Dead Poets Society

Hey, Do You Remember...?

Christopher Schrader

Tv & Film, Comedy

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2021

⏱️ 117 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Carpe Diem, friends! The three of us all remembered the iconic lines and moments peppered throughout Dead Poets Society, but not much else. It turns out there's a pretty good explanation for that.

Peter Weir's film is a stacked deck in terms of its cast (especially the Oscar-nominated performance of Robin Williams), but does it actually engage with any of the ideas it espouses in its numerous sentimental platitudes? And does that ultimately even matter if there are so many other aspects of this that work?

Topics include: the truly bizarre notes the studio had on how to improve the script, the type of career Robert Sean Leonard seemed destined for in the late 80s, the importance of establishing a clear audience identification character in a story like this, the response to Williams' performance at the time, actors who find out they've been cut from a film at the very last minute, and much more!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, do you remember Dead Poets Society?
0:07.0	Hello and welcome to Hade You Remember, show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose-tinted glasses to see how it holds up.
0:31.5	I'm Chris.
0:32.3	I'm Donna.
0:33.1	And I'm Carlos.
0:33.7	And today we're revisiting Dead Poets Society.
0:53.2	Music I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting Dead Poets Society. When Robin Williams passed away in the summer of 2014, an overwhelming majority of the
0:59.0	tributes that his fans in the media were posting used quotes from this film. There were more
1:04.8	iconic roles and performances that were much flashier than this one. But in the wake of such a heartbreaking tragedy,
1:12.9	the sentimentality of something like Dead Poet Society isn't just comforting. It almost feels necessary.
1:19.4	Beyond that, I also think another way to look at this film, especially now, is that it's almost about
1:25.5	us, the audience, and our relationship to Robin Williams as an actor and entertainer.
1:31.4	We were all these students, and he was our John Keating.
1:35.8	He made us laugh. He opened our minds, and when he left us too soon, we wanted to honor him.
1:42.3	I think it's very telling that this was the go-to movie for so many people
1:46.3	when they felt compelled to express their love and gratitude. Of course, we all knew him best for his
1:51.6	larger-than-life characters and creations. But with something this sincere and understated,
1:57.4	maybe we got to feel a little bit closer to the man as opposed to the myth.
2:02.4	Dead Poet Society has always been a very highly regarded film,
2:06.5	but there's no question that there's some extra weight and significance to a lot of this now.
2:11.4	And like many of Williams films, its legacy is now impossibly intertwined with its leading
2:16.3	man's.
	...

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