Behind the Scenes: Dead Poets Society (Weir, 1989) with Robin Williams and Ethan Hawke

I have worked with the great ones, with Hitchcock, Chaplin, Wells, Jean Renoir, Scorsese, Peter Weir. You know, I have a big crush on him still. He was a profound influence on my acting and my approach to acting, you know. And he did, he seemed to really love what he was doing. Peter, for all of us, became kind of a little folk hero. We were very young and very impressionable. And in many ways, he was the first kind of legit professional artist I'd ever met. And he, not dissimilarly to the way that Mr. Keating does in the movie, instilled us with visions of art about what cinema could be, what was possible. From an actor's point of view, one wants two things from a director, a constant interest in one's performance and the preservation of the ego, of the actor's ego. Peter does that to a marvelous degree. And in addition, he is what I call a humanist. He fought for all of us, he protected all of us, he inspired all of us, he trusted all of us. And he really kind of instilled in us this passion and this feeling on the set that what we were doing was important. He knows what he wants from a scene. He knows what he needs, I should say, from a scene, what he has to have. And then beyond that, he's looking to see what more he can get out of it. And that's, that I think is the best kind of director because that, for an actor, because that encourages you to do more, to go beyond just what it is on the page and what it is he tells you he needs in the scene. There are other directors that I've worked with, good directors, you do, he tells you how he wants the scene to play, you do it that way, you start to do things differently, and it's like, yeah, well, that's good, but let's go back to the other way. Or, yeah, let's hang on to that for later, and then later never comes, you know? They just want it the way they want it, and that's all. I was doing this scene with Gail Hansen, and it's just the two of us. And we finish the scene, and nobody says cut. Peter doesn't say cut, the camera's rolling. And this has never happened to me before, and I just sat there, like, not knowing what to do. And then, finally, Peter comes in, and he's like, you guys, you're actors, the camera's rolling, do whatever you want, it's yours. That moment, that moment that the director says action, and you've done the scene, and it's rolling, it's yours, it's all yours. And it was one of the most wonderful gifts I've ever had from a director, because now, for me, acting from action to cut, it's complete, it's mine. It's safe, nobody can touch it, and I love it intensely. So, no matter what's going on, once the director says action, action to cut is this Stephen Hawking moment of no time, as we know it. I'll tell you the moment when I think I may have really iced myself, or at least given myself a very good chance of getting the role, is I went in to meet with him on the Disney lot here in Los Angeles, and he said, is there anything about your character that you don't feel comfortable with, that you don't feel is consistent? That was a scary moment, because I didn't want to criticize the script, or I didn't want to get it wrong, but I did have an impression of the final scene, because in the original version, all of the poets stand on their desks when Robin Williams leaves at the end. I said, I don't think my character would stand on the desk. I think it would be much more true to what the character is in the script if he's not allowed to get up, or he doesn't allow himself to get up and defy Norman Lloyd's character, and stand on the desk in the classroom. And Peter Weir said, you're exactly right. I said, I don't think you're right. I don't think you would either. And I went, great. And I walked out, and I went, whew. I don't remember anything about Peter from that first meeting. I was so nervous. I remember that he was Australian, and that he talked funny and met many Australians at that point in my life. I got a call back, and then another call back, and then finally I read for Peter Weir, and then Ethan and I read together for Peter Weir. And then there was a screen test. It was endless, endless process. I received a call that I would have to audition, and that the audition would be on tape. They would shoot it. They would shoot, it would be a test, what we used to call a test, and a scene from the script. You know, you have to know, I was 18 years old, and I thought that getting this part would save my life. I mean, I had instilled it with that kind of importance for myself, and there were like 50 kids around, 50 18-year-old guys all passing through reading scenes, and it was incredibly nerve-wracking. I didn't feel that I should have to audition or test. I'd just come off St. Elsewhere, and I said they had six years of film if they want to look at it and make a decision from that. No, this had to be this test. Mr. Weir, the director, was not in Los Angeles. He was on location in Wilmington, Delaware, looking for locations, and the only way he could judge would be if you did this scene from the piece. So I thought about this while I was on the tennis court, which always gives me a certain receptivity, and I thought, well, I'm in a good mood. I won this match today. I'll audition. I mean, I'll do the test. Lucky I won. If I hadn't won that match, we would not be sitting here talking about it. I had just started acting, and I had