Taylor Swift’s ‘Fortnight’ Music Video Reunites ‘Dead Poets Society’ Stars
It’s not quite midsummer yet, but a Dead Poets Society rewatch is still a dreamy option for spring.
The 1959-set tear-jerker—starring a coterie of up-and-coming heartthrobs as students at the elite, all-boys Welton Academy and Robin Williams as the English teacher who inspires them—hit theaters 35 years ago and instantly made its mark as a critical and box office hit.
Tom Schulman won an Oscar for his original screenplay, one of the film’s five nominations that included Best Picture, Best Director for Peter Weir and Best Actor for Williams, who up till then was far better known for live-wire comedic performances than the quiet, interior drama he also proved so adept at.
And for anyone who hadn’t realized how deeply the trials of Mr. Keating’s squad of burgeoning Tennyson buffs have stayed embedded in the collective psyche, Taylor Swift knew all too well the power of nostalgia: She tapped Dead Poets Society stars Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles—Welton boys Todd and Knox, FTW—to play mad scientists in her “Fortnight” video.
“I think there’s some kind of psychic connection she was trying to provide for the fans about The Tortured Poets Department and the Dead Poets Society,” Hawke mused on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show earlier this month. “She was kind of doing some little homage, and so she asked a couple of us old dogs to come out and make our presence known.”
Just call her captain.
Touchstone/Kobal
But this is now and you, much like the members of a certain cave-frequenting club, want to know more about then. So seize the day and read on to uncover secrets about Dead Poets Society: