Connect with us

Entertainment

The 5 biggest 'Gilmore Girls' revelations from Kelly Bishop's memoir

Published

on

The 5 biggest 'Gilmore Girls' revelations from Kelly Bishop's memoir

On the Shelf

The Third Gilmore Girl

By Kelly Bishop
Gallery Books: 256 pages, $29

If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.

Advertisement

Long before she ever took on the now-iconic role of Emily Gilmore in Amy Sherman-Palladino’s beloved comedy-drama “Gilmore Girls,” Kelly Bishop had a stunning résumé. From the mid-1960s and on, Bishop appeared in numerous Broadway shows, earning a Tony Award for her performance as Sheila in the first iteration of “A Chorus Line.” In the ’80s, she appeared as Frances “Baby” Houseman’s mother in “Dirty Dancing” and in subsequent years lit up daytime television on “One Life to Live” and “All My Children.”

For all her career highs, however, Bishop likely will remain best known for her cutting and complex performance as the moneyed New England matriarch in “Gilmore Girls” from 2000 to 2007 — a period she chronicles beautifully in her new memoir, “The Third Gilmore Girl.”

In candid and down-to-earth prose, Bishop, 80, looks back at her early years as a trained ballet dancer, moving to New York and entering the Broadway scene (then under her birth name Carole Bishop), auditioning for Woody Allen’s one-act play “Central Park West,” transitioning to film in Paul Mazursky’s 1978 Oscar-nominated drama “An Unmarried Woman” and meeting Sherman-Palladino, with whom she continued to work on “Bunheads” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

“There was no pretense about [Sherman-Palladino], no slickness, no political glad-handing or equivocating,” Bishop writes in her book. “Just a woman who knew the value of her work and the quality of her project and was crystal clear on how it should be done.”

Advertisement

Here are a few more “Gilmore”-themed revelations from Bishop’s memoir — out now.

Sorry, Jess and Dean fans — Bishop is Team Logan

For as long as “Gilmore Girls” has been a part of the cultural conversation, viewers have been split over which of Rory Gilmore’s (Alexis Bledel) beaus was the best — an argument that extended into Netflix’s 2016 “Gilmore Girls” revival. Typically, the fight boils down to Team Jess (Milo Ventimiglia), an emotionally avoidant but well-read “bad boy” who becomes a self-actualized published author, and Logan Huntzberger (Matt Czuchry), Rory’s classmate at Yale who is being groomed to take over the family publishing empire. Then there’s Dean (Jared Padalecki), Rory’s first boyfriend, who is kind, stable and communicative but periodically acts threatened by Rory’s Ivy League aspirations. Not to mention he cheats on his wife with Rory.

“I was always Team Logan,” Bishop writes in her memoir. “All the young actors on ‘Gilmore Girls’ were terrific, on- and off-screen, but while several of them seemed boyish, Logan took a more manly approach that I thought worked perfectly as a partner for Rory.”

As for Lorelai’s romance arc, Bishop is Team Luke

Fans also have squabbled over the question of which love interest was best for Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham), who started the series dating one of Rory’s prep school teachers, Max Medina (Scott Cohen). Later, she pinballs between Rory’s unreliable yet charming father, Christopher (David Sutcliffe), and Luke (Scott Patterson), the local diner owner with a gruff exterior and unextinguishable torch for Lorelai.

Advertisement

“I was definitely Team Luke,” Bishop says. “It wasn’t just that Luke genuinely loved her. He also understood that he was dealing with a very quirky, specific woman, and he ‘got’ her. I loved watching them together.”

Bishop’s favorite Emily insult was aimed at Logan’s mom

One of Emily’s defining characteristics was her seemingly endless supply of scathing insults. Though the bulk of Emily’s barbs were reserved for her mother-in-law, husband and daughter, in the Season 6 episode “We’ve Got Magic to Do,” she unleashed in grand fashion on Logan’s mother, Shira (Leann Hunley), upon learning that the Huntzbergers told Rory she wasn’t “properly bred” to date Logan.

Bishop writes: “I kept a smile on Emily’s face so that, from a distance, it could have appeared that she was complimenting Shira on her dress and asking who designed it, while she was actually delivering lines like, ‘You were a two-bit gold digger fresh off the bus from Hicksville when you met [Logan’s father] Mitchum at whatever bar you stumbled into. … Now, enjoy the event.’

“It was an absolute masterpiece by Amy and a joy to deliver, not only because it was Emily at her force-of-nature best but also because it was another display of her fierce love for her granddaughter.”

A woman and her daughter stand outdoors watching her parents smiling at each other.

Kelly Bishop as Emily, left, Lauren Graham as Lorelai, Alexis Bledel as Rory and Edward Herrmann as Richard in a scene from the WB’s “Gilmore Girls” in 2002.

(Mitchell Haddad / The WB)

Advertisement

Bishop didn’t like the final season of ‘Gilmore Girls’

Very few “Gilmore Girls” fans think highly of its seventh and final season, which ran from 2006 to 2007. Due to a breakdown in contract negotiations, Amy and husband/co-writer/producer Dan Palladino exited the show after Season 6. Though Warner Bros. brought in a new writing team, Bishop recalls that “Gilmore Girls” “seemed to get kind of sleepy and tired from one week to the next, as if the air was being slowly let out of a big, sparkly balloon, and we could sense that the party might be ending, even though no one wanted to say it out loud.”