done some, two NYU films, and the last one I did was with a director that was really mean, and it was March, and he wanted me to be baptized in a lake, fully submerged, and I yelled at him, and I showed up late, but in the end, I did what he said, and so I had this really big fear about when I was really gonna work with a real director. So I audition, and I get the part of Dead Poets Society, and I show up on the set, and I had met Peter Weir, obviously, because I auditioned, but I was terrified that he was gonna be even meaner than the NYU directors, so we get ready to work, and he takes me aside, and he says, well, I just want you to know that you are far more interesting than any character anybody could write, so it's about really making it real, and if anything doesn't seem right to you, just change it and let me know, and I was in shock. You know, he's a beautiful guy, and he was good to all of us, and that makes an experience like that go better, but I don't have any memories of him until we started rehearsing. It was amazing, really, that we were given as much time as we were to rehearse the film before we started shooting. We were there to rehearse. We were there to get our hair cut. You know, we all got these real 50s hairstyles, which was devastating to me in my vanity, and we were there to play soccer. We were there to mostly research. Yeah, Peter had given us these giant books of what were the top films of the 50s. You know, he kind of decided that it was like, I forget what years, but he kind of gave a three-year parameter, and so he made us these mixtapes that had the top 20 songs of those three years, what it was like to be in the 50s, what it was like to be a guy in the 50s, a young kid. You know, you see these young people movies now, and they're all making peace signs, or they're, you know, doing hip-hop things, or whatever it is. He really wanted to start getting us divorced from any kind of behavioralism that was locked into the, you know, it was the late 80s, early 90s. Even suggested that we, that we, like, not use shampoo when we took our, like, when we bathe at night and stuff. He wanted to, he wanted us to, like, you know, like, use soap instead of shampoo, because back then, that's what kids had to use. Peter started having us write poetry in order to start waking up our minds and start opening us up to what we might discover through the course of the filming. And really, the thing that I remember being the most important part of the rehearsal process of that two-week period was Peter wanted us to spend as much time together as we could, to get sick of each other, to get annoyed with each other, to really just be together. We really felt, by the time shooting started, that we had been to school together, you know, in a sense. So that was the kind of environment that he was taking. I remember one of the big exercises he had us do is he pretended we would do this, we'd get together for these rehearsals, and he would pretend that he was the drama teacher and that we were putting on a Christmas play, and we all had to be in character. It was really kind of bizarre, but, you know, kind of your basic theater game stuff that he was doing with teenagers, trying to loosen us up, and also to start making us feel safe, that we could contribute, and that we wouldn't be ridiculed, and, you know. That's Peter's great gift is, you know, when you're working with him, he really makes you feel like you have something to offer him, which encourages people to give their best. He was like the Pied Piper. They would do anything, they'd go anywhere with him. They just thought he was the greatest, which he was, and so he made a marvelous unit out of them, which made it marvelous to play with them, because you had these marvelous performances happening before you, and, you know, acting is give and take, talking and listening, and they were so good about that. So I found it very easy to do their best. I enjoyed giving them a bad time. Father, you know. There was concern that this character, Mr. Perry, really be the villain of the piece. I think that had to do with sort of setting up some rationale for the suicide, but in any case, they were quite concerned about that, and, you know, I can understand that, but at the same time, I was bound and determined that the character be understandable. Not likable, just understandable, because I felt that that was really the nut of what was going on, certainly with their relationship in a big part of the movie, is that this is a man who loved his son and thought he was doing what was best from his own sort of twisted version of how to deal with a kid. He didn't do this out of, you know, maliciousness. He loved this boy. He just went about it all wrong. So, when we did the scene in the hallway then, I tried as much as possible to play it down, to sort of work on him a little bit more instead of harassing him to kind of like work on him, make him feel a little bit more guilty, you know, about what's this gonna do to your mom, and, you know, and we've worked hard, and, you know, that kind of like wheedling him as opposed to just harassing him and being nasty. That night when we went to Daley's and I saw the stuff from the previous day, which is in the hallway. You know how much this means to your mother, don't you? Yes, sir. And I thought it really worked. And so did Peter, we thought it worked well. We kind of found that line between where, you