Show notes
Tom Schulman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Dead Poets Society, joins me to look back on the 1989 classic that still has generations standing on their desks. Set in 1959 at Welton Academy, an elite Vermont boarding school, the film follows John Keating (Robin Williams), an unconventional English teacher who urges his students to seize the day, inspiring a group of boys, including painfully shy Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke) and aspiring actor Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard), to revive a secret poetry club and find their own voices against the expectations of their parents and school.
Tom shares the teachers who inspired Keating, the agent who loved the script but didn't think anyone would make it, the first version of the movie that ended with its sets burned to the ground, the improv session that unlocked Robin Williams's performance, how the unforgettable "O Captain! My Captain!" ending took shape, why Todd is the character most like him, and the night he accepted his Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay from Jane Fonda. This episode includes discussion of suicide as it relates to the film's storyline.
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