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So check that out. Coming up, Chris Ryan, Miley, Ruben and I are going to talk about Dead Poets. Got to my captain. You going to cry about?
The tears are starting. That's coming up right now. There's a walk, a new path there to strike out and find new ground. Touchstone pictures presents Robin Williams.
All as that's a dagger I say about format in the most highly acclaimed movie of the year. Robin Williams, he'll make you laugh. I like Byron's 42, but I can't dance. He'll make you feel he's the day.
He'll make you care. Medicine law, business, engineering. He's an older suits, a poetry, romance, love. He's what we stay alive for.
Touchstone pictures presents Dead Poets Society. Discover for yourself what all the cheering is about. All right. I love this movie.
This is the email tree. It's 30 years old. This is the heartfelt, real emotions run through this podcast. It's 30 years old.
It's timeless because it's set in another time. So right there, it's set in the 50s. It feels like this. 40s, 80s.
Medieval times. 1959. Yeah, man. 59.
So it's not like a movie from 1989 that feels like it's like, Oh, 1989. It's actually set in the 1950s. Vintage Robin Williams. Vintage, super young cast of people that when you saw the movie, you were like, Oh, all these people are going to go on to great things.
Taps into the English major side. I know you guys have, I fight it off, but this one got me 30 years later. What's your favorite thing about this movie, Chris Ryan? Well, this was a really weird rewatch to go back to because I think it's the first time I've seen this movie where I'm closer to Keating's age than any kids.
So it was definitely an experience this time where I was thinking a lot about Keating and Keating's character more than the kids. And how he got real rooted. Yeah. But I mean, for me, this movie is, you know, we did this a lot with field of dreams where there's, for as magical as that movie is, there's a lot of really universal stuff that happens with it.
And I think that most people, and specifically the people who work in our industry and work with words and work with communication have a origin story of how they fell in love with this stuff. It's usually because of a teacher, it's usually because of one or two or three teachers that they had who taught them that literature was something that you could love as well as study. And then it could be your life. And that's like this movie captures that, that captures that relationship because a lot of the times I had somebody like that, this guy, when I was in early high school, who was just teaching the usual text to us, the word of flies, tale two cities, Scarlet Letter, but was also like the first adult who took me seriously.
And it just winds up changing your life if it clicks in the right way. You know what I mean? I'm already emotional. That was so beautiful.
I'm deeply moved right now. I don't care what fantasy says. I don't think you're overrated. Oh man.
Boy. I mean, what Chris just said is a microcosm of the power of the movie itself, finding the courage to just say something that you believe and not care what other people think. And if they're going to think that it's silly or stupid and just to believe in what you believe in because you know that it matters to you and that eventually you'll find other people that it matters to all. So I was thinking as well about those formative years in high school and the teachers who really unlock something for you and help you believe in yourself and your own abilities to just think about life and literature and who you are and what the world is and what it's all about.
Obviously, I've spoken before on many podcasts about it. How my dad first gave me those stories too. And it's just really cool to think back to that time, your own life and those universal themes about self-expression and choice and nonconforming but also the power community and the power stories and how stories can help for that community. It's just really special.
Shouts to Ms. Lil'Quest and Mr. Reed, the two high school teachers who were that for me. Great people.
Yeah, I told my daughter because she's going to high school next year, I said, you're gonna have three or four teachers slash coaches that change your life. So she's already had one soccer coach that has had a huge effect on her. So there's one. There's probably three left.
But I think everybody has three or four that just you can look back when you get older and you'll be like that before I met that person, I was here and then this happened. And I know who mine are. I'm sure you guys know who yours are. But I think that's also my favorite thing about this movie.
Not just the teacher part but the acting is so good by the kids. The movie doesn't work as well. I don't think if those actors aren't great. I left this movie 30 years ago.
I remember who I saw with us. I'm a buddy Jim Grady. I thought Robert Sean Leonard was gonna be like the biggest star in the world. If you told me he was gonna be the next like Pacino, I would have believed it.
