All right. Here we go. Quiet. Hello.
Welcome to the Big Picture podcast, where we take a look at the latest movie news, the films of today and yesterday, and put them all into some sort of context. Seated across the microphone from me is Film Buff online editor in chief, Richard Dries. And Seated Across the microphone for me is Film Buff online contributing editor, Natasha Bogotsky. Thank you.
How's it going, Natasha? I'm excited to review our film today. I'm excited too. I hadn't visited this with this film since literally since it came out, I don't think.
Really? Yeah. I know it's been a while for me, but I have some reactions, but we'll get to that in the moment. But I'm just glad we were able to find this film on streaming.
Unlike the other one that was in its wheelhouse that I recommended, we do that one as well. Yes. Okay. In case you haven't read the title of the episode for some reason, look down at your MP3 player, your phone, what have you.
We're going to be talking about the Robin Williams classic dead poet society as directed by Peter Weir. The perfect film to start off your autumn season and your back to school season. Yes, it's our back to school movie. It's our retro review this week because nothing big really came out that we both wanted to see.
I saw Beast, which is fantastic. You did not want to see Beast, and I completely understand because no one wants to watch a movie where the possibility of a human being being lunch is- No, you- That's one of my fears. One of my fears is actually being eaten by an animal. I don't know why it just is.
No, my thing was when I was a kid, I saw a little known movie called The Ghost in the Darkness with Michael Douglas of Val Kilmer about being on a line hunt and I saw the trailer for Beast and it was enough to make me have really bad nightmarish flashbacks. So I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm good. Thank you.
I don't want to have to revisit that sweaty mess. That's okay. But yeah, we were talking about what we wanted to do. We were talking about back to school movie and I did have to say slight plug here.
Sorry. Here we go. On the other show that I do with J.W. Call Generation Movies, which goes live on Facebook at 10 o'clock Wednesday nights, Eastern Standard Time.
But we are off this week while J.W. is on the cruise. We were planning on doing Grease 2 in a couple of weeks as our back to school movie. So I said, okay, what's back to school movies do we want to do that aren't Grease 2?
And we talked about Dead Poets Society. I brought up Dead Poets Society. We didn't talk about it. Well, you brought it up and then we talked about it.
And then you said... Yes. I'm in the minority here. Dead Poets Society is considered like the greatest dark academia boarding voice school film of all time.
And I prefer the Emperors Club with Kevin Klein, Emil Hirsch and Paul Danna. Which I had not seen. So I promptly go to the internet, which gives us everything, right? No.
No. Yeah, no. The movie is not available for streaming. I'm glad I have a copy of it.
Yes. I'm going to have to borrow that from you at some point. Because it's a Kevin Klein performance. I have not seen it.
I'm a Kevin Klein fan. So that's... And you're also going to be a Hirsch fan because it's a speed racer. Because it's a speed racer, yes.
But very young Paul Danna. Very young. Well, we've got really young Josh Charles in this. Which, you know, I'm going to go and baby Josh Charles years before sports night.
Baby Josh Charles before the good wife? Yeah. But anyways, we're seeing a lot of things kind of disappearing or being memory hold online recently in terms of films available through streaming, TV shows available through streaming Warner Brothers Discovery is removing content from HBO Max. And a lot of people are upset.
And I can't say that label. I was checking the leaving soon last night on HBO. And I noticed something very, very funky. All the Harry Potter movies are leaving at the end of the month.
What the hell are they thinking? It's one of Warner Brothers' biggest money makers. It is. However, there are certain factors that go into streaming.
Where are these films? Or is this content bringing in new subscribers? Is it keeping current subscribers? I mean, I understand that.
But what Warner Brothers and then don't seem to understand is Harry Potter does its most amount of streaming views either when a new movie comes out or during the autumn because it's actually considered like an autumn film. I don't understand what they were thinking. It has the heart. It's great for kids.
It's the boarding school factor. Like, it is considered for like fall and winter one of those type of movies. He considered a Christmas movie to a certain extent. And it's possible that there's a longstanding contract with another streamer that gets the Harry Potter movies for six months or a year every now and then.
