10 Things I Hate About You

The Rom Com Rewrite

Lisa and Charles Adrian kick off The Rom Com Rewrite in time for Valentines Day by talking about the (now) classic rom com 10 Things I Hate About You.

Year: 1999

Writers: Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith

Director: Gil Junger

Stars: Heath Ledger, Julia Styles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Larisa Oleynik

(also mentioned in this episode: David Krumholtz, Susan May Pratt and Gabrielle Union)

Show notes:

In this episode, we give a synopsis of the film 10 Things I Hate About You (and a synopsis of that synopsis because Charles Adrian found the film so difficult to follow), we take you through the meet cute, the obstacles and the happy ending, and then we talk about how we would make it better.

You can find a description of the seven major beats of rom com writing here: https://www.well-storied.com/blog/anatomy-of-a-romantic-comedy-seven-essential-story-beats

We mention that the plot of this film is based on The Taming Of The Shrew by William Shakespeare, which you can read a synopsis of here: https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/shrew/summary/.

We also mention Sleepless In Seattle (a 1993 film that you can read about on imdb here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108160/), She’s All That (a 1999 film that you can read about on imdb here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0160862/) and Clueless (a 1995 film that you can read about on imdb here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112697/).

The Ellen we mention is Ellen Degeneres; you can read about The Puppy Episode of her sitcom Ellen, in which the character she played came out as a lesbian, on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppy_Episode.

You can find out about Bikini Kill on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Kill and you can browse a whole selection of the kind of Jared Leto photographs that Kat might have had in her drawer here: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/photos/jared-leto-1997?family=editorial&phrase=jared%20leto%201997&sort=best

Thank you for listening!