56:41):
Just let go and do it.

Speaker 1 (01:56:42):
And like, I know I'm not going to be Paul McCartney.
I know I'm not gonna be Bob Dylan. I know
I'm not gonna be any Brian Wilson or any of
these people. Maybe Brian Wilson. But they're just trying to
help get me to express myself in the way that
I want to express myself because it feels good. So
to that extent, their advice almost sounds the same to

(01:57:03):
what Robin Williams's character saysn't Dead Poe society.

Speaker 2 (01:57:06):
Just let go and do it.

Speaker 1 (01:57:07):
And you are a songwriter, so I'm sure you have
some thoughts on that too. I mean, poetry writing, fiction writing,
I'm sure, nonfiction writing, music, I mean it's all the
same thing. We're all talking about passion and creativity and
in any form you want to take.

Speaker 2 (01:57:21):
Acting. No, acting doesn't count. No, I mean there is
a unrelated there's a great part in one of the
Nick Cave documentaries where he says the worth of an
idea is only in its doing. Oh I always loved
and was like so crushing to me because it's like, yeah,

(01:57:43):
you can be sitting on all the great ideas in
the world, but who cares unless you show the receipts.
You know. Here's what it actually gets down to for
me is that with everything, with any immersion into art,
to get to that period of that place of like
losing yourself, like the flow state, if you want to
put like the actual pop psychology term onto it, there

(01:58:06):
is like a high degree of rigor that you have
to put into.

Speaker 1 (01:58:09):
It before that, Yeah, put it in.

Speaker 2 (01:58:11):
A less you know, in a less eloquent way. You
have to suck at something before you can be good
at it. And most people don't want to suck, especially adults.
Like kids don't mind kind of sucking at something if
they have like a certain mindset and can be told,
like just do this over and over again.

Speaker 1 (01:58:25):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:58:26):
Adults have a much shorter attention span for that kind
of stuff because they're bringing all of their insecurity and
ego to it. But like you have to be the
intense serious dork reading Stanislavsky and put that kind of
work into it to get to the place that Robin
so effortlessly occupied of like always being in that flow state,
you know, And it's not really fun or interesting in

(01:58:48):
art to glamorize rigor.

Speaker 1 (01:58:51):
You know, you have whiplash.

Speaker 2 (01:58:52):
I mean yeah, but that swings the opposite way, where
it's glamorizing the toxicity of it, right, you know, But
like the middle ground between the talkxicity and then then
like the free spirit, every fart you take is a
work of art, there's a middle ground there which is
like art is work, And I don't think this movie
adequately sells that from what I understand. I never saw it,

(01:59:13):
But like I don't think this twinkly eyed view of
like just live man and that'll be your art that
doesn't get at it, and nor does the flip side
of it with whiplash, where it's like art is misery.
I mean, art is misery, but that's because of capitalism,
not because of art. I blame that on art.

Speaker 1 (01:59:28):
I agree with you, but I think you're implying that
these kids are trying to be slash, are being told
that they are good. Sure, and I think that's different.
I think it's the same with me trying to write
a song, not because I want to make that my
be all and all in life or make a living
at it or whatever. It's something I want to do
because I just want to express myself that way, and

(01:59:49):
I feel locked up personally inside of me. That's something
that is just I'm not able to let go for
whatever reason, and I wish I could.

Speaker 2 (01:59:56):
I don't know why.

Speaker 1 (01:59:57):
I don't know why I feel compelled to write a
song due it's just something, you know. I love these
beautiful noises and I want to make one of my own.
And I think that I would argue that Robin's character
is trying to help these kids unlock themselves find their
own voice, not because he's not saying that they're going
to be poet Laurie's I think it's just the same

(02:00:19):
reason I want to write a song. It's just you
have something inside of you that you want to get out. Yeah, exactly.
And that's the scene we were talking about earlier with
Ethan Hawk when he gets up in class and delivers
a just a free verse poem extemporaneously. And let me
put it this way, the plot of the movie wasn't
to get Ethan Hawk to write a poem down on
paper that he sent off to the Paris Review that

(02:00:42):
then got to Yeah, it wasn't that at all. It
was get up in class, say some weird nonsense. Some
of it had little gems of letting us see you
for who you were and get a look at for
who you are and get a look at your psyche
and what's inside of you, and was revealing. That was it.
And then this movie it wasn't like that didn't come back.

(02:01:03):
That wasn't like something that was used as a you know,
I decided I'm going to do this for the rest.

