Queue Up That Sarah McLachlan Song

This is Kate laughing at her then-future boss.

As you may have noticed, today we are saying goodbye to one of our most tenured contributors, associate editor Kate Erbland. And before you jump into the comments to ask why we’ve now spent two full articles on one of our writers leaving, just know that we covered this week’s episode of True Detective not once, but twice. That’s professionalism right there.

The time we are putting into saying goodbye to Kate and allowing Kate to say goodbye to Film School Rejects is indicative of how important Kate Erbland’s work has been to us over the last 4 years. And it’s not often in this business that a site, an audience and in this case, a family of hard working people, get to say a happy goodbye to one of its own. These sort of things usually end unceremoniously. But in the case of Kate Erbland, her moving on to become the Managing Editor of IndieWire is something that fills us with great pride.

I’m not entirely sure if she knows it, but Kate was on my radar long before she joined us in July of 2011. For a number of years, she was an editor at the plucky little film blog Gordon and the Whale. We’d met at a South by Southwest, I believe, and had hung out with the entire GATW crew at a Sundance (or two, my memory is fuzzy). And when I learned that Gordon and the Whale was about to close down for good, I remember texting founder Chase Whale with a simple request: “I want Kate and Allison for FSR.” Much to my own surprise, both Kate and Allison Loring had similar thoughts on the matter. It was destined to be a great fit.

In the almost exactly four years since that text message, Kate has been a driving force behind some of our best content. I love stats, so here are a few. In four years, she has published 1,712 articles on this site and been read by over 8 million readers. That’s just her articles alone.

As you can see below, she also laughs a lot, which has always brought a special energy to our team:

This is when Kate “borrowed” all the remaining freebies from a film festival party.

This is the time Kate found the remnants of her first byline in her high school newspaper.

Though it’s not just about quantity for Kate Erbland. As I look back over her tenure as an editor, I see some great reads. For a long time, she’s been one of our strongest voices on the subject of television. Her piece on The Legacy of Parks and Recreation is still one of my favorites, as is her piece about the time How I Met Your Mother Killed The Romantic Gesture, Then Resurrected It. There’s also that time when she binge-watched all of The Sopranos and lived to tell the tale. And oddly, she wrote not one, but two articles about the MTV series Catfish that to this day are still extremely popular clicks on our website. We still can’t figure that one out.

It hasn’t all be about television, though. Some of Kate’s best work went into this fantastic profile of actress Brie Larson. She’s also long been a champion for social issues and a strong female voice in an industry that frankly doesn’t have enough of them. From pointing out what Man of Steel got right about Lois Lane to explaining why Maleficent really was about rape and abuse, she’s never shied from a topic and she has always stayed true to herself.

She’s also never been shy about delivering strong opinions within her reviews. Her review archive is littered with wonderful work, all evidence of her very nuanced taste. We’ve had a lot of fun watching her give the very rare ‘F’ grade to a few films over the years, including hardcore takedowns of InAppropriate Comedy, the Adam Sandler/Andy Samberg film That’s My Boy and the stunningly tone-deaf Vivi Friedman film The Family Tree. She has also delivered high praise along the way. While she has understandably never given a movie our highest grade of ‘A+’, she has given a wide variety of films big, beautiful ‘A’ grades, including the creepy Jake Gyllenhaal film Nighcrawler, DisneyNature’s adorable film Bears, the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, the indie darling Sound of My Voice and yes, even the blockbuster sensation The Hunger Games.

For Kate Erbland, it’s been a great run here at Film School Rejects. As her boss, I’ve enjoyed working with her immensely. She is one of the hardest working, sharpest and most thoughtful human beings working in the film blogging world today. And while we are going to miss her desperately, we can’t wait to see what she does next over at IndieWire. And we’ll be reading, for sure. Because even though she’s moving on, she will always be part of the FSR family.

This is where I was going to place the Sarah McLachlan song, “I Will Remember You.” Instead, plot twist! This song is far more appropriate for a goodbye to Kate. Because Erbland 2016!

Thanks to our own Allison Loring and our friend Katey Rich at Vanity Fair for helping find some of the most fun photos of Kate during her time here at Film School Rejects. I’m sure it won’t be embarrassing at all.

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