A Joseph Gordon-Levitt Love Story Part II: 10 Things I Hate About You

(Blogger's note: Titles don't get much longer than that, huh?)


“Don't let anyone ever make you feel like you don't deserve what you want.”

Spoken by Heath Ledger's character in the 1999 film, 10 Things I Hate About You (based on Shakespeare’s, The Taming of the Shrew), this quote can be spoken in every cookie-cutter, coming-of-age, romantic comedy, but it means so much more, for me, coming from this extremely attractive, bad boy-playing, sweetheart.
Maybe it was the fact that the writers of this film left this quote in one scene and didn't play on it throughout, like most other movies with strong themes of “being yourself”, but it was a nice little gem in this hour-and-a-half of teenage angst, Coffee Kids (“Very on edge; don't make any sudden movements around them”), and penis jokes (so, two minutes with my friends?)
Referring to “the shrew”, Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) is an unsociable, strong-minded feminist against any form of teenage conformity out there. Her sister, Bianca, is the exact opposite and completely dumbfounded by Kat’s anti-socialness. Played by little Joseph Gordon-Levitt is new student, Cameron James, who finds himself utterly infatuated with Bianca and pays the dangerously hot, bad boy Patrick Verona (Ledger) to date Kat so that he can date her sister.
It’s all very hard to explain on paper while still making seem interesting and uncomplicated, especially when you bring in the douchebag “model”, Joey, who finances Cameron to pay Patrick so that he can date Bianca. Yeah.
At first the doting, dorky, teenage Cameron is passed off by Bianca, like Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character in (500) Days of Summer is, but she eventually comes around, like every other woman with the chance to get with JGL (except for Summer, but she's just a bitch).
10 Things I Hate About You is a great movie; it's funny and sweet and sometimes a little but cheesy, but always awesome. It's also one of the only movies that can make me cry when Kat recites her poem, “10 Things I Hate About You” in front of her class to Patrick, for whom she’s fallen. Every. Time.
But every time I watch it, that quote still sticks out at me. Don't let anyone ever make you feel like you don't deserve what you want. They're strong words to live by.
Strong words coming from a smoking, rumored-to-be-ex-con, flashing Patrick Verona to a young, amiable, although impressionable Cameron James in this Joseph Gordon-Levitt love story.