Speaker 2 (02:01:09):
Of my life.

Speaker 1 (02:01:09):
It was not that. It was just you found your voice,
like you spoke up here, you said what was inside you?
That's cool? Like end of story.

Speaker 2 (02:01:16):
Yeah, I mean, that is really beautiful, and I think
I maybe you know what's interesting about this movie is
everyone brings their like completely and their own baggage to it,
and that colors their interpretation, and I think all of
them are valid.

Speaker 1 (02:01:31):
You know, I really want you to say it now,
because I am curious what you know, eighties cheese, twinkly
eyed whatever aside. I'm curious of what you would take
from the specifics of it.

Speaker 2 (02:01:46):
Oh dude, I a sucker for this kind of like
I talked such a jaded game, but I'm also the
person like a child who watched Karate Kid constantly and like,
we'll still weep at any underdog fighting story. I cried
at the end of Real Steel, which is the Hugh
Jackman Rockham Sockham Robots movie, because the little robot was

(02:02:07):
the underdog and he won. Like that's so ingrained in me.
But like, you know, Warrior, have you ever seen that movie?
That movie fucking crushes me, dude. Joel Edgerton is like
a middle aged guy doing mma cage fights and his
brother is like is Tom Hardy, who's like a shocked
veteran incredible film, but like again, just like the whole

(02:02:29):
under I don't know, I'm just rambling.

Speaker 1 (02:02:32):
Now, what are you talking about? Yeah, we've got more
contrarian takes for kay Society. Are you I feel like
you should read these. You're better at the contrarian.

Speaker 2 (02:02:44):
Many writers have debated whether or not Keating was an
irresponsible teacher, allowing inexperienced teenagers to run them up rather
than provide stronger structure and guidance. In a twenty eleven
article for The Guardian in which he cites Dead Pote
Society as his favorite film, writer safras Manzo admits, as
a forty year old recent father, I found in some
ways the film had not aged well. The adult characters

(02:03:06):
seemed too crudely drawn. The hopes and dreams of the fathers,
and one assumes the mothers too easily dismissed. My looties
were now more divided. I sympathized with Neil Perry's dreams
of becoming an actor, but I also understood why his
father had reservations come and a dad makes you lame.
Writer Elizabeth Grace Matthew takes on an even stronger stance
in her piece The Case against Dead Poets Society. In

(02:03:29):
the wake of Neil's death, she writes, the well administration
dismisses mister Keating, blaming his unorthodox instructional methods and the
dead poet's society for the tragedy. This is, of course
unfair to the well intentioned Keating, who is trying to
help Neil explain to his father just how much he
loves acting. Still, as anyone who has spent any time
around teenagers, especially teenage boys, knows, their primary limitation is

(02:03:52):
not an inability to seize the day. It is an
inability to plan for the future. Indeed, teen's impulsivity and
recklessness is best met with exactly the kind of regimentation, order,
and authority that Welton as a whole was attempting to provide.
That's square square as hell. Any claim to mathematically measure
the greatness of poems, She continues, as outlined in the

(02:04:16):
page of the textbook that Keating dismisses as excrement and
orders torn out is self evidently asinine. More important, a
father's attempt to make significant life decisions for his healthy
and self aware teenage son without his input was bound
to be counterproductive in every possible way. Are these people
really siding on the no No, no, nineteen fifties boarding school.

Speaker 1 (02:04:37):
No no, they're saying that they're admitting that these things
are obviously bad. But she continues in this piece. Sure,
these excesses of the nineteen fifties educational order, as depicted
in Dead Poets Society, are made up exceptions that prove
the overwhelming rule healthy teens need order if they are
to court and create developmentally healthy dis order. Being without

(02:05:01):
boundaries to push against and structures to push against leads
to exactly the type of sulpcistic faux introspection that gives
rise to the existential angst for which teens have been
known ever since. We accept it as a cultural rule that,
in the words of Bob Dylan, mothers and fathers throughout
the land should not criticize what you can't understand. But

(02:05:22):
of course mothers and fathers can understand just fine. The
only thing more anti intellectual than some self important college
professor presuming to quantify the greatness of Shakespeare is some
self important English teacher presuming to teach impressionable boys to
think for themselves by using them to unquestioningly validate his
own credulous and oversimplified relationship to romantic verse, God is ass.

