SOOKIE: ‘Fran’s Old Place’! It’ll be like Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. People will be trying to figure out who Fran is.
Ruth’s Chris Steak House is a chain of over one hundred upscale steakhouses across the United States, Canada and Mexico. The original Chris Steakhouse was founded in New Orleans in 1927 by Chris Matulich. It was purchased in 1965 by divorced single mother Ruth Fertel, who needed money to send her sons to college.
The name was changed to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in 1976 after a fire forced Fertel to move the restaurant to a new property. It allowed her to to keep some continuity, as she was legally not able to use the name Chris Steakhouse for any other locations than the original restaurant. Fertel admitted she always hated the name.
Note the similarities between Ruth and Lorelai – both struggling single mothers who need money for their children’s education. Both will even suffer the setback of a fire!
LORELAI: It’s the title search for the Rachel property. And guess who owns it. SOOKIE: Tell me it’s not that bastard Donald Trump.
Donald Trump (born 1946), American businessman, media personality, and politician. He became president of his father’s real estate business in 1971 and renamed it The Trump Organisation. Trump expanded the company’s operations to building and renovating skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. He later started various side ventures, mostly by licensing his name. Trump and his businesses have been involved in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions, including six bankruptcies. He owned the Miss Universe brand of beauty pageants from 1996 to 2015.
Sookie seems to think of Donald Trump as someone who owns so much real estate, any random property could very well be his. Although it seems comically unlikely he would own a rundown inn in rural Connecticut, he did have a history of buying derelict hotels and doing them up.
It’s probably best that Sookie doesn’t know that Donald Trump will later become the President of the United States (2017-2021).
In American slang, a “money pit” is any property, possession or business which takes up an increasingly large amount of money to maintain it – usually more than was foreseen or budgeted for.
Michel is possibly referencing the 1986 comedy film The Money Pit, starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long as a couple struggling to renovate their recently bought house. It closely parallels the 1948 Cary Grant comedy, Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House, and received lukewarm reviews. The movie does have a happy ending, a possible foreshadowing that Lorelai and Sookie will have one too.
LORELAI: It shouldn’t be too flashy. SOOKIE: How about something historical, like ‘The Paul Revere’?
Paul Revere (1735-1818) was a Boston silversmith and patriot of the American Revolution. He is best known for his midnight ride to alert the colonial militia in 1775 to the approach of the British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord. It was dramatised in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1861 poem, Paul Revere’s Ride, which significantly increased Revere’s stature, and made him part of American legend.
LUKE: Well, I should be getting going. You gonna write this meal off? LORELAI: Why? LUKE: Oh, we talked business. You gotta be thinking about these things. LORELAI: No, I mean, why? I’m not paying for it. [Luke sighs] Exactly.
How often did Lorelai and Rory get free meals from Luke? We almost never see them pay, and they seem to storm off or run out without either eating or paying quite a bit. It might help explain how they manage to eat out so often without blowing the budget …
LORELAI: So, who taught you about all this business stuff? Your dad? LUKE: Please. My dad didn’t even have a checking account until I finally got taller then he was. He bought this land with cash from working construction, built this place himself. Didn’t have a bookkeeper, an accountant, or anything. LORELAI: Wow, so you had no one showing you the ropes. LUKE: Nope, I figured I had to just dive in on my own, fail if that’s my destiny, and forget what the experts say.
Note that this back story changes slightly later on.
Is it really possible that Luke learned nothing at all from his father before he died? William Danes ran a hardware store, he must have known something about business, and Luke worked alongside him when he wasn’t at school. Surely he picked up a few hints at the very least, especially as William would have been expecting him to take over the store one day (which, in a sense, he did).
LUKE: Go. Stay out of trouble. JESS: Guess that means calling off the chickie run down at the salt flats.
Jess references the 1955 drama film, Rebel Without a Cause, directed by Nicholas Ray and starring James Dean, previously discussed. It was a groundbreaking attempt to portray the moral decay of American youth and inter-generational conflict, focused on a Los Angeles teenager named Jim Stark. Released less than a month after James Dean’s death in a car accident, and the only film where he received top billing, it is now regarded as a cultural landmark.
