As 10 Things I Hate About You leaps up the Letterboxd rankings, scriptwriter Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith shares precious memories and personal photographs with super-fan Marcie Neubert.
In the years since its release, the high school romantic comedy Marcie Neubert knew without a doubt there has been widespread iration and growing love for the modern retelling of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. She just couldn’t prove it—until now.
The data team at Letterboxd running the data again in 2018 with break-out lists according to opt-in member pronouns (she/her, he/him and xe/zir) to see what fandom looks like along varied gender lines (answer: the lists change a lot; Interstellar remains high on all variations).
10 Things I Hate About You did not appear at all on the “most fans” masterlist for 2019’s update; now it’s at number 28, between Lady Bird and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Significantly, it leaped from 43rd position in the she/her “most fans” list to number four, baby.
The Letterboxd statistics sparked in Marcie an excited interest in working out some of the factors contributing to the ever-increasing popularity of 10 Things I Hate About You. But while Letterboxd reviews and statistics can explain a lot, they can only prove a certain amount, so she also invited one of the film’s writers, Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith, to me for this Deep Impact column.
