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

Summary

WHAT WENT WRONG – Featurette: "10 Things I Hate About You" (with Two Judgey Girls)

Podcast: What Went Wrong – Sad Boom Media
Date: July 17, 2026
Hosts: Lizzie Bassett & Chris Winterbauer
Special Guest: Mary from Two Judgey Girls

Overview

This special featurette episode takes a deep dive into the making of the 1999 teen rom-com classic "10 Things I Hate About You." Hosts Lizzie and Chris are joined by Mary from the podcast "Two Judgey Girls" to explore the film’s origin, production journey, casting choices, and enduring legacy. Instead of their usual full-length focus on disastrous productions, the What Went Wrong team uses their featurette format to celebrate a movie that went surprisingly right, despite a few bumps along the way. The discussion traverses nostalgia, behind-the-scenes gossip, and sharp screenwriting insights, while honoring the chemistry and charm that has made the film a beloved teen classic.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Format Shift and Episode Purpose

• Because there wasn't enough "disaster" behind "10 Things I Hate About You" for a classic main episode, the team introduces the lighter, shorter "featurette" format to spotlight films with smoother productions (02:30 – Lizzie Bassett).
• Lizzie: “It doesn’t matter. It still deserves its place in the sun. So we thought, why not do slightly shorter episodes, call 'em featurettes and still, you know, give these movies their time to shine.”

2. Nostalgia & First Impressions

• Mary reflects on her deep connection to the film’s soundtrack and fashion, noting its timelessness and rewatchability (04:33–05:21).
• Mary: “Rewatching it gave me so much nostalgia… I had [the CD] on a CD and every single song I was singing to my husband as I was rewatching it.”
• Chris compares "10 Things" to other 90s high school movies, listing it closer in quality to "Clueless" than "American Pie" (05:28–06:56).
• Both hosts marvel at the film's emotional core and character performances, especially Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger, and share favorite moments of dry humor.

3. Soundtrack & Cultural Time Capsule

• All three hosts rave about the soundtrack’s pivotal role in the film’s appeal, crediting music supervisor Ralph Sal (08:48–09:17).
• Lizzie: “This soundtrack is incredible… We don’t talk about music supervisors that much, but this soundtrack is an absolute banger.”
• The movie is cemented as one of the top five most iconic 90s teen movies.

4. Cast Chemistry & Age Realism

• Discussion around the relatively young and age-appropriate casting, compared to other high school movies (07:00–08:00).
• Surprise at Gabrielle Union being significantly older than her co-stars.

5. Screenwriting Origins

• The screenwriting team, Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah, met after reading each other's work via query letter and collaborated initially on a female action thriller before pivoting to a teen comedy (15:00–16:29).
• Inspiration for the title came from a real high school diary entry called “10 Things I Hate About Anthony” (18:02).

6. Adaptation Process: Shakespeare, but Make It Modern

• The writers were inspired by the “Clueless” approach to Jane Austen and found "Taming of the Shrew" adaptable for a modern, feminist teen rom-com (18:02–19:08).
• The script was shaped by their desire for a strong-willed female protagonist and northwestern U.S. location (Portland in script, Seattle/Tacoma in shoot).

7. Studio Competition and “Teen Movie Lottery”

• Disney’s late 90s scramble for the next teen hit: "10 Things" was up against a script called "School Slut" (ouch) (22:45–23:10).
• Disney pushed for rewrites, particularly questioning Kat’s anger, reflecting studio unease with “difficult” female characters.

8. Directing & Script Evolution

• Gil Junger, primarily a TV director, landed the job after a successful Ellen episode but was overwhelmed and promptly bought “six books on how to direct a movie” from Borders (25:00–26:09).
• Junger made significant script changes, especially around character motivations and physical comedy, sometimes to the writers’ chagrin (27:17–29:43).
• Notable: Removal of Kat and Bianca’s mom from the script and addition of physical comedy gags like motorcycle and arrow scenes.