At one point, Jim takes on Buzz, the leader of the local gang, in a “chickie run”, where two people drive headlong towards each other, or towards some object of doom – the first one to swerve away to save themselves is the “chickie” (chicken, coward). In the film, the chickie run is headed straight for some seacliffs, so that there is a serious risk of one or both ending up mortally injured, and indeed, it ends tragically for the gang leader, whose jacket becomes entangled with the door when he tries to jump out and save himself.
A chickie run at the salt flats is a reference to the 1984 dance movie Footloose, set in salty flat Utah and previously discussed. In a homage to Rebel Without a Cause, the film’s hero Ren takes part in a chickie run on tractors against a rival. Like Buzz, he suffers a technical glitch when his shoelace gets stuck in the vehicle’s pedals. Unlike Buzz, this causes him to win the chickie run and emerge triumphant.
It’s interesting that Jess references Footloose, one of Lorelai’s favourite films. It’s another reminder how much these two characters have in common.
LORELAI: Mmm, I’m terrible at coming up with names. When we first bought out house, Rory and I wanted to name it, you know, like Jefferson named his place Monticello, but all we could come up with is The Crap Shack.
Former US President Thomas Jefferson, previously discussed, called his main plantation Monticello, from the Italian for “little mountain”, as it’s situated on a peak of the Southwest Mountains, near Charlottesville, Virginia. The plantation house was first begun in 1768 in a neoclassical style, but extensively remodelled in the 1790s with elements from Parisian homes Jefferson had seen in France and ideas of his own devising, and work continued into the 1820s. Monticello is now a National Historic Landmark and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and features on the US five cent coin.
Notice that Lorelai wears a black blouse with a red cherry print design on it – Monticello is famous for its orchard, including its cherry trees. You can still buy cherry preserves from the Monticello gift shop. I cannot say if the colour of the blouse is significant in light of the slave labour that was used at Monticello, and even to some extent, in the building of the plantation house itself.
This is the first time we learn that Lorelai and Rory supposedly called their house The Crap Shack when they moved in, when Rory was eleven. Presumably the house was in poor condition, and has needed a lot of work to get it to the standard we see. It can’t be a name they use very often – they’ve always just referred to as “home” or “the house” so far. Perhaps that’s because the house is now far less crappy than when Lorelai bought it and the name doesn’t really apply any more.
EMILY: The [painter] from Italy had some sort of breakdown. RORY: Oh my God. LORELAI: Hey, it didn’t hurt van Gogh, the guy should thank me.
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch post-impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in the history of western art. In only a decade, he created more than two thousand oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life, his work becoming brighter, bolder, and more dramatic as his style developed.
Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions, and neglected his physical health, drinking heavily and not eating properly. His friendship with the painter Paul Gauguin ended with a confrontation during which van Gogh partially severed his own ear in a fit of rage. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, but after being discharged, his depression continued. He is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver, dying two days later.
Van Gogh was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime, but attained widespread success over the ensuing decades, and today his works are among the world’s most expensive paintings to have ever sold. His legacy is honoured by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Although van Gogh suffered lifelong mental health issues, it is thought he may have had an acute breakdown when he severed his ear, as he had no memory of the event. It certainly did hurt him – he ultimately killed himself. But Lorelai probably means it didn’t do his career any harm, as the mental illness and suicide have only given him an aura of tortured, misunderstood genius in the public imagination. [picture shows a Van Gogh self-portrait].
It’s clear the Italian painter’s Lorelai-caused breakdown also hurt him – a year later, he was apparently homeless or destitute, found rummaging through Emily and Richard’s recyclables. It was typical of Emily not to check that he was okay, or offer him help – after all, it was her daughter that supposedly drove him to madness! Hopefully he was just working on an art installation and looking for materials, or something.
EMILY: She wouldn’t stop scowling. LORELAI: I was going for a Billy Idol thing.
Billy Idol (born William Broad in 1955), British-American singer. He first achieved fame in the 1970s as leader of London punk band Generation X, before a subsequent solo career made him a lead artist on MTV in the 1980s. His biggest hits include Dancing With Myself, White Wedding, Rebel Yell, and Eyes Without a Face. Billy Idol took a break from music during the 1990s, making musical comebacks in 2005 and 2014.
Billy Idol was known for his signature scowl, which he came up with as a way of making himself memorable. He could easily have been an artist that Lorelai enjoyed during her teen years.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 