(02:05:45):
Keating demanded remember that as students rip out understanding poetry,
not that they develop arguments for refuting it or forbid
the thought or agreeing with it. Keating doesn't want the
boys to think for themselves. Not really is I want
them to think at all. In fact, he wants them
to feel as he does. Absent strict boundaries and consistent discipline,

(02:06:07):
privileged teens like those in Dead Poets Society might develop
the kind of sophomoric self importance that causes themselves angst
and others annoyance. Yeah, that's a measured take. Yeah, I'm
glad the word privilege was in there because I feel
like that's something that is you know, I mean, it
is a prep school after all.

Speaker 2 (02:06:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:06:27):
And then there's the novelist Nicholson Baker, who argues that
the central motto of the movie has been entirely misinterpreted
and mistranslated. I love this, he writes, Yes, linguistic pageantry.
Do you want to read or to take this one?

Speaker 2 (02:06:42):
Carpe DM doesn't mean seize the day. It means something
gentler and more possible. Carpei dm means pluck the day.
Carpe pluck seize the day would be kpe DM if
my school Latin serves no R very different piece of advice.
What Horace hadn't mind was that you should gently pool
on the day's stem, as if it were say a

(02:07:04):
wild flower or an olive, holding with all the practice
care of your thumb inside of your finger, which knows
how to not crush easily crushed things, so that the
day's stalk or stem undergoes increasing tension and draws to
a thinness and a tightness, and then snaps softly away
at its weakest point, perhaps leaking a little milky sap,

(02:07:26):
and the flour or the fruit is released in your hand.
Pluck the cranberry or blueberry of the day, tenderly, free,
without damaging it. Is what Horace meant. Pick the day,
harvest the day, reap the day, mow the day, forage
the day. Don't freaking grab the day in your fist
like a burger at a fair ground and take a
big chomping bite out of it.

Speaker 1 (02:07:48):
What do you think about that?

Speaker 2 (02:07:49):
I like that. I think that's measured. Yeah, I mean, really,
just this all every take on this thread is really
just like tread the middle path, like via a free flowing,
lunatic and don't be a complete square.

Speaker 1 (02:08:05):
But sometimes breaking down those internal walls require some a force,
you know, that is extreme. Yeah, it's a fascinating episode.

Speaker 2 (02:08:13):
We've got into a lot of heavy stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:08:15):
You know. One of these boys took his own life.

Speaker 2 (02:08:18):
I mean I think that.

Speaker 1 (02:08:18):
Yeah, a sad and as almost unfair as that scene
seems to be in this movie, it kind of does
obliquely show the other side of what happens when you
are just so blithely ruled by your passions that you
aren't forging the day or whatever the phrase was, You
aren't like better to burn out or fraight away man,

(02:08:40):
you know.

Speaker 2 (02:08:41):
Yeah, I mean, like I think if Hunter s Thompson, like, yeah,
consciously being like I'm not doing this anymore because of X,
Y and Z, the entirely predictable consequences of my own actions.

Speaker 1 (02:08:55):
Oh yeah, his his farewell note was crazy. Yeah, well,
he's a thing.

Speaker 2 (02:09:00):
Was basically like, I got more mileage out of this
than I wanted, and I feel myself getting like soft
and unable to do this to the degree that I
wanted to, So I am going to shoot myself.

Speaker 1 (02:09:13):
Yeah, the no, the heading of it was. Football season
is over. No more games, no more bombs, no more walking,
no more fun, no more swimming. Sixty seven at seventeen
years past fifty seventeen more than I needed or wanted. Boring,
I'm always bitchy, No fun for anybody. Sixty seven, you're

(02:09:34):
getting greedy. Act your old age. Relax the swelling hurt. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:09:39):
God, that's so fucking crushing, I know.

Speaker 1 (02:09:43):
God.

Speaker 2 (02:09:45):
And again he's one of those guys who's also like
arguably an incredible apple who should yeah, who should not
have been lionized in the first place. But yeah, yeah, man,
don't let your kid mama's don't, mama, don't let your
children become artists. Honestly, what's that from, mama? Don't let
your babies grow up to be cowboys? Oh yeah, right, yeah,

(02:10:05):
I mean, you know, artistry is not inherently cinematic.

Speaker 1 (02:10:08):
It is kind of the thing.

