Featurette: 10 Things I Hate About You (with Two Judgey Girls)

How did Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ become one of the greatest teen comedies of all time? In this Featurette bonus episode, Chris, Lizzie, and special guest Mary from Two Judgey Girls explore the movie that introduced Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles to the world. Find out why the screenwriters clashed with the director, which role Joseph Gordon Levitt really wanted to play, and how that bonkers helicopter shot came to be! Plus discover why this Seattle-based shoot was magical for the cast. Our Featurette episodes are shorter, more relaxed explorations of films we love that don't have quite as much behind-the-scenes drama as a regular What Went Wrong episode... but they’re too fun to skip! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Winterbauer?

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• 0:31Lizzie Bassett?

  12 celebrities, one Don, and cold, hard cash. From the producers of The Traitors comes The Mob, a new Hulu original series now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. In this unique new reality competition show hosted by the iconic Parker Posey, 12 celebrity contestants are about to become members of a powerful family. For two weeks in a lavish Italian villa, they'll shake down and hustle to win a share of up to $250,000. And every good mob needs a Don. Whoever they choose to lead them will have absolute power deciding who stays and who gets taken out, who makes money and who walks away with nothing. In a game of power where loyalty and trust are the currency,

• 1:15Lizzie Bassett?

  will the most powerful reality contestant in TV history be able to keep the family happy? And if they're overthrown by the mob, who will step up and become the new Don? Let the games begin. Watch The Mob, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 1:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to a special episode of your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a movie that takes place in Seattle and was mostly shot in Seattle, let a little bit in Tacoma, but that's fine, it's close enough. It's what went wrong, and we're doing things a little different today. And to explain that, I'm gonna send it over to the person who came up with the brilliant idea for today's format at all, Lizzie Bassett. So celebrate her, blame her, I leave it to you.

• 2:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Great. Love that responsibility. Um, yes. So this is a featurette, folks. This is not a full-length feature episode. This is just a featurette because initially we did a poll around, I believe, rom-coms that people wanted covered. And the one that won was 10 Things I Hate About You. And I didn't think you all were gonna pick that. So I hadn't done enough research into it. And then when you did pick that, I started looking into it and I thought, well, there's not actually enough here for a full episode. So we kind of put it on the shelf and forgot about it. But then I thought, you know what? It doesn't matter. It still deserves its place in the sun. So we thought, why not do slightly shorter episodes, call them featurettes, and still, you know, give these movies their time to shine? So it's a different kind of bonus episode. Let us know if you

• 2:59Lizzie Bassett?

  like this. As I said, today, we are discussing 10 Things I Hate About You. And we have a special guest joining us to help us revisit this William Shakespeare classic. We have Mary from Two Judgey Girls. Hi.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.

• 3:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Of course. Absolutely. And can you tell us a little bit about your show before we dive in?

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Yes. So Two Judgey Girls is a daily podcast and we talk pop culture, but really are focused on Bravo TV. It's the 20th season of Real Housewives of Orange County. We will be deep diving every single episode. Lizzie was on recently and we talked The Valley. We'll be doing Next Gen NYC. Anything that has to do with Bravo, we are covering. So if you want to head over to Two Judgey Girls and give us a listen and follow us on Instagram, please do.

• 3:52Lizzie Bassett?

  You definitely should. And I want everyone to know that Mary is so committed that she sings the theme song to The Valley every time they cover it, which is...

• 3:59Speaker 02

  I'm all right.

• 4:00Lizzie Bassett?

  There it is.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  You ever sing your whole life?

• 4:03Lizzie Bassett?

  It's so funny. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here. We're thrilled to have you to talk about this movie. So let's start with you, Mary. What was your relationship to 10 Things I Hate About You before now? And what did you feel rewatching it for the podcast?

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Rewatching it gave me so much nostalgia. I actually owned the soundtrack. I had it on a CD. And so every single song, I was singing to my husband as I was rewatching it. And I haven't seen this movie since I was in middle school. So... I think this came out when I was in seventh or eighth grade. But you know, when you have the CDs in your car, you listen to an entire CD the entire way through. And so like, that was giving me life, all the music. And I also feel like the fashion is really in right now, all the clothes. It also just, this movie like held up.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  I feel like a middle schooler now would enjoy it just as much as I did 20 years ago.

• 5:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Nice. I agree. I had a similar experience with the soundtrack, which we can get into. But Chris, what was your experience watching this?

• 5:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Watched it with Carmella, who's a huge fan of this movie. On the spectrum of American Pie, ones that don't hold up to Clueless, Sterling, Like a Diamond, Will Never Dull. This is much closer to Clueless. It's not, it's not quite clueless for me, although I do think it gets better and better as the movie goes on. And so especially I think as you focus more and more on Heath Ledger's relationship with Julia Stiles, the movie improves and he is so unbelievably charming and she's great. I really love her speech at the end. I forgot how good she was. Her dad, who's the actor, is escaping me, is one of my favorite like dry comedy delivery, you know, parent performances until, I mean, I was trying to like Stanley Tucci in Easy A

• 5:57Chris Winterbauer?

  or something like that would be like the next one that comes along. The wildly inappropriate Alice in Janney, weird, like erotic literature subplot, flashing the teacher. There are a few things, do they hold up entirely? Eh, I don't know. There, there can be one or two scenes where, you know, they kind of default to a, a cheap homophobic or sexist joke because it was the time, that's what we did in 1999. But overall, I agree. I think this movie holds up really well. It's so fun. I do think it has a really great heart to it ultimately. And that really comes down to the performers. This movie has a great cast. Obviously Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, but the only one who looks like he's actually in high school.

• 6:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Joseph Gordon-Levitt. By the way, aided by the fact that he's next to David Krumholz, who looks like a 45 year old man, even though he's not.

• 6:47Chris Winterbauer?

  After they cut on every take, he is getting a hot lather shave trying to get rid of the five o'clock shadow after every single take. But also Andrew Keegan makes a great heel in this movie. He's very funny. Obviously Gabrielle Union, I forgot, like, we're seeing her just-

• 7:03Lizzie Bassett?

  You know, she's the oldest.

• 7:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Is she? She looks young.

• 7:06Lizzie Bassett?

  She's 10 years older than everybody.

• 7:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, wow.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Because Heath Ledger is 19 when he films this?

• 7:11Chris Winterbauer?

  He's 19 and he looks older to me.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  I, I agree with that, but Julia Stiles is 17 when she-

• 7:18Lizzie Bassett?

  She's very young, yeah.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  And I feel like most movies, when you watch a high school movie, like The Breakfast Club or something like that, they're like-

• 7:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, they're all 45.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Exactly. So to me, I was like, okay, I am watching someone playing a high schooler that could actually be in high school.

• 7:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  That was kind of shocking.

• 7:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. I was surprised that Heath Ledger was 19 because that, he does look older.

• 7:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Me too. I thought he was older. And, uh, Larissa, is it Oleneck?

• 7:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Oleneck, I think.

• 7:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Oleneck, The Secret World of Alex Mack, I had totally forgotten about. Um, she's really fun in this as well, the show where I believe her secret power, she becomes a puddle.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Yes, I watched Alex Mack.

• 7:55Chris Winterbauer?

  And she goes under doors. I loved Alex Mack.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  A Nickelodeon.

• 7:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, really enjoyed it. Also loved the soundtrack, just opening with one week. I was like, oh, we are back in it. We are in it right now. This movie, I think, definitely one of the top five 90s teen movies that you would put on in a time capsule and keep.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Like with She's All That.

• 8:16Chris Winterbauer?

  She's All That would maybe be number five.

• 8:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Hey, She's All That is good.

• 8:20Chris Winterbauer?

  It's good, but it's not quite on this level for me.

• 8:23Lizzie Bassett?

  That's fair.

• 8:24Chris Winterbauer?

  I loved it.

• 8:24Lizzie Bassett?

  That's fair. I, like you, Mary, I had the CD to this. And so I had the same experience. Every single time a needle drop started, I was like, I have a lover who loves me. Every song. I knew every lyric to every song, like, all the way through. I was singing along. I just had the best time. Uh, I have to give a shout out to the music supervisor on this movie, whose name is Ralph Sal. This soundtrack is incredible. And just FYI, this guy also did The Craft. He did Dick and Three Kings the same year as this. Mean Girls, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, so many more. We don't talk about music supervisors that much, but like, this soundtrack is an absolute banger.

• 9:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Do you listen to Girl Talk or did you in high school? So Greg Gillis samples almost every song on this album, I feel like, especially in his first couple of albums in particular.

• 9:12Lizzie Bassett?

  There's it's Yeah, you're right.

• 9:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, there's a lot that's used in this.

• 9:15Lizzie Bassett?

  It's so nostalgic, the songs in particular, but I'm totally with you. The outfits, I forgot how much I wanted to look like Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You. And you know what? I still do. I think her outfits are amazing. Her hair, come on.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  The perfect curl.

• 9:30Lizzie Bassett?

  It looks absolutely incredible. It's the perfect curl and the little braids.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yes.