He was so great in this movie. He's so enchanting. I don't think any of us saw the Ethan Hawke thing coming which was this unintended benefit of this movie as a rewatchable which five years later he's in reality by it's which we've done in a pod. And it's like that's a kid from dead poets.
And now he's Ethan Hawke. But in this movie there's like the seeds of Ethan Hawke and he's doing a lot as an actor in this movie that I don't think he realizes he's doing a really tough part in 1989. And it's also like all the things I've ever liked about Robin Williams who is for better and worse. I think people love him certain things don't like him other things.
This is like the best version of him. Yeah, it's really hard to explain to people who are like maybe 20 years younger than us and who are watching this movie. And they only know Robin Williams obviously from life tragically cut short but no one from his movie work. So you probably grew up with him on sitcoms.
I remember happiness. I knew his comedy albums we would kind of play a little bit in school and then also like comic relief was really big. So you would see like once a year you would see his stand up or something like that. And do these like frankly like if not coke fueled like energy energy driven stand up routines.
Well it's also his late night appearances too are a big part of the Williams thing. Yeah, he was like the biggest one of the biggest comics out there, right? Oh yeah. I think he was kind of Richard Pryor for a couple years there.
And then 86 to 97 or 86 to 98 or something it would be kind of like if Jezlenik tomorrow became the biggest actor in the world who also was nominated for four Academy Awards in 10 years. Yeah, it's hard to explain to people the leap he made because they only know him as like, this is not fire. It was always like an actor, right? It's Robin Williams.
But when you saw good morning Vietnam, you were like, right? Holy shit. It'd be like if Jeff Ross was not not going to be like that. No, yeah, it's I think he was somebody that we always thought was exceptionally talented though.
Because they you know, more commendate if you watch those reruns now, it's like, how the fuck was this the number one show and you know, it's just an absurd show and it only work because he was so great in it. But that's one of the things that's special about this performance too is I mean, in many ways, the movie, which obviously we all love. That's why we're here. It can be very self serious at times and the moments where he and Jex comedy and levity and that improvisational spirit, you know, doing the voices when you see the kids Shakespeare and things like that.
Yeah, he's still actually injecting that DNA that might have been more familiar to people for this, but it's this whole new version of that marriage and that harmony feels totally organic. Do you feel like this was sports movie for English majors? Yeah, in a lot of ways. It was like the natural because I remember in college, this movie came out when I was in college.
One of our roommates, the Wormschaun Kraus, who was like big, big English major, like wrote a crazy Hunter Thompson type song for our newspaper and was just really in like, he went to Prague junior years, like one of those kids. Was it Prague? Went to Prague? Oh, I've been to Prague.
But this was like his movie and we used to argue about it and it was a senior field of dreams came out. And I really liked this movie. I think I like it more as I've gotten older. Yeah.
It was kind of like field of dreams, bolder, more of my movies. And then dead poets was like for him and there was a little bit of attention. mechanics of putting the team together to those kids are all just like, like, I do trick homework, we got to do history homework. And then they all of a sudden become this sort of ragtag band of artists.
I do want to touch a little bit on like when it's set. You mentioned that kind of, it feels a little bit timeless. But I hadn't really thought about it when I saw it probably the first few times. But you know, this is pretty much the kids in this movie in 59 would be a little bit younger than my mom was at 59.
And I remember she used to tell me a lot. Like she grew up in like a lefty Jewish New York family or father was a teacher like, like pretty pretty like progressive for the time. But even then she would be like, I would write poetry and he would go through it with a red pen and like adjust the meter and correct typos. He wouldn't be like, this is an incredible expression.
Yeah. He was reading Dr. Pritchard. That's right.
They have the perfection scale. But this was a time period where there was still like, even in the most sort of liberal progressive families, like pretty domineering parenting style, I think was pretty, was pretty, pretty consistent there. And right around then, so like, I think Rebel Without a Cause comes out in 55. Yeah.
And on the road, I think it's 57, but I could be wrong. But like, there's like this explosion where like now all of a sudden you walk around. And my mom always told me about like when Rebel Without a Cause came out, it was like the first time she'd ever seen someone act the way she felt James Dean. Yeah.
