From the archives: 20 years ago, Tacoma was on the big screen

A 20th anniversary showing this weekend of the 1999 film “10 Things I Hate About You” had to cap the crowd at 5,000 after too many eager fans registered for the showing at Stadium Bowl. Here, we look back from The News Tribune’s archive at our coverage of filming of the movie at Stadium High School and a North End neighborhood in the summer of 1998.

NORTH END GOES HOLLYWOOD AS DISNEY BEGINS FILMING

Originally published, June 9, 1998:

Filming for the Disney movie “10 Things I Hate About You” began Monday in a North End neighborhood that is distinctively Tacoma.

The spectacular view of Commencement Bay visible from the house on North Junett Street makes it obvious that “10 Things” is being shot in the City of Destiny.

But when the movie lands in theaters sometime next year, audiences will be told that the setting is Seattle.

After all, Hollywood is in the business of selling illusions. And in this illusion, filmmakers have decided to pass off a lesser-known Northwest city for one with a more recognizable name and image.

It’s happened to Tacoma before. In 1996, Disney’s “Prefontaine” used the University of Puget Sound campus as a stand-in for the University of Oregon in Eugene. And “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” filmed in 1991 at a home on Tacoma’s North Yakima Avenue, was, like “10 Things,” set in Seattle.

In the beginning, the film people hadn’t intended to either shoot or set their movie in Washington. Jeffrey Chernov, the film’s executive producer, said the filmmakers had decided that the movie would be set in Oregon — but would be filmed in California.

“About seven weeks ago the movie was already prepped and ready to go in Los Angeles,” Chernov said. But because almost half the picture takes place in a high school, the filmmakers asked film commissions in Oregon and Washington to send them photos of distinctive Northwest schools so they could dress up a couple of LA-area schools in a Northwest style. Washington officials sent photos of Tacoma’s Stadium High “and it really changed the course of history,” Chernov said.

Stadium’s towers and turrets seemed perfect for this modern version of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew.” Although the picture is set in the present day, the medieval look of Stadium will effectively tie the film back to the Bard, Chernov said. So the decision was made to pack the movie out of Los Angeles and bring it to Tacoma. Filming at Stadium is set to begin on June 17, after school is out.

Until then, filming will take place at the home of William and Joan McGovern in the 2700 block of North Junett. The McGoverns have moved out temporarily and the film people have moved in, with their trucks and their lights and their crew members talking into their walkie-talkies.

But if a film crew could be said to be keeping a low profile, the “10 Things” crew was doing its best. Virtually all of the filming will take place inside the home, and aside from the noise of the generators, the neighborhood street was quiet Monday morning.

Late in the day, a small crowd of parents, children and dogs gathered outside the home, along with a couple of police cars for security. Mary McElroy and her 14-year-old daughter, Desiree, said they planned to be there every day of the shoot. The mother said she and her daughter normally don’t go to movies because of the cost, but they will see “10 Things.”

“I like to watch them being made,” Mary McElroy said of films, adding she watched the filming in Tacoma of “The Three Fugitives,” released in 1989.

In “10 Things,” the McGovern home is the residence of a family named Stratford — another link to Shakespeare. The principal female character, called Kate in Shakespeare, is called Kat in the film — but don’t call her shrewish. Julia Stiles, the 17-year-old actress who plays Kat, said, “Kat is very intelligent and assertive. ... She’s not really a shrew. She just doesn’t fit into her environment.”

That environment is high school, and though she’s good at her studies, she’s something of a social outcast. It’s up to a young man named Patrick Verona, played by 19-year-old Australian actor Heath Ledger, to try to smooth off her rough edges.

MUCH ADO ABOUT A CONTEMPORARY SHREW

Originally published, June 18, 1998:

Alumni might recognize the building as Stadium High School in Tacoma, but for a few weeks it has been renamed for the filming of the Touchstone Pictures movie “10 Things I Hate About You,” described as a contemporary update of William Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew.” During the filming of this scene Wednesday, in which students are playing hacky sack in the school courtyard, assistant prop master John Sweeney reaches out from a balcony to retrieve the sack in midair. Below, members of the film crew work in the Stadium — er, Padua — High courtyard. Filming began last week at a North End house and is to continue at the school for about a month. The picture, which will feature extras from Western Washington, is scheduled to be released next year. Filmmakers decided to shoot the movie in Tacoma because of the romantic, Renaissance look of the 92-year-old brick school. They also have agreed to pay the Tacoma School District $650 for each day it uses the school. That could mean as much as $25,000 for the district’s general fund.

This story was originally published May 17, 2019 at 1:30 PM.