9. Casting Stories & “What Might Have Been”

• Disney originally wanted Katie Holmes and James Van Der Beek (of “Dawson’s Creek”) as leads (35:10).
• Key audition trivia:
  • Julia Stiles landed the role of Kat by exuding “confidence,” after being passed over for being “not bubbly or cute enough.”
  • Heath Ledger's audition was legendary; Junger reportedly thought, “If this can speak English, I'm going to cast him” (41:03).
  • Alternative casting considered Rachel Leigh Cook, Eliza Dushku, Anna Paquin, Kate Hudson (who turned it down because Goldie Hawn didn’t like the script).

10. Location, Set Life, and On-set Gossip

• Most of the film was shot in Tacoma, WA’s Stadium High School, rather than Seattle, to the slight disappointment of Joseph Gordon-Levitt (48:26).
• Cast stayed at the same hotel, partied together frequently, with gossip about brief romances between Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Larisa Oleynik (48:34–49:08).
• Heath Ledger reportedly showed up with a didgeridoo, being the life of the party.

11. Iconic Scenes & Production Details

• Table dance scene: Julia Stiles (17) improvised it herself, drawing on dance experience—this led directly to her role in “Save the Last Dance” (53:48–55:18).
• Football stadium serenade: Heath Ledger insisted on “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” over the script’s “I Touch Myself”—a choice that made the scene romantic and iconic (56:22–56:39).
• One-take poem scene: Julia Stiles’ raw emotion and single-take performance surprised crew and elevated the film’s climax (57:14–57:59).
  • Lizzie: “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.”
• Death-defying final shot: The unapproved helicopter shot with Letters to Cleo on the stadium roof terrified the band and almost the producer (60:08–61:47).

12. Box Office and Release Context

• Released March 31, 1999, grossing ~$53 million on a ~$12 million budget.
• Opened the same day as “The Matrix,” which overshadowed box office and cultural conversation (62:26–63:06).
• Gained cult classic status via home video and continued affection from fans and critics.

13. Legacy and Sequels

• Attempts at sequels (including an unfinished one with Evan Rachel Wood) have floundered, as has a short-lived TV series.
• The writing duo Smith & McCullah went on to pen “Legally Blonde,” “She’s the Man,” and “The House Bunny” among other hits (65:20).

14. Heath Ledger’s Legacy

• Cast and crew, particularly David Krumholtz, reflect on Ledger’s charisma, the tragedy of his early passing, and his place in cinematic memory (66:18–68:39).
• Krumholtz: “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 been a lovelier human being.”

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• Chris, on Heath Ledger:
  “As soon as you see him on screen, he is so unbelievably charming…he just lands in their lap. It's crazy.” (41:03)
• Mary, on chemistry:
  “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.” (71:03)
• Lizzie, on music:
  “This soundtrack is absolutely insane. It really is burned into my brain in a way…” (74:12)
• Lizzie, on female protagonists:
  “[The studio asked] why is Kat such a bitch? What if her mom left and that's why she's such a bitch. ... If you have a vagina and an attitude problem, there needs to be an explanation.” (32:12)
• Chris, on iconic 90s moments:
  “Him going down the bleachers is one of the most iconic moments in 90s teen film history.” (29:17)
• On Julia Stiles’ audition:
  “The first thing that struck me about Julia is that she didn’t give a shit about how she was dressed... There was so much confidence in that.” (38:31)
• On the cast’s offscreen fun:
  “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.” (48:26)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Featurette Format Explanation – 02:30
• Nostalgia & Music – 04:33–09:17
• Cast Age Discussion – 07:00–08:00
• Script Origins & Screenwriters' Meet-Cute – 15:00–16:29
• Adapting Shakespeare – 18:02–19:08
• Disney's "Teen Movie Lottery" & Rewrites – 22:45–23:10
• Gil Junger’s Directing Journey – 25:00–26:09
• Physical Comedy Debate – 27:52–29:43
• Casting (Holmes/Van Der Beek, Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger) – 35:10–41:03
• On-set Friendships & Romances – 48:34–49:08
• Behind the Table Dance Scene – 53:48–55:18
• Heath Ledger’s Stadium Serenade – 56:22–56:39
• Poem Scene – 57:14–57:59
• Final Helicopter Shot – 60:08–61:47
• Release Day Box Office & "The Matrix" – 62:26–63:06
• Reflections on Heath Ledger – 66:18–68:39
• “What Went Right” Roundtable – 71:03–74:16