Speaker 2 (02:10:09):
Yeah, yeah, Like you can't capture all the glories and
excesses and crushing lows and nothing. Also in this world
compares highs of art into like a two hour movie. Yeah,
especially when made in the eighties by an Australian What
are those people gonna tell me? You say, this after
being like, well, Nick Cave taught me this, and like,

(02:10:32):
you know, God, there's this amazing scene in one of
those movies. He's like in the front row and he's
like practically embracing this woman and the lyrics to the
song or can you feel My heart Beat? And he
like places her hand over his heart as he sings that,
and this girl is weeping, and I'm just like, yeah,
that is one of the most transparently powerful things I've

(02:10:56):
ever seen in my life. I don't know where I
was going with that other than the fact that it is.
You know, he also has to answer for like a
generation of bastard sons of his who thought, like a
cheap suit and bad poetry, that their cheap suits and
bad poetry were as valid as his.

Speaker 1 (02:11:18):
I mean, I think you're gring this one home, Jordan,
and the transcendence of art, I think is what you're
getting too. We've talked about what happens when people aren't
good at it try it, and what happens when good
people do it. There we go, That's what that was.

Speaker 2 (02:11:31):
Hell yeah, brother, it's Miller time punching out of the
old podcast factory.

Speaker 1 (02:11:42):
Despite these contrarian takes Dead Poets Society is generally remembered
extremely fondly as such execs do what studio execs do,
and tried to figure out a way to capitalize on
this love. For years, people pitched a Dead Poet Society music, which, ironically,
you recall four hours ago when we started this episode,

(02:12:04):
was what Disney wanted to do in the first place,
but right Tom Schulman just never saw it. However, an
off Broadway play premiered in twenty sixteen, with Jason Sedakas
playing the Robin william part, But that same year, Sadeikas's
ex colleague Fred Armison made a much better tribute to
Dead Poet Society and a pre taped segment on SNL

(02:12:28):
in a parody of the stirring final scene, the desk
standing routine takes a deadly turn due to some ceiling fans.
It is very good stuff. That was really good. And
it was Pete Davidson who got decapitated too, so that
was good.

Speaker 2 (02:12:44):
Yes, the grudgingly give it to him for that. Yes.

Speaker 1 (02:12:48):
The most recent tribute to Dead Poe's Society came from
none other than Taylor Swift following the release of her
Appropriately titled Tortured Poets Department. She reunited old friends and
Dead Poets Society castmates Ethan Hawk and Josh Charles for
her music video Fortnite. The connection came through Ethan's daughter,
Maya Hawk, who's friendly with Taylor. Is she on the squad?

(02:13:11):
Does Taylor have a squad anymore?

Speaker 2 (02:13:13):
I think this squad doesn't exist anymore. But also everything
that you're saying right now makes me want.

Speaker 1 (02:13:18):
To like, you don't want to do this. I go,
you don't want to do this, not her, not her?

Speaker 2 (02:13:25):
I know, but he also kisses me off about it,
like you can't we could gon forbi it. This should
be the entire bleeped We've always talked about doing the
entire bleep thing. And it's like and then Jordan pops
in at the end and he's like, and I censored
that because your fans are insane and I want my
friend to live.

Speaker 1 (02:13:41):
I'm so glad you're getting a new apartment soon. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:13:44):
What what a dumb world we live in. Oh, surely
you cannot co sign this. I know you have a weak,
like timid part of you that likes Taylor Swift, but
come on, man, you see how gross this is right.

Speaker 1 (02:14:02):
I haven't engaged with it much. To be honest with you,
I tortured Poets Department. Hah yeah, I don't think we
need the rest of this. Honestly, we can cut right
to the out shrow, go right to the outtrow. But
you know what, no, Josh Charles praise Taylor Swift's directorial

(02:14:24):
skills in general, Cools, I was already a fan of
her music, but if any of you ever get to
meet her, your fandom for her will just go up
through the roof. She's just such a genuine, cool, approachable person,
and that's nice to see because that's not always the case.

Speaker 2 (02:14:40):
Blink twice, buddy, if you know you're saying this all
at gunpoint, I bet her Yeah, And wasn't she like
and she was like personally nice? But then didn't you
have like seventeen hours of negotiation with tree pain? Yeah right, yeah,
don't mention the name. Oh my go god, oh my god.

Speaker 1 (02:15:02):
All right, the rite out here we go. I'm pleased
to say that Robin Williams cite A Dead Poet Society
as one of his favorite movies he ever appeared in.
He said, there's something in that movie that affected people
just beyond the movie. I met a guy who said,
mister Williams, I saw the movie Dead Poets Society, and
I used to work for a major corporation. I took
off my business suit, I burned it, and now I

(02:15:24):
own an art gallery. I went, I have to buy
a lot of art from you.

