One or Two Things He Knows About Teenagers

By KATHRYN SHATTUCK

New York Times

CARTER COVINGTON, then 26, had a lingering nostalgia for high school when “10 Things I Hate About You,” the director Gil Junger’s spin on Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew,” arrived in theaters in 1999. It immediately became one of Mr. Covington’s favorite films.

In his first major role Heath Ledger played Patrick Verona, a Padua High School outcast. He’s paid by a new kid, Cameron James (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), to seduce Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles), the sour older sister of Cameron’s beloved, Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), who isn’t allowed to date until her sibling does.

Flash forward to 2007, when Mr. Junger was directing some episodes Mr. Covington had written for “Greek,” on ABC Family. Mr. Covington’s natural curiosity about “10 Things” began bubbling up, he said, and soon the men “started percolating this idea.”

The result: “10 Things I Hate About You,” the television series, which is to have its premiere July 7 on ABC Family. Lindsey Shaw plays Kat, Meaghan Martin is Bianca, Nicholas Braun is Cameron and Ethan Peck, a grandson of Gregory, is Patrick. There’s also DNA from the film, with Larry Miller reprising his role as Kat and Bianca’s father, Mr. Junger directing the pilot and Richard Gibbs composing the music.

“I like to say that we’re reimagining the movie, we’re not reinventing,” said Mr. Covington, now 36, who developed the series and serves as a writer and executive producer. “ABC Family respects the fact that writers have voices, and they really encourage them to express themselves. If I were Shakespeare, it would be my Globe Theater.” In excerpts from a recent interview, Mr. Covington talks with Kathryn Shattuck about coming of age.

Q. Why bring the movie to television?

A. I grew up on John Hughes movies. I was that kid who was completely hooked on “16 Candles” and “Pretty in Pink.” That whole Brat Pack era for those kids really resonated with me, and I thought that what he did well was tell these stories based on universal archetypes that anyone could relate to. And “10 Things” really tapped into that same sort of emotional resonance — that humor, that lightheartedness, but that grounding in the reality of what it’s like to be a teenager.

Q. How do you keep the story fresh for television?

A. I decided in the beginning that there’s enough distance between Shakespeare and us that we can free ourselves of some of the things Shakespeare dictated to the movie. For Patrick, I wanted to remove the element of Cameron paying him to date Kat. I really wanted Kat to be an interesting enough character that Patrick would be intrigued by her regardless of money. Kat is actually the character that I’m most excited about writing. She’s a unique female teen voice in a world of “Gossip Girl” and “90210.”

Q. What about your high school days?

A. I grew up in Winston-Salem, N.C. Actually went to R J Reynolds High School. In fact about 10 years before I started high school, kids could smoke in class. I was that guy who could sort of float between groups but never fully was grounded in any of them. I am an openly gay male now, but I was in the closet, so that also colored my experience, this idea that I think everyone feels — that you’re not quite yourself yet, but you have all these ideas of who you want to be, and you’re constantly trying on new identities or trying to get people to see you the way you want to be seen.

Q. How do you introduce Shakespeare into a contemporary series?

A. It’s probably the thing that I’m most unsure about, to be quite honest. It’s a fine line between putting in enough references that people who respond to those sorts of things feel rewarded, but not putting so much in that it takes you out of the show.

Q. Why does “The Taming of the Shrew” have such staying power?

A. I think it’s that sort of Sam and Diane relationship you saw in “Cheers” — the combativeness of attraction. It’s these two characters who probably would never be friends in real life, but they have this chemistry that draws them to each other. These charged romances help you storywise because it enables you to not have to get them together so fast.

Q. How do you tease people without turning them off?

A. You just asked the central question to everything. It is such a balancing act. What we are trying to do in the first 10 episodes is build the foundation for an epic romance. People have to buy into that, to be invested enough to want to watch the twists and turns. I’m sure we’ll have to use some of the devices that have been used before, like giving one of them someone else so that they’re now jealous and can’t be together. But I do feel like we will be playing cat and mouse with them for a while.

TV Teen Shows Inhabit Another World

By Ellen Gray: Philadelphia Daily News

SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER. 8 tonight, ABC Family.