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What Went Right? (Conclusion Roundtable)

• Mary: The chemistry between Ledger and Stiles—“magnetic” and aspirational for teen viewers.
• Chris: Larry Miller’s portrayal of the father and the honest approach to father-daughter relationships.
• Lizzie: The soundtrack (Ralph Sal, music supervisor) as the film’s lasting emotional glue.

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Final Thoughts

"10 Things I Hate About You" managed to overcome minor studio interference and the studio system’s nervousness around “unlikable” female leads thanks to:

• Smart source material adaptation,
• Outstanding casting (especially Stiles and Ledger),
• A now-beloved (and nostalgia-inducing) soundtrack, and
• A production culture that, while subject to a few sitcom-style gags, preserved real, relatable emotion.

As Mary notes, the result is “timeless,” and no reboot or follow-up has ever recaptured its peculiar lightning-in-a-bottle.

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Listen to Two Judgey Girls for more Bravo TV/pop culture content, and keep an eye (and ear) out for more What Went Wrong featurettes and full episodes!

Transcript

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[Chris Winterbauer]

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[Lizzie Bassett]

Great. Love that responsibility. 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 10 things I hate about yout. 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 em featurettes and still, you know, give these movies their time to shine. So it's different kind of bonus episode. Let us know if you 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 Judgy Girls. Hi.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Yes. So two Judgy Girls is a daily podcast and we talk pop culture, but really are focused on Bravo TV. And 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 Judgy Girls and give us a listen and follow us on Instagram, please do.

[Lizzie 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. There it is.

[Chris Winterbauer]

All right. It's so funny.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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 yout Before Now? And what did you feel rewatching it for the podcast?

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Lizzie 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?

[Chris Winterbauer]

Watched it with Carmela, who was 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 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, whose 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 and Easy A or something like that would be like the next one that comes along, the wildly inappropriate Alison Janney. Just weird, like erotic literature subplot, flashing the teacher. There are a few things. Do they hold up entirely? I don't know. There can be one or two scenes where they kind of default to 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, Justin Gordon Levitt, by the way, aided by the

[Lizzie Bassett]

fact that he's next to David Krumholtz, who looks like a 45 year old man even though he's not.

[Chris 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,

[Lizzie Bassett]

you know, she's the oldest.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Is she. She looks young.

[Lizzie Bassett]

She's 10 years older. Than everybody.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Oh, wow.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Because Heath Ledger is 19 when he films this.

[Chris Winterbauer]

He's 19, and he looks older to me.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

I. I agree with that. But Julia Stiles is 17 when she.

[Lizzie Bassett]

She's very young. Yeah.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

And I feel like most movies, when you watch a high school movie like the Breakfast Club or something like that, they're all 45. Exactly. So to me, I was like, okay, I am watching someone playing a high schooler that could actually be in high school.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

That was kind of shocking.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

Me too. I thought he was older. And Larissa, is it Olenek.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oleynik, I think Oleynik.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I watched Alex Mack and she goes under doors. I loved Alex Mack.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Nickelodeon.

[Chris 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 right now. This movie, I think definitely one of the top five 90s teen movies that you would put on in a time

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

capsule and keep, like, with she's all that.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She's all that would maybe be number five.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Hey. She's all that is good.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

That's fair.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I love that.

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[Lizzie Bassett]

I like you, Mary. I had the CD to this, and so I had the same experience. And every single time a needle drop started, I was like, I have a

[Chris Winterbauer]

lover who loves me.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Every song I knew every lyric to every song. Like, all the way through, I was singing along. I just had the best time. 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. We don't talk about music supervisors that much, but this soundtrack is an absolute banger.

