Tuesday, November 24, 2020

“Look it up”

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life is coming to network television, and The New York Times has an article about the appeal of the original series, with reflections from the people of Stars Hollow. Did you know that Lauren Graham (Rory Gilmore) and Scott Patterson (Luke Danes) gave up smoking to have wind enough to manage the show’s dialogue?

My favorite bit from the Times article:

Popular culture was the lifeblood of the series, and Rory and Lorelai’s conversations, speckled with rapid-fire allusions to bad television shows and great books and distant historical epochs, were the joyous center of the show, offering fans a utopian fantasy of familial love grounded in the deep appreciation of Cop Rock. A single episode might reference Nikolai Gogol, The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, the punk band Agnostic Front, the Velvet Underground collaborator Nico, Fiddler on the Roof, David Hockney, and the Franco-Prussian War.

“There was going to be an Oscar Levant mention in there, and if you don’t know who he is, that’s OK! Look it up,” [the show’s creator Amy] Sherman-Palladino said.
Related reading
All OCA Gilmore Girls posts (Pinboard)

comments: 3

Anonymous said...

I loved the original Gilmore Girls and watched it when first shown as well as again on DVD. I wonder how good and how pithy the writing will be for the newer version. Somehow updates often don't capture the original. Also the characters were less on social media, their phones or even computers on the show which made it more fun.

Amy Sherman-Palladino also co-created the show "Bunheads" which starred Kelly Bishop.

Kirsten

ps I must admit when binging shows you really realize how annoying some characters are on shows.

Geo-B said...

I was very keen on Oscar Levant as a youngster, probably from his Jack Paar appearances. (My mother, pianist, organist, harpsichordist extraordinaire, liked him for his piano playing)

Michael Leddy said...

Kirsten, the mini-series that’s airing first ran in 2016. So there’s nothing new beyond that. I won’t say anything about the mini-series if you haven’t seen it yet.

Annoying: Jess, Logan, Paris? Though Paris was at least amusing. But Logan was intolerable. Rory, what did you see in him?

George, there are several Levant/Paar clips on YouTube. Also at least one episode of Levant’s own show, with Fred Astaire as a guest. Those were the days.