On Story: 510 Dead Poets Society: Deconstructing the Acclaimed Classic

you on story is brought to you in part by the Alice Clayburgh Reynolds foundation a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979 on story presented by Austin Film Festival a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers and directors this week's on story Dead Poets Society Academy award-winning screenwriter Tom Schulman in this episode Tom Shulman walks us through the process of bringing his first screenplay to life with director Peter Weir as several people pointed out to me why would you write something like this on spec when no one would make this movie and the first person to do that was my agent who I gave the script to and he said wow this is the best script you've ever written and I can't sell it and if you want to sell it you're gonna have to get another agent so and he said to me really it's it's it's one of the best scripts I've ever read and I can't sell it and why did you write it why did why would anybody think that a script about a boys school with you know they're almost no girls in the movie it's it's a boarding school it's the 50s it's the three worst possible words I can think of in a title all and together Dead Poets Society all in one so my agent called and said I found a producer who read it two years ago who can't get it out of his mind he wants to hill-hill option it I think for 250 dollars maybe we can get him up to that and which which was just ghastly and he said look I'm not doing any work on this anymore so you know at least he'll put some money in hill-hill hill-hill make some moves that was a guy named Steven haft who happened to have gone to prep school with Jeffrey Katzenberg who was running Disney at the time and he gave it to Jeffrey and Jeffrey bought it that night tied the the sort of shy mute boy played by ethan hawke is really was me and you know there are theories that movie the thing that you write is real you're really working out something for yourself the the script is the writer's journey and i guess if that were the case it would be Todd's journey for me because I was pathologically shy and terrified of public speaking and that is Perry then I thought you know writer is perfect for me I'll write I'll have my name on the screenplay I'll send it in I'll never have to go in and talk to anybody it'll just be you know didn't quite work out that way I remember when I got the call that Peter wanted to do the movie they said you know he loves the script he's in he only has his only problem is with the ending and I said there he wants to redo the ending and I liked the ending so I was worried about that in the original script which some of you may have read on about page 80 or so the boys show up for class and teachers not there and they found out he's in the hospital and they go to see him and as it turns out he has I think Hodgkin's non-hodgkins lymphoma one of one of these cancers that will kill you but slowly and that explains the sort of carpe diem of it all Peter said got a it's the easiest rewrite you'll have ever done you just go and you take that scene out that's it you cut it out and that nothing else changes I said but then it doesn't explain why the teacher has this this philosophy of life and he goes that's just because it's who he is so we've he said and I'm not gonna make the movie unless you agree that this is the right thing to do so I said well I don't I don't agree he said I know you don't know I don't explain it if you told me right now you'd agree I wouldn't have any any respect for you I know that you believe in this so I'm coming over to the states in about two weeks and you know we'll get together and talk about it so I went home and you know I went through all the thousand reasons why he was wrong and I was gonna win this argument and he got there and for two or three days we said we were arguing about it and finally he said to me you know look it's his first argument was this movie will just be reviewed as a disease of the week kind of movie it'll be a kind of weepy where you know this this one notion will swallow everything else that you've done in the movie it'll be about a teacher who's dying and that's different and and I don't think that's what you want but he finally said look it's easy for a bunch of boys to stand up it's easy for anybody to stand up for someone who's dying you know that's just that's a courtesy almost he said but and if he's dying it but if they're if he's not dying then we know they're standing up for what he's taught them for what he believes in so I went you know that's that's right so so that was it he had said to me by the way I want you on the set and by the way I know that I can tell you want to direct most writers want to direct so you know it to the degree that you want considered a learning experience you know I he said I've directed eight movies so I'm happy to help anyway I mean the most generous man so I said to Peter he said really just go talk to Robin about this what you want to change in the scene and let's see how it works and I said well what if it what if I screw it up he goes I'll fix it I said okay so I went out walked out there I saw Robin look back over at Peter and Peter when it's okay and I gave Robin a note and Robin did it he Peter