[Chris 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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, you're right.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. There's a lot that's used in this.

[Lizzie 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 yout and you Know what? I still do. I think her outfits are amazing. Her hair. Come on.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

The perfect curl.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It looks absolutely incredible. It's the perfect curl. And the little braids. Yes. 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 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 gonna 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. 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 yout was released March 31, 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 Krumholtz, 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 cat Patrick verona.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Every teen 90s movie was based around a bet of some kind. Like, it's always a bet. She's all that. Cruel Intentions. This.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I love Cruel Intentions.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I do too. That is a weird movie. Yeah, Ryan Phillippe has never been better.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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[Lizzie 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 ten 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. 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 yout. According to the New York Times, it was a female action thriller about girls who kill members of the Navy seals.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Oh wow, that's fun.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Sure.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

That's right.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

Long Kiss Goodnight. Pretty good.

[Lizzie 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. So 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?

[Chris Winterbauer]

I don't.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

I did.

[Lizzie Bassett]

You did?

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Yes.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Have you read it?

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh my God. But you have to read it.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

I'm genuinely scared to read them because I feel like you should do it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

You should get drunk with your husband

[Lizzie Bassett]

and you should read it. Yes, yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Because we did that with. I did that with Carmela'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.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

I definitely have that.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I can't reveal anything because it's too personal. It's just incredible. So 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.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Okay, mine's probably from 17 to like 22, so I'm sure those are good years. There are some interesting stories in there. I feel like I would rewrite a story from the night before of what happened.

[Lizzie Bassett]

You got to go back and look.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Okay, I will.

[Lizzie Bassett]

And 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. Cause 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 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.

[Chris 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.

[Lizzie 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 acknowledged 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 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 is 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And you had things like, you know, Scream had redefined, like 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.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, me too.

[Chris 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. 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.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

And like a Titanic where you saw it seven times.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Oh, Titanic, A great example. I always forget that they were so young because when I. We were younger than them, so they seemed grown. And now I watch it and I think, your children are Titanic. Yeah, Women and children first. That's you.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I think she is 19 in that.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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 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 waning period, it's like.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Cause but six months when you're that old is, you know, 5 to 10% of your life completely. You think, oh, my God, I've missed it. I'm never gonna see it again.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Bassett]

So Disney put Smith and McCullough 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 yout and something that might really have been called School Slut.

[Chris Winterbauer]

No, that's really.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, I think so.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Doesn't feel very Disney.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Yes. Yes. And then. And then she. Because she did that, she got canceled.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes. Yeah. 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's good, two hours must be better.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

Good scope. For what? For that. It does. It ends with a helicopter shot over Stadium High School.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Well, we'll get to that.

[Chris Winterbauer]

All right.

[Lizzie Bassett]

So 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 Julia 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

I agree.

[Chris 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.

[Lizzie 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 negged 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 RIP and bought six books. Yep. Bought six books on how to direct a movie. Almost started reading all of them.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Been there.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

How did you direct a movie fan for Dummies?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Literally, just give me the dumbest version.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Yes.

[Lizzie 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 almost

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

Dawson's river, as it's called.

[Ad Voice]

Yes.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

And I couldn't watch the Creek exact same.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Bassett]

And she'd be like, nothing. Yeah, it's Spanish.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Don't worry about it.

[Lizzie 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. 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?

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Sure.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I wonder if you're right.

[Chris Winterbauer]

When Joseph Gordon Levitt says, not in a prison film sort of way. Right. When he's like, we're gonna be your one.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That might be the screenwriter.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Okay. Cause 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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

loves a good prison, don't you?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Listen, he delivered it all.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

All right. As you might imagine, our two screenwriters did not love this approach. In fact, they didn't get a 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Krumholtz shooting off. Yes.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

The party when the window shatters.

[Chris Winterbauer]

That one. I didn't care about the motorcycle.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie 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.

