A Standoff Between Robin Williams and Disney Almost Ruined ‘Dead Poets Society’

Released in 1989, the critically acclaimed Dead Poets Society ingrained itself into pop culture memory. Its success helped launch the careers of then-newcomers Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, and Josh Charles, earned Robin Williams his second of four Academy Award nominations, and won writer Tom Schulman an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The latter fact is especially appropriate since Society celebrates the power of the written word. If you’ve heard someone recite “o captain, my captain,” chances are high they’re quoting Society and not the Walt Whitman poem said phrase references. It’s a movie indelible enough that Taylor Swift reunited Hawke and Charles for her “Fortnight” music video accompanying the debut single from her newest album, The Tortured Poets Department.

Williams’s lead performance as John Keating, an atypical English teacher at an all-boys boarding school, marked a turning point in his career as the comedian transitioned into roles with increased dramatic heft. However, a collision of wills between Williams and the Walt Disney Company — the first of several clashes — almost prevented Dead Poets Society from being made. Despite having greenlit the production, Disney burned the sets before the cameras ever truly rolled.

Dead Poets Society

PG

Drama

Documentary

Maverick teacher John Keating returns in 1959 to the prestigious New England boys’ boarding school where he was once a star student, using poetry to embolden his pupils to new heights of self-expression. 

Release Date

June 2, 1989

Director

Peter Weir

Cast

Robin Williams , Robert Sean Leonard , Ethan Hawke , Josh Charles , Gale Hansen , Dylan Kussman

Runtime

128

Main Genre

Drama

Writers

Tom Schulman

Tagline

He was their inspiration. He made their lives extraordinary.

Why Did Robin Williams Turn Down ‘Dead Poets Society’?

When Dead Poets Society was in pre-production, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Touchstone Pictures, a division of the Walt Disney Company marketed toward older audiences, wanted to cast Robin Williams. They were following the success of his Academy Award-nominated turn in Good Morning, Vietnam, a comedy with a piquant backbone. Jeff Kanew, the first director attached to Society and known for Revenge of the Nerds, preferred Liam Neeson. According to a 2013 interview with Tom Schulman held at the University of California, Williams “wouldn’t say no, but he wouldn’t say yes to working with that director. In fact, we prepped the movie, built the sets […] and Robin just didn’t show up for the first day. He never said he would, but Disney kept trying to pressure him by moving forward. After the first day he didn’t show up, they cancelled the production, burned the sets. We actually have dailies of the sets burning.”

At the time, this seemed like the story’s end: Dead Poets Society was a lost cause. A year passed before the tides turned. As recounted by E! Online, when Touchstone signed director Peter Weir onto the project, Williams accepted the role. Disagreements aside, the House of Mouse was right: Robin Williams was the right choice, and perhaps the only choice. His contributions and Dead Poets Society‘s lasting impact are inseparable.

What Inspired ‘Dead Poets Society’?

Dead Poets Society argues that the arts are as essential to life as breathing. To put a finer point on it, John Keating, Williams’s character, describes “poetry, beauty, romance, love” as “what we stay alive for.” The film has a poet’s astute articulation and wears its bleeding heart on a tattered sleeve. Such philanthropy has realistic roots. Tom Schulman modeled Keating’s philosophy and his radical teaching methods after one of his high school instructors, a man named Samuel F. Pickering Jr. During a Script Magazine retrospective with Peter Weir and Ethan Hawke, Schulman said:

“I had an antic sophomore English teacher, who was charming, and he loved his students, but he was an iconoclast. When we came back for our junior year, he wasn’t there anymore. Rumors spread that he had an affair with the headmaster’s daughter
and
the headmaster’s wife, but we were all too scared to ask what really happened. Had we done so, we would have learned that he simply got a better job. But because we never knew that, it left an opening in my imagination to write a whole other story around an eccentric teacher, and what happened to him. The idea of resistance to traditional thinking bubbled up, as part of that.”