It's just what it is. And that sucks. At some point, all of these contracts should expire and content should be resting with whomever actually owns it. So Warner Brothers stuff is on HBO Max.
Netflix stuff is with Netflix, Hulu stuff is with Hulu or Disney Plus or Disney stuff is with Hulu or Disney Plus. The big thing though, I think the bigger thing is when content is made and then not made available, I think the big promise they always talked about with streaming was everything will be available. All they have to do is slap it onto a server and then you can get it and you can access it. And that doesn't seem to be the case.
Even more recent stuff. We're not just talking about Batgirl and what indignity Warner Brothers did to that movie. We're talking about what happened on HBO Max with their original films like the Seth Rogen film American Pickle. I think we talked a little bit about this last time as well where these things are available and then the company decides, well, they're not really bringing in people as much as we thought they would.
So they become, I don't want to say a liability, but they're taken off and then they become a tax write off for the company. They're like, well, it did perform the way we thought it would. So we're going to make it not available and take a tax write off on some of the cost of this. And you're seeing that again with a lot of animated product on HBO Max is disappearing.
Yeah, I heard about that. Something about Looney Tunes? Not the Looney Tunes so much, but some of the other stuff like Infinity Train. It's a lot of kids stuff that obviously I hadn't really watched, but just kind of judging on reactions on social media, it seems like a lot of parents were letting their kids watch.
And it's frustrating because the creators don't have actual physical copies of their work. They can always go to the service and watch it. Or so they thought there was a very heartbreaking tweet from one of the creators, one of the show creators, not just like an animator on there or something like that, the actual person who created the show, who said, I created the show for my kids. I don't have copies of it.
My kids can't watch this unless I resort to piracy. Yeah. Yeah, we have the Sesame Street spin off, the not too late show with Elmo, some of the unspecified selection of Sesame Street specials, Summer Camp Island, yeah, an Infinity Train. Yeah, there's a few of them.
There's a list of like 36 of them. I think they're not the biggest draws on the service that people were watching them, and that means discovery had to pay out residuals on that, on those views. Problem is, by discovery taking off these shows from the service, they don't have to pay the residuals, which is good for them on their balance sheet, but those residuals were going into the animator's union's health insurance fund. It was paying for their health care.
It wasn't like they were getting a check every couple of months for 25 bucks that they went out and, you know, treated themselves to a big burger at Red Rob or anything like that. This is money that was going towards their health insurance. And a lot of people are very upset. It looks like a way of undercutting the union as well.
The streaming services and how the residuals worked is getting to be so fricking funky at this point. It's disgusting. Recently, there was an interview which Cindy Sweeney, one of the lead actresses on the TV show, Euphoria with HBO, was mentioning how, as a working actor, and of someone of her caliber, you see her and she is everywhere at this point. She's doing commercials and billboards and blah, blah, blah.
She has to kind of keep working. She doesn't come from a legacy family like the actress who played her sister, who is Maud Abatow, who comes kind of, I don't want to say she's an Epitism baby, but she's an Epitism baby. She has that financial cushion. That's another thing that's a big problem right now that they're talking about in Hollywood.
Yes. And because of that, Cindy was just like, look, everyone knows who I am. My face is everywhere. I don't want to say I'm like an absolute complete A-lister.
I'm up there. I'm getting there. But if I wanted to take off, say, six months because I have been working and working and working, I can't because HBO doesn't pay their actors what they use to. And because of streaming, there's no residuals.
Oh, yeah. It's a mess. It really is a mess right now. And people are bitching.
Well, we don't get to take six months off our work. Yes. That is true. Well, for what she makes, when she has to pay her publicist more than her mortgage costs on a three million dollar house, I mean, you've got a bit of an issue with paying your people.
I dare say, most people aren't working jobs where they're working 12 hours a week, six days a week or 12 hours a day, six days a week. Or more than that. Yeah. Because not only is she working for that, but I mean, there's photo shoots, there's publicity tours, there's, you know, premieres, there's this and that.
So sometimes it can end up being 16, 17 hours a day and you don't get a day off. Oh, yeah. You know, people think, you know, Hollywood's glamorous, but there's moments of glamour, but there's also a lot of hard work that goes into it too. And you know, and putting aside, that's and that's why.