[Chris 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, which that's for

[Lizzie Bassett]

sure in the script, by the way.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. And her on the table. She's great. I mean that. I know we all talk about the Save the Last Dance audition. We should be talking about Julia Stiles on the table and 10 things I hate about you because it's so fun.

[Lizzie Bassett]

They're connected. Chris.

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Learn [e-mail] Explore Gold terms and points cap apply. 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I do too. It also, 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 in Tacoma. It's a really beautiful football field. It's a cool shot. It helps establish the geography, which will

[Lizzie Bassett]

later come out like they're at an actual school.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

Well, the arrow that once you hit the arrow on the butt, you start to think movie. Am I in?

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Yes.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's just a little weird. But. So the biggest changes made to the script seemed to be around Cat. Now, originally, Cat'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 they're like, okay, 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 do this. It doesn't bother me. I will say to me, it emphasizes

[Chris Winterbauer]

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, then 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.

[Lizzie 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 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.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

I wanted more of both their backstory from the beginning.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I definitely felt like I wanted more of him because I feel like we get even less of him.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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.

[Chris 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. And we just move. She has no follows quickly. Well, that's interesting. I would like to know more.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, no, not allowed.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Nothing else.

[Lizzie 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

Golden Mayor. Yeah, golden and Fiva.

[Lizzie 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 Cat and Patrick. And guess what, Mary? They're Dawson's Creek stars Katie Holmes and James Vanderby.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Wow.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

I love you, baby. Yeah.

[Lizzie Bassett]

For whatever reason, they didn't work out, and those roles remain 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Didn't you do, like, was it Mysterious Skin that he did? Yes, shortly after this.

[Lizzie 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?

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Patrick.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's not Patrick.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I mean, then I have no educated guess.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Hot model. What's his name?

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

Is it the David Krumholtz character?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes. He wanted to play Michael. The David Crumholz 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. 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?

[Chris Winterbauer]

Go buy yourself a Star Wars.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I love this.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I love that.

[Lizzie Bassett]

The other one's just like, I have no idea what you're talking about, but he bought it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

Now, for the role of Cat, they saw tons of young women, including, as we said, Katie Holmes. But also, she's all that Rachel Leigh Cook.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

Young Gabbie Hoffman. Interesting.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Very young. Alicia Wick, Keri Russell, and of course, Larisa Oleynik, who would end up being cast as Bianca instead. She actually really wanted to play Cat, 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 had Bianca.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, exactly.

[Lizzie 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.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Oh, that's so interesting.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Maybe she didn't want her to get, like, labeled as this alternative person or something. She wanted me more like Girl Next Door.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Maybe.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Because Almost famous was 2000. When was almost Famous?

[Chris Winterbauer]

It was right around this time. It was almost.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's 2000.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It was almost exactly this year.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah. Yep.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She might have been holding out. I wonder if it was the high school thing where she said, no, 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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I wonder if she was older, too. Yeah, 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, fought. 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 gonna 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 point. She was getting nothing. She kept being told, you know, you're not bu. 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 Cat, 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 Krumholtz, who he knew from the sitcom world, to play Michael. But plot twist, he wanted to play Cameron. Let him switch.

[Chris Winterbauer]

No, you can't.

[Lizzie Bassett]

No, I know.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Sorry, boys. I know you can't. No way.

[Lizzie 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. No one was right. They were not finding him. And then casting director Marcia 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 press. And he looked pretty cool.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I mean, 15 years earlier, it would have been Johnny Depp, right? Or 12 years earlier. And so you were 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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's crazy. 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, myself, if this can speak English, I'm going to cast him.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And then he has an Australian accent. They're going to have to explain in the.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

I don't Yeah. I wonder if he didn't even do an American accent.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I don't think he even did an American accent. I don't even think he tried. He's like fresh off the boat from Austria.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Oh, Hartnett makes sense too. Hartnett makes a lot of sense.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I love Josh Hartnett.

