Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: Wow, you’re crabby.
RORY: I’m sorry. I lost my Macy Gray CD and I need caffeine.
Macy Gray (born Natalie McIntyre in 1967) is an American R&B singer known for her distinctive raspy voice. The CD which Rory has lost is Gray’s debut album On How Life Is, released in 1999. Her best-selling album to date, it was widely praised by critics.
RORY (responding to Lorelai’s offer of cosmetics): God, RuPaul doesn’t need this much makeup.
RuPaul (born RuPaul Charles in 1960) is an American drag queen. In 1993 he found mainstream success with his dance album Supermodel of the World; several of its singles became hits, and two more albums followed in the 1990s. RuPaul was signed as a model with cosmetics company MAC, released his autobiography in 1995, and got his own talk show in 1996.
Author avatars for showrunners Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, with their own relationship mimicking the high-energy Lorelai (Amy) and the quieter Rory (Daniel). The rapid-fire pop culture laden dialogue between Lorelai and Rory was partly inspired by Amy and Daniel’s own conversations.
In German popular culture the Lorelei is a water spirit which lures men to their doom, inspired by a dangerous rock in the Rhine River (the name literally means “murmuring rock”). It was Heinrich Heine’s 1824 poem Die Lorelei which personified the Lorelei as a beautiful siren, unwittingly distracting sailors so that they came to grief on the rock. The two Lorelais in Gilmore Girls are also alluring but somewhat dangerous. We cannot help but feel Joey makes a lucky escape in the first episode, being thoroughly out of his depth.
JOEY: Yeah, I’ve never been here before. Just, uh, passing through on my way to Hartford.
LORELAI: You’re a regular Jack Kerouac.
Jean-Louis “Jack” Kerouac (1922-1969) was an American novelist and poet, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac’s most famous work is On the Road (1957), based on his travels around America.
JOEY: Yeah, I’ve never been here before. Just, uh, passing through on my way to Hartford.
Hartford is the capital of Connecticut, with a population of around 125 000, making it the third largest city in the state. Founded in 1635, it is one of the oldest cities in the United States, and for many years in its history was one of the wealthiest. These days it is actually one of America’s poorest cities, so its glory days are behind it.
In the show, Hartford was the home of Richard and Emily Gilmore, and the birthplace of both Lorelai and Rory Gilmore. Lorelai attended college part-time in Hartford, while Rory went to private school there. It is one of the most important locations in Gilmore Girls outside Stars Hollow.
The owner of the town’s diner was originally meant to be a woman named Daisy, but the network thought the show needed another male character; there was supposedly a direct gender swap with the same dialogue being used.
In the original pilot, the male owner of the diner was named Duke – as a replacement for Daisy, you can see a Dukes of Hazzard reference. Luke was only meant to be a minor character, but after seeing his chemistry with Lorelai he was promoted to main character.
Luke always wears a baseball cap as reference to Scott Patterson’s former career in baseball. Before he was an actor, Patterson was a professional pitcher in the minor leagues from 1980-86.
A friendly, relaxed diner in Washington Depot where people helped themselves to food and drink behind the counter was supposedly the inspiration for Luke’s Diner, and gave Amy Sherman-Palladino the idea for a show set in a charming, quirky small town. (This diner is no longer in existence, and I cannot identify it). Oddly enough, in the show Luke is not friendly or laid-back, and greatly dislikes people helping themselves to food behind the counter.
For the filming of the pilot in Unionville, Luke’s Diner was temporarily built inside a hardware store. This explains the backstory whereby Luke opened his diner in his dad’s old hardware store, William’s Hardware – William Danes being Luke’s deceased father.
In the first shot of the pilot, we see a sign with STARS HOLLOW FOUNDED 1779 on it. Stars Hollow is loosely based on the small town of Washington Depot in Connecticut, which incorporated in 1779. In the 19th century its industrial section was known as Factory Hollow.
However, Rory says that Stars Hollow is 30 minutes drive from Hartford, while Washington Depot is about an hour away from there, so it can’t have the same location. That distance might put it somewhere around the vicinity of the town of Wallingford or the city of Meriden.
The pilot of Gilmore Girls was filmed in Unionville, Ontario, and from then on at Warner Brothers in Burbank, California.
This song by English indie rock band The La’s is the first track to play during the pilot, and accompanies Lorelai on her walk through the town to the diner. First released in 1988, There She Goes initially failed to chart in the US, but after being remixed for their 1990 self-titled debut album went to #13 in the UK and #49 in the US.
Gilmore is a Scottish and Irish surname which means “servant of the Virgin Mary”. A very apt name for a show which revolves around motherhood, and maternal relationships.
Alternative titles for the show were The Gilmore Girls, and The Gilmore Way, which Lauren Graham thought sounded like a method of natural birth. Eventually Gilmore Girls was decided on. The font for the title card is Solid Antique Roman.
Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino chose the name Gilmore after their bank, the Gilmore Bank in Los Angeles. It’s a family-owned community bank operating since 1955, and proud of their friendly customer service where everyone knows your name. That kind of cosy hometown environment must have seemed perfect for a show all about family and community.
There’s an odd sort of logic too, that the money they made from Gilmore Girls went straight back to Gilmore Bank!
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 