And you can tell that that's supposed to be who these guys are that they're like, just sort of starting to get in touch with like, we don't have to be like our dads. Well, it wasn't that was Ebert's biggest criticism in the movie that he they kind of ignored that whole side of things. Right. That you didn't have them reading Carowak and Ginsburg and Burrows along with it.
But they were like classics, Tony New England kids, right? Like they were pretty, like, I don't know. I didn't know. I don't know how prevalent on the road was.
Vermont boarding school. Yeah. Right. Did you go to boarding school?
I've dated a PG year one year. Okay. Yeah. Here's the thing.
I love boarding school movies. Mm hmm. Great. Yeah.
Even toy soldiers, I really like, do I love them? Oh, so she's really good. There's something about. That's a Apex Mountain.
Oh, by the way, season nine of rewatchables, what we're doing now. Apex Mountain, but um. Do you like taps? Yes.
Yeah. I'm not kidding when I say I like every single boarding school movie. And I think this is the best one. So it's like, all right, what do I like about boarding school movies?
Well, you're taking, you're putting all that, especially you're putting all these boys together. And there's just a lot of shit going on with that. Anytime there's a woman introduced, it's like, introduced almost like introducing an alien to their whole weird world, the teachers have a huge impact. And there's always like, you can pretty easily do like, all right, that guy's the jack, that guy's the love stripe on it.
That guy, you can hit the architect really easily. Yeah. And then you can put roommates together, which is the other thing. So you have, in this movie of Neil, I'm not going to do it yet.
Neil, I'm saving. Neil, you have him who's like the star of the class, basically, and then you have Todd, the legacy brother, who just afraid of his own shadow. And now they're thrown together and they have to get along in their relationship as it develops. That's what boarding school is.
And that's why I couldn't believe I sent you guys the deleted scenes from the laser desk. And there's this one scene of them practicing lines for Neil's play. I couldn't believe I put that in. Because it was like, that's the most important relationship in the movie.
So it's not Mr. Keating's proxy for how these kids are going to grow. But it's like those two are the heart of the movie, I think. Yeah, the desk throwing scene.
Did you guys stay friends with the people you roomed with your first year of college? Like, was roommates, were you like, I easily can be friends with whoever I'm asked to live with, or were you a little bit more like, I can't wait to get out of your own place? My dearest friends to this day, other than you guys, of course, and hello, my cat, are the people I met on my freshman year dorm floor and the people from my journalism school orientation group. Carmel Anthony and Key Warwick.
All my friends from college, I was on the same floor with my freshman year. You just get thrown together and that's it. That's the thing, it has to be a high school movie because the difference in what we're talking about the teachers, obviously, people have teachers who have a play outside role in their lives who come into their lives in college as well. But there's something just fundamentally different about where you are and as you're discovering who you are as a person in high school to college.
But the boarding school aspect facilitates that part of the college experience in the high school years. And that gets back to your question to a bad, is it like a sports movie in a way? Well, what's a society? What's a club?
It's a team. And what's just the floor in the hall where you sleep and the people you take class with and you're studying your chemistry books with all of that is a sense of team and community. And there's something that you actually, like, even with your spouse and your family, you never quite replicate again in your entire life, other than that college reporting school experience or maybe like summer camp is the only other thing that approximates it where every single thing you do in your life, every single thing you're sharing with the same people. I know the poetry scenes are like the sports scenes in a sport.
I mean, they're literally kicking soccer balls as they're reciting lines. I have questions about the soccer scenes. So I went to the temple for a year before I went transfer to Emerson and just stuck in a temple of those college. Yeah, no, yeah.
I thought you met an actual temple. I was like, I was a temple university for a year before I went to Emerson. And I grew up pretty close to temple. So I didn't, I went and moved into temple freshman year.
And then I was like, this is crazy. Why do I have to like share a bathroom? I just move home because I want to transfer anyway. But the first night I stayed at temple, I remember like I met this guy who I was assigned to live with.