And that's sort of why people who come from a background where they have that financial stability to help safety net them are able to succeed more in Hollywood or even able to break into the industry at all. If you wanted to work in an agency, you'd probably start off as an intern. You're not getting paid, but it's awfully expensive to live in Los Angeles. So what do you do?
You work a 12 hour day job and then still have to find time to have another job to pay your actual living expenses? No, you have mommy and daddy cover your ass for a year or two while you're doing that. And not everyone can afford to do that. No, there is definitely, you want to talk about a gap between like the lower class, the middle class, the upper class.
It's it's no different than when you're in Hollywood. If you are a actor who's trying to come out pretty much out of the middle class or whatever, without a good support group, you'll never make it. It's because you don't have the you don't have people to fall back on. You're constantly going to have to work because your projects only hold you over till your next gig.
And at this point, like, you have to be doing video content for for TikTok. You have to be doing, you know, ads, you have to be doing, you know, publicity shoots and all kinds of stuff besides your main acting gig in order to even you have to take on all those side gigs. Oh, exactly. And it's it gets your face out there, but it's exhausting.
And I think not just not this so much, but the idea that streaming is not paying residuals or they're making deals that say, okay, since this movie isn't going theatrical, you can't get back in points on the box office. We're just going to pay you off a certain amount. That's going to become more and more of an issue. And I think we're going to see in the next round of contracts for the screen actors guild, the writers guild, the directors guild, we're going to see a lot more of discussion about that.
And I hopefully we'll see some changes. And when is that, you know? I'm not sure actually. It feels like we just did a writers guild strike recently or a threatened strike.
There was a threatened strike. Yeah, about two years ago, but there was another two or three year wait then before another round of contract negotiations. So it could get really ugly before that happens. And that's not going to be good for the producers in the studio.
Yeah, I'm not worried about the writers right now. I'm worried more about with all due respect. I know you're big Jones and for the writers Guild of America. But now I'm worried more right now for the actors who are getting overworked and underpaid.
But on that note, yes, I don't know how to segue out of this. There is no segue from this to our retro review of, well, maybe those actors could go ahead and try to, you know, teach English in a boarding school. No, I was going to say, you know, grab the moment by the tits, seize the day and get their money. There we go.
Carp a DM to the contract negotiators from the union. Sorry, the snorches came out. There's no stopping. Yeah, trust me, there's never is.
And on that note, we'll be right back with our retro review of Dead Poets Society. So rich. Yes. This film is absolutely delightful.
It is. And simultaneously, I found myself really aggravated and stressed with this. Well, let's start at the beginning, that whole opening sequence where they're in the school in the chapel. And yeah, that whole nonsense, they march in with banners.
I'm like, this is like half a step away from a leaning rifle and shawl, Nazi propaganda film. And the fact that they're kind of doing it in a church or a chapel area, too. I'm just like, so there maybe it's just a reflection of dealing with what we deal with, you know, and the times today, but I'm just like, holy crap, this is where white nationalist Christians start, you know, it really it to me out. Most films that I've seen that are kind of like a boarding school style vibe, whether it be for, you know, high school, like preparatory or college, like Wellesley in Mona Lisa Smile.
They all seem to have those pillars of values at the school in which they try to instill in the students because in truth, the students are away from home. So the parents aren't there to mold the kids. So they have to instill in these kids a sense of responsibility. True.
And so doing that, I mean, it just made perfect sense to me. I mean, no, there's a reason for that. I think these systems kind of became so inert and so in love with themselves that they kind of elevated themselves in their own mind to a point where we are better than now. And that's kind of led to a lot of societal conditions today.
Yeah. So it was kind of just watching that. And I'm sitting there going, how many of these kids are going to wind up working in the Nixon administration in 15 years. Definitely not Josh Charles.
Nope, no, no. Pretty much at the end of the film, any person who was sitting down and not standing on the desk went on to the Nixon administration. Oh, yes. Oh, my God.
Yes. Yes. And hopefully they all went to prison afterwards. Sorry.