[Chris Winterbauer]

He kind of plays. He's got the slutty little bangs in the faculty. He has Courteney Cox's haircut from Scream 3 in the Faculty. And that's a great, great 90s teen movie that features a lot of the other future movie stars and whatnot.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

It didn't hit as hard though.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

I never tried harder in a class because I had a crush on my teach. 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. And there was something like young and innocent about seeing the freckles that I love too. He's just charming, all well rounded and

[Chris Winterbauer]

he's got 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. Hartnett, I think would feel more grunge

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

and sexy and I think that Heath is a little bit more charismatic that

[Chris Winterbauer]

you want to talk to him.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

There's a light. He gets cuter the more you talk to him.

[Chris 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.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

And he took such a long pause. He did like he didn't do a movie for what, like 20 years?

[Chris Winterbauer]

No, Tink, like 10. Like lucky number seven.

[Lizzie Bassett]

But that was him just saying, I don't want to be a part of Hollywood. And he went to be with his family and I believe moved back to Minnesota. And I know someone who knew him through mutual friends and just said he was like the loveliest guy who 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.

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[Chris Winterbauer]

acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

[Ad Voice]

Hey guys.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Welcome to Giggly Squad, a place where we make fun of everything, but most importantly ourselves.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I'm Paige Desorbo. I'm Hannah Burner. Welcome.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Welcome to the squad.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Giggly Squad started on Summer House when we were giggling during an inappropriate time.

[Ad Voice]

But of course we can't be managed,

[Lizzie Bassett]

so we decided to start this podcast.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

To continue giggling.

[Lizzie Bassett]

We will make fun of pop culture news. We're watching fashion trends pep talks where

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

we give advice, mental health moments and games and guests.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Listen to Giggly Squad on ACAST or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chris Winterbauer]

ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their Podcast podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.

[Lizzie 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. 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I think Stadium High School was originally a hotel.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Was there some romance going on behind the scenes?

[Lizzie 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 dated for a bit.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Did you hear something else, Mary?

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Lizzie 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 kind of like hopped from one sister to the other after that and then dated Larisa Oleynik.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Okay, phrasing. Also not real life sisters, just to be clear. I'm just saying.

[Lizzie Bassett]

All right, Mary 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

Gasworks is obviously Seattle. Lake Union, Seattle. Kerry park is Seattle.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, I don't think they ever offered hand thrown paintball at Gasworks, but no, I don't know.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That's definitely.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

So, guys, that was like my dream date. This moment. I mean, like, paint throwing.

[Lizzie Bassett]

This is like every girl's.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

it would be so fun.

[Chris Winterbauer]

The realistic version of that is the snowball fight in Dumb and Dumber where he beams her with the snowball.

[Lizzie Bassett]

The guy goes too hard. Yeah, probably.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, exactly, Probably.

[Lizzie Bassett]

But fun fact, Chris. Producer Andrew Lazar rented a house on Mercer island for the duration of the shoot. Oh, wow, Hometown.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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 have 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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes, 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 stretch limo and taking them to strip clubs, which, as our researcher pointed out, probably would not have flown if they were guys. Chris, any top notch Seattle strip clubs to shout out on the pod?

[Chris Winterbauer]

There's one that David and Troy went to a couple times that they took Me to. It's the one time I went to a strip club. I can't remember what it was called. And it was kind of a bummer, but it was a funny story because one of our friends was really drunk, and 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 and ended up spending hundreds of dollars he didn't have. We took him home. We. I was the designated driver. I was sober. 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 were like, no. He must have gone. And we say. He said, no. And sure enough, we all went up. He. He had failed to get his key in the door, and he had gone to sleep in the bushes outside of his house. So he had to get. We got him inside. Turns out he was supposed to go to college the next day and hadn't packed yet. So 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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

I mean, it's. It is an entertainment venue. I would say, Mary, if you're ever in an LA and never been Jumbo's Clown Room, you should go. There are clowns.