Bishop also says, “To the best of my knowledge, Amy still hasn’t watched a single episode of [Season 7].”

She did, however, love Netflix’s divisive ‘A Year in the Life’

When “Gilmore Girls” hit Netflix in 2014, it experienced an extraordinary bump in popularity. “Not only did its original viewers jump right in to enjoy it all over again, but whole new generations were introduced to it and fell in love with it too,” Bishop recalls.

The renewed interest led to a 15-year reunion panel at the ATX TV Festival in 2015 and, one year later, a Netflix revival. Though the four-episode “A Year in the Life” brought the Palladinos back, reception was decidedly mixed. Critics overall favored the miniseries, but fans “were frustrated by the loose ends they felt they were left with,” as Bishop writes.

Advertisement

One of those loose ends was Rory’s infamous “last four words” to Lorelai: “Mom?” “Yeah?” “I’m pregnant.” Cut to black.

“Those mysterious ‘last four words’ … struck me as more interesting than infuriating, since it opened debates among viewers to decide who Rory was pregnant by, and what the repercussions would be. I personally think it was Logan, by the way.”

Movie Reviews

403 Forbidden

Published

on



403 Forbidden <br />

Forbidden

Access to this resource on the server is denied!


Proudly powered by LiteSpeed Web Server

Please be advised that LiteSpeed Technologies Inc. is not a web hosting company and, as such, has no control over content found on this site.

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Universal Music invests $80 million in Bollywood production company

Published

on

Universal Music invests  million in Bollywood production company

Universal Music Group is investing $80 million for a stake in one of India’s biggest Bollywood production companies, Excel Entertainment Pvt.

Universal Music India, a division of Universal Music Group, will acquire a 30% equity interest in the Mumbai-based movie studio. In the deal, announced Monday, the companies will work together on forthcoming films, series, music and emerging formats.

While getting involved in India’s local film industry, Universal Music will also now receive global distribution rights for all future original soundtracks attached to projects produced or owned by Excel. There are also future plans for the companies to launch an Excel-linked music label that will allow UMG and Universal Music India artists to appear in various Excel titles.

The investment underscores the rapid growth in the Indian entertainment industry.

India is the 15th-largest recorded-music market globally.

Advertisement

Founded by producers Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar in 1999, Excel is responsible for making over 40 different films and scripted shows. Its most popular titles include “Dil Chahta Hai,” “Don” and “Talaash.” The company is currently valued at approximately $290 million.

“India’s entertainment landscape continues to grow from strength to strength, and this is the perfect moment to build meaningful global collaborations,” said Sidhwani and Akhtar in a joint statement. “Together, we aim to take culturally rooted stories to the world.”

Universal Music Group, with its corporate headquarters in the Netherlands and another office in Santa Monica, was founded in 1996. The music giant behind artists like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish is valued at roughly $48 billion on the U.S. stock market, with shares selling around $25.80.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Movie Reviews

UNTIL DAWN Review

Published

on

UNTIL DAWN Review
UNTIL DAWN is a horror movie based on a video game about a group of friends who find themselves trapped in a time loop, reliving the same night repeatedly with increasingly terrifying, fatal threats. One year after her sister Melanie vanished without a trace, Clover and her friends look to find more information about her disappearance. Clues lead them to an abandoned mining town implied to be in Pennsylvania. This place of unimaginable horrors traps them all in a horrifying time loop where they’re murdered again and again. They must work together to survive without losing themselves in the never-ending time loop of gruesome murder.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances. However, the movie has a strong humanist worldview featuring gruesome violence, lots of strong foul language, and excessive gore. The violence includes psychopathic killers, people spontaneously exploding, stabbings, kidnapping, demonic possession, and more. The frequent dying over and over in the plot of UNTIL DAWN puts the sanctity of life into question. It forces the characters to conduct abhorrent and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

(HH, Pa, C, O, Ho, LLL, VVV, S, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong humanist worldview that twists the concept of modern psychology into a supernatural hellscape with unexplained time loops and reoccurring nightmarish horror filled with excessive violence and gore, but with unexplained pagan supernatural elements (such as a storm circling a house, the appearance of more buildings, the time loop itself, and many more), the time loop perverts the laws of mortality and implies that the consequences of violence, murder, suicide, etc., don’t apply, the psychologist controlling the time loop discusses the situation with modern psychology in vague circles meant to confuse and disorient the nature of the reality in which the victims are trapped, religion or God is not explicitly discussed, but there’s an unexplained cross in front of a house that isn’t explained and a character references the belief that a possessed person cannot become possessed through contact but rather weakness of faith, and some occult content where one woman is a self-described psychic and is into “woo-woo” stuff as another character describes it, she tries to amplify her psychic abilities with help from the others by holding hands and meditation, and she often has strong feelings and seems to have a sense the others do not have, but no worship or symbols are shown, plus a girl dating a guy is said to have previously dated a girl as well as other men;