Sorry, not sorry. But that's also the scene where we're introduced to Robin Williams as the new incoming teacher, Mr. Keeti. And just like looking at everybody's like kind of like dead eyes, like all the other faculty, and there's like, there's something about them.
And then like, he kind of like pops out at that angle. And there's like this twinkle in his eye. And I just kind of like, I don't care if the character went to school here, you know, earlier, just that expression on his face would not have gotten him hired at this institution because of their very close-minded attitudes. I don't think they're close-minded.
I think they're cynical at this point. They're just worn down just being there all the time with these kids. And Mr. Keeti is so much younger than the rest of them, which means that he hasn't had the opportunity to fully become as jaded as them at this point, plus he's been working over in England.
But I don't think he's even jaded so much. I think, I mean, the others aren't so jaded so much as they're kind of like calcified into these molds and- Because they're competing. Yes. And I'm kind of thinking about that Amadeus line about, they're so calcified they shit marble or whatever it is, whatever that was.
And I apologize. I know I screwed that that line up from Amadeus. Sorry, Tom Pultry, if you're listening. But no, they are competing for prestige.
Still at that time, I think there was a level of we are an American institution that is still trying to compete with Old World England with values and excellence. But that kind of evolved into an elitism. It does. I think which is ultimately- But the fact that Robin- Then into the parents.
Oh, yeah. And that's why we see what happens later on in the movie. Yes. And that's just besides the fact that that father is a piece of shit.
He's an absolute psychotic piece of shit. And we're gonna have a discussion about that later. But considering that they are pretty much elitist assfuckers, the fact that Robin Williams had been working at one of their competition across the pond gives them an extra level of name recognition of he's a former alum who went off to work it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's like someone coming over to Yale and saying I worked at Cambridge or Oxford. Well, shit, come work for us. Come work for us. So Twinkle or not, that's what got his foot through the fucking door.
Yeah, I hear it. Where did that come from? Oh, no, it started. It's picking up something that's happening in Illinois.
It's so faint though that you couldn't tell until you lived up. Yeah, but I raised all the levels and level everything out with a level later on in the post-production process. So more work was just made for you. Yeah, let me let me let me take a second room tone so we can get rid of this as well.
Okay, starting now. Okay, good. Okay. Where were we?
What? Did you see this about Gary Busy? Yes. At Monster Mania?
Yes. Z was telling me about that last this past week. Yeah. Monster Mania just posted a thing.
Mm-hmm. Yikes. Okay. Yeah.
Old world. Yes. But amongst all of that, we have three boys, three of the main boys. Yes.
Played by very young Ethan Hawke, Josh Charles, and the always wonderful and should get more work, Robert Sean Leonard. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yeah, I'm not sure why he isn't working more.
Well, he was the lead on house for a very long time, or well, his best friend. Yeah. But yeah, that was a while ago. Mm-hmm.
Anyway, they are delightful here. They're wonderful. I think this is more their vehicle than the Robin Williams character, this movie. Yeah, I would agree with you.
Any film where the teacher is there is usually there to inspire the students. I don't want to say they're on flat device, but they're supporting character. We don't know much about Robin Williams character outside of he went to the school, he was teaching in London, and he has a love back there. Yeah.
That's it. We don't know anything else except, you know, he likes he likes poetry, and he likes them once played he once played soccer very long time ago. Oh, yes. Yes.
Well, I think that's just by dint of being in England for a certain amount of time you wind up playing soccer. No, when he was in high school, it was in the yearbook. Oh, that's right. That's right.
That's right. That's right. It was in the yearbook, which is strange to me because it always feels to me like soccer didn't become big and exciting in the US until like the 70s, so that people were still playing it here in the US back in the 40s kind of strikes me as odd. But as you said, the whole inferiority complex about British private education makes me think that maybe they were doing it to kind of emulate that.
Possibly. But no, I just, I really did enjoy this film. And I laughed a lot more than I thought I was going to. And you know, when Robin Williams broke into his, uh, just his straight impersonations of John Wayne and Marlon Brando, those kids were just having a blast that day.
You could see it in their face. Yeah, mine. They weren't acting. My biggest thing about this film is I'm watching it was like, man, Peter, we were really probably had to like ratchet Robin Williams back at points, or they had long discussions.
Or maybe Robin Williams came in was like, okay, I know exactly what I want here with this character. And he doesn't do his over the exuberant. Yeah. And things like that where, you know, you can see it like peeking around the edges every now and then.
It's a he does like a little hand gesture, like a point or something like that. Yeah. And this is why we need to be a video podcast for the hand motion you just did. And that you can see, but he definitely kind of keeps himself pulled in.
Yeah. And I thoroughly enjoyed that about him. Um, there was one scene in particular that I actually had to rewind after watching it and rewatch it again. Because it is just so brilliantly done is when Ethan Hawks says to him that he didn't do his assignment and didn't write the poem.
And he brings him up on the stage in front of the class and points to a picture of Walt Whitman and then covers his eyes and starts spinning him around like, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Uh, it's way too bad. Yes. Okay.
It's way too bad. Tell me about this way too bad. And he just kind of goes off on this thing, but the blanket, the blanket, a heavy blanket that never, you know, covers our heads and never keeps us warm. Yeah.
Um, until the, from the moment you enter crying to the moment you leave dying. And I was just like, it's just such a beautifully shot scene and it has so much energy to it. Yeah. In this movie, there's a couple of times, I mean, this is like, they're going in a circle and Peter Weir is like going the opposite direction that they're moving with the camera and it creates a lot of visual energy.
And he likes doing circles in this movie because the one shot that kind of caught my eye is when they're in one of the dorm rooms and they're like grabbing the poem out of the one kid's hands and they're jumping around on the beds and they're going in a circle and the camera keeps following them in a circle and goes about three or four times around, stops on the door for a moment as somebody comes in and then picks right back up again. And I'm just sitting there thinking, good Lord, how do they do that? Cause I'm thinking how to have been steady cam because there's no way they could have like actually set up a camera on a camera on a tripod that low. Um, you know, probably a hi-hat or something that low looking up and then only having like a grip in there, turning it with the thing.
You know, no one was, you know, I don't know how they did it, but it had to have been a real hand of the ass. But it's great. Yeah. But it adds so much to that scene.
You're in that room with them. You're just watching them. You're heads whipping around following the action. And I think that's what's really great about that is this movie really kind of gets you into these kids' lives through this semester.
And yeah, to show the kind of energy that these kids have that whilst at this school where they're supposed to be grounded, they're supposed to be, forgive me if you're saying, they've got to stick, they're trying to instill sticks up their ass so hard that they'll never be able to turn their head left or right. But here you can see when they're alone boys, the boys are boys, they're full of energy, they're full of life and passion and genius and the camerawork that goes into it to kind of make you feel that. And Robin Williams' character of the teacher of Mr. Keating understands that.
He's not so old. He's not so far removed from that experience as, you know, all his contemporaries are at the school. So he knows how to tap into that to give them a love of poetry. Not just, I mean, right in the front of the movie, you know, the first thing they do is they're reading that what the headmaster calls brilliant, I'll say, that reduces poems down to a fucking graph, a mathematical graph.
Yeah, science. Yeah, it's a science. You can't do that. That's why science is science and art is art and they sometimes overlap a little bit in terms of technique, but in terms of impact of art, you can't graph that.
No, it's supposed to be about a feeling. Yeah. And so obviously he's right, rip that shit out of the book and throw it away. Josh Charles, the first way to do it is just this.
Thank you, Mr. River Street. Oh, no, my favorite part was when he's trying to teach them about conformity in the courtyard, speaking of going in circles. Yes, again, circles.
But they all end up with their first with their own strides, and then they all seem to kind of fall in line with each other until they're walking in sync. And he goes, from right now, I just want you all to find your own way of walking. You're not performing, just find something. I don't care if it's silly, angry, whatever it is, just do it.
And then he looks over at Knox over Street and goes, what are you doing, Mr. River Street goes exercising by right now to walk. He's like, yeah, that's my point. Yes, I'm surprised he doesn't go, OK, you pass.