And he was like, Hey, man, do you like fish the band? And I was like, I've never heard them. And he was like, do you want to come see fish with me? And I was like, I was going to go meet up with like a friend from high school tonight.
And I always think about like what would happen if I was a sliding doors moment in your face? Seriously, because the door would have slid and I probably would have taken mushrooms and I never would have. Right. Sliding down the aisle.
I would have been called like khaki sack. And I would be dealing LSD outside of like the great Jones Pavilion. You know, like an art car fungal perm right now? Black light in your room.
Yeah, it is funny. All right. So this movie is nominated for an Oscar 1989. No small feat.
That was a pretty good year. Me 235 million worldwide. Fifth highest for 1989. People really came out for this.
And this is on top of the year before Good Morning Vietnam, Robin Williams. Now he's an A plus lister. Right. It one Tom Schumann, the best original screenplay Oscar.
It was based on his experiences at the Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee. He had an inspirational teacher named Samuel Pickering. 7.3 Rotten Tomatoes. I don't understand what people are doing out there.
Roger Ebert's review, largely negative, two out of four stars criticized Williams for spoiling an otherwise credible dramatic performance by Variano's comedians persona and wrote quote, a collection of pious platitudes. The movie plays lip service to qualities and values that on the evidence of the screen bay itself, it is cheerfully willing to abandon. Wow. Tough one for Raj.
Raj is in a slump now in the rewatchable. He had a really good start of the year and then it's kind of flipped on him. What was Raj's take on Austin Powers, too? Not a fan.
Didn't like it. I stayed with Raj. So one of the concards with this movie was The Cast. And I remember in the marketing of it, it was like, we went out and we found these awesome actors, which I don't do you remember this happening before this?
They might have had four. Well, there was there's a bunch of movies. I remember when you would like read Premiere or movie line back in the late 80s and the 90s. Yeah, there would be the news and notes section in the beginning where it would be like casting rumors and stuff.
And there would be movies like this like Flatliners. I remember was like, Oh, what are we doing Flatliners? What are we doing? Every young star in Hollywood is reading for this whole, you know what I mean?
Like it would just be these like ensemble young movies where it was like anybody from 15 to 22 was basically trying out to get apart and these movies that I would imagine. It's like what we're hiring a new blogger. I was watching a video of like, I was like, how many years later, 25 years later, or something, 20 years later, because the hawks were young in the video. They're talking about the process and Robert Sean Leonard said he read like three or four times before he even tested for Peter Weir, the director, then screen tested with Hawk.
So he was like, it was endless. Callback, callback, callback, chemistry test with different people. So it sounds like a lot of different people were up for these roles. And they changed directors.
Right? So that is the process considered to I would think running down sets. This has become one of my favorite things when I have famous actors on the pod asking about like their class. Because they're all like, you know, testing for the same part.
So we're in over again for three, four, five years. Like all those crews Rob Lowe, all those guys knew each other in 1981 because they're all trying out for the same part. Yeah. And I think this era was became kind of an era it feels like because I'm sure like River Phoenix was part of that group.
And all the guys in this movie and just was kind of down the edge. Yeah, these guys Josh Charles, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, I think Josh Hamilton, who's a bunch of know a bombback movies. I'm like, that's our guy. Yeah.
But he's he's friends with those guys. He became Grover at all. And they have all done a much theater together and they all talk really fondly of each other. So other than your homie, Gail Hanson, who was quietly almost 30 when this was made.
And a lot of gail. I want to get to the categories because there's so much to dive into here. But let's take a quick break. Let's take a break.
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All right, most rewatchable scenes. I somehow have eight. I have nine. There's like 15 scenes in this movie.
Well, it's like, well, it's because there's just some awesome scenes. First one I have is when Keating meets the kids and he brings them into the lobby and he does the car pay. Incredible. That scene is just great.
Yeah. And they use Robin Williams almost like the shark and jaw in this movie. They're just very careful with how they bring it over exposed. They're over exposed.
