Dead Poets Society is a 1989 American coming-of-age film directed by Peter Weir and written by Tom Schulman. It stars Robin Williams and is set in 1959 at a fictional boarding school called Welton Academy, and focuses around a select group of boys, who over time take several pieces of advice from their English teacher, John Keating (Williams). Schulman wrote the script for Dead Poets Society in 1985 based on his own experiences at the Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee. Jeff Kanew was originally hired as director, but was eventually replaced by Weir.