This Is Not About 'Dead Poets Society' (But Also It Totally Is)

That terrifically confusing headline goes out to all my Gen X homies who thought that if we listened to Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, marched to the beat of our own drums, and seized the goddamn day, we’d grow up to be brilliant, successful, unique individuals who could forever avoid that sweaty-toothed madman with a stare that pounds my brain. YAWP.

Tom Everett Scott—the guy you first developed a crush on during Dead Poets Society, which flowered into a full-on adoration seven years later when he put on a pair of sunglasses and played a character virtually the same age in That Thing You Do! …

… oh sh**. When I looked up Tom Everett Scott’s character name from Dead Poets Society, I learned that Tom Everett Scott was never actually in Dead Poets Society. I had confused him with Gale Hansen, who basically disappeared after Dead Poets. I had evidently conflated him and his sunglasses with Tom Everett Scott and his sunglasses in That Thing You Do!. I’ve seen Dead Poets Society more than a dozen times and could recite half the movie from memory, and yet my brain insisted Tom Everett Scott was in it. Memory is a real asshole. But I’m sticking with the article, even though I cannot find any photos of Gale Hansen wearing sunglasses, so I may be confusing him with Josh Charles’ character, which makes this a real sh**show of a post.

Anyway, Tom Everett Scott—who was in Southland (double-checks … whew!)—will play the father of Elle Woods in Amazon’s Legally Blonde update, Elle, which is set in high school. So it’s a 2025 television prequel to the original movie. Scott will star opposite June Diane Raphael, who will play his wife. In the original film, Scott’s character was played by James Read, who looks nothing like Scott—who actually looks a little more like the love interest in Legally Blonde, played by Luke Wilson.

And this is part of the reason why diversity is important, folks. White blindness is real, both in the literal and figurative senses.

Here’s a photo of Tom Everett Scott and Mark-Paul Gosselaar in the movie Dead Man On Campus just to add to the confusion.