Speaker 2 (02:15:27):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:15:28):
Just hear Robin Williams say that you know? And that
is I think the best part of Dead Poets Society.
It directs your attention inward. As Ethan Hawk said, you
don't leave this film thinking wow, I wish I was
Robin Williams. You leave thinking where am I at?

Speaker 2 (02:15:45):
What am I doing?

Speaker 1 (02:15:47):
The film is a well needed reminder that, no matter
what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.
As Walt Whitman via John Keating says, the powerful play
goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will
your verse be?

Speaker 2 (02:16:04):
I do love that quote? Yeah, and I also like
what witmen. I have a copy of Leaves of Grass
on my shelf right now. Oh yeah, did you know
that our boy, uh Daniel day Lewis based the bill
a butcher voice on what Whitman? No, Yeah, he found
like old wax cylinder recordings of what women reading his

(02:16:24):
own poetry and like no way, it's like have you
heard Henry Miller read? Like no, it's like all of
this stuff coming out in like a like a grizzled
Brooklyn fire Marshall's accent. And it's the same way with
like Walt Whitman. It's like very much like you know,
the Song of Myself, like deeply old New York kind

(02:16:47):
of accent.

Speaker 1 (02:16:48):
He died in eighteen ninety two, so he must that. Wow,
that must have been seriously early audio.

Speaker 2 (02:16:53):
Records, unadulterated Brooklyn accent. Wow or New York I guess.

Speaker 1 (02:16:57):
But anyway, I ruin your outro? Was I supposed to
say that's good?

Speaker 2 (02:17:00):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (02:17:00):
Yeah, sorry? Uh?

Speaker 2 (02:17:02):
This has been too much information?

Speaker 1 (02:17:04):
Uh? I write a poem or don't.

Speaker 2 (02:17:07):
I don't give it dump It'll be AI at some point, right,
Like you know, my version of this is is like
from Moby Dick, where he's like from Hell, I stab
at the Actually, that's that's gonna be my epitaph with
my last breath, I curse THEE from Hell's heart.

Speaker 1 (02:17:28):
I stab at THEE. But it'll be misattributed to con
you don't want a tombstone, do you so? Well? Where
can we put that?

Speaker 2 (02:17:37):
I just want the note to read no burial or
no funeral like Moe and the Simpsons. Now, actually, you
know what sincerely I want like, and I've talked about
this with Lowe, is like I want to be a tree.
I want those expensive things where your remains get like
potted into like a ready to plant tree.

Speaker 1 (02:17:57):
Okay, didn't you want to an eternal like feedback loop
with like guitars and distortions and amplifiers.

Speaker 2 (02:18:04):
Yeah, a five thousand year feedback drone performance? Yeah, yes,
I also want that, so, you know, modest goals, It
would be a two part thing.

Speaker 1 (02:18:14):
I want to have my remains put in the firework,
which they do now oh hell yeah, that's pretty cool. Right.
We can't even talk about the Hunter.

Speaker 2 (02:18:21):
As Thompson ashes shot into a ka.

Speaker 1 (02:18:24):
It was enabled by you know, one of the worst men.
Was this depressing?

Speaker 2 (02:18:31):
Was this uplifting? Who knows the TMI promise? Go watch RoboCop. Uh,
RoboCop is about art, get a get a PhD in
Italian Renaissance literature?

Speaker 1 (02:18:45):
Who gives it? We're all going to be dead soon.
Your your kids are going to be.

Speaker 2 (02:18:50):
Fighting each other for water. You know, Just go out swinging, man,
learn martial arts. Don't ever pay your credit card bills
like you know, brood over slights real and imagined. I
can boot do more of these. I can do this
all day. That's the Captain America punch it. This is

(02:19:13):
like Alex being bitter and hateful. I can do this
all day.

Speaker 1 (02:19:17):
And I'm Jordan Runtagg. And and don't forget to seize
the day and make your lives extraordinary. Too Much Information
was a production of iHeart Radio.

Speaker 2 (02:19:33):
The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtogg.

Speaker 1 (02:19:37):
The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. The show
was researched, written, and hosted by Jordan Runtagg and Alex Heigel,
with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows that blur them that black Fatima and said

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Dead Poets Society: Everything You Didn't Know