Footnotes to the TV series
RORY: Hey Clara. Nice, is that a Stella McCartney?
CLARA: It’s a Walmart.
Stella McCartney (born 1971), English fashion designer, and the daughter of Paul McCartney and his wife Linda, previously discussed. In 2001, she launched her own fashion house, in a joint venture with Gucci, and now has more than fifty stores around the world.
Walmart, previously discussed. There is a Walmart in Hartford where Mrs Forester could have bought Clara’s dress.
PARIS: Oh. Okay, well, I’ll get out of your way. Call if you need to talk things through, and oh – she uses the Prince version of writing. A letter U for you and a picture of an eye for an I.
The pop star Prince, previously discussed. Some of his song titles are I Would Die 4 U, U Got the Look, and Nothing Compares 2 U, a notation which became common in 1990s songs, and foreshadowed text speak. I can’t find an example of him using a picture of an eye for the letter I, but there are enough references to him doing so that I don’t think Paris is exaggerating.
BABETTE: Morey hates being the first anywhere. He thinks it hurts his street credibility.
MOREY: Charlie Parker was late to everything.
BABETTE: Charlie Parker had more drugs in him than a Rite-Aid.
Charlie Parker, previously discussed [pictured].
Rite-Aid is a chain of pharmacies or drugstores, founded in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1962 as the Thrift D Discount Center, changing its name in 1968. They have numerous stores in Connecticut, and other US states.
RORY: I thought maybe a certain depressed man and his wife could stay there.
LORELAI: Woody and Soon-Yi?
Woody Allen (born Allan Konigsberg in 1935), multi award-winning actor and film director, famous for films such as Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989). When acting a role in a comedy film, he often played a depressed, anxious, or neurotic character.
Allen had been in a long-term relationship with Mia Farrow since 1979 when, in 1991 or 1992, he embarked on an affair with Farrow’s adopted daughter from a previous marriage, Soon-Yi Previn (born circa 1970), then a college student. There was an immediate scandal when the affair became public knowledge – not only because of the age gap, but due to the perceived familial relationship. Allen denied being Soon-Yi’s stepfather, or being a father figure to her, although he did describe his role in their romantic relationship as “paternal”.
Allen and Previn married in 1997, and have since adopted two children. Woody Allen has continued making films, although his career did founder in the early 2000s – when this episode aired, his most recent offering was the costly failure, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001). However, he went on to make successful films set in Europe later that decade. Recently he has gained acclaim for films such as Blue Jasmine (2013) and Cafe Society (2018), and is regarded as a cinematic genius.
RORY (looking at photo of Sherry): Nice looking lady.
LORELAI: Mm hmm. Like a young Tammy Faye Bakker.
RORY: But prettier than that.
Tammy Faye Bakker, born Tamara LaValley (1942-2007) was the ex-wife of television evangelist Jim Bakker (born 1940). She and her husband ran a televangelist program called the PTL Club, founded in 1974; it was dissolved in 1989 when Jim Bakker was convicted and imprisoned on indicted on numerous counts of fraud and conspiracy. Tammy Faye divorced Jim in 1992, and married Roe Messner, a church building contractor (so by this stage she was actually Tammy Faye Messner).
Tammy Faye was known for her eccentric and glamorous image, and her views which often diverged from mainstream evangelical Christianity. For example, she supported the LGBT community, and reached out to HIV positive patients at the height of the AIDS epidemic. She was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1996, so was already terminally ill when this episode aired.
It is unclear what age “young” Tammy Faye Bakker was that Lorelai believes Sherry resembles. Knowing what Sherry actually looks like, perhaps when Tammy Faye’s hair was brown, before she dyed it blonde. That would have been in the 1960s, when Tammy Faye and her husband Jim had a puppet show on a Christian TV network.
The viewer may decide for themselves whether Sherry looks like Tammy Faye Bakker at any age, but I personally cannot see any strong resemblance (I can barely see a weak resemblance). I’m surprised that Rory doesn’t disagree any more strenuously than by saying Sherry is “prettier than that”, and can only think that she walks on eggshells when it comes to her mother’s jealousy over Sherry.
I’m not sure how Lorelai’s frame of reference for picturing a young Tammy Faye Bakker is in the 1960s, before Lorelai was born. I find this whole reference quite confusing.
SOOKIE: We are crazy for doing this.
LORELAI: We’re beyond crazy. We are ‘Anne Heche speaking her secret language to God and looking for the spaceship in Fresno’ crazy.
SOOKIE: Oh Quiness, Nakka dune notta.
LORELAI: Il el nostra doska don.
Anne Heche (born 1969), actress, director, and screenwriter. First became known as a soap opera actress, before gaining mainstream recognition in the late 1990s in films such as Donnie Brasco (1997) and Six Days, Seven Nights (1998). She was also famous for her high-profile three-year relationship with comedian Ellen De Generes, who came out to the press shortly after she and Anne began dating.
On August 19 2000, the day after her relationship with Ellen ended, Anne drove from Los Angeles to Cantua Creek, near Fresno, parking her vehicle on a roadside. She walked for more than a mile through the desert wearing shorts and a bra before knocking on a stranger’s door and asking for a shower. As she seemed reluctant to leave, the homeowner called the sheriff’s department. When deputies arrived, Heche told them that she was God, and would take everyone up to Heaven in a spaceship (she later said she had taken ecstasy). She was admitted to a psychiatric unit in Fresno, and released after a few hours.
While promoting her 2001 memoir, Call Me Crazy, Anne told interviewers that she had been mentally ill for the first thirty-one years of her life due to horrific sexual abuse by her father (a closeted gay man who died of AIDS when Anne was thirteen), which began when she was only a baby. Her surviving family strongly reject those claims, although even without that, her childhood doesn’t sound like a picnic.
Anne said that she created a fantasy world called The Fourth Dimension and had an alter ego named Celestia who was the daughter and reincarnation of God, spoke her own language, had special powers, and was in contact with extraterrestrials. It seems likely Lorelai read Call Me Crazy, as it is the sort of camp celebrity memoir she could not resist (like Mommie Dearest and Tears and Laughter), although all the information could be gleaned from the press at the time.
Anne Heche stated that she had no further mental health issues after the episode at Cantua Creek, and she has gone on to have a successful career in film and television.
Sookie’s statement means, “Oh God, I cannot do this” in Anne Heche’s invented language. Lorelai replies, “It’s too scary for me now”, in the same language. Anne said this when she believed God wanted her to heal a friend’s injured ankle, however she says she did go on to heal her friend through laying on of hands. Anne shared this information, including the example of her language, with Barbara Walters on 20/20 in early September 2001.
Like Lorelai and Sookie, and many others at the time, Amy Sherman-Palladino mocked Anne Heche mercilessly after going public. Their tone was completely mainstream for the time.
UPDATE: Anne Heche passed away after a car accident on August 12 2022, under the influence of narcotics.
RORY: We’re competing against the Michelangelo of snow.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known by his first name (1475-1564), Italian Renaissance sculptor and painter of unparalleled influence on Western art, often described as the greatest artist of his age, and sometimes as the greatest of all time. His best-known sculptures are the Pietà, and David, and he is famous for painting the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
RORY: Of course, right, I have to [tell Dean I kissed Tristan].
LORELAI: Yeah. Then at the play, right as Tristan enters to find you dead and pulls out the vial of poison to kill himself, Dean can leap from the audience and rip his head off, adding a level of reality few productions have ever seen before. You’ll get an A. The Actors Studio will go nuts. You’ll have James Lipton asking you what your favorite swear word is. It’s a great plan.
Louis James Lipton (1926-2020), actor, lyricist, and dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York. He was the creator, executive producer, writer, and host of the talk show, Inside the Actors Studio, which began broadcasting in 1994.
The show interviews famous actors and directors in a far more in-depth manner than the usual celebrity piece, sometimes taking hours, and set up as a masterclass for students of drama. Since its inception, it has interviewed over 300 guests, with Paul Newman as the first.
The interview always includes a questionnaire submitted to the guest, with ten questions. Question 7 is, “What is your favourite curse word”?
RORY: Right, so Tristan, he’s in our group, so that means he’s in …well, and Dean lives here, so this sucks.
LORELAI: Okay, you know what Vanna? I’m gonna need a few more vowels here.
Vanna White (born Vanna Rosich, born 1957), famous since 1982 for being the hostess of Wheel of Fortune, previously mentioned.
When solving the word puzzles, contestants can ask Vanna for the chance to “buy a vowel” to give them extra help. Lorelai feels that she also needs some assistance to decipher Rory’s barely comprehensible statement.
LORELAI: Have you seen my bag with the beads and the fur, kind of looks like Stalin’s head?
Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), Georgian revolutionary and Soviet leader who governed the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death. He is occasionally depicted wearing a round furry hat, which might be what Lorelai is thinking of. Of course Lorelai has a Communist bag!
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 