• 9:35Lizzie Bassett?

  If only. I can't. My daughter would rip them out of my head, but back in the day I would have loved it. I'm with both of you. I think this holds up incredibly well. I was a little nervous rewatching it because there were a couple of moments where I was like, oh no, is this gonna, you know, not quite stand the test of time? And then it really, really does. I'm with you that there are a few moments. And actually, I think we're going to learn over the course of today that some of the moments that maybe don't work as well were not in the original script. So we will get into that. But yeah, I just was so pleasantly surprised by this. Heath Ledger is so unbelievably attractive and charming and just so clearly a movie star from the second you see him on screen.

• 10:18Lizzie Bassett?

  And it was fun to go back and see his, this is his big break. This is his first big movie, same for Julia Stiles. Yeah, actually, the biggest star in this movie was probably Joseph Gordon Levitt, which is like funny to remember, but he's coming off of Third Rock from the Sun. So, all right, let's get into it. Here's the details as always. 10 Things I Hate About You was released March 31st, 1999. It was directed by Gil, I believe it is younger. That's how I'm going to pronounce it. It's J U N G E R. Written by Karen McCullough and Kirsten Smith, of course, based on The Taming of the Shrew, one of my least favorite Shakespeare plays. It stars Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gabrielle Union, Andrew Keegan, David Crumholtz,

• 11:02Lizzie Bassett?

  and 100 million more people. The cast of this is incredible. And the IMDb logline is, "A high school boy, Cameron, cannot date Bianca until her antisocial older sister Kat has a boyfriend. So Cameron pays a mysterious boy, Patrick, to charm Kat. Patrick Verona."

• 11:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Every teen 90s movie was based around a bet of some kind. Like, it's always a bet. It's She's All That, Cruel Intentions, this.

• 11:28Lizzie Bassett?

  To be fair, those are also all remakes. She's All That is Pygmalion, Cruel Intentions is Dangerous Liaisons.

• 11:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, they're all, they're all pulling from far more salacious material. I feel like only Cruel Intentions really leans into it in a really gross, but kind of awesome way.

• 11:44Lizzie Bassett?

  I love Cruel Intentions.

• 11:45Chris Winterbauer?

  I do, too. That is a weird movie. Ryan Phillippe's never been better.

• 11:50Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true.

• 11:53Lizzie Bassett?

  We recently moved into a new house and realized that our bedding desperately needed a refresh. So I took my own advice. And before spending all our money on a luxury bedding brand, I went to Quince. And let me tell you, we now have the crispest, coolest, most beautiful, organic percale sheets and duvet covers that we've ever had. I've bought quite a bit of bedding from Quince, and it's all super high quality and has lasted for years without paying the brand markup. Now, obviously, you shouldn't stop at bedding. You should also refresh your closet with elevated everyday essentials that you will wear over and over again. Think cozy Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at 50 bucks, cashmere scarves, responsibly sourced down jackets, and 14-karat gold jewelry. I genuinely love Quince, and I shop here for everything. I walked out the door the other day and realized every single thing I was wearing

• 12:36Lizzie Bassett?

  was Quince, down to my socks. Did I mention their socks are great, too? Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was What Went Wrong. It's the best way to support the show. Today's episode is sponsored by Mars. You might not realize it, but Mars is behind so many of your favorite Halloween treats, and I'm not just talking about your candy boy. Yes, Mars makes iconic candies like M&Ms, Snickers, Starburst, my personal favorite, and Skittles. But they also have salty snacks, easy to make meal options, and even treats for your pets. There's something for everyone to enjoy this spooky season. David and I are too old to trick or treat, so we've been getting creative with our Halloween movie night spreads for our friends.

• 13:21Lizzie Bassett?

  I put together a char bootery board with some classic sweets like Rice Krispy Treats and Peanut Butter M&Ms. And because I'm a salty girl, I added some Pringles and my all time favorite snack, Cheez-It crackers. Scary delicious. For Halloween night, I'm making a spooky seven-layer dip using Ben's Original Ready Rice because there is nothing that my kid loves more than a rice and bean dip. And don't think I forgot about our dog Q. Mars knows he needs a celebration too, so I put together a special Halloween treat jar packed with Greenie's Original Pumpkin Spice Dental Chews and Pedigree Tasty Biscuits. He's agreed to share with the neighbors because he's a very good boy. Find Mars products in a retailer near you or on Instagram at Mars Global, M-A-R-S-G-L-O-B-A-L, where you can shop everyday favorites and limited time Halloween offerings.

• 14:07Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, so in 1996, a young woman named Kirsten Smith was living in LA and working for an indie production company as a script reader, which means reading scripts, querying letters, probably writing coverage. I did this early on, Chris. You've probably done this at some point. She had one screenplay of her own under her belt and wrote poetry in her spare time. But one fateful day, she got a query letter from another young woman, Karen McCullough, and this one caught her eye. Because McCullough had bounced around marketing and PR jobs in DC, she moved to New Mexico. She was like, there's jack shit to do here. And then settled in Denver where she started cranking out screenplays, like nine or 10 screenplays. So in this query letter, she included log lines for each of these scripts. And Smith really liked them. So she wrote McCullough back and asked to read a screenplay.

• 14:51Lizzie Bassett?

  She really liked that, so she asked to read another. And finally, she called up McCullough and said, hey, maybe we should meet for drinks if you're ever in LA. And McCullough was like, I'm on an airplane now. So they met up, they got drinks, and they started writing their script together on a cocktail napkin that night. And that script was not 10 Things I Hate About You. According to the New York Times, it was a, quote, "female action thriller about girls who kill members of the Navy SEALs."

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 15:19Chris Winterbauer?

  That's fun.

• 15:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure.

• 15:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Instead of clubbing baby seals, it's clubbing Navy SEALs.

• 15:25Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right.

• 15:25Chris Winterbauer?

  In a sense, yeah.

• 15:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Very good. So Smith said they wrote it, quote, because we were like, long kiss, good night is going to be a huge hit. Everyone's going to want more female action. It wasn't, and no one wanted our script.

• 15:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Long Kiss Good Night, pretty good.

• 15:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, not according to everyone in the 90s, apparently. But that didn't stop these two. They looked around. They saw that teen comedies were selling like hotcakes. They were like, fine, we'll write one of those. And they went a little slower this time. There was no feverish writing on cocktail napkins, but there was some source material. McCullough had always been an avid writer, and she had a collection of high school diaries. Do either of you ever keep a diary?

• 16:02Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  I did.

• 16:03Lizzie Bassett?

  You did?

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Have you read it?

• 16:05Speaker 02

  I'm too embarrassed to reread it. And even in college, when I would go on trips, I would write a diary entry the next day of what happened the night before.

• 16:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, my God.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  But I'm-

• 16:18Lizzie Bassett?

  You have to read it.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  I'm genuinely scared to read them because I feel like-

• 16:22Chris Winterbauer?

  You should do it. You should get drunk with your husband and you should read it.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:25Chris Winterbauer?

  We did that with, I did that with Carmella's. We did that together with her middle school diary from when she was in sixth grade. And it was the most amazing. I can't, I will-

• 16:37Speaker 02

  I definitely have it.

• 16:38Chris Winterbauer?

  I can't reveal anything because it's too personal. It's just incredible. Alternating between some of the most insightful, intelligent things you would never expect an 11 year old to say, followed by, hands down, the dumbest take in the history of the world. And so it was just amazing. It was so charming.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Okay, mine's probably from 17 to like 22. So I'm sure-

• 16:59Lizzie Bassett?

  That's, those are good years.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  There are some interesting stories in there. I feel like I would rewrite a story from the night before of what happened.

• 17:07Lizzie Bassett?

  You gotta go back and look.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Okay, I will.

• 17:09Lizzie Bassett?

  That's exactly what McCullough did. So she pulled out her high school diaries, and she's reading them. And that's when she found a list called 10 Things I Hate About Anthony, written about a boyfriend she didn't particularly care for. So she brought it to Smith, who immediately was like, that's our title. But they still don't have a story. And then they saw Amy Heckerling's Clueless. And they thought, that's it. If she can pull from Jane Austen, because obviously Clueless is Emma, then why can't we do that? So they go looking for anything, fairy tale, story, play, novel, something they could use as a jumping off point. They searched high and low for two months, and they kept coming back empty handed until a friend suggested The Taming of the Shrew. Smith said, "The more we read the play, it just felt like a perfect adaptation and

• 17:52Lizzie Bassett?

  something that had all of the great Shakespearean turns and twists, but also could be modernized in a really cool feminist way." I really don't like this play, but I like what they did with it a lot. So, Smith and McCullough set out to write their outline, the same way any aspiring screenwriters would. They hold up for a week in McCullough's timeshare in Mexico that she bought when she was really, really drunk.

• 18:12Chris Winterbauer?

  She'll never get out of that. She's still paying for it now. My grandparents had a timeshare, and I think my parents were forced to inherit it and they were trying to get rid of it. It's a curse. It is as close to a curse as exists in this world.