It comes in big and you even say it in the laser disc, the way it seems where there's a couple of really important scenes with Keating. They could have put in the movie, but he must have thought like a little less is more with Keating. So every time you saw him, there was real impact. That scene's awesome.
And I just, I told Amanda Dobbins was filming a touch show for a big little live today. And I went to her and I said, just remember in Dead Poets, signing and he takes them in. And he's like, all these all these kids in these photos are now dead. Like we're not going to be dead someday.
Who cares? Just go out and have fun and big little one. I made a take that. She thought it was funny.
Okay. You showed her some film from us and talk to throw us and said they're not that different from you. Are they? Same haircuts.
They're fertilizer now. They're all gone. That scene is incredible. It's just a sense right away that something totally strange, but also special and transformative is happening.
And the rational part of your brain is you're watching that says, okay, well, look, what I'd be able to opt in right away to what's happening is in natural that the kids are opting in so quickly to what's happening. Obviously you have the, you know, the requisite like moments, but you're so enchanted by just the magnetism. Just setting up how boring the other teachers are to. Absolutely.
Like, I go cold. My dude Bobby Leonard is really good in that scene too. Yeah. Bobby.
I rewatch the joy in his face. Bobby Sean. I rewatch that scene. I thought about also like that that would have been so 59.
Like it's like the key to generation and Neil's father's generation is like, it's World War II. And like, those guys have like lost a lot of friends probably and gone through a lot of trauma that the kids in 59 probably don't even understand. They're like, the world will be broken. Like America is a superpower.
And we have everything we could ever want all these opportunities and you'll stats as I all the time is like, you don't understand what I gave up. And I never had the opportunities that you have. We're like, very pro-neals dad in this movie. All of a sudden.
Oh, God. I want to take. I think he's trying to get me to do it. You're not going to be able to have a physical class.
That's just like my clay travis take. He's going to be like your own dad. He's a good idea. One of the things that's so great about the scene is that both of the things that you guys have said are already are true.
Like you feel the specificity of each generation, but also you feel why the message of the film itself is timeless. Like the themes that unite these people across time and these ideas that serve as a bridge across history and across generations. And you know, when he says, if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in, listen, you hear it.
It's like how do you find yourself actually leaning in toward your TV as that's happening? It's just so mesmerizing. And one of the best lines in the movies and that scene sees the day boys make your lives extraordinary. Yeah.
Oh, she's getting well done. That's all anybody wants, you know? So we'll tell you how to make your life extraordinary. You know, obviously none of us have been in school for a long time.
But there was that moment being in school that I miss where that first day of class, we just kind of never knew what the teacher is almost like being on a date. Yeah. And occasionally there would be this teacher. I remember my sophomore year in college, the best teacher at Holy Cross was this guy, Professor Vanicelli, who's a political science guy.
And I got in his class because I was a major. And my friends were like, that guy's going to eat you live. Because at that point, I was like, just barely doing it to five freshmen. I was barely doing it to homework.
So you would have been academically disqualified from the basketball team. Yeah, seriously. Holy Cross would have had to vacate their title. So it's somehow actuality.
So people were like, he's going to eat you up. You actually have to work in that class. I was like, I'll be fine. So I actually took it seriously.
And the first day he was in was the telling guy with a big accent. And he was just such a character. And he just from the get go, it was like a Mr. Katie moment.
And you know, you might be two teachers like that ever. He was great. Got to be plus in his class. He actually brought me in my midterms.
Because I wrote, he gave me an A for the midterm. I wrote this paper. And he brought me in. He's like, Hey, I gave me basically a pep talk.
He was like, saw your grades freshman year. What's wrong with you? Why aren't you doing better? Like this paper was great.
What's going on with you? Like he was like, generally, I was like, I don't know, I'm in college. I'm just like going out and staying up till three in the morning. Like he's right.
He saw the potential in you. He saw the potential. Just like eating a meal. Yeah.
Yeah. Next rewatch we'll see. I love ripping the understanding poetry part out of the book. Fucking kills me.
How can you describe poetry like American bands? I like Byron. I give him a 42, but I can't dance to him. I want you to rip out that page.