said what do you think and I said I don't think it works he goes I don't either and on to the next thing but that I mean I don't think any other writer that I've ever talked about has had an experience with the director with that kind of level of generosity and and and sort of openness to the writer and he you know he the first day of the the one right before the the movie started he raised the script up and said this is why we're all here this is our Bible this is what didn't mentioned me of course but this is this is what we're here to do and he said I'm a very open director he said if you have any thought any buddy here whether you're a grip ever has any ideas any thoughts come to me come to Tom bring them to anybody he said the only thing I ask is that you not be offended if I don't use your idea and at one point there's a scene with I don't even know if we're gonna look at it but there's a scene where Robin is meeting with having lunch with a fellow teacher and Robin quotes as has a quotes a line of poetry that he wrote and I had written something and about a week before that scene was to shoot Robins stand-in came up to me and said I wrote a little poem that I think would be perfect for that that moment and I said okay so a couple days later he brought it to me and it was great it's wonderful it's in the movie so it was because of Peters that openness again in people that was that kind of set where people just any idea people came you know to him or anyone else and which i think is a wonderful way to make a movie funny never pegged you as a cynic not a realist show me the heart unfettered by foolish dreams but I'll show you a happy man only in their dreams can men be truly free it was always thus and always thus will be Tennyson kitty whatever changes were necessary I knew Robin would make but and although I was worried about Robin because I didn't understand what I had seen of him as a dramatic actor and his madcap amazing comedy how that was going to fit into the reality of a teacher and the very first thing that we shot we we had one day with Robin to shoot an exterior scene we were shooting pretty late in the year it was already late fall and early November when we started shooting so he had one day with him and he was gonna go off to New York and do a play for a couple of weeks and then come back and Robin was just almost stuck to the word forward to the script and it was he seemed almost tight and nervous and not not him you know so we shot the scene and I remember saying to Peter oh my god he seems wooden and tell you guys I know I don't know we'll figure it out in those two weeks that we have to so when Robin came back Peter said before we started shooting Peter said I want to do an improv Robin and just will shoot it and in fact it's in the movie he said if you had to just teach these boys something anything you'd want to teach them what would it be in Robin say Robin I don't know he said Peter said you want to read to them he said yeah I could read to them so they found a book said you want to teach him a little Shakespeare oh yes I could teach him some Shakespeare so he walked into the room that we were shooting and he it's the difference between what he had been doing before was that now he was talking to this even though he was doing all the talking he really it was a dialogue just similar to what he did in stand-up but he was looking at the kids looking for their reactions talking to them amusing them the whole bit and did that improv where he's the Shakespeare scene where he's John Wayne doing Macbeth if any of you have seen mr. Marlon Brando Shakespeare can also imagine maybe John Wayne is Macbeth Corey well is this our dagger I see before me from that moment on he was completely connected to the to the character and so the you know there are improvisation that he does all the way through he invented this Bell that he dinged whenever student was wrong he did all kinds of little stuff everybody feel taller oh thank you for playing mr. Dalton at that moment that sort of blend of his dramatic and and and comedic self you know worked for the movie I went to a place called the actors in director's lab which was in Los Angeles and my teacher was a gentleman named Jack Garr fine whose teacher was a famous Broadway director and critic and named Harold Clurman I wrote a kind of rough draft with with Clurman as the teacher and then realized this isn't gonna work okay this should be about a teacher that I had when I was a sophomore in high school a guy named Sam Pickering who was a very mischievous wonderful inspiring English teacher that I'd been lucky enough to have and the good news for me is that the Pickering had been at my school for one year and then disappeared and so all these rumors went around what what happened for me it was this kind of open question you know and left my imagination to sort of you know go somewhere else so I think if I'd ever known what actually happened to him I would have never written this it was the first moment we would have seen with with the Robin William character and it had him walking in walking down the script had him walking down the aisles looking at the boys kind of going sort of seeing something in their eyes that only he could see and then walking back to the front of the room and