You don't even need to do anything else with the rest of the semester. And when he explains that, though, to the headmaster later, what was going on, that's when the headmaster knows this man is a danger to us. He's a danger to the upper class. Because he wants them all to say, man.
And these children that are of the upper class, because if he starts teaching them empathy and thinking for themselves and expressing themselves and not conforming and not being the same, you know, little fascist little business people and doctors and lawyers that we want to turn out, they're hearing the drop of the guillotine. You know, he becomes a danger. And that's ultimately why they wind up, you know, just totally rare-roading him at the end, which just fucking frustrates me when I see that. I'm like, man, just tell those old assholes there are a bunch of cunts and punch them in the face and then walk.
That's the ending I want. And that's the ending we don't get. And that's frustrating to me. But I understand why, because this is supposed to be ultimately a cautionary tale about our educational system.
Yeah. It's also a feel about bad parenting. But yes, very much so. Speaking of, you want to get into that part now?
OK, yes. Because I have a feeling you have thoughts on that. Oh, I do. Then by all means, please.
First of all, I love Kurt Woodsmith. Anything he is in is automatically better because of his mere presence. And I'm talking like from Robocop to that 70 show, everything he's in is like, he's just so fucking phenomenal as an actor. I would agree.
But he's an asshole here. He absolutely is. And my question to you about that is, does his character, after this movie ends, does his character ever have one iota moment of reflection where he comes to a realization that he's responsible here? No.
OK, what do you think happens to him? I think forever he blames Mr. Keating. He blames the school and he blames Neil's friends.
OK, I have a feeling that he's probably already borderline drinking. His wife becomes a raging alcoholic and probably kills herself in an auto accident. I feel like the wife is already halfway there to begin with. Yeah, because she's trapped in a loveless marriage.
She's in a gilded cage, but it's a cage with no love. And I feel like he probably dies bitter and alone, even if he has brothers or sisters or siblings, and they have children, no one visits him. And he just dies alone and bitter and never realizing that because he couldn't love his child enough to allow his child to be who they thought they wanted to be, to explore those possibilities in their life, that that's what drove them to kill themselves. And that is the real tragedy, though, of this movie, even perhaps more so than the frustration of the kelp filtration of the staff at the school.
Now you were about to say? Yeah, I don't think any of the parents in this film would ever take responsibility for their own actions. They don't believe in regret. They don't believe in being wrong because, of course, we are the upper class.
We are always right. We are right. We are always right. Jesus.
Well, come on. I mean, yeah, this is very pale school. It's the 50s. But this is also why this movie kind of can only I think can only best be told in the area it is.
Oh, yeah, most of these most of the films like this are definitely told from that perspective of it has to be done via a time period, because if you try to do it now, it's just not going to fly. Well, in the mid 50s, we have the baby boomer generation hitting their teen years. We have rock and roll coming in. We have kids having disposable income starting for the first time, really.
And they're starting to understand that they can do their own thing. They have their own choices ahead of them, making their own lives, not what is predetermined for them. And I mean, that's a big thing that happens. It's a big societal shift in the 50s into the 60s.
That's what leads to the hippie movement and summer of 68, all of that. So I think this movie is kind of like teetering just on the edge of that about to happen, because you get where they have the bootleg radio, where they can listen to rock and roll music. Yeah, that's not a radio, is it? No, it's a science experiment radar.
And even that they want to control what the kids listen to for music kind of says something too, that they want to keep those traditions they don't want anything new to see because new is scary and it's changed and it's scary and a change could mean we could lose our privileged status. That's what this ultimately was ultimately what this is always all about. Can we imagine those kids discovered Elvis? Oh my God, I'm sure there's a group of them who are already listening to Elvis on the slide.
Oh, yeah, definitely. But one of my favorite little moments, and this goes to show you just how all the parents are kind of alike in a way, even if we don't see them, is when Ethan Hawke gets his birthday present, and it's that stationary desk set. And he's like, yeah, they gave me the same thing last year. Yeah, that's how uninvolved these parents are.