MAKE IT OR BREAK IT. 9 tonight, ABC Family.

NYC PREP. 10 p.m. tomorrow, Bravo.

Few Teenagers, I suspect, learn much about their actual lives from watching television.

Assuming they're watching at all.

Their younger sisters (and some of their brothers) may be trying to read their futures in the activities of Nickelodeon's "iCarly" or Disney's "Hannah Montana," but by the time they've left middle school, they'll probably have moved on, much the way I abandoned Seventeen magazine years before turning 17.

Moving on may mean the CW's "Gossip Girl," where money confers a quasi-adult status on amazingly dressed adolescents, or MTV's "The Hills," where young adults behave like adolescents.

But for 12- to 17-year-olds it's even more likely to mean ABC Family's "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," which in its first season set ratings records in that much-targeted demographic with the story of a 15-year-old named Amy (Shailene Woodley) who loses her virginity and gets pregnant in the same night.

And it happens at band camp.

Created by Brenda Hampton, whose "7th Heaven" boasted some of the least-believable teens ever on TV - as well as the largest audiences on its youth-oriented network - "Secret Life," which begins its second season tonight, reflects Hampton's fascination with sex and its consequences.

Amy's far from the only one who's taught a lesson in this show, which also seeks to make things uncomfortable for her warring parents (Molly Ringwald and Mark Derwin) and just about everyone else in her life.

Ringwald, who in real life is expecting twins this summer, won't be spending the season standing behind the couch holding a basket of laundry, Hampton having chosen to use the tools at hand to make it work, even if it means Amy's new baby's soon going to have an aunt or uncle for a playmate.

There is nothing in me that can say that "Secret Life" is a good show, or even a good-for-you show, but I can understand why kids whose media diet's been saturated with sexual images since early childhood might be attracted to a parallel universe where bad behavior's punished more often than it's celebrated.

I'm weirdly attracted myself, if only because "Secret Life" 's characters do and say such unexpected things - whether it's a 15-year-old boy proposing marriage or a sexually active girl advising a friend to hang on to her virginity - that there's seldom a dull moment.

Or, OK, a genuine one.

ABC Family, whose motto, "A new kind of family," clearly seeks to separate the cable channel from its Pat Robertson roots, is erecting a big tent for younger viewers, with shows like "Greek" and "Lincoln Heights" as well as "Secret Life."

Among its summer offerings: "10 Things I Hate About You," a series based on the hit teen-movie takeoff on "Taming of the Shrew"; "Ruby & the Rockits," a rocker-family series starring David and Patrick Cassidy (with brother Shaun getting the story credit); and "Labor Pains," a movie starring Lindsay Lohan, of all people, as a screwup of a secretary who fakes a pregnancy to avoid losing her job.

Another series, "Make It or Break It," which premieres tonight, follows the fortunes of a small group of female gymnasts, would-be Olympians for whom pregnancy's probably less of an issue than puberty.

Chelsea Hobbs stars as Emily Kmetko, a girl from the wrong side of the gymnastic tracks who, in the tradition of every sports movie from "Rocky" to "The Cutting Edge," has been given a shot at the big time.

Not that that's going to be easy, as the politics of the sport threaten her dream almost immediately.

There's very little that's unexpected in "Make It," including the obvious editing of the gymnastics performances.

But Emily's a tough character who's easy to root for.

And though many of the show's grown-ups aren't very grown up, "Frasier's" Peri Gilpin, who plays the mother of two other gymnasts, does a nice job of showing someone trying to do the best for her kids, not just herself.

Certainly I'd rather see a kid of mine tuning in ABC Family's altered reality than Bravo's latest unpleasant exploit-fest, "NYC Prep."

Bad enough that "The O.C." begat MTV's "Laguna Beach" (which begat "The Hills"), and "Desperate Housewives" inspired an entire franchise of angry, table-tipping women on Bravo.

Now, thanks to a collection of well-off New York adolescents whose parents really should have known better, the NBC Universal-owned cable network's out to convince us that those kids from "Gossip Girl" are real.

As if anyone would want them to be. *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT