Tag: Music

River City

TAYLOR: When standards slip, families flee and in comes the seedy crowd. You got trouble, my friends.
LORELAI: Right here in River City!

A reference to the 1962 musical film The Music Man, adapted from the hit 1957 Broadway musical of the same name, written by Meredith Willson. Directed by Morton DaCosta, and with Robert Preston in the title role, the film is set in River City, Iowa (based on Mason City) in 1912.

The film is about a conman named Harold Hill who tries to swindle a town by claiming he is raising funds to pay for a marching band. In the song Ya Got Trouble, Harold convinces the townspeople that the pool hall is seducing their boys into sin and vice so that they will sink money into the marching band to save them. The song says repeatedly, “Ya got trouble right here in River City!”.

The Music Man was the #5 film of 1962, and won an Academy Award for its score. Critically acclaimed, it is regarded as one of the best musical films of all time. It was filmed on the same Warner Brothers lot as Gilmore Girls.

Sister Suffragette

LORELAI: She’s [Donna Reed] medicated.
RORY: And acting from a script.
LORELAI: Written by a man.
RORY: Well said, Sister Suffragette.

Sister Suffragette is a song from the 1964 Disney film Mary Poppins, written by Richard and Robert Sherman. Sung by Glynis Johns in the role of Mrs. Winifred Banks, it is a pro-suffrage song as Mrs. Banks is a supporter of votes for women. The song’s chorus ends with the words, “Well done, Sister Suffragette!”.

Mary Poppins was loosely based on the children’s book of the same name by Australian author P.L. Travers, and directed by Robert Stevenson, with Julie Andrews in the title role. The story is about a magical nanny who comes to care for two children in Edwardian London, and improves the lives of all the family.

Mary Poppins was the #3 film of of 1964 and received universal acclaim from critics. It won five Academy Awards, including a Best Actress for Julie Andrews, and is generally seen as Walt Disney’s crowning achievement. It was released on home video three times during the 1990s, suggesting that Lorelai may have bought it for Rory the previous decade.

Eternal Flame

This is the second song The Bangles play at the concert. It plays while Lorelai questions Sookie about Luke’s ex-girlfriend Rachel, up to the scene where Madeline and Louise tell Rory they are ditching the concert to go with Jess and Sean.

Eternal Flame was a 1989 hit for The Bangles when it was released as a single from their 1988 album Everything. A love song, it was partly inspired by the eternal flame at Elvis Presley’s grave site. The song went to #1 in the US and other countries around the world, and was the number 32 song of 1989.

“I almost named you Susanna”

LORELAI (to Rory): Oh you’re going to have a great time. The Bangles are the best! They were my favorite band in high school. I almost named you Susanna.

We find out here that not only was The Bangles Lorelai’s favourite band as a teenager, but she almost named Rory after Susanna Hoffs (born 1959), their lead singer. Susanna’s middle name is Lee, very similar to Rory’s middle name of Leigh.

Walk Like an Egyptian

LORELAI: Okay here [offers concert tickets, but pulls them back] Ah! With these tickets you are about to enter sacred space, you will be treading on hallowed ground, you will be walking like an Egyptian.

Walk Like an Egyptian is a 1986 song by The Bangles, from their album Different Light. It was written by Liam Sternberg, who was inspired to write it after seeing the stiff, stylised way passengers on a ferry were walking to keep their balance, reminding him of figures in Ancient Egyptian pictures.

Walk Like an Egyptian was the #1 song of 1986, and sold millions of copies; it helped make Different Light The Bangles’ most successful album, and is their best known song. It plays as they arrive at the Pastorella Theatre.

Pastorella Theatre

The Bangles concert takes place at the Pastorella Theatre in New York City, a fictional entertainment venue. In Italian, pastorela means “shepherdess”, and a pastorella can mean any musical or literary work with a pastoral theme, a church composition for the Christmas season, or a medieval poem or song involving love for a shepherdess. The Pastorella Theatre therefore has a name connected with music.

In real life, The Bangles appeared at the Irving Plaza at 17 Irving Place in Union Square, Manhattan when they played in New York during their reunion tour; the date was October 2 2000. For the concert venue in this episode, the exterior shots are from the Warner Bros. Theater in Burbank, while the interior shots are from The Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles.

The Bangles in Concert

The main event of the episode kicks off when Sookie receives four tickets to see The Bangles in concert that Saturday as a gift from a delighted wedding client named Mr. Birnbaum, and gives them to Lorelai. Sookie says that Lorelai requested them, so perhaps Mr. Birnbaum, who owned a ticket agency, asked Sookie which show she would like to attend, and she asked for The Bangles on behalf of Lorelai.

The Bangles broke up in 1989 and went on hiatus. They drifted back together in 1998, and officially re-formed in 1999 to record a song called Go Get the Girl (written by band members Susanna Hoffs and Debbi Peterson) for the soundtrack to Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Susanna Hoffs is married to Jay Roach, the film’s director.

In 2000 The Bangles did a reunion tour, and that same year was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. In real life, Lorelai could not have seen The Bangles in concert in February 2001 as they were not touring then, but working on their next album.

Beethoven

Todd tells Lane that his favourite movie is Beethoven, and Lane incredulously asks, “The one with the dog?”.

Beethoven is a 1992 family comedy film directed by Brian Levant and written by John Hughes (as Edmond Dantès). It is about the antics of a big friendly St Bernard dog named after the composer Ludwig van Beethoven, and the way he protects the family who have adopted him. The movie received tepid reviews but was enough of a commercial success to spawn numerous sequels and a television series.

Todd describes his favourite scene as the one where a little dog is running around with a cabbage in its mouth. During the movie, Beethoven’s family help him escape from an experimental lab run by an evil vet, and they release all the other dogs who have been held there. As the evil vet’s henchmen chase the dogs through a marketplace, a Golden Retriever puts an entire cabbage in his mouth, and spends the rest of the scene hanging onto it.

It’s one of those blink-and-you’d-miss-it funny background scenes, so this actually provides a glimmer of hope in regard to Todd’s intelligence. He clearly has a keen eye for detail (although Golden Retrievers are not really “little dogs”; maybe he means it in an affectionate way.) In the Gilmore Girls universe, perhaps even the dimmest people have a knowledge of obscure movie trivia!