10 Things I Hate About You

Gil Junger’s 1999 debut turns on a household rule: the younger sister may not date until the elder does, so the boys arrange someone to take out Kat, and Patrick accepts the job for money. The building used as Padua High is Stadium High School in Tacoma, built at the turn of the century as a luxury hotel and named for the huge stadium set into a ravine called Old Woman’s Gulch. A 1999 teen comedy therefore leans on a castle facade no production designer would have paid for. The paintball scene was shot at Gasworks Park in Seattle. Two narrative choices stand out. Patrick is built first out of the rumours other characters repeat about him, arriving as legend before he does anything, and Heath Ledger was cast three and a half weeks before the shoot began. The other is the close: the last word is Kat’s, and what she delivers is not an apology but a list still angry. The boy is the one who pays. The song on the stadium steps was completed in three takes. Worth it if an ending where the boy pays rather than the girl softens is the point. Avoid it if you expect the adaptation to keep the language or shape of the play, since only the skeleton and names survive.