Yeah, ultimately. They don't know the kids at all. And so he's like, you know, Robert Sean Leonard picks up and goes, this thing is very aerodynamic, isn't it? It just wants to fly the first on it and flying desks and they toss it.
There's a right off the turret and they're laughing and goes, don't worry, you'll get another one next year. It's a great moment, but it's funny, but yeah, it does kind of cut to a deeper truth that these kids really aren't loved. No. And that's another tragedy in this movie.
Let me ask you this. Yes. Out of the blue here. Which Robin Williams character is the better teacher here or good will hunting?
He's not really a teacher in good will hunting. He's a therapist. Oh, shoot. That's right.
Never mind. We're going to cut that. No, no, no, no, no. Okay.
Okay. And the reason why I want you to keep it is even though he won his Oscar for good well hunting, it depends on what you're trying to talk about here. He's trying to instill a love of art and of emotion, of history, of love, and to kind of teach these kids to care. But he's trying to do it as a group, which he succeeds.
But I think good well hunting is a little more intimate and it's more about getting this one person to understand their value in life, not so much instill anything, but get them to see themselves for how they should be seen. And to know that you are enough. I have to go with good with hunting. Oh, interesting.
Okay. Okay. I will admit though, last night I posted on Facebook that I was watching the post society and in the comment section I wrote and I tagged one of my old English teachers and there and I went, uh, lady, Kish, you are absolutely the teacher I would have stood on my desk for probably. Oh, that's nice.
Um, I was going to ask you that that was going to be my next question. Do you think things have changed in education or not? Or is it? That's a case by case basis case by case.
Yeah. Because I, you know, I went to Catholic high school and if something had happened similarly and they started like grilling kids and then saying, okay, we have determined what the truth of the matter is and your opinion actually doesn't matter. So just sign this thing attesting to it. I could really see that happening at my Catholic high school.
There were a couple of teachers that definitely had that jadedness when I went to school. A couple were in the math department. There was one in the English department. Um, one in the science department, most of them were in the math department actually.
And that's not me being biased because I'm definitely more of an English arts kind of person. But, um, no, that's just how they were. Um, funny enough, all the good ones that were in the English department. I would agree with you there, English and history actually.
Because, you know, there were still some teachers who were there to not just wrote Ram knowledge into our noggins. They were there to, you know, inspire us as well. Um, my one teacher Hank Moriarty who passed away over the last couple of years was a great teacher. He was my current events teacher, senior year.
And I really liked his class. Even my law teacher was actually a good one. We had, we had rotating band directors all four years. I had four different band directors in my, uh, in my, uh, in the music department at my high school.
And two of them were really good. And that's why they had to go. Um, I don't know why. Actually, I do know why.
And that's not for me to say it in public. Oh, yeah. Um, let's just say one of them began dating, um, a senior girl about 14 minutes after graduation. Yeah, it was a little, so I don't know.
I think this is more of a case by case basis. I think, I mean, I just knowing the conversations I've had with your husband about his teaching. Uh, I know he is there to inspire and not just wrote to teach things. I know I have friends in both high school and college level, who are there to inspire kids.
And sometimes they have to butt up against, uh, department heads, things like that, who are just like entrenched in protocol entrenched in tradition entrenched in, I don't want to do anything that's going to, uh, upset the status quo because the status quo is really good for me. Things like that. And those are all my heroes, all my friends, including your husband who do this kind of stuff. I'm just like, I could never do it because I would be like, healing obscenities at my boss, which I know the urge I have to fight now now about a job I don't care about about a day job.
I don't care about from, you know, just popping off at my boss. If it was this job that I actually felt care for, I felt impassioned about and I had to do that all the time. Now forget it. See, and that's what frustrates me with this movie because of the, you know, Robin Williams kind of doesn't stand up for himself.
He just kind of goes with it. Or we, if he does try to stand up for himself in front of these people, we don't see it. And again, it's not his story. It's the kid's story and how they react to him as a teacher.
But I think the audience needs a scene for Robin Williams, you know, fighting for himself because otherwise it just seems like he just meekly takes it. I'm okay with him meekly taking it because I, in my head, it's more of a case of, well, why should I fight to stay when I could go somewhere where I could actually do some good? He's probably going back to London in his love. I hope.