know, where he's still on the kid and yet at the same time, he's not overbearing. I mean, he's overbearing, but I mean, you know, not too much. And it just, I went home and all I could think about was what we had shot that day, which was before that, chronologically. And I thought, you know, it's just, I shouldn't have done that. You know, I shouldn't have got as angry with him. I mean, I could have played the scene, which would have fit much more in connection with the hallway. This happens a lot when you're doing films. You know, you second guess your scenes later on. You go, man, if I had known that when I shot the scene before, it would have been so much better. But that's it, you know? So I went in the next day then, and I was off camera, of course, wardrobe and makeup, because they're shooting over my shoulder and all that. And so I was doing the scene, and I was doing the scene as I wanted to do it now. We did a couple of rehearsals, and Peter came over and said, now, you know, you're doing the scene differently. And I said, yes. And I was expecting him to say, you've got to do it the way you did it yesterday. And he said, is that because of what you saw in the dailies? I said, yeah. Yeah, I said, and I explained what I thought. And he said, yeah, yeah, you're right. So I turned to the director of photography and said, John, turn it around. We're gonna reshoot Kurtwood's stuff. Now this, this doesn't happen, you know? To just reshoot stuff because it's, you know, because there are nuances of acting that are better. I mean, it's, you know, you know, time's money in movies. This is a couple hours worth of work. You've got to relight the whole set from the other direction, turn the cameras around, you know. But he did it because it was right. He could have got away, we could have got away with it the way the scene was before, you know, but it was better this way. That's the way he was about everything. And that, that tells you so, you know, that gives you such a feeling about a director that, you know, you'd do anything for him. Hey. What's going on? It's my birthday and my parents have sent me the same gift they sent me the year before. And I remember I was supposed to have this monologue about where I said 428 and Bob was like, what's 428? And I said, that's what all the chemicals in your body would be worth if you bottled them up and sold them raw. That's what my father said I was worth. We were doing, it was one of the things I used to audition for the, for the scene and, and we started shooting it. And, you know, if Bob, I'm sure would tell a story differently. I'm trying to remember it. It didn't really work very well, the scene. And Peter came over and stopped shooting and said, this isn't working. Cut. Let's just, we need to just, let's stop. We need to rethink the scene. It's just, it's flat. It's, it feels like a scene that doesn't feel real. I don't believe it. I remember saying to Peter, I said, I just would never be this self pitying in front of another guy, my own age. I just would never do that. And he's like, you're right. This is really corny. So Ethan and I went off and he said, you guys, we're going to, we're going to do some notes for tomorrow. You guys think for an hour, try to find some way to make this work. So we went into the back hall and we started coming up with ideas of how it can happen. I remember Hope, the script supervisor, this woman in chain smoke, seemed like they're trying to write all the different ideas we had. And we came back with that idea. I don't know if it was Ethan or me or what, but Bobby came up with the idea that we should tuck it off the roof of the thing. And he said, that's it, that's it. That's, that is where the scene has to go. I remember Bob and I in the van ride home afterwards, like, is he really going to put that in the movie? I mean, it was, it was too, it was too much fun. I mean, to be sitting there with this really guy and we were just making up these lines and he was writing them down and it was fun. And if you look very closely, I bet Bob wouldn't like to say it, the last moment of the scenes after Bob throws the thing, forget what he says. Oh my, or something like that. Oh my. It's a total David Letterman impression. It's always, I've always wanted to bust Bob on that. I did at the time, but. So good night, and to you all, give me your hands. We'd be- Peter needed to turn the cameras around on the audience and get reactions from the crowd. So he said, let's, you know, divide it into groups. You know, the middle, the left and the right. When I point to you, I want you to, you know, start laughing or start reacting. And he took about 15 or 20 minutes with this audience where he was standing at the front of them and he was running his hands like this. You know, he'd be like, go like this, and they'd start laughing a little bit and then he'd move down, then he'd point back there and those people would start laughing. And he'd point to both at the same time, they'd both. And then he, I mean, by the end, he was like an orchestra leader and he was playing this audience of 200 extras like an instrument. And he was running his hands like that and the laughter would spread all across. And then he'd spread the laughter that way and then he'd spread it all up and then he'd bring it all down. And he got this crowd so engaged in what was going on. And I just thought it was a perfect illustration of how he directs with his actors is