Advertisement

Foul Language:

At least 101 obscenities (including 62 “f” words), two strong profanities mentioning the name of Jesus, and four light profanities;

Violence:

Very severe violence and gratuitous blood and gore throughout including but not limited to dead bodies, monsters, scarred masked psychopath, stabbing, beating, and people spontaneously exploding;

Sex:

Advertisement

No sex shown, but a person puts on a VHS tape and a pornographic movie is heard playing briefly but not shown, and a woman is said to date a lot of people and one time dated another woman;

Nudity:

No nudity;

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol use;

Advertisement

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

A psychologist is a callous antagonist whose motives are relatively unknown beyond having a morbid curiosity that led to awful experiments and playing games with other people, he purposely keeps people trapped for no known reason other than his sick and twisted observations that end in gruesome murder and unnecessary torture.

UNTIL DAWN is a horror movie based on a video game about a group of friends who find themselves trapped in a time loop, reliving the same night repeatedly with increasingly terrifying, fatal threats.
Advertisement

One year after her sister Melanie vanished without a trace, Clover and her friends look to find more information about her disappearance. Clues lead them to an abandoned mining town. This place of unimaginable horrors traps them all in a horrifying time loop where they will be murdered again and again.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances, but it has a strong humanist worldview overall with some occult elements is filled with gruesome violence, gore, lots of strong foul language, and a time loop that leads to an increasing amount of horrific murder and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

The movie begins with a woman named Melanie clawing her way through the dirt with an unknown monster chasing after her. Digging her way out, she looks up to a masked psychopath standing over her with a scythe. She begs him, “No! Please not again. I can’t!” He fatally stabs her without a thought. It cuts to the main title, and an hourglass is shown with a ticking clock sound and unsettling music.

Cut to a group pf people in a red car driving up a winding mountain, an obvious nod to THE SHINING. It’s been one year after Clover’s sister Melanie vanished without a trace. The group consists of Max, Nina, Megan, Abe, and Clover. Shortly after their mother died, Melanie had decided to start a new life in New York. Clover decided to stay, which created tension between the sisters before Melanie left.

Clover and her friends are looking for more information about her disappearance. Their last stop is the last place she was seen in a video message taken in front of a middle-of-nowhere gas station. Megan, a proclaimed psychic, wants to join hands outside and see if they can feel any mystical energy regarding Melanie. Their attempt is cut short when an RV blares its horn and almost hits them, scaring them all.

Advertisement

Clover goes inside the gas station for a cup of coffee while the others talk outside. Clover asks the man behind the register if he worked here last year. After confirming he’s been working there for years, she shows him a picture of Melanie from the video. He asks if she was missing and clarifies saying that Clover is not the first to come asking. When she asks if many people around here go missing, he says people “get in trouble” in Glore Valley. As their only lead, the group decides to go there and stick together.

Nervously driving to the valley in an increasingly dangerous storm, the group begins to question what they are doing. Suddenly the storm stops but is still raging behind them. They park in front of a house with a “Welcome Center” sign, with the storm circling around the area but leaving the house dry. Confused, they get out of the car and look around. Nina decides to see if there’s anyone inside so they can come up with a plan. Everyone goes in except Clover, who walks up to the strange rain wall.

Inside the house, they find a dated and dusty interior. The power and water don’t work, and they conclude that they are the first people to come there in years. There is a strange hourglass with a skull on the wall. Checking the guest book, Nina finds Melanie’s name signed multiple times, with increasingly shaky handwriting. In another room, Abe finds many missing posters with faces on a bulletin board and finds poster with Melanie’s face.

Outside, Clover thinks she sees a person in the rain. She also hears Melanie’s voice and runs after it. Concerned, Max calls after her and he pulls her back in. As Nina signs the guestbook, the sun suddenly sets and the clock starts ticking.

Inside the house now with the hourglass turned over, they try to understand what’s happening. The car is out in the rain now with someone revving the engine threateningly. Some of them go to the dark basement, where the lights don’t work. There is an eerie sense of dread as Abe goes to check out a noise, and Nina finds a scarred and masked psychopath standing in a room as the top half of Abe’s body falls to the ground.

Advertisement

Hearing the commotion upstairs, the others go to see what happened and Max spots the killer. They run to hide, and the apparently invincible psychopath horrifically stabs each of them as they try to fight back. The sand in the hourglass runs back, as each character returns to where they were when Nina originally signed the book (she now signs it a second time). They remember what had just taken place, and how they were all murdered. Clearly stuck in this time loop escape room situation, they will now have to figure out how to escape this terrifying hellscape as the situations get worse with every loop.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances. However, the movie has a strong humanist worldview featuring gruesome violence, lots of strong foul language, and excessive gore. The violence includes psychopathic killers, people spontaneously exploding, stabbings, kidnapping, demonic possession, and more. The frequent dying over and over in the plot puts the sanctity of life into question. It forces the characters to conduct abhorrent and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

Continue Reading

Trending