March 8, 2021

Haven't gone grocery shopping yet, and since we were gone for four weeks, my husband and I have no food in the apartment. For breakfast this morning, we got Starbucks. I drove Mitch into work -- it's his first day back in person in a year. It reminded me of Trainer Tips on YouTube. It's this young guy, Nick, who plays Pokemon Go every day and then makes videos about it. He lives in Long Beach, and his routine is he wakes up, records a little video, goes out and plays Pokemon Go for an hour, and then he gets breakfast. (I haven't watched the channel since COVID-19 hit, so he might be doing something different now.) Him getting breakfast was always my favorite part. Long Beach is great for food, and Nick eats by himself, talks to the camera, and enjoys the hell out of it. I tend to have immediate needs in the morning. Coffee now! Water now! Food now! But there's something adventurous about getting out in the world first and then seeking out your breakfast. Our Starbucks run, this slight deviation from the norm, has me reminiscing about our time in Thailand, where first thing every morning was a search for a coffee as big as our head. Thinking ahead to Mitch's and my trip to Scotland. Do they have coffee there? Or do they only believe in tea? I can't wait to find out. 

Script Log (SLog) time! **SPOILERS** but come on, you've seen this movie before

10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU

Script Revision: 1997

Movie Released: 1999

Written by: Karen McCullah Lutz & Kirsten Smith 

Directed by: Gil Junger

McCullah manager: Seth Jaret at Jaret Entertainment

Smith agent: Bill Weinstein at Verve Talent and Literary Agency

Smith manager: Josh Goldenberg at Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment 

Logline (from IMDB): A pretty, popular teenager can't go out on a date until her ill-tempered older sister does.

Read: 3/6/21

Cameron, from North Dakota, is new to a giant high school in Portland, Oregon. Michael takes him around, introducing him to the school dynamics. There are the coffee kids, the cowboys, the white Rastas. Cameron sees Bianca, a sophomore and the most gorgeous girl in school, and is immediately smitten. The problem is that Bianca can’t date until her older sister Kat does, and Kat is smart, scary, and hostile. Michael and Cameron hatch a plan to make this happen. They pick Patrick, a scary hostile guy himself, to be the suitor, and they rope in Joey – an affluent and self-absorbed tube sock model – to pay Patrick to take Kat out. Joey wants Bianca for himself. Patrick agrees and slowly wins Kat over. We find out that both his and Kat’s gruffness are defenses (armor/masks), and that they’re red-blooded humans underneath. Kat eventually finds out that Patrick was paid, but Patrick insists that he’s fallen for her for real. In the end, Kat forgives him and the two go out together. 

I read this script on the drive from Colorado to Los Angeles, and it felt like watching a movie. The whole thing felt energetic and specific. I liked how the writers created their own high school cliques instead of going for your standard jocks, nerds, stoners. The script is darker than I remember the movie being. For example, Kat’s friend Mandella spends much of the movie trying to killer herself (like with the spiral wire from her binder during class) and it’s played for laughs. (She wants to die so she can be with William Shakespeare.) Also, Joey is beaten so badly, first punched by Bianca several times and then mobbed by the student body, that he spends several days in the ICU. I like this darkness, it makes the movie less cute. But it kind of shocked me as well. Maybe the script is darker than the movie or maybe I just remember the movie as lighter because of its pink font and bopping sound track. Lastly, there are genuine jokes. It holds up as a comedy. McCullah and Smith have also written Legally Blonde and Ella Enchanted. They’re a powerhouse. 

Rating: ★★★★