• 18:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, she got hammered and bought one. So, then they wrote the whole thing by sending pages back and forth via actual mail and fax. Now, they acknowledge that the internet probably did exist, but that Kirsten just didn't have email. So, this is how they did it. And it's fun, because Smith said, "We had a lot of debates, but I think what comes through the movie is so personal. Karen has a great sense of humor. She loves a dick joke. I love Bikini Kill and indie rock music. I was a poet before. We both love a really strong-willed feminist-leading character. We just really want her to be very defiant and didn't care what people thought about her. We wanted for her to be punk rock." Now, Smith is originally from Seattle, but they set the script in Portland, Oregon. The Pacific Northwest location, partly Smith's origins, but also they really wanted to differentiate

• 19:13Lizzie Bassett?

  this from Clueless, which is obviously very clearly set in LA. So, they finished writing in January of 1997 and immediately started shopping it around everywhere. Like, everywhere. They took the script to Sundance. They took it out to different producers who tried shopping it around. And finally, they got a manager who, through a daisy chain of events, manages to get the scripts into the hands of Touchstone, which was, of course, owned by Disney. Now, Smith described this year for Disney as the, quote, "teen movie lottery of 1997." Basically, Disney was looking around, seeing that teen movies were making money. And so they were just putting the word out, trying to buy a bunch of teen movie scripts.

• 19:49Chris Winterbauer?

  And things like, you know, Scream had redefined slasher movies, 96, I want to say, and had done huge business. So everything, you know, rated R, all the way down to PG, these movies are minting money.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  I remember every Friday night in seventh and eighth grade, I went to the movie theater. It didn't even matter what movie was on. That was just something to do to occupy your time. And I went every single weekend to the movies.

• 20:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, me too.

• 20:16Chris Winterbauer?

  You could even argue that, I mean, this wouldn't be until the same year as 10 Things, but even something like Blair Witch has a teen feel to it. They all did at this point in time. There was such personality, I feel like, to, not that there isn't now, but there was such outward personality to teen culture, where I think what's hard about trying to capture teen culture now is that it's so integrated into the internet and it's really hard to make that visual in a lot of ways. But when it works, like Obsession, right? They came up with a metaphor that works. People really show up for it. And that's how people were showing up for these movies in the 90s.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  And like a Titanic, where you saw it seven times.

• 20:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, Titanic, a great example. I always forget that they're so young, because when I, we were younger than them. So they seemed grown. And now I watch it and I think, you're children. Women and children first. That's you.

• 21:03Lizzie Bassett?

  I think she is 19 in that.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  And he's, I think, 17. But I mean, that was a movie that you saw in the movie theater? I saw it seven times in the movie theater. And

• 21:13Lizzie Bassett?

  It was amazing.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  There was such a long period of time between seeing it in the movies when it was actually then released to DVD or VHS, the waiting period.

• 21:23Chris Winterbauer?

  It's like, because six months when you're that old is, you know, 5 to 10% of your life. And you think, oh, my God, I've missed it. I'm never going to see it again.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  This was also the time where you would go into Blockbuster and hope to get it on the Friday night. And if you weren't there on time, you'd have to go to a different movie that they had in stock. It's so crazy that now everything is so on demand and you can get it immediately.

• 21:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 21:52Lizzie Bassett?

  So Disney put Smith and McCalla through some rewrites. But the thing is, they were up against another script going through the same process. Ultimately, when the time came, Disney had to decide between 10 Things I Hate About You and something that might really have been called School Slut.

• 22:09Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 22:11Lizzie Bassett?

  That's

• 22:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Really?

• 22:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Doesn't feel very Disney.

• 22:16Lizzie Bassett?

  No, it doesn't. I think they might have changed the title. They chose

• 22:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Working title.

• 22:21Lizzie Bassett?

  School slut. School slut. But they did want to know, why was Kat so dang angry? That was their big thing. She's so angry. Why is she so? She has everything she could possibly want. Why is she angry? And they're like, she just is. It's okay. Like, it's okay for a girl to be angry. And they said, Hold that thought, because no. In six months from start to finish, Smith and McCullough had sold the second script they'd ever written. Now they had to find a director and Disney sent the script around to every agent looking for the right person for the job. And they ended up hiring a TV director who'd never helmed a feature before.

• 22:58Lizzie Bassett?

  That's not really giving Gil Younger enough credit, though, because he had directed a ton of TV and actually had just directed the coming out episode of Ellen. Do you remember that?

• 23:07Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't. I mean, I, well, I remember discussions of it. I don't, I don't remember the episode.

• 23:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Got it. I mean, it was a big deal. Mary, did you ever watch that?

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. And then, and then she, because she did that, she got canceled.

• 23:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Yeah. It was, I mean, it was a huge deal. Say what you will about Ellen. That episode was pretty groundbreaking. And it was this episode that pushed Gil into wanting to direct a feature because he had such a good time doing that and the emotional weight of it and everything. He thought if one hour is good, two hours must be better.

• 23:39Chris Winterbauer?

  As a TV director, had he directed, I'm assuming he probably directed a lot of young actors.

• 23:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he had.

• 23:45Chris Winterbauer?

  As well. And so that gives him an advantage also. He knows how to work with young people. He probably can work on a budget and work really well on a tight schedule.

• 23:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, this budget is not huge. I've, New York Times reported it at about 11.5 million. I've seen up to 13 million, but I mean, it's pretty small.

• 24:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Good scope for

• 24:02Lizzie Bassett?

  It does.

• 24:02Chris Winterbauer?

  For that. It ends with a helicopter shot over Stadium High School.

• 24:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, we'll get to that.

• 24:06Chris Winterbauer?

  All right.

• 24:08Lizzie Bassett?

  He got a meeting with Disney and told them, "It's perfect. No notes." Just kidding. He actually had two very specific problems with the script. The male and female leads. He really, really didn't like them. He said Julius Stiles' character was just cold and arrogant. What I needed to know is why? Why is she that way? There's some type of emotional pain, so she's very guarded. Heath Ledger's character felt like he was just weird for weird's sake. Again, what are his emotional underpinnings? Why is he a bit of an outcast? What is it about him that caused him to behave this way?

• 24:37Chris Winterbauer?

  I think those are good notes. I think audiences always wonder those things.

• 24:40Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 24:41Chris Winterbauer?

  They at least need a hint. And you get an explanation with her and a hint with him, I would argue. And I think that's enough.

• 24:47Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm with you. I think these are good notes. I'm not sure I love the other elements that he added to this movie, which we will get into, but I think he's spot on with this. So I guess Disney enjoyed being nagged because they hired him. And as soon as he'd gotten the job, he realized, "Oh, my God. I don't know what I'm doing." So he went to Borders Books and Music, R.I.P., and bought six books. Yep, bought six books on how to direct a movie. Oh, I started reading all of them.

• 25:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Been there.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  How did you direct a movie for dummies?

• 25:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, literally.

• 25:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Just give me the dumbest version.

• 25:21Lizzie Bassett?

  That's probably what he bought. He was like freaking out, having a panic attack, flipping through the idiot's guide to making a feature film. But there's one thing Younger knew from the start. He did not want to direct a typical high school rom-com. He said, "I want to direct a movie that my friends will also love. So a movie about truth, a movie about relationships, a movie about love, as opposed to being the central focus, high school kids, and the typical condescending high school movies that are made all the time." I think he achieves that goal.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Almost a little like Dawson Creek-esque. The vocabulary is intelligent.

• 25:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Dawson's River, as it's called.

• 25:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, in this movie. Those Dawson's River kids climbing into each other's beds, which is like a direct quote from my mom talking about Dawson's Creek.

• 26:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I wasn't allowed to watch it either. I was allowed to watch rated R movies in 3rd grade.

• 26:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Me too, but not Dawson's Creek. Exact same.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  I watched Dawson's Creek with my mom. And I think I would ask her, "What does that word mean?"

• 26:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 26:17Lizzie Bassett?

  And she'd be like, "Nothing."

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:19Chris Winterbauer?

  It's Spanish. Don't worry about it.

• 26:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, according to Younger, he made some pretty big changes to the script pretty quickly. He says he asked four of his best friends, who happened to be major showrunners at the time, which does make sense, he was a sitcom director, to get together and help rewrite the script over the course of four days. He also said they removed about 28 pages from it. Now, he acknowledges they made pretty big changes to the script, but that, according to him, the core of the film was on the page. I, we're gonna talk about the screenwriters a little more and what they went on to do. I'm inclined to believe they added a little less to the script than he is hinting here, but who knows?

• 26:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Can I point out an example of what feels like a showrunner added joke?

• 27:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure, I wonder if you're right.

• 27:03Chris Winterbauer?

  When Joseph Gordon-Levitt says, "Not in a prison film," sort of way, right? When they're, they're, he's like, "We're gonna be your boys."

• 27:10Lizzie Bassett?

  No, that might be the screenwriters.

• 27:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, cuz that, that just, to me, felt like, the scene had already moved on. Why are we dropping this joke that's incongruous, honestly, with his character as well? So anyway, that was just an example of one that stood out to me, that I felt.