Rip out the entire page. You hear me? Rip it out. Rip it out.
And then the fucking camera in the think with the ruler, like carefully. All that is just really, really well done. And just in general, dark, having a teacher just be like, rip pages out of a book. When you're in a book, you're in a book.
It's really incredible. Some good quotes in their mouth. Poetry, beauty, love. This is what we say live for.
Powerful play goes on and you can contribute a verse. What will your verse be? They just made that into an apple commercial, right? That's what your verse be is really, really, really, really great quote.
And then it's one of those things where you see that and you go like, yeah, especially you know, they're like, was my verse good enough? Like, look inside. That was my verse. Craig, what will your verse be?
I don't know guys. I gotta go. I gotta go. Drags like, I have a retiree for podcast engineering.
Like, figuring your verse. Your shit together, man. You're like 25. One of the reasons that's such a good line though, like the real flexes in the movie are the moments when you can't quite tell right away which line is from the screenplay and which line is the whole trade.
And so that line plays off of a Whitman quote from me on me in a life. So that's a and you make it to be diverse. What will your verse be? Next we watch will see when he explains Shakespeare, which is really funny.
The brand of really good rap. That's what he's doing on the waterfront, yeah, doing different accents. And then he gets everyone to stand on the desk. I mean, if you've seen Shakespeare done very much like this, Oh, Titus, bring your send hither.
But then if you've seen Mr. Mullen Brando, no much Shakespeare can be different friends, well, months, country men, women, or ass. Strath to find your own voice the longer you wait to begin the harder it will be to find it at all. That's incredible.
Fucking awesome line. And it ends with him, leave it, the kids leave it or whatever. And he's like, everybody's gonna have to do this on Monday. Even you, Mr.
Anderson. I know how much that scares you. Like, what a fucking mind fuck. That coaching job by Mr.
Keating, I felt like. Well, he broke through eventually. accountability. What would Bellichik do?
Would Bellichik just go up to Anderson and be like, there's 10 poets right out there. That's a replacement. But just wait for that. What would Bellichik do?
What would Bellichik do? Tech poets decide with Bellichik is an amazing bit. We're going to do a Netflix movie. It's Bellichik retires from the Pats and teaches like, Coaches at the Night Street 59 for about school.
He's like, He's at the military academy that Neil's dad wanted to send him to. That's where Bellichik is. No, it should be about the monitor versus the Merrimack in a civil war, maritime military action. No, there should be a time machine animated series where Bellichik goes back in time to just coach high school at a 1959 boarding school and just picks apart Todd Anderson.
He tied up that breakthrough with the hand on his thing and the sweaty tooth man. Yeah. And he's like, that was good. Yeah.
Do your job. Do your job. Todd's parents asked for the report. He says, I have 25 students.
I don't have time to watch just this one. Right. And practice today. He leaves a book in the desk and it's just like some lame book.
What would he leave? What would be Bellichik's version of the Keating book? What was that book called? Five Centuries.
It would just be. It would just be Dr. Z's taking the dryest world to history. Five Centuries of verse.
Yeah. Next one. The other icon I quote in that scene though, the standing on the desk scene is, I stand up to my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way. The world looks very different from up here.
I mean, one of the key ideas in the movie is perspective and pushing yourself to try to find a new perspective and allowing yourself to find a new perspective and understanding that you have to be the propulsive force that are the engineer of that aspect of your life because other people don't want that for you. Right. People want you to see the world their way. And so if you want to see a different way, you have to make that choice yourself.
You have to climb on the desk. Great. Shaking people out of their comfort zone. Making them look at it from a foot different than they're usually looking at it.
It's a good scene. Not as good as the next scene though. Tied freestyling the poem. Incredible stuff.
Like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold. Forget them. Forget them. Forget them.
Tell me about that blanket. You push it. Stretch it. It'll never be enough.
Kick out it. It'll never cover any of us. From the moment we enter crime to the moment we leave dying, it'll just cover your face. As you wail and cry and scream.
I just want to, we didn't really mention, don't you forget this. We didn't really mention Peter Weir. But. No, I was saving a book.