Probably. Yeah. And I hope that he somehow stays in contact with these kids, through, you know, through letters and such. And, you know, maybe twice, three times a year, he hears from each of them and gets to know how they're doing.
And he can sit there and continue to encourage them whenever. He can sit there and go at least there. I did some good. Yeah.
So he knows the impact. I mean, he kind of knows the impact at the end. Okay. Captain, my captain.
Yes. I love the idea of that the symbolism that by standing on their desks, it doesn't mean it is a, both a salute to the person who did all this for them. But it's also a way of saying we haven't forgotten. We will see things from a different perspective.
Exactly. And I also like that, um, the headmaster at some point just stops yelling at them to stand, stop standing on their desk. I'd like to think he had an aneurysm and was lying dying on the floor. I don't like him.
Sorry. I like, I don't know what I am. One thing, though, was kind of hit me hard, actually, when I was rewatching this yesterday. And that's the knowledge that sadly, tragically, Robin Williams took his own life.
And, you know, and watching this movie, I mean, obviously, this movie is an advocating suicide for goodness sake, but just, it's just a parallel there where he felt he couldn't go on anymore. And he was dealing with a lot of depression issues, a lot of things like that. And we can't know what he was going through in those last moments that drove him to that, that didn't, where he couldn't find the strength to walk away from that. And it's, it's rough because, you know, there's a, I don't know if it's a dark irony that person who could bring the most amount of joy into this world.
The person who was, who played a character who inspired kids to really live their life full of joy and, and find, uh, find their happiness like that. I was fighting his own sorrow. Yeah. Especially, you know, in this film, it's, it's kind of, oh, it's, it's, and I don't want to end this discussion on it down, but we can't ignore that now, watching this movie from this point of view.
No. And obviously, when I sat in the theater, whenever this came out originally at the gateway, there was, you know, there's no conception that something like that could have ever happened to him. And then I know with me, Robert Sean Leonard killing himself was not, that didn't get me so much as the scene right before where he opens up a windows and puts on his putt crown, knowing that it is the last time he will ever, ever get to be himself. Because if a boarding school wasn't going to beat him into conformity, the military was.
Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah. Also, like, I could never have been in the military.
Yeah. We would have been the real misfits and basic training. I think we talked about this before. Yeah.
From the fact that we're just not mourning people, too. Why are we going to go on a hike? We're just going to go on a big circle. That seems pointless.
I'll just wait here for you. See in 20 hours when you get back. No, I, I'm getting, I'm getting better about the morning person stuff. Yes, I have noticed.
When we talk in the morning on the phone, there, you are usually more awake and more ready for work than you normally have been in the past. And we'll just leave it at that. I don't want to like drag you about this or anything. But is that a good thing or bad thing?
It's a good thing. We're being adults, boo. Fuck that. Yeah, I know.
But overall, I think that poet society, let's circle back to where we should be here. This holds up extraordinarily well, I think. It does. And I think most of those films like that tend to.
I know that you mentioned that this would make a great triple feature with Emperor's Club and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. And I would even go as far as to say, you know what, we need some women in here from Mona Lisa Smile into the, into the mix. Mona Lisa Smile was also set in the fifties, right?
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, even maybe more so than with college girls. Yeah.
And just for fun to cap off our day long marathon of back to school, coming of age stories, let's throw in for fun. Roddy Dangers Fields back to school. I have not either even heard of that. Oh, let alone not see that.
I've never heard of it. Oh, you're in for a treat whenever I freaking get to it. I know. I know.
But we'll have to get that to you to you soon. All right. And I think that pretty much wraps this up for this week. Exactly.
Remember, you can find us online. Can you take it from that so I can drop in a another plug for generation movie? No, no, no. Oh, that currently, then Poets Society is available on Prime.
Well, and on that note, I think that pretty much wraps this up for this week. Yes, and if you haven't watched that Poets Society in a while, it is available to stream for free if you have an Amazon Prime subscription. Remember, you can find us online at BigPicturePod.com, and we are now available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play. So either use the link in the show notes post or head directly there.
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