[Chris Winterbauer]

A lot of them.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Check it out.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's great. I used to live around the corner from it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I loved it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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 Krumholtz said he instructed him on how to do it. Krumholtz said, in a way, I kind of conducted my own penis drawing on my face.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And Krummhalt is like, I gotcha. Yeah, this is where we go.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

I believe it.

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

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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. And that was quite impressive, if you ask me.

[Lizzie 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Hey, point of order for our Australian friends.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Isn't their age of drinking lower.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Okay, fair point of order on Chris. Okay.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

I thought you were just saying because they're Australian. No, they're boligrant.

[Lizzie 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'd 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 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

the movie, 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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Which looks really good, by the way, when they have her bonker head.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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 going to catch her.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. When she falls off the swing and he catches her. That was a great one.

[Lizzie Bassett]

All the way back. Yeah. I could never do that. I would be way too scared. 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 youe. And then they changed it to I Touch Myself, 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, which obviously was a better call.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

So sweet.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I feel like I attach 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?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Because 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.

[Lizzie 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

What do you spend. The security guard is my favorite part.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

No, don't even try.

[Chris Winterbauer]

No.

[Lizzie Bassett]

And then of course, there is the infamous poem where she reads the reasons I don't even hate you. Not even a little bit. Not even at all. 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.

[Chris 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. She did. And it's really phenomenal. It's a phenomenal scene. She does such a good job. That felt true to high school. You know, the way that you could get raw unexpectedly in front of people. I really love that scene.

[Lizzie 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 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 really nice when they pan to his reaction. I feel like it's great.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

They had such great chemistry the whole entire movie. You could just feel it between them. Was he always in the class? I felt like

[Lizzie Bassett]

he walks in at the very beginning. He walks in, says, what did I miss? And then she says the thing about, like, you know, whatever she says. And he says, good. And then leaves.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Shout out. Daryl Mitchell as the teacher.

[Lizzie Bassett]

He's really funny.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Also great in Galaxy Quest this same year. One of my favorite films. He's so funny. I love when she genuinely likes the assignment and he says, get out.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Get out of my closet.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Get out of my closet. I really liked him. And just as the one black teacher at this school and he's dealing with all these white kids, I really liked it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I did, too.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

The fact that he checked her on some of the stuff that she's complaining about and he's like, I know it must have been hard for you growing up. Upper middle class, white.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And then the Rasta kids say it, man, don't even get me started on you.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

I didn't know you were a former teacher.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, my God.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Thank You.

[Lizzie 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, yup. 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It looks horrifying.

[Lizzie 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 about to pee her pants and just has to keep going. And they do an amazing job.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

I know, I know.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, it's a full blown helicopter just swooping up in their faces. I would barf. I could not be on top of that building. One other fun thing, apparently, and you can see this if you watch it when Ms. 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. 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Another galaxy quest at the end with Sigourney Weaver. Well, fuck that. Which, well, screw that, you know, at the end.

[Lizzie Bassett]

All right. 10 Things I Hate about yout premiered March 31, 1999, to mostly positive, though more mixed reviews than I remember. 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. 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

It would spawn an entire subreddit genre.

[Chris Winterbauer]

An entire subreddit genre.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

Oh, the Matrix was. That's right, March 31, 1999. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, Matrix 99 is such a good year for movies.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's so good.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Sixth Sense, August, Phantom Menace. Say what you want about it, November. They were movies. Every quarter, Lizzie's face melted like a crayon in the hot sun.

[Lizzie Bassett]

But, well, the Matrix definitely stole a massive amount of glory from this, of course.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And the Matrix was also a movie that high schoolers especially I can say from experience, high school boys. Well, I was only 10, but we were obsessed. We just thought like this movie is gonna get repurposed as a toxic male sort of symbol.

[Lizzie Bassett]

My God, you were right. 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 starring Evan Rachel Wood. That was a disaster. It was never finished. Oh, wow. 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 data to marriage.

[Chris Winterbauer]

We don't need them.

[Lizzie Bassett]

No, we don't.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

This was perfect.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, you don't need to do any more.