Oh, let's do it now. This is a good time to do it. The circle camera scene is fucking out. One of the most underrated directors of the last 30 or 40 years, Picnic at Hangarock, Year of Living Dangerously, Witness.
Witness, I mean. Witness, she serves up the hottest person of all time. I'm turning right around. Just Paris in the bottom.
Witness getting all on. It's been replaced by Tyler C in the Bachelor. Truman Show, Dead Poets, and one of my personal favorites, White Squall. Yeah.
Great movie and also Master Commander. But the camera work in the scene and also all the actors in the making of documentaries talked about the environment that he created and the kind of freedom he gave them. The feeling that they were collaborators with him. And there's an electricity in that scene that like, it just doesn't happen.
It doesn't happen in most movies where you just are like, holy crap, this is like really happening. It's also like how did they do that scene? Like how to pull off the act and that they pulled off with a camera following them around in a circle. It was just hard to know.
And to know Williams is going to go crouch down and like, no when Hawk is going to be competent and start going with it. And it's my favorite scene of the movie by far. By the way, Williams is a great actor. Yeah.
I don't think he made great choices. And I think when he was bad, there was very few stars that were worse. But when he was really good, he was as good as anybody. Yeah.
This is like, this is up there with it's not your fault. Yeah. And you know, some of the best iconic scenes in this movie. Yeah.
The way he says, don't you forget this at the end. And one of the points of the scene is that everybody is there. Everybody is bearing witness to what's playing out. But they're also completely alone in this one moment with each other.
When my favorite line is when he says the blanket line for the first time and they all start laughing, he's like, don't look at them. Yeah, forget them. Forget them. That's incredible.
That's incredible. The way that the camera swirls also just makes you feel like you're completely embodied in that moment because part of what's playing out for him is like the swirl of his not only emotions and his thoughts, but his actual identity. You know, you said he's like this legacy kid. Everybody knows who his brother is.
Obviously, under this immense amount of pressure from his parents, who can't even remember that they got him the same birthday gift to yours in a row. Somebody who is scribbling poems in his notebook, but doesn't have the courage and confidence to say it out loud. And like when you find somebody in your life who helps you unlock that, who believes in you, it's just a really, really, really special and incredible thing. I think also like there's a world in which you watch the scene in 2019.
You're like, oh, the teacher has his hands on a student. He's bullying him. And the fact that you're not thinking about those things actually when you're watching it and you're just totally captivated by the poetry. It's an achievement.
It really is. I think you're wrong. I think you have something inside of you that's worth a great deal. Incredible.
And Ethan Hawk really good in this movie and especially in that scene. And this could have gone wrong in a lot of different ways. This scene specifically, especially with the wrong actor, even the little smile he has after he realizes he pulled it off. Dude, it's probably hard.
Like it's really good. There are movies where there are all these little tests for movies where there's anything, any kind of creativity that's being documented. If it's not, oh, well, this is the giant cash movie. So we just have to sing a walk of line.
And that has its own challenges. But I often think about this and that thing you do together where it's like, when these guys have to be creative or when the phone eaters have to be creative and what I think you do, it's really like a dangerous thing. If that song sucks, the movie doesn't work. If the poem's bad.
It's bad. The movie kind of doesn't go anywhere. I mean, it's just good enough that you're like, maybe Todd is a fucking genius. It's way too bad.
I wonder how many versions of the Swaty tooth man poem did they actually even work? Or what did they even like? What were some of the other takes that? Yeah, for sure.
That scene is fucking awesome. I should also mention it leads right into the soccer montage, which I also really love. That's wild. Montages are usually a disaster, especially in movies before 1994.
And that whole scene is just really good. It's really well filmed. It feels like New England. All that.
That whole stretch is great. Next we watched. I got to put this in. It's not a feel good.
Not a feel good scene, but Todd finding out that new is dead. Pretty rough. Yeah. I don't know if it's a rewatch.