• 27:23Lizzie Bassett?

  That's interesting. I feel like I liked that one. I, I don't know about some of those sort of quips, but we will, what?

• 27:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie loves a good prison film joke.

• 27:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Listen, he delivered it well.

• 27:34Chris Winterbauer?

  You're Michael Scott in, in the, "Don't drop the soap, don't drop the..."

• 27:38Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. As you might imagine, our two screenwriters did not love this approach. In fact, they didn't get along with Younger particularly well at all over the course of this. He came from the sitcom world. He really wanted to add a lot more physical comedy gags. So those are the big things that they added.

• 27:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Kremholtz shooting off, uh...

• 27:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  The party where the window shatters.

• 28:04Chris Winterbauer?

  That one I didn't care about. The, yeah.

• 28:06Lizzie Bassett?

  The motorcycle, I actually think, is funny. It's one of the few that I think works.

• 28:09Chris Winterbauer?

  I like the motorcycle. I think it's a funny pratfall.

• 28:12Lizzie Bassett?

  But that is the one thing, upon watching this back, and maybe it was colored by the fact that I had done this research, but there's too many. Like, at a certain point, there's too many arrows in the butt, you know, like...

• 28:24Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. Yeah, the golf ball, the arrow. It starts getting a little, and I think it actually starts to take away from the great physical moments of her dancing on the table. And him dancing down the bleachers. And like, cause him going down the bleachers is one of the most iconic moments in 90s teen film history.

• 28:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Which that's for sure in the script, by the way.

• 28:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, and her on the table, she's great. I mean, that, I know we all talk about the State of the Last Dance audition. We should be talking about Julia Stiles on the table in 10 Things I Hate About You, cause it's so fun.

• 28:50Lizzie Bassett?

  They're connected, Chris.

• 28:57Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, so they really hated these physical comedy moments. They've since acknowledged that most of the moments work. However, they actually really don't love the motorcycle sequence. I think that's the best one. It's so funny.

• 29:11Chris Winterbauer?

  I do too. It also, it, to me, it also gives scope to the set and the setting. That, so I believe that you're looking at Commencement Bay, that's the, that's in Tacoma. It's a really beautiful football field. It's a cool shot. It helps establish the geography, which will later-

• 29:26Lizzie Bassett?

  That they're at an actual school, yeah.

• 29:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, when he goes down the bleachers, which are on camera right as you do the shot. To me, that one feels justified and, and like it serves a story purpose.

• 29:36Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree, but from there on out, they start to get a little tiresome.

• 29:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, the arrow, that, once you hit the arrow in the butt, you start to think-

• 29:42Lizzie Bassett?

  It's too funny.

• 29:42Chris Winterbauer?

  What movie am I in?

• 29:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, it's just a little weird. But so the biggest changes made to the script seemed to be around Kat. Now, originally Kat's mom was very much present in the screenplay, but according to McCullough, everybody was like, why is Kat such a bitch? What if her mom left and that's why she's such a bitch? She said there, like, okay.

• 30:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Which is so funny. Smith said, I mean, with the female characters, it's like she's got to have a reason to have an attitude problem, because if you have a vagina and an attitude problem, there needs to be an explanation. I understand both sides of this. I understand what they're saying. I personally don't mind adding in the stuff with their mom missing. They don't like the scene with the mom's pearls that was added. Maybe there was a less ham-fisted way to, to do this. It doesn't bother me, I will say.

• 30:30Chris Winterbauer?

  To me, it emphasizes the importance of her relationship with her sister. And so that's why I like it is that it and their dad a little bit to me than I understand their father's character more. So again, I don't like the sexist valence of the logic, but if the note had just been, I'm worried that the audience is going to keep wondering why this character is the way they are. We should probably give them a reason. I think that's a valid note is all I would say.

• 30:57Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. And upon watching it this time, you know, I always used to think like, oh my God, she's perfect. Like, of course, everyone would love her. This is ridiculous. Watching it this time, I was like, no, okay, she is actually an asshole and like, pretty difficult to get along with, which is why maybe in a weird, twisted way, she kind of needed this setup to happen in order to have the connection with someone like Patrick in the scenario of this movie and that he did too, like that they're both sort of unable on their own to kind of bridge that gap. And I liked the way that this set that up. I think it achieved that very well.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  I wanted more of both their backstory from the beginning.

• 31:36Chris Winterbauer?

  I definitely felt like I wanted more of him, right? Because I feel like we get even less of him.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  They just threw it in at the end and was like, I lived with my grandfather for a year when you had all these crazy stories, like he doesn't even have a liver and whatnot.

• 31:52Chris Winterbauer?

  But also, that's kind of a crazy story. I fed my dying grandpa SpaghettiOs for a year and like, lived on his couch. And he's just smiling and like dipping her in the dance as he does it. We just move, she has no follow ups.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Quickly.

• 32:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, that's interesting. I would like to know more. Yeah, no.

• 32:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Not allowed.

• 32:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Nothing else.

• 32:11Lizzie Bassett?

  They also really didn't like the moments they found incredibly unrealistic, like when Patrick calls in a favor to bring letters to Cleo to prom.

• 32:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I don't know what favor that was.

• 32:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Both the screenwriters were like, a favor to who? How does this work?

• 32:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Called the mayor. Yeah.

• 32:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure. But when it came time to casting, Disney really wanted big names in the lead roles and they had two people in mind for Kat and Patrick. And guess what, Mary? They're Dawson's Creek stars Katie Holmes and James Vanderby.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Wow. I did not know this. That's shocking. It would have been such a different movie had they been the ones.

• 32:50Lizzie Bassett?

  So much lower energy.

• 32:54Chris Winterbauer?

  I love you, baby. Yeah.

• 32:59Lizzie Bassett?

  For whatever reason, they didn't work out and those roles remained some of the last to be cast. Now, in the meantime, Joseph Gordon Levitt was one of the first people to join the project. And again, he's probably the biggest name coming off a third rock from the sun. But he was a bit of a tough sell. He really did not want to do teen comedies. He wanted to do indie films. He wanted to do Sundance. And remember, this is 90s Sundance. So it's like peak actual independent films.

• 33:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Can you do like, was it Mysterious Skin that he did?

• 33:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 33:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Shortly after this?

• 33:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep. And then, of course, he goes on to do Brick and yeah. So he does do it, but he did this first. He auditioned and he actually wanted a different part. Do you have any guesses what part he wanted to play in this movie?

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Patrick.

• 33:42Lizzie Bassett?

  It's not Patrick.

• 33:43Chris Winterbauer?

  I mean, then I have no educated guess.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Um, hot model. What's his name?

• 33:48Lizzie Bassett?

  No, no. He knew himself better than both of you.

• 33:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Then is it the David Crumholtz character?

• 33:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he wanted to play Michael, the David Crumholtz's part. He thought it was really funny. That's what he wanted to do. But of course, after reading for both, they came back and they were like, yeah, no, you're the biggest star. Joining this, we're offering you Cameron.

• 34:08Lizzie Bassett?

  He still was like, I don't really want to do it. And so younger Smith and McCullough met with him and heard him out about all of his concerns. They knew it's important to get him on board. They don't have any names attached yet. And according to McCullough, Smith took a pretty big swing in this meeting. She said, quote, "He was trying to get a handle on the character." And Kirsten whips out, "He's like Luke Skywalker." And Joe's just sitting there nodding like, "All right, all right." And I'm standing there thinking, "What?"

• 34:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Go buy yourself a Star War.

• 34:35Lizzie Bassett?

  I love this. I love that the other one's just like, "I have no idea what you're talking about." But he bought it.

• 34:42Chris Winterbauer?

  He's like Luke Skywalker if he tried to trick Princess Leia into dating him.

• 34:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 34:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly.

• 34:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, for the role of Kat, they saw tons of young women, including, as we said, Katie Holmes. But also, She's All That, Rachel Leigh Cook.

• 34:59Chris Winterbauer?

  What about Kirsten Dunst? Wasn't the virgin suicides around this?

• 35:02Lizzie Bassett?

  I did not see her name, which I think is interesting. They looked at Summer Phoenix, Melissa Joan Hart, Eliza Dushku, Lauren Ambrose, Gabby Hoffman.

• 35:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Young Gabby Hoffman, interesting.

• 35:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Very young. Alicia Wick, Carrie Russell, and of course, Larissa Olenek, who would end up being cast as Bianca instead. She actually really wanted to play Kat. And so when she was auditioning for Bianca, she apparently did it like she didn't really give a shit. And she thinks that's why she got it.

• 35:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Bianca, yeah, exactly.

• 35:32Lizzie Bassett?

  And then Anna Paquin and Kate Hudson were involved and they actually offered it to Kate Hudson, who turned it down because Goldie Hawn didn't like the script.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Oh, that's so interesting.

• 35:42Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. I wonder what she didn't like about it.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Maybe she didn't want her to get like labeled as this alternative person or something? She wanted me more like girl next door?

• 35:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Maybe, because Almost Famous was 2000? When was Almost Famous?

• 35:57Chris Winterbauer?