[Chris 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 just it captured a feeling and a moment in time. And also these young actors. It's not really the property, it's. We wanna see Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles and all these people.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Well, and the story was good.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I agree, the story's good, but it's not a franchisable story engine in any way.

[Lizzie 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

And you said it was their second screenplay together. Yes, but for one of them, it was their 10th screenplay. And the other one was a script reader and had been writing coverage, writing her own work and poetry and whatnot. So 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 one of your least favorite Shakespeare.

[Lizzie Bassett]

One of my least favorite comedies, for

[Chris Winterbauer]

sure, and they turned it into maybe one of your favorite teen movies.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's true. That's say they improved on the source material. Dare I say 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.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Bassett]

But of course, any reboot would not include Heath led Ledger, who passed away in 2008 at the age of 28 from an accidental drug overdose. Now, David Krumholtz 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. 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 been a lovelier human being. I Prefer to remember heath as a 20 year old kid doing his first American lead with a big giant Cheshire grand smile on his face, taking charge as the leader of the group, like any good ensemble leadership should. Aw, that's tough.

[Chris 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 almost 2019. For me, that was all of middle school, all of high school, and then almost my first year of college, basically. And so it felt like a lifetime of having Heath Ledger around.

[Lizzie Bassett]

No, it wasn't a meteoric rise and

[Chris Winterbauer]

it was just narrow nine year window, really, where you had, you know, the big touchstones. Obviously this.

[Lizzie Bassett]

A Knight's Tale.

[Chris Winterbauer]

A Knight's Tale for me and then Brokeback Mountain and then Darkness amidst many other films, obviously. But yeah, it was such a brief window.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

2005.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

That was the one that said Heath Ledger's serious actor. 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 to a certain extent, definitely. And Anne Hathaway as well. It really put all of them on the map in that sort of prestige way.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

Can I pivot and ask Mary a question? Because she is our reality TV expert here?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

There's a really important reality TV moment in this movie on television. Briefly.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Real World.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Real World Seattle.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Yes. When they throw the fish and. Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Did you watch Real World Seattle? And I believe that was the first season of the Real World. Maybe it's the second.

[Lizzie Bassett]

New York is the first one, right?

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

And that was it. Okay. That was why I'm asking.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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?

[Chris Winterbauer]

Laughing at people with Lyme disease.

[Lizzie Bassett]

No, I'm not laughing.

[Ad Voice]

It's just that.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That being her defining characteristic.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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 19 1997. I mean, I was only born in 1985, so why was I 12 years old watching the Real World Seattle?

[Chris Winterbauer]

Well, that's why I was gonna ask.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Cause you knew what you loved.

[Chris 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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Okay. They lived on Pier 70 of Seattle, Washington's Elliot Bay.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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

[Lizzie 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.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, no. That's terrible response to.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

I know what you're saying. Yeah.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Okay, well, now we have to go back and rewatch 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?

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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 won't to feel that as well. You wanted to have a relationship like that.

[Lizzie 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?

[Chris Winterbauer]

Okay, I'm gonna give mine because 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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

She's great.

[Chris 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?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, I love it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's pretty rough.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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, you know, 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, like, very smart, headstrong young women in his house. And I really liked that story. Maybe just cause I'm a dad to a little girl now, but I thought it was really nice.

[Lizzie Bassett]

No, I loved it.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

I also just love that he was a guy in college.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes. And that was where he was coming from.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I love when he's like, you're gonna wear the suit, wear the belly, wear the belly.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

It was perfect.

[Lizzie 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 favorite song now. Well, don't do this to me now. 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 Ron. 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?

[Ad Voice]

No.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

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.

[Lizzie Bassett]

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

[Chris Winterbauer]

Thank you, Mary.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Thank you. Bye.

[Lizzie Bassett]

What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer.

[Mary from Two Judgy Girls]

Post production and music by David Bowman.

[Lizzie Bassett]

This episode was researched by Jesse Winterbauer and edited by H. Con.