Footnotes to the TV series
DRELLA (to Michel): Hey, Pepé Le Pew, you wanna give me a hand with this?
Pepé Le Pew is a character from the Warner Brothers cartoons. A smelly French skunk with an accent and fractured Franglais, Pepé is always in romantic pursuit of a black cat in the mistaken belief she is a skunk, to the cat’s terror.
LORELAI (to Mrs Shales): Why don’t you go up to your room and have a fabulous bubble bath, and I’ll send up some wine and a masseuse who bears a remarkable resemblance to Antonio Banderas.
Antonio Banderas (born 1960) is a Spanish actor. Successful in Spain during the 1980s, he made the transition to Hollywood in 1992 with The Mambo Kings. His breakthrough role was in Philadelphia (1993). His biggest success in the late 1990s was playing the title role in the action film The Mask of Zorro (1998).
Lorelai uses the term masseuse incorrectly: a masseuse is a woman who performs massage for a living; a man in the same role is known as a masseur.
LORELAI: Well, we like our internet slow, okay? We can turn it on, walk around, do a little dance, make a sandwich. With DSL, there’s no dancing, no walking, and we’d starve. It’d be all work and no play. Have you not seen The Shining, Mom?
The Shining is a 1980 horror film directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on Stephen King’s 1977 novel of the same name. The film is about an aspiring writer named Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), who accepts a job as caretaker at a spooky old hotel. Supernatural forces conspire to send his sanity into a tailspin, placing his family in danger.
At one point, Jack’s wife (Shelley Duvall) looks at what her husband has been writing on the typewriter, and finds he has just been typing All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy over and over, filling hundreds of sheets of paper in the process. (The phrase is a traditional English proverb about work-life balance).
Although initially gaining a lukewarm reception from critics, The Shining is now regarded as one of the greatest horror films ever made.
Madeline says this line while hiding in the shrubs as they read Rory’s academic file. In the film The Goonies, the character of Chunk (Jeff Cohen) says as he runs alone to find help at night: “I like the dark. I love the dark. But I hate nature. I hate nature!”.
The Goonies is a 1985 adventure comedy film directed by Richard Donner. In the film, a group of children try to save their homes from demolition as they search for pirate treasure. The Goonies was the #9 film of 1985 and has become a cult classic.
RORY: And I was in the German Club for a while, but there were only three of us, and then two left for the French Club after seeing Schindler’s List, so . . .
Schindler’s List is a 1993 drama film directed by Steven Spielberg. It is based on the Booker Prize-winning 1982 historical novel Schindler’s Ark, by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally. Based on real life events, it tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a German Nazi Party member who unexpectedly became a World War II hero after saving hundreds of Jews from Auschwitz.
Schindler’s List was the #4 film of 1993, was acclaimed by critics, and won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
RORY: What are you looking at?
LORELAI: I’m just trying to see if there’s a hunchback up in that bell tower.
Lorelai is alluding to The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, a Gothic novel by French author Victor Hugo which was first published in 1831. Set in the Middle Ages, the protagonist of the novel is Quasimodo, a hunchback who is the bell-ringer in the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. It has several times been adapted to film. The most recent for Lorelai and Rory in 2000 would be the 1996 animated Disney version.
It is ironic that it is Quasimodo’s job to mark the time of day by ringing out the bells in the cathedral to mark the time of day, when Lorelai’s clock did not go off.
[Lorelai and Rory sit in the Jeep staring at the school]
RORY: I remember it being smaller.
LORELAI: Yeah. And less . . .
RORY: Off with their heads.
“Off with their heads” is a quote from The Queen of Hearts, a character in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, whose furious catchphrase demands immediate death sentences on the flimsiest pretexts.
This nonsensical fantasy novel was written by English author Lewis Carroll (the pen name of Charles Dodgson) and published in 1865. An immediate publishing sensation, it has gone on to become a classic enjoyed by both children and adults. It has been adapted into other media numerous times: as a child, Rory may have seen the 1951 Disney movie Alice in Wonderland, which was re-released on video in 1991 when she was seven – the same age Alice is in the book.
The book begins with a white rabbit looking at his watch and worrying that he is running late, just as Lorelai and Rory began the day behind schedule. The book plays with the concept of time and dates, much as Gilmore Girls does.
LORELAI: Aw, you’re not gonna give me the Mommie Dearest treatment forever, are ya?
Mommie Dearest is a best-selling 1978 memoir by Christina Crawford, the adopted daughter of Hollywood screen star Joan Crawford. In the book, Christina details the years of alleged physical and psychological abuse she received at the hands of her alcoholic and controlling mother Joan. When the book came out, even people who knew the Crawfords were divided on the accuracy of the book. Some friends of Joan said that Christina exaggerated details of her life, and Christina’s two younger sisters said her stories were untrue. On the other hand, other friends and colleagues of Joan’s said they witnessed many of the incidents in the book first-hand, Joan’s private secretary confirmed Christina’s stories of abuse, and Christina’s brother staunchly defended her. The book helped to raise awareness of child abuse.
The book was made into a film in 1981, directed by Frank Perry and with Faye Dunaway in the role of Joan Crawford. It was panned by critics, but a commercial success. Intended to be a serious biographical drama, Mommie Dearest became a cult classic due to its unintentional campy humour and over the top acting. It seems like the kind of film Lorelai and Rory would have loved to mock.
There are enough references to Rory writing a book about Lorelai one day during the show to suggest that it was a long-standing joke between them, perhaps initially triggered by either reading or watching Mommie Dearest.
This country song by George Strait plays while Lorelai and Rory leave the diner and walk past the hayride after arguing about Rory’s unexpected reluctance to attend private school. The song is from the 1992 album Pure Country, the soundtrack to the musical western film of the same name, which had Strait in the lead role of Wyatt “Dusty” Chandler. The movie bombed, but the soundtrack was a commercial success, and is George Strait’s best selling album. Heartland went to #1 on the US Country charts.
RORY (after being startled by Dean): God! You’re like Ruth Gordon just standing there with a tannis root. Make a noise.
DEAN: Rosemary’s Baby.
RORY: Yeah.
DEAN: Well, that’s a great movie. You’ve got good taste.
Rosemary’s Baby is a 1968 horror film directed by Roman Polanski, based on the 1967 best-seller of the same name by Ira Levin. In the film, a young housewife named Rosemary (played by Mia Farrow) discovers that a cult has tricked her into bearing a demonic child. Ruth Gordon (1896-1985) plays Rosemary’s elderly neighbour Minnie Castavet, who is a leader in the cult; Gordon won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.
Minnie gives Rosemary a pendant necklace filled with tannis root (a fictional herb), which the cult apparently deploys as an all-round demonic treatment. As Minnie hovers around handing Rosemary tannis root in food and drink as well, it is hard to know which exact moment in the film Rory has in mind – or if she is so startled that she doesn’t quite know herself what she is saying.
Rosemary’s Baby was the #8 film of 1968, was acclaimed by critics, and is regarded as a classic movie. Dean is right that Rory has good taste. Fans of Dean Forester (Jared Padalecki) can enjoy this time during Season 1 when Dean quickly picked up on old film references and seemed to be an intellectual equal for Rory. It won’t last.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 