Dead Poets Society
Overview
 
Dead Poets Society is a 1989 American drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Peter Weir
Peter Weir
Peter Lindsay Weir, AM is an Australian film director. After playing a leading role in the Australian New Wave cinema with his films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave and Gallipoli, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films—many of them major box office...

 and starring Robin Williams
Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin Williams is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance...

. Set at the conservative and aristocratic
Aristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...

 Welton Academy in Vermont in 1959, it tells the story of an English teacher who inspires his students through his teaching of poetry.

The script was written by Tom Schulman
Tom Schulman
Thomas H. Schulman is an American screenwriter most famous for his screenplay Dead Poets Society which won the Best Screenplay Academy Award for 1989....

, based on his life at the Montgomery Bell Academy
Montgomery Bell Academy
Montgomery Bell Academy is a preparatory day school for boys in grades 7 through 12 in Nashville, Tennessee.The school ideal is "Gentleman, Scholar, Athlete." Montgomery Bell Academy is noted for a large number of National Merit and other scholarship winners...

 in Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...

. Filming took place at St. Andrew's School in Middletown, Delaware
Middletown, Delaware
Middletown is a town in New Castle County, Delaware, United States. According to the 2010 Census, the population of the town is 18,871.-Geography:Middletown is located at with an elevation of ....

.
Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard
Robert Sean Leonard
Robert Sean Leonard is an American actor, who has regularly starred in Broadway and off-Broadway productions. Since 2004 he has played the role of Dr. James Wilson on the TV series House...

), Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke
Ethan Hawke
Ethan Green Hawke is an American actor, writer and director. He made his feature film debut in 1985 with the science fiction movie Explorers, before making a supporting appearance in the 1989 drama Dead Poets Society which is considered his breakthrough role...

), Knox Overstreet (Josh Charles), Charlie Dalton (Gale Hansen
Gale Hansen
Gale Hansen is an American film and television actor best known for playing Charlie Dalton in Dead Poets Society.-Filmography:*Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction .... Security Guard...

), Richard Cameron (Dylan Kussman
Dylan Kussman
Dylan Kussman is a film and television actor who played the part of Richard Cameron in the 1989 film Dead Poets Society as well as Dr. Allen Painter in The Way of the Gun in 2000. He has also appeared in such films as Leatherheads and X2 , and is the writer, director, and star of the online noir...

), Steven Meeks (Allelon Ruggiero
Allelon Ruggiero
Allelon Ruggiero is an American film and television actor whose first role was playing the part of Steven Meeks in Peter Weir's 1989 film Dead Poets Society. He attended the Philadelphia High School For The Creative And Performing Arts.-External links:...

), and Gerard Pitts (James Waterston
James Waterston
James Waterston is an American film and television actor whose first role was playing Gerard Pitts in the 1989 film Dead Poets Society....

) are senior students of the Welton Academy prep school
University-preparatory school
A university-preparatory school or college-preparatory school is a secondary school, usually private, designed to prepare students for a college or university education...

, whose ethos is defined by the headmaster Gale Nolan (Norman Lloyd
Norman Lloyd
Norman Lloyd is an American actor, producer, and director with a career in entertainment spanning more than seven decades. Lloyd, who currently resides in Los Angeles, has appeared in over sixty films and television shows....

) as "tradition, honor, discipline and excellence".
Quotations

We're not laughing at you; we're laughing near you.

When you read, don't just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think.

Sucking the marrow out of life doesn't mean choking on the bone.

He was their inspiration. He made their lives extraordinary.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

 
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