he's inspiring and he's evoking things from people. And you just felt like when he did turn his attention on you, you wanted to be alive for him. There's a scene where I was supposed to find out that Terry, Bob Leonard's character killed himself. And in the script, as was written, this big scene in the bathroom where I shouted, you know, it was his father, it was his father. He, blah, blah, blah, blah, it was his father. This big, long monologue about it. As we was driving to the set, it starts to snow and it's snowing in buckets. It's coming down really fast, these giant flakes of snow. And, you know, I've been up all night. And as soon as I get to the set, Peter runs over in the snow and he says to me, he says, now, you wouldn't run into the bathroom, would you? You'd run outside, wouldn't you? I mean, would you run outside? I think you'd run outside. And I was like, yeah, I'd run outside. Sure, whatever. John Seal, the cinematographer, said to Peter, you know, he said, the snow is letting up. And he said, we can only shoot this once because, why, because we don't have time to cover the tracks. And even if we do, the snow is not gonna cover our error. It looks like it's stopping. And Peter's just, without, you know, a beat, said, it's okay, Ethan can do it in one take. And I'm sitting there like, oh my God, you know what? Do what in one take? All right, you know, we're gonna shoot it outside now. And I remember Ethan telling me that story and welling up with pride that Peter had no doubt that he could do it in one take. Peter gets everybody hustling in the camera, how they're gonna shoot it, and how they're gonna get the snow. And everybody's now on full speed because, you know, anybody, when it's coming down this heavy, it's gonna stop, right? That's what everybody's talking about. So, and Peter's saying, okay, if we don't get it, we'll just go into the bathroom. And that's, you know, but let's try. And so then he comes back to my dressing room and he's like, do you wanna rehearse this? Because we're only gonna be able to do one or two takes. And I said that, you know, I really didn't wanna rehearse it. I told him I was a total mess and that I'd probably be better off not rehearsing it. And, but, did he mind that I hate this speech that I'm supposed to say? I said, can I not say that speech? And Peter's like, I love that speech. It's a great speech. And I was like, well, I think it's really on the nose, you know, really on the nose. And, and Peter's like, all right, well, listen, you cannot say the speech, but I have to think that you said the speech. And I'm like, Laura, what the hell does that mean? Todd, it's okay, Todd. It's all right, Todd. And he's got two cameras going and I did the puking thing and kind of half, half did that speech. And father, dad, Neil, dad, ah. And then I ran down the field and, and he got it. And that was, you know, that was pretty dramatic. There's also a scene with Robin and I at the funeral. Neil, this is the truth. I want you to know, I hold you personally responsible for this. When we shot that, Peter said he doubted that he was going to use it. In fact, first, you know, he cut it. And then he, then when we were shooting the funeral, he said, you know, I was thinking about that scene. What do you think about it? You know, and shoot, you know, and Robin and I both went, you know, let's shoot it and he can always not use it. So we just shot this little sequence. I went to the movie with a friend of mine and his family. And the father and son had the kind of relationship that's in the movie. And at the end of the movie, the father was sobbing and it changed his relationship with his son. It changed their lives, their relationship. That, to be a part of something like that, to be a part of something that can make people's lives better, you know, that's something I can be really proud of. And we should all be proud of, people who are connected with this film, that it has, that it can have that kind of impact on people. That's, that's the best, you know? I remember telling the boys, treasure this experience because of working with a director like Peter. It's gonna be rare in your life. They were young men then, you know, it's 10 years ago, of course. You may have maybe two or three more experiences like this, if you're lucky, in your lifetime. And I meant that, and I said, so treasure every moment because you will look back on it as a frame of reference. And that film really opened up a lot of doors for me, not just professionally, but socially too, you know? Like, I met people that I would have never met as a result of that, and gone places that I would have never gone, you know? Thank God that I did that movie because I met so many just wonderful people as a result of it. I'd love this, to use this as an opportunity to publicly thank Peter Weir for introducing me to the arts and like introducing me to the church of my choice. And most people I meet on the streets still think that movie's the best thing I ever did, you know, 12 years ago. And that's cool with me. Filming Dead Poets Society, to me, was life-changing. The release of it and its success was whatever it was, but filming it, actually making the film, is what lives in my heart and is still with me every day. It changed my life and certainly changed my career too, but more importantly, it changed my life. And Peter Weir tends to do that to people, I think. Even people who just see his films.