jumping up on the other either his desk or you know and Oh captain my captain who said that we shot it it was good Robin did a great job with it and Peter and I both felt like oh this is the end of the movie right here it dies at this moment because it just looks like the teacher is a complete completely self-absorbed show-off then the question was what to do so suddenly we thought okay let's just have it have him instead we got to get this he can't jump up on the desk so maybe he walks into the room and with yet we still want something that's gonna you know get our attention as students and we as an audience so the idea was have him just walked through the classroom look at the kids and walk out and then we'll do the whole scene in the honoureth and we were lucky that there was a solution that was so simple you know in the in the honor of its itself that began Robin sort of improvisational stuff that helped give him that twinkle and added obviously humor to the movie so it was great stuff I mean I think my original intent was that somehow these kids were going to find poetry inspiring you know and so the so I sort of pulled out the poetry that had inspired me as a youth and put it in the same and the studio and Peter and later me of course I worry about everything well it was worried that that that no one know kids who would could relate to this you know that the bunch of boys going out into the woods and reading poetry to each other was just not something anybody ever did and and Peter said you know the important thing really is there can be some of that but they they have to have fun out there he had a wife his life continually got his goat and one day at dawn with her night shift on he slit her bloody throat the Vachel Lindsay thing at the end but the the Congo was actually supposed to be part of another scene I think in the original script there was a second scene out at the cave after Neil is taken away from the theatre I don't even remember it's still in the movie that poem from the Congo was was there so we moved it back then I saw the car cutting through the forest with a golden trap and I saw the come so the scene sort of transformed the beginning but everything in between is just supposed to be fun for me Todd was the main character of the movie I mean it which is odd because he doesn't talk that much he's not really driving the action of the movie but from the point of view of the my point of view anyway he was the the guy who changes the most in the movie and there's a resistance to change it's I mean he's sort of caught up in the in the Keating Ora magic here but he doesn't want to he's kicking and screaming I don't want to get up and do this and I think Ethan found that I mean I I I would have probably just had Todd's you know kind of in the corner until he finally stands up at the end and I think you know Ethan wisely just started to see that he could give a little bit more voice to the character but it would be the voice of resistance to change as opposed to just the changing and that would be another step along the way yeah in the original scene I think Neil comes upon Todd and Todd is is sad because he's received the desk set and then he says his father nicknamed him 598 which is the value of all the chemicals in our body if if you just had to sell them in the store so you know all the carbon and the various chemicals that's that's all we're really worth so it was kind of a self-pitying as you say dark scene and it's from that moment on from them from the time that he that the Todd tells Neal that he's gotten this desk set everything else in the scene is improvised by Bobby Leonard and and and Ethan so they had this idea that this the flying death set the whole bit Todd I think you're under estimating the value of this desk set would want a football baseball or a car or a car if they could have a desk set as wonderful as this if if I were ever going to buy a desk set twice I would prophecy play this one both times fact it's shapes it's rather aerodynamic isn't it you can feel it Tessa wants to fly when when Ethan stands up he has this look on his face of just excitement and and affection it's wonderful so that that changes and it just really deepens their relationship and it's it's an act of defiance that you know we wouldn't have seen in him had it not been for this scene you know so it's it's really important well I mean of course the concern is that you know anything like carpe diem taken to an extreme or just that becomes your sort of motto of way of living isn't going to work you know living is more complex than that so in the movie is supposed to be a sort of working out of that to some extent and and this is one of the moments where you know the rubber meets the road and the boys have got one of the boys has gone too far and and you know pulled a silly prank so and I think Robin had the instinct that it needed to be just lighter that he needed to be one of the guys coming into the room not the scolding teacher which is I think the way it was originally written because it's the words are similar it's just how he did it was was was much more endearing I think and much better for the kids she was a time for daring and there's a time for caution and a wise man understands which is called for but I thought you'd like that