Robin Williams Gives ‘Dead Poets Society’s Empathy a Face

Hoping to broaden his filmography and armed with Schulman’s barnburner of a script, Robin Williams’s approach to the role evolved. Tom Schulman’s interview with the University of California called Williams’s initial take “too tight, he was too bound up in the script.” Similarly, Peter Weir shared with Script Magazine that he and Williams brainstormed how to strike the ideal balance between Williams’s established strengths and letting the actor stretch his thespian muscles. The answer wasn’t somber gravitas, but a restraint appropriate to the material’s needs. “I didn’t want to completely bury his gift, because that’s what the public loved about him,” Weir explained, “so it was really a case of a scale — sort of like turning down a volume control. How low can you go, where people will see Robin inside the character?”

Seeing Robin Williams inside John Keating is the skeleton key behind the character’s lingering appeal, and by that logic, Dead Poets Society‘s cultural significance. Keating is the vessel through which Schulman’s script delivers its message, which is a manifold one: the importance of words goes hand-in-hand with rejecting the kind of social conformity that limits creative expression. To make that point in earnest, Society needs the groundwork laid by Williams’s performance. There’s always a glimmer in Keating’s eyes, a warmth that welcomes, envelops, and immerses. This is the Robin Williams gift redirected. Keating’s playful wickedness lacks malice; he’s sly and sprightly, his gentleness lowering his students’ emotional barriers and disarming their assumptions. His winks, whether literal or metaphorically applied through his unconventional lessons, make everyone lean in to catch each word and cherish every hinted smirk.

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Good comedy infuses people with joy. Hopefully, it also makes them think. Williams’s comedic training suits Keating’s underhanded gentleness. When he impersonates how John Wayne and Marlon Brando would recite William Shakespeare, the goofy mannerisms let his students connect with the Bard’s ancient words for the first time. They view Shakespeare differently, which is the point; Keating advocates individualism and independent thought. The difference between Keating and the other teachers at Welton Academy, who restrict, drone, and chant dull slogans, is stark. Rather than march his students to a single beat, Keating sets these young men free. He’s the reason their eyes light up, and why their souls want to seize life with white-knuckled fists. His intimate vivacity makes them courageous. Any dramatically trained performer could deliver an excellent and fully realized Keating. Williams’s singular distinctness taps into something deeper, a thrumming vein of honesty inspired by a real individual.

How Did Peter Weir Influence ‘Dead Poets Society’?

When Robin Williams officially joined Dead Poets Society after his standoff with Disney, Tom Schulman thought he was an excellent fit for Keating’s droll side but questioned whether Williams’s somber scenes would come off as “very precious and dark.” Schulman immediately dismissed that past concern to the University of California crowd by saying, “but that didn’t happen.” Conversely, Peter Weir, whose naturalistic touch ensures the movie’s soulful empathy, knew Williams was capable because Weir “had met that quieter, more thoughtful and funny” side of Williams.

The director’s instincts rang true on several fronts. He politely refused to direct Society unless Schulman removed a plotline where Keating passed away from cancer, believing that diminished the man’s idealism and the story’s thesis. While filming, Weir shot Dead Poets Society‘s scenes chronologically, and the Shakespeare sequence was a filmed improv exercise that made the final cut. The moment helped Williams shape his performance; he realized that teaching children was, like stand-up comedy, a dialogue. Weir also told Williams not to cry during the climactic final scene:

“The audience will be crying — but not you. You [as Keating] don’t cry until after you leave, and you’re alone in your car. Right now, you want those boys to take care of themselves, so you keep it together, for them. Just say ‘Thank you’ and get out!’ And Robin was like, ‘F***, you’re right!'”

There Is No ‘Dead Poets Society’ Without Robin Williams

Years after Dead Poets Society hit theaters, Williams cited the experience as a career highlight. Explaining why, he singled out Peter Weir’s skill behind the camera and the public’s passionate reactions. A man once told Williams that the film inspired him to quit his corporate job and join the art world — to which Williams replied, “I have to buy a lot of art from you now!”

John Keating tells a classroom full of impressionable boys hungry for guidance and fulfillment that “we must constantly look at the world in a different way.” Art frames our perspectives. Through his art, whether it’s Dead Poets Society or beyond, Robin Williams helps us view the world differently. His affinities and insights, honed through comedy, give Society‘s plea for understanding a compassionate face. Keating’s students apply his wisdom to their lives, be it by seizing the day (“carpe diem“) or broadening their horizons by defiantly standing on a desk. May we do the same.

Dead Poets Society is available to rent or buy on Prime Video in the U.S.

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