  It was right around this time. It was almost.

• 35:59Lizzie Bassett?

  It's 2000, yeah.

• 36:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Almost exactly this year.

• 36:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep.

• 36:02Chris Winterbauer?

  She might have been holding out. I wonder if it was the high school thing where she said, no, you don't, you know, you don't want to get stuck in the high school role sort of thing. And let's try to move you past it.

• 36:12Lizzie Bassett?

  I wonder if she was older too.

• 36:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 36:15Lizzie Bassett?

  No, she's same age as Heath Ledger. So she was pretty young. Well, only Goldie Hawn knows. So finally, Younger got a call from the head of casting at Disney and asked if he'd be willing to meet with one more actress. She'd only done one indie film. Her agent's really pushing her for this. And Younger's like, fine. And so he met Julia Stiles that evening. And he said, quote, "The first thing that struck me about Julia is that she didn't give a shit about how she was dressed. She was being herself. The second thing was the way she extended her hand and gave me a firm handshake. There was so much confidence in that. I literally thought, God, I hope she can act because if she can, this is going to be the girl." And of course, she could. As soon as they left the audition, he called Disney and said, hire her. Now Stiles was thrilled because she'd been going out for a ton of teen comedies at this

• 37:00Lizzie Bassett?

  point. She was getting nothing. She kept being told, you know, you're not bubbly enough. You need to be more cutesy, smile more, be a little more effervescent. And that's really not her. So when she read the role of Kat, she felt like she could finally breathe, although she does acknowledge that it was more sort of aspirational for her at the time because being that assertive even in her own life was something that she still struggled with. And again, she's very young. To your point, she's like 17, 18. Now Younger brought in David Crumholt, who he knew from the sitcom world to play Michael, but plot twist, he wanted to play Cameron. Let him switch.

• 37:35Chris Winterbauer?

  No, you can't.

• 37:37Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 37:37Chris Winterbauer?

  No, sorry, boys.

• 37:39Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 37:40Chris Winterbauer?

  You can't. No way.

• 37:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, as the shoot date approached, they had one role left to fill. Of course, it's Patrick Verona. Now, Younger says he read somewhere around 253 guys for the part, which he points out means that casting had probably read something like 2,500 guys for the part.

• 38:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 38:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow. No one was right. They were not finding him. And then casting director Marsha Ross asked if he wanted to take a break during one of their marathon casting sessions and Younger said, no, just bring in the next one. And she's like, okay, this next guy, I don't know anything about him. He is here as a favor to his agent. Please don't judge me if he sucks. I really don't know what we're gonna get. And of course, in walked Heath Ledger in a white Saturday Night Fever suit and black shirt. He was both way too dressed up and extremely rumpled because the suit was not pressed and he looked pretty cool.

• 38:34Chris Winterbauer?

  I mean, 15 years earlier, it would have been Johnny Depp, right? Or 12 years earlier. And so you're just waiting for, and like Leo never did this type of movie, you know, but you need that movie star guy here to really elevate it. And Ledger just lands in their lap. It's crazy.

• 38:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Younger said he took four steps into the room. I hadn't said hi yet. He hadn't said hi yet. He's walking towards me and I thought to myself, if this fucker can speak English, I'm going to cast him.

• 39:04Chris Winterbauer?

  And then he has an Australian accent they're gonna have to explain in this.

• 39:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  That's what I was thinking. So he must introduce himself, speak in his accent and then switch over to sound.

• 39:16Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't, yeah, I wonder if he didn't even do.

• 39:18Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't think he even did an American accent. I don't even think he tried.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 39:22Lizzie Bassett?

  He's like fresh off the boat from Australia.

• 39:24Chris Winterbauer?

  I know in the movie when they're like, I lived in Australia until I was 10. I was like, bitch, you lived in Australia until 10 minutes ago.

• 39:30Lizzie Bassett?

  10 minutes ago, yes. Exactly. Apparently, this is Younger's recounting of it. He turned to the casting directors and said, ladies, I've never wanted to sleep with a man, but if I had to sleep with a man, that would be the man. Cast him immediately.

• 39:43Chris Winterbauer?

  It'd be this 18 year old boy right here.

• 39:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Good times. Now, of course, it wasn't actually this simple. They did screen test four people. Two of them, of course, were Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger, and the other two were Josh Hartnett and Eliza Dushku.

• 39:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, Hartnett makes sense, too.

• 40:00Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 40:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Makes a lot of sense.

• 40:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I love Josh Hartnett.

• 40:03Chris Winterbauer?

  He kind of plays, he's got the slutty little bangs in the faculty. He has Courtney Cox's haircut from screen three in the faculty. And that's a great, great 90s teen movie that features a lot of the other future movie stars.

• 40:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 40:17Chris Winterbauer?

  And whatnot.

• 40:18Lizzie Bassett?

  It does. I love Josh Hartnett. He doesn't, I don't think he brings the fun in the same way that Heath Ledger does, which you need in this movie.

• 40:26Chris Winterbauer?

  What do you think, Mary? Where do you stand on Josh Hartnett?

• 40:29Speaker 02

  I love Josh Hartnett. I had a teacher my freshman year that looked like Josh Hartnett that I had the biggest crush on.

• 40:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Wait, I did too. Was it just the unibrow? Was it just they had a little bit of unibrow? Cause that's what mine was.

• 40:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Let's all remember Tommy Lee Jones was the OG and then Josh Hartnett stole it from him.

• 40:44Lizzie Bassett?

  It didn't hit as hard, though.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  I never tried harder in a class because I had a crush on my teacher. But I just feel like Heath Ledger, he's like light and airy and charismatic and such like a natural. I feel like you walk into a room and he starts talking to you and you just get like enveloped by him. And it sounds like that's what happened as he was casted. I also don't remember him having, I really noticed like his freckles in this movie.

• 41:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  And there was something like young and innocent about seeing the freckles that I love too. He's just charming, all well-rounded.

• 41:19Chris Winterbauer?

  And he's got like his look with the hair. He's got a Jim Morrison vibe. I think there's something to it that fits Seattle in kind of a throwback way. He feel like Hartnett, I think would feel more grunge.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  And like sexy. And I think that Heath is a little bit more charismatic that you want to talk to him. Like, he gets cuter the more you talk to him.

• 41:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Hartnett has a darkness that's really great in some of his roles. I really love it. Split, shout out, serial killer Josh Hartnett, but not Split. What's the movie? Not Split. What was the one? Trap, which didn't feature enough trap music. Anyway.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  And he took such a long pause.

• 41:58Chris Winterbauer?

  He did.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Like, he didn't do a movie for, what, like, 20 years?

• 42:03Chris Winterbauer?

  No, 10. Like, think like 10. Like, Lucky Number 11.

• 42:06Lizzie Bassett?

  But that was him just saying, I don't want to be a part of Hollywood. And like, he went to be with his family and I believe moved back to Minnesota and like, I know someone who knew him through mutual friends and just said he was like the loveliest guy who just, just had it. Like, he didn't want to do it for a little while. And so that was entirely his choice, which is like also pretty badass.

• 42:32Lizzie Bassett?

  So when it came time to film, they'd initially planned to shoot just a few exteriors in Seattle, you know, bring the actors up for a week, whatever, five days, and then film everything else in LA. But when Gil Younger saw Stadium High School in Tacoma, Washington, he was like, record scratch, we're filming the entire thing here. They were only three weeks away from filming and had to prep basically the entire shoot with that location change, which I'm sure his location manager was thrilled about.

• 42:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Some of the cast was stoked to be spending the summer in Seattle. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was not one of them. He wasn't happy about the last minute switch, which meant he'd be away from his friends for the whole summer. Because he's obviously an LA kid. But this pivot also created a very close knit vibe amongst the cast who all stayed at the same hotel. Apparently, they all had to be moved onto the same floor even because all the other hotel guests were like, please, please, it smells like weed. They're partying until three in the morning every night. You have to move them.

• 43:26Chris Winterbauer?

  I think Stadium High School was originally a hotel.

• 43:28Lizzie Bassett?

  It looks like it. I mean, it's beautiful.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Was there some romance going on behind the scenes?

• 43:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, eventually there was. Julia Stiles and Joseph Gordon-Levitt did actually date coming off of this movie. I believe that's the only relationship that generated from this. And they did it for a bit.

• 43:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Did you hear something else, Mary?

• 43:46Speaker 02

  So I think there might have been a little love triangle between JGL, Larissa, and Julia Stiles.

• 43:56Lizzie Bassett?

  I think you're right. Okay, so I knew that he dated Julia Stiles briefly on the set of this, but I think he kinda like hopped from one sister to the other after that and then dated Larissa O'Leary.

• 44:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, phrasing also not real life sisters, just to be clear.

• 44:11Lizzie Bassett?

  No, I'm just saying.

• 44:14Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, marry with the gossip. Very good. So another fun fact, apparently Heath Ledger showed up carrying a didgeridoo and would play it frequently at the parties. It sounds like he was like the life of the party and everybody sort of rallied around him. Now, principal photography took place the summer of 1998 from June 8th to August 6th, all over Seattle, but mostly Tacoma, Washington. So you're wrong, Chris. It was primarily Tacoma.