no you being expelled from school is not daring to me it's stupid because you'll miss some golden opportunities yeah like it's nothing else the opportunity to attend my classes got an ace high captain keep your head about you that goes with a lot of you phone call from God if you've been collect it would have been daring we started having discussions fairly early on about the suicide Peter Weir said to me that he had once heard in mark Bergman say that if you have a main character in a movie commit suicide the audience will hate you so he said that's that's our challenge and I said what are we gonna do about that he goes I don't know so but we were also concerned that Neal's father seemed to arch to villainous to to sort of over-the-top so and and in the original script as you see you said the Neal's father comes to the theater sees that Neal is born his son not to do this play so when he gets to the theater and sees that his son is in it and see what he comes back during the middle of the play basically says to Neal you're not to get your things we're leaving and Neal says you can't do that I'm in the play we don't have anybody else to take my place is I don't care what happens you're you're leaving and he actually drags his son out of the theater and the play just grinds to a halt we don't even know what happens to what and he takes his son home and Neal kills himself and Peter felt that that was just too much and I had based Neal and his father on a friend of mine that I grew up with and his father would definitely have come and taken him out of the play in the middle but nevertheless we did it this way what performance you left even me speechless you have to stay with card cheating you stay away from my son Neal mr. Perry Camilla don't make it any worse than it is I think for me it changes the dynamic of the suicide because I don't think suicide should have felt like an option for Neal and right now I asked myself when I see the movie why doesn't he just run away from home as opposed to killing himself and I think if his father had been the type of father that had actually dragged him out of the theatre you would have this feeling that his father if you ran away from home it wouldn't matter your father would track him down you know at the end of the earth so and this is just something I don't know you know we never did it the other way and I certainly agree that having the father take him out of the play early would have been very strong and maybe too strong an action but it changed again changes the suicide so you know because it was you know it was it was it was a good discussion but I still wish I could have seen a version where where his father pulls him out because I think the suicide would have worked better I felt like the the hardest thing for me to take in the movie was the suicide it was just as an audience the first time I saw it I absolutely expected everybody to just walk out of the theater at that point I mean I was just whoa we have done something truly wrong here the theme of the movie was some something about you know sort of this this struggle with suffocating Authority versus this kind of internal drive for liber8 you know spiritual or liberation and so the father like the administration at the school was was you know an example of suffocating Authority so the more suffocating the better if as long as it's believable I mean the ending was really the most difficult part for me because I did that thing you're not supposed to do which is start writing and you don't know your ending you know and I had sort of a thought that the teacher there would be some sort of trial at the school and that you know after the boy's suicide there would be this this kind of kangaroo court but but somehow following some rules that the school had established and the boys would testify for him and so forth and so I started writing that trial knowing that this is just total there's no such thing you know and it makes no sense at all and then as I was writing the trial at one point one of the boys I think I guess they must have been Ethan's character Todd just became tongue-tied instead of talking or saying what trying to defend he just stood up on his chair and as soon as that happened I went oh my god that's the end of the movie so I dispensed with the trial and put it in the classroom and and then I realized okay this this this could work Oh God this is your final warning Anderson you hear me my cat there's no straight I warned you yeah for more on story check out our free podcast at on story TV or search the iTunes Store and get the book today on story screenwriters in their craft on Amazon you

Channel: Austin Film Festival

Views: 64,324

Keywords: DEAD POETS SOCIETY, HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS, MEDICINE MAN, THE COURT, filmmaking, filmmakers, screenwriting, screenwriters, film festivals, film research, film industry, film competitions, screenwriting competitions, austin film festival, screenwriters conference, scripts, screenplays, writers, directors, producers, television creators, show runners, film school, filmmaker interviews, writers room, storytelling, inspiration, script to screen, Robin Williams

Id: UmdsLv7Zx6g

Length: 26min 46sec (1606 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 20 2015