It's not the scene that I fast forward to. No, but I felt like I didn't want to put it in what stage the best. I didn't know where to put it, but I just had to kind of mention that that scene is really great. And apparently they had one take for it because of the snow and that's something about the light.
And they basically eat the knock head to just crush it and this one thing. And that was it. I think one thing I like about that scene is his friends are really, you just tell those guys are all friends. There's a friendship that comes out of that.
That's not just like written in a script where these guys are going to do this. Like you can really see how much they love him and just get one of the things that popped up in the internet. Research is that we are had them all live together. Like actually had the kids all bunked together to help forge that sense of genuine community and friendship and then it plays out.
Yeah. And also like in something like the Todd's poem scene, the other thing that he did apparently was film chronologically, which obviously is extremely uncommon for a movie, but part of what that then leads to is this really organic sense of evolution in their relationships with each other. So that when they get to that endpoint, you really feel like they have traveled that road in order in a linear fashion together. You stepped on what's age the best with that.
Sorry. But that's all right. Yeah. I think that's really smart that he did that because he really wanted them to talk care about each other and have real relationships.
Yeah. And we'll offer him now. He just said when Robert Sean Leonard, when he dies as Neil, he had him like leave the set like he didn't come back. Really?
They had him he wanted those guys to feel like they lost somebody. Yeah. So they didn't even take a bite on him. He was just the next day he was gone and he wanted that to affect how they handled like the next class scenes and stuff, which is really kind of smart and also like borderline evil.
Dalton punches Cameron the Fink. You just signed your expulsion papers, Noanda. That all seems great. He's such a fake.
That is also the luggage room. He clocks him. He does get him. Oh my god.
It's like it kind of makes he drills that dude. I was kind of like Cameron's not getting up from that. Everything about that scene is great because everybody in college or in board, there's always that one guy, nobody trusts. And then he comes in the attic.
Hey, what's going on guys? And just really good stuff. And then the last time. Yes, burning incense of your.
You have another rewatchable scene because the last one for me is the ending, which I wanted to talk about. I did. I had a couple more before that. The the conformity walking scene.
Yeah. Love that one. She's in my power not to. He was the same.
She's my right not to lie. Not to lie. That's the Robert Frost quote, Duroed's Diverged in the wood. And I took one less travel by that made all the difference.
But again, just this perfect encapsulation of one of the core ideas of the story that it's okay to be different. It's okay to just be who you are and to not feel like you have to be someone else. Also, whether you want to do what other people are doing, whether you want to do your own thing, that the key is really understanding why you're making that choice. Whatever the choice is.
And just having that level of self-awareness and the ability to be introspective and also like a lot of the strong season of the movie. It's deeply insightful. But also has these moments of levity and joy that prevent it from being too heavy. Yeah.
When the kid does the cats out on the mat poem and he's just like, I don't care if it's simple, but don't waste the opportunity. Right. You know? Yeah.
That's a great one. I also like the the tas. It's really good. It's a blunder every day.
Yeah. Exactly right. It's a kire Irving treat rumor. Don't waste the opportunity.
It's like a marrow out of it. The death set. You're going to do that. The death set scene is good.
I think that's a really nice moment for their friendship as you noted one of the most important relationships in the story. And it's a really great insight into both of those characters who taught it as why he's struggling. And also what makes Neil such a compassionate person, you know, which is a important thing to find in your life. I also think the first actual dead poet society meeting scene is great.
When they it's this spooky, you know, they have like their Hogwarts clothes on and their it's got like a flashlights. It's a little too over the bat. Yeah. It's very, it's weird.
Yeah. It's weird. But there's something about the way they're tapping into like the forbidden element of what they're doing. Because it's really, really, you're a bunch of teenage boys and you cut from school and you thought you were going to go re-biron and show you the thing you would really do is look at Playboy and each other cookies.
Totally. And smoke cigarettes. Yeah. Absolutely.
So then the ending. I got them. I got them. I got them.
Sit down, Mr. Anderson. You hear me? Sit down.
Sit down. That for me is the most re-watchable scene. Same. If I'm flipping channels and we're right around the point where the kids are about to think I'm Mr.