• 44:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I didn't know it was primarily Tacoma because they do shoot in Lake Union on the paddle boats.

• 44:43Lizzie Bassett?

  They do. Gas Works is obviously Seattle, Lake Union, Seattle, Cary Park is Seattle.

• 44:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I don't think they ever offered hand thrown paintball at Gas Works, but I don't know that for a fact.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  That was like my dream date.

• 44:55Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  This moment. I mean, like.

• 44:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Paint throwing?

• 45:00Speaker 02

  This is like every girl's.

• 45:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, I mean, I guess if it's Heath Ledger that you're throwing the paint with, sure.

• 45:06Lizzie Bassett?

  It looks so fun.

• 45:07Chris Winterbauer?

  The realistic version of that is the snowball fight in Dumb and Dumber where he beams her with the snowball. Like, let's be honest.

• 45:15Lizzie Bassett?

  The guy goes too hard. Yeah, probably.

• 45:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 45:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Probably. But fun fact, Chris, producer Andrew Lazar rented a house on Mercer Island for the duration of the shoot.

• 45:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, wow.

• 45:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, hometown.

• 45:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  I also think that movies need to bring back this like montage, like listen to an entire song and create like romantic scene. Like, I feel like all these 90s movies had these moments of like, we had the best time and they go out for like a full day date and have this great soundtrack to go along with it. And we're missing that from movies now. Yeah.

• 45:51Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. Bring back the montage. Gordon Levitt said, "We all really loved spending time with each other on that movie. While we were shooting, we all genuinely hung out all the time. That doesn't usually happen in my subsequent experiences on film sets. There was some kind of chemistry between that whole group of people, and I think when that happens, it shines through." Now, when McCullough and Smith visited, they would party with the cast, which apparently included piling everyone into a stretched limo and taking them to strip clubs, which, as our researcher pointed out, probably would not have flown if they were guys.

• 46:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Chris, any top notch Seattle strip clubs to shout out on the pod?

• 46:25Chris Winterbauer?

  There's one that David and Troy went to a couple of times that they took me to. It was the one time I went to a strip club. I can't remember what it was called. Uh, and it was kind of a bummer, but it was a funny story because one of our friends got was really drunk. And it was the, it was his last night before he was going to college. And so he proceeded to, we didn't know that actually. And he kept going to the ATM and overdrafting his debit card.

• 46:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh my god.

• 46:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Ended up spending hu- hundreds of dollars he didn't have. We took him home. We, I was the designated driver. I was sober. Um, we took him home. He stumbled out of the car. And then somebody said, I can't remember who, I didn't see him go, go into the house. And we're like, no, he must have gone. I would say, he said, no. And sure enough, we all went up. He had, he had failed to get his key in the door and he had gone to sleep in the bushes outside of his house.

• 47:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh my god.

• 47:13Chris Winterbauer?

  We got him inside. Turns out he was supposed to go to college the next day and hadn't packed yet. So his, his mom, who's a badass and a hard ass, sent him to college with no clothes. For like the first month. And so he had to just wash his one set of clothes every other day. Before he got clothes from his mom. I will not say his name.

• 47:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, you know, I've been to a lot of strip clubs. Uh, no, I've been to just the two in LA that are like really good. Jumbo's Clown Room and Cheetah's. Shout out.

• 47:45Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't think Jumbo's is a strip club. I wouldn't call it a strip club.

• 47:48Lizzie Bassett?

  It's, it is an entertainment venue, I would say. Mary, if you're ever in LA and there have been Jumbo's Clown Room, you should go. There are clowns, a lot of them.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Check it out.

• 47:58Lizzie Bassett?

  It's great. I used to live around the corner from it. I loved it. All right. So a couple of fun facts about the filming. Andrew Keegan reportedly didn't know how to draw a penis on someone's face. I don't know what that means. So David Krumholz said he instructed them on how to do it. Krumholz said, in a way, I kind of conducted my own penis drawing on my face.

• 48:15Chris Winterbauer?

  I think he means like, where do you put the various parts, right?

• 48:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 48:19Chris Winterbauer?

  And Krumholz was like, I got you.

• 48:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 48:23Lizzie Bassett?

  And also according to Andrew Keegan, apparently Larissa Olenek did actually punch him in the nose in the take that's in the film. She, she got him a little bit.

• 48:31Chris Winterbauer?

  I believe it.

• 48:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. I don't think it was like bad, bad, but she, she clipped him. Now let's talk about the table dance scene. So do you know anything about?

• 48:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Julia Stiles playing drunk in this sequence in this movie. Because remember, she's 17.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I heard that she asked Heath Ledger, like, I've never been drunk before. Give me some tips. And he gave her some tips and she got up there and had the time of her life. And that was quite impressive, if you ask me.

• 49:03Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. So, yes, he was sort of guiding her on how to be drunk, which is funny because he also is not 21, although I guess he's Australian.

• 49:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Hey, point of order for our Australian friends.

• 49:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Isn't their age of drinking lower?

• 49:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, fair. Point of order on Chris.

• 49:18Lizzie Bassett?

  I wasn't saying because they drink. I think it's because the drinking age is lower. But I'll double check that.

• 49:23Chris Winterbauer?

  I thought you were just saying because they're Australian.

• 49:25Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 49:26Chris Winterbauer?

  They're belligerent.

• 49:27Lizzie Bassett?

  But it is funny because Younger was actually good friends with Paula Abdul. And so he was gonna have her choreograph this table dance scene. And he mentioned that to Julia Stiles. He was like, I'm gonna have a big choreographer come do this. And Julia Stiles is like, that's fine, but I can dance. I'll just do this by myself. And he was like, okay. And let her get up there. And she said, quote, I would never have the guts to do that now. I'm glad somebody got that on film. I mean, I love dancing, but sort of provocatively on the table, I was pretty guileless at that point. I've also heard that that is what got me the part in Save the Last Dance. The director said to me that he had seen that scene and then realized I could do hip hop, not just ballet. I love Save the Last Dance. I know it gets a lot of shit for that final dance

• 50:08Lizzie Bassett?

  that she does, which is a bit funny in retrospect, but she is a really good dancer. She is great in this moment. I'm so glad they didn't choreograph it because it looks good, but it looks real.

• 50:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it looks like a high school kid could do that.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  It's just so impressive. Like, she's 17 year old girl to have the confidence to go up there and do this dance. And then, I mean, the end of the movie.

• 50:32Chris Winterbauer?

  It's also a stunt. Like, she's above, she's on a table, she's above a bunch of people. She could fall off.

• 50:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Which looks really good, by the way, when they have her bonk her head. Also, shout out to Julia Stiles for all of her falls in this because she really goes for it. There's like no holding back. And every time I'm a little worried, Heath Ledger is not gonna catch her.

• 50:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, when she falls off the swing and he catches her, that was a great one.

• 50:52Lizzie Bassett?

  She goes like all the way back. Yeah, I could never do that. I would be way too scared.

• 50:57Lizzie Bassett?

  So, in terms of Heath Ledger's serenade, which obviously is one of the greatest parts of this movie, the first song they had in the script was I Think I Love You. And then they changed it to I Touch Myself.

• 51:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Which would be a different vibe. And it was actually Heath Ledger who was like, I don't think this is romantic enough. And he chose the Frankie Valli song that's in the movie.

• 51:21Chris Winterbauer?

  That's good.

• 51:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Which obviously was a better call.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  That's so sweet.

• 51:23Chris Winterbauer?

  I feel like I test myself feels like older people making a choice for high school kids as opposed to, you know what I'm saying, as opposed to letting them choose what they would do, you know?

• 51:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 51:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Cause what would be embarrassing to him is doing the crooner song. But it's also what makes it great and endearing. So it feels true to the character.

• 51:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, apparently it was like fully choreographed and Heath Ledger said, I just made it sloppy. He was like having so much fun running around.

• 51:47Chris Winterbauer?

  When he spanks the security guard is my favorite part.

• 51:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. It's so funny. But he apparently, they like, the guards were having so much trouble running after him that they were afraid one of them like was about to have a heart attack because they could not keep up with Heath Ledger running around the bleachers.

• 52:02Chris Winterbauer?

  And he's 19. I'm like, I'm, I'm in decent shape for an almost 40 year old. I could never keep up with a 19 year old. That's insane.

• 52:12Lizzie Bassett?

  No, don't even try.

• 52:13Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 52:14Lizzie Bassett?

  And then of course, there is the infamous poem scene where she reads the, the reasons. I don't even hate you, not even a little bit, not even at all. Um, that was not written for her to cry. And when they went to film that scene, they did it in one take. She just started doing it and younger was like, this is amazing. We don't need to do this again.

• 52:35Chris Winterbauer?

  I almost wondered, not that it was one take, but it felt, she felt so natural and in command. And it really felt like she just unexpectedly broke at a certain point. And it's, it's really phenomenal. It's a phenomenal scene. It's, she's, she does such a good job. That felt true to high school, you know, the way that you could get raw, you know, unexpectedly in front of people. I really love that scene.

• 52:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, and she also said this, which I really appreciated, that Heath Ledger is an extremely generous scene partner in that moment. Because if you watch his reaction, it's very small. He's just listening to her and watching her. And she said that, you know, often in her experience, when one actor is crying and having a bigger moment, the other actor feels like they have to match that with the same kind of emotion. And he didn't do that. And apparently it's because he said, you know, this isn't about me. Like this is, this is your moment in this scene, in the spotlight. And I just think that's a really lovely, that's a very generous scene partner. And it's, it's really nice when they pan to his reaction. I feel like it's great.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  They had such great chemistry, the whole entire movie.

• 53:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  You could just feel it between them. Was he always in the class? I felt like that.

• 53:46Lizzie Bassett?

  He walks in at the very beginning.

• 53:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 53:49Lizzie Bassett?

  He walks in, says, what did I miss? And then she says the thing about like, you know,

• 53:55Lizzie Bassett?

  whatever she says, and he says, good, and then leaves.

• 53:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Shout out Daryl Mitchell as the teacher.

• 53:59Lizzie Bassett?

  He's really funny.

• 54:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Also great in Galaxy Quest, uh, this same year, one of my favorite films. He's so funny. I love when she genuinely likes the assignment.

• 54:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Get out of my class.

• 54:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Get out of my class. I really liked him. And just as the one black teacher at this school.

• 54:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 54:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Dealing with all these white kids. I really liked it.

• 54:19Lizzie Bassett?

  I did too.

• 54:20Chris Winterbauer?

  I, I don't know. There was just something about his character that felt, it made the movie a little more honest in a, in a great way. I really like his, his character. He's very funny.

• 54:28Lizzie Bassett?

  The fact that he checked her, like on some of the, you know, the stuff that she's complaining about. And he's like, I know it must've been hard for you, growing up, um, upper middle class.

• 54:36Chris Winterbauer?

  And then the rest of the kids, say it, mom.

• 54:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Don't even get me started on you.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  I also love, it's so meta, like, because I feel like an English teacher could show this movie to their class and then read the book along with it.

• 54:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Which as a former teacher, I would like to do something like this. Yeah.

• 54:54Lizzie Bassett?

  I didn't know you were a former teacher.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. I taught, um, for 15 years and I taught third grade and kindergarten.

• 55:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, my God.

• 55:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:04Lizzie Bassett?

  I could literally never, I could never do it. So kudos to you.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 55:09Lizzie Bassett?

  So when it came time to shoot that final bonkers helicopter shot, Disney had told Younger that they loved what he was doing with the movie, but not that much. They did not okay the budget for this. But when the line producer came up to him and asked if they had approved it, something came over Younger and he said, yep. So they went ahead without Disney's approval for the budget to get this. And according to the lead singer of Letters to Cleo, Kay Hanley, it was really terrifying.

• 55:38Chris Winterbauer?

  It looks horrifying.

• 55:40Lizzie Bassett?

  I could never do it. She was like, they told us this is a helicopter shot. It costs $500,000 every time the helicopter has to take off, so don't fuck this up. So she's scared to death on the top of this building. And she said it looks, they see the helicopter coming and then it looked like it was like dive bombing them, which if you watch, it does like four times. So she's like about to pee her pants and just has to keep going. And they do an amazing job.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  It's so crazy. Now you would just throw up a drone and it wouldn't be a thing.

• 56:11Lizzie Bassett?

  I know, I know.

• 56:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Or they just do it on a soundstage and replace the background, you know, too. But yes, a drone, certainly.

• 56:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's a full blown helicopter just swooping up in their faces. I would barf. I could not be on the top of that building.

• 56:25Lizzie Bassett?

  One other fun thing, apparently, and you can see this if you watch it, when Miss Perky says the same old shit for brains and flips off the kids behind her at the window at the very beginning. If you watch her mouth, watch it again, it looks like annoying orange. It's, they had to change it because originally she said fuck. So if you watch it, her mouth is like, like not matching her face at all.

• 56:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Another galaxy quest at the end with Sigourney Weaver. Well, fuck that, which it's, well, screw that, you know, at the end.

• 56:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. All right. 10 Things I Hate About You premiered March 31, 1999, to mostly positive, though more mixed reviews than I remembered. And a decent, though again, not as big as I thought, box office. It took home around $53.4 million, which again, is very good. If the budget was 11.5 million, that's great. But part of the reason it didn't become as big a smash hit as we maybe remember it, was it came out the same day as what movie, Chris? March 31, 1999.

• 57:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Would it be Blair, was Blair Witch March 31? No, that was earlier. That was January. March 31, 1999.

• 57:33Lizzie Bassett?

  It would spawn an entire. Subreddit genre.

• 57:39Chris Winterbauer?

  An entire subreddit genre.

• 57:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Are you gonna take the blue pill or the red pill?

• 57:43Chris Winterbauer?

  The Matrix was, that's right, March 31st, 1999.

• 57:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 57:47Chris Winterbauer?

  I forgot about that. Yeah, Matrix, 99 is such a good year for movies.

• 57:50Lizzie Bassett?

  It's so good.

• 57:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Sixth Sense, August, Phantom Menace, Say What You Want About It, November, like this, they were movies every quarter. Lizzie's Face Melted, Like a Crayon, and The Hot Sun. But, yeah.

• 58:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, The Matrix definitely stole a massive amount of glory from this.

• 58:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Of course. And The Matrix was also a movie that is, high schoolers, especially I can say from experienced high school boys, while I was only 10, but it was, we were obsessed. You know, we just thought like, this movie is gonna get repurposed as a toxic male sort of symbol in 20 years.

• 58:23Lizzie Bassett?

  My god, you were right.

• 58:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 58:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, of course, it was nominated for 17 Choice Awards. It served as the breakout for Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger. So many people in this movie really broke out after it. But it really did grow in popularity after it came out. Mary, you mentioned this, but the rentals on this did incredibly well. And in the years since it was released, it's made the list of many best teen movies, rom-coms, best 90s movies. Something I don't think anybody really expected it would do when it came out. Now, given the long-term success of it, of course, Gil Younger returned to the 10 Things Cinematic Universe. Once for a never released film called 10 Things I Hate About Life, starring Evan Rachel Wood, that was a disaster. It was never finished. Oh, wow.

• 59:07Lizzie Bassett?

  There is an ongoing lawsuit surrounding Evan Rachel Wood's departure from production. She claims she was never paid because the production company ran out of money. It's a huge mess. There was also a very short-lived TV series. And in 2025, Younger said he wanted to return to the franchise with not one, not two, but three 10 Things I Hate About You movies, covering everything from dating to marriage.

• 59:30Chris Winterbauer?

  We don't need them.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  No.

• 59:31Lizzie Bassett?

  No, we don't.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  This was perfect.

• 59:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 59:33Lizzie Bassett?

  You don't need to do anymore.

• 59:34Chris Winterbauer?

  I also feel like we're missing what made it great, which the title's fun. Don't get me wrong, the poem's great at the end, but what made it great was it captured a feeling and a moment in time, and also these young actors.

• 59:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 59:45Chris Winterbauer?

  It's not really the property, it's we want to see Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles and all these people.

• 59:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, and the story was good.

• 59:51Chris Winterbauer?

  The story, I agree, the story's good, but it's not a franchisable

• 59:54Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 59:55Chris Winterbauer?

  story engine in any way.

• 59:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, you know who agreed with you is the screenwriters, who did not return for any of the reboots under Younger's watch, but in case you don't know, they did go on to write some of the greatest rom-coms of the 2000s, including Legally Blonde, The House Bunny, She's the Man, they co-wrote Ella Enchanted. Just throwing this out there to say, I think maybe they knew what they were doing a little bit more than they have gotten credit for in some of these oral histories.

• 1:00:20Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I think they totally knew what they were doing.

• 1:00:23Lizzie Bassett?

  They're great. That is a crazy run of screenplays.

• 1:00:26Chris Winterbauer?

  And you said it was their second screenplay together.

• 1:00:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:00:28Chris Winterbauer?

  But for one of them, it was their 10th screenplay.

• 1:00:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:00:31Chris Winterbauer?

  So, and the other one was a script reader and had been writing coverage.

• 1:00:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly.

• 1:00:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Writing her own work and poetry and whatnot. So it, I think these were two very smart writers who did a very tricky thing in adapting Lizzie's least favorite, I mean, that's saying something. They took your, one of your least favorite Shakespeare.

• 1:00:49Lizzie Bassett?

  One of my least favorite comedies, for sure.

• 1:00:51Chris Winterbauer?

  And they turned it into maybe one of your favorite teen movies.

• 1:00:53Lizzie Bassett?

  It's true.

• 1:00:53Chris Winterbauer?

  So that's, that's something.

• 1:00:55Lizzie Bassett?

  I would say they improved on the source material, dare I say.

• 1:00:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:59Lizzie Bassett?

  So they have some really great rom-coms in the pipeline. Keep doing what you do best, ladies. I can't wait to watch them. And of course, there is a Broadway musical in the works with score by Carly Rae Jepsen and producer Ethan Gruska and a book by Jessica Wong and Lena Dunham. I'm excited for that. That could be really good.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 1:01:19Lizzie Bassett?

  But of course, any reboot would not include Heath Ledger, who passed away in 2008 at the age of 28 from an accidental drug overdose. Now, David Crumholtz grew very close to Ledger on set, and he had this to say in The New York Times 20 years later. Toward the end of his life, I reunited with him at a time when we were both quite vulnerable and trying to recover from some stuff that was haunting us. I had an opportunity to tell Heath how much I loved him and sort of try to help Heath. He had become so famous and his life had become so crazy that in the moment when I could have said something, I didn't, even though I thought it. It's a big regret I have. To fans, he's a movie star that died. To me, he was flesh and bone, soulful, sweet, and I know for a fact he was in recovery prior to his death. I just want people to know there was a suffering individual there who couldn't have

• 1:02:03Lizzie Bassett?

  been a lovely or human being. I prefer to remember Heath as a 20 year old kid doing his first American lead with a big giant Cheshire grin smile on his face, taking charge as the leader of the group like any good ensemble leader should.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  Oh, that's tough.

• 1:02:17Chris Winterbauer?

  It was great. Carmel and I were remarking that we forgot, he passed away within a decade of this movie. And so what to me felt weird thinking about that was because I was 10 in 1999, and then he passed away in 2008. So I was, I was almost 20, 19. For me, that was all of middle school, all of high school, and then my first, almost my first year of college, basically. And so it felt like a lifetime of having Heath Ledger around.

• 1:02:51Lizzie Bassett?

  No, it was a meteoric rise.

• 1:02:54Chris Winterbauer?

  It was, and it was this narrow nine year window, really, where you had, you know, the big touchstones, obviously, this.

• 1:03:02Lizzie Bassett?

  A nice tale.

• 1:03:03Chris Winterbauer?

  A nice tale for me. And then Brokeback Mountain, and then Dark Knight amidst many other films, obviously. But yeah, it was such a brief window.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, for him to go from like getting discovered on 10 Things I Hate About You to doing this like profound movie, Brokeback Mountain, to his final movie being The Dark Knight is truly insane.

• 1:03:25Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm curious, what is the year gap between, when is Brokeback Mountain?

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  2005.

• 1:03:32Lizzie Bassett?

  That's crazy. Six years between this and Brokeback Mountain. He just like, he went nonstop.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  Skyrocketed.

• 1:03:39Chris Winterbauer?

  That was the one that said Heath Ledger's a serious actor.

• 1:03:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Not that he wasn't talented. And everybody knew this guy's a pop movie star, right? But Brokeback Mountain, if I'm remembering correctly, for both him and Gyllenhaal, I think, in, to a certain extent, said, and Anne Hathaway as well. It really put all of them on the map in that sort of prestige way.

• 1:03:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it helped get Anne Hathaway Devil Wears Prada, as we learned in that episode. Her performance, Meryl Streep saw her performance in that.

• 1:04:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Can I pivot and ask Mary a question?

• 1:04:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:04:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Because she is our reality TV expert here.

• 1:04:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:04:09Chris Winterbauer?

  There's a really important reality TV moment in this movie. On television, briefly.

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  Real World.

• 1:04:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Real World Seattle.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  Yes, when they throw the fish and yes.

• 1:04:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Did you watch Real World Seattle? And is, I believe that was the first season of The Real World.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:04:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Maybe it's the second.

• 1:04:27Lizzie Bassett?

  New York is the first one, right?

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  New York, and I think they had San Francisco. No, Seattle was a little bit farther down.

• 1:04:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, was it? Okay, that was why I'm asking.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  That was like Irene was on that season and she had Lyme disease. And she got into a fight with Brad. Why do I know this?

• 1:04:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie's just laughing at people with Lyme disease.

• 1:04:46Lizzie Bassett?

  No, I'm not laughing. It's just that that being her defining characteristic.

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  No, no, Brad was San Diego. Sorry. Irene got into like, she ended up leaving. Didn't she get into a fight? I don't know. This is in 1999 or 1997. I mean, I was only born in 1985. So why was I 12 years old watching The Real World Seattle?

• 1:05:06Chris Winterbauer?

  That's why I was gonna ask.

• 1:05:07Lizzie Bassett?

  You knew what you loved.

• 1:05:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. It is, yeah. I do, I was also not allowed to watch The Real World. I was allowed to watch Die Hard many times, but I couldn't watch The Real World.

• 1:05:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, they lived on Pier 70 of Seattle, Washington's Elliott Bay.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Because what was happening? The, the lights in the house were really affecting her with her disease.

• 1:05:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, no. Okay, now I look like a huge asshole for laughing. I was not laughing at her or at Lyme disease. It was, I was laughing at you for qualifying her as having Lyme disease.

• 1:05:39Chris Winterbauer?

  She had like the Michael McKean condition in Better Call Saul.

• 1:05:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, no, that's terrible.

• 1:05:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Response to.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  I know where you're saying, yeah.

• 1:05:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, well, now we have to go back and re-watch Real World Seattle. All right, well, we like to end our episodes, Mary, by asking what went right? And obviously, a lot went right on this movie. That's part of why it gets a featurette and not a main episode. But what would you say went right?

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  I think what went right was the chemistry between Heath and Julia Stiles. I just think it was like magnetic. They had an amazing rapport. You could feel the love and the energy. And, you know, watching that as a teen, you wanted to feel that as well. You wanted to have a relationship like that.

• 1:06:25Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. So shout out to the casting directors because I think the cast of this movie is incredible and the chemistry is great. Chris, what about you?

• 1:06:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, I'm gonna give mine because I I'm gonna say that one went to Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles, who I agree. And I think Julia Stiles is overlooked a little bit in retrospect.

• 1:06:41Lizzie Bassett?

  She's great.

• 1:06:42Chris Winterbauer?

  She also stepped away, I think, from movies a little bit. She's so good in this movie, so shout out Julia Stiles. Okay, can I give mine to the father-daughter relationship in this movie?

• 1:06:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, I love it.

• 1:06:52Chris Winterbauer?

  I I think it's really good. I actually like that he is very honest and open with his daughters about sex. And it's not a conversation about morality or anything like that, although there's one line that Bianca has

• 1:07:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, it's pretty rough.

• 1:07:06Chris Winterbauer?

  would not live today. Okay, that is acknowledged. However, him just saying, "Look, I don't want you to get pregnant when you're young and possibly not have the future that you want." But he's ultimately supportive of his daughters and her going to Sarah Lawrence, for example. And I think the way that Larry Miller plays it is very fun and leans just enough into the sort of put-upon dad trope that we all know, but he gives it a lot of humanity. And at the end of the day, he realizes he doesn't really have any control over these very smart, headstrong young women in his house. And I really liked that story, maybe just because I'm a dad to a little girl now. But I thought it was really nice.

• 1:07:45Lizzie Bassett?

  No, I loved it.

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  I also just love that he was a gynecologist.

• 1:07:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:50Lizzie Bassett?

  And that was where he was coming from.

• 1:07:51Chris Winterbauer?

  I love when he's like, "You're gonna wear the suit. Wear the belly. Wear the belly."

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  I think it was perfect.

• 1:07:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, and now, watching it as a parent, I was like, fully on his side of that, very much. And I also, you know, I grew up with a single dad, who I watched this movie with a lot. And I wonder if that's part of what he connected to in this. My poor dad, who had to take me to the mall to buy a training bra, and he was like, "I will be over here. This woman will help you." But God love him, he did it. So shout out to Chip and shout out to Larry Miller. I do love his performance in this. All right, I'll keep mine very brief. I'm gonna go back to Ralph Sal, the music supervisor. I just think the soundtrack is absolutely insane and it really is burned into my brain in a way that...

• 1:08:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Favorite song?

• 1:08:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, well, don't do this to me now.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

• 1:08:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, I will say it's a tie between "I Love Sexy Boy" by Air, because that's actually just like a great song. But I actually really love the Joan Arma trading song, "The Weakness in Me," that's in this movie, which I've never really heard anywhere else. And I'm not super familiar with a lot of her work, but I think it's a beautiful song. I loved it then. I love it now, and I love the placement of it in this movie. So shout out to Joan and shout out to Ralph. You really stuck in, stuck in my craw. All right, Mary, thank you so, so much for being here. Is there anything you would like to plug before you leave?

• 1:09:16Speaker 02

  No, thank you so much for having me. And you guys, if you want to listen to my podcast, it's called Two Judgy Girls. You can find it wherever you listen to your podcasts.

• 1:09:23Lizzie Bassett?

  It's great. You absolutely should. I love listening to you all. My news comes from you, Mary. All right, thanks so much.

• 1:09:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Thank you, Mary.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Thank you. Bye.

• 1:09:34Speaker 03

  What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom Podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Jesse Winterbauer and edited by H. Conley.