Speaker 1: I Am all In.
Speaker 2: Let's you.
Speaker 3: I Am all In with Scott Patterson, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Speaker 1: Hey Everybody, Scott Patterson, I Am all In podcast. iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: one eleven Productions a one on one interview with Aaron Berman,
Speaker 1: who's a former editor writer for USA Today. He's a
Speaker 1: freelance writer and editor with background covering technology, publishing, and entertainment.
Speaker 1: Gilmore Girl's Companion released July twenty fifteen. Since we first
Speaker 1: peeked into Stars Hollow, Connecticut, October fifth, two thousand, Gilmore
Speaker 1: Girls has delighted people worldwide. The Gilmore Girls Companion takes
Speaker 1: you behind the scenes of the classic television series from
Speaker 1: first glimmer with the idea of making this series finale.
Speaker 1: Based on more than forty interviews with cast and crew, Aaron,
Speaker 1: welcome to this show. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: your book, what inspired it, and what do you find
Speaker 1: most intriguing about the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me, Scott. That book
Speaker 2: was a labor of love from the very beginning. Basically,
Speaker 2: like most Gilmore fans, I fell in love with Stars
Speaker 2: Hollow and everybody in it, and I at the time
Speaker 2: I was actually working on a making of book about
Speaker 2: the seventy sitcom soap, And this was like thirty years
Speaker 2: after the fact, and I was talking to people who
Speaker 2: could barely remember a lot of what happened during the
Speaker 2: making of that series, and there was also a lot
Speaker 2: had passed away by the time I was doing that book.
Speaker 2: And the first thing that struck me was I'd waited
Speaker 2: a few years to see a book on Gilmore Girl
Speaker 2: come out, and nothing had come out. And I was like,
Speaker 2: you know what, I really don't want this to happen
Speaker 2: to Gilmore Girls.
Speaker 3: It's such a special show.
Speaker 2: And what inevitably happens is, you know, memories get fuzzy,
Speaker 2: and people forget how things were put together, and especially
Speaker 2: the way Gilmore seemed to have been brought together, the
Speaker 2: writing and just you know, everything that came together. I
Speaker 2: didn't want that story to be lost, and so I
Speaker 2: went to my publisher and pitched it and said, nobody's
Speaker 2: done a book about this.
Speaker 3: Let me just start making some phone calls.
Speaker 1: Right, So what what first brought you to the show?
Speaker 1: When did you discover the show?
Speaker 3: My memories are hazy, but I think I saw that.
Speaker 1: Hazy memories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's gonna be a lot of gee,
Speaker 2: I don't remember.
Speaker 3: I'm afraid it was. It was a long time ago.
Speaker 2: My memory isn't what it should be, but I think
Speaker 2: I saw it from the pilot, and I think it was.
Speaker 2: It was just the promo for it, that that iconic
Speaker 2: shot of Stars Hollow with the church and and and
Speaker 2: everything else.
Speaker 3: It's it instantly puts you, gives you a.
Speaker 2: Sense of home that I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: don't have but wish for. There's a there's a word
Speaker 2: that I can't think of for, but the definition is
Speaker 2: a nostalgia for something that you never actually experienced yourself.
Speaker 2: And I think that is the key to that show.
Speaker 2: I think we all want a place that we can
Speaker 2: call home and no, but very few people actually come
Speaker 2: from a place that feels that that special.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. You know a lot of those places in
Speaker 1: the Northeastern United States. I came from a place like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I came from a place like Stars Hollow. Where'd you
Speaker 1: come from?
Speaker 3: I came from the suburbs of Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Nothing like that, Nothing like it, nothing.
Speaker 2: Nothing, nothing at all like that. And in fact, the
Speaker 2: funny thing is that the reality of it is every
Speaker 2: time you talk to somebody who said, so, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I grew up in a small town. The first thing
Speaker 2: I did was get the heck out of there.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I did. That's exactly what I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah. See, it's the fantasy without the other part. You know,
Speaker 2: everybody knows everybody's business in a fun, warm way in
Speaker 2: Gilmore Girls. In the real world, it's why does she
Speaker 2: know my business?
Speaker 1: Mmmmm, well, you know, yeah, they're pros and cons of
Speaker 1: small towns. Right when you're growing up and you're not
Speaker 1: having the best experience, or even if you are having
Speaker 1: a great experience growing up in a small town, everybody
Speaker 1: knows your business. You know, there's a big, wide world
Speaker 1: out there. You want to you want to dive into it,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have any kind of curiosity. And
Speaker 1: but I found out that most people from the town
Speaker 1: that I grew up and ended up staying there. If
Speaker 1: they went away to college, they came back. They found
Speaker 1: a way back. I think that stars hollowing it. You're right,
Speaker 1: that's one of the main hours of this show. If
Speaker 1: not for all the jokes, you'd still have a show.
Speaker 1: What kind of a show do you think would be
Speaker 1: without the humor, without the jokes, do you think it
Speaker 1: would be pretty barren? Would it be empty? What do
Speaker 1: you think?
Speaker 2: I think it's the idea of stars hollow that draws
Speaker 2: you in, but it's the writing that keeps you there
Speaker 2: and coming back week after week. And it was particularly
Speaker 2: interesting to me putting this book together, right, Actually it
Speaker 2: was during and a little bit after putting the soap
Speaker 2: book together. Soap was was. The showrunner was Susan Harris,
Speaker 2: who was a real trailblazer in the seventies for you
Speaker 2: didn't have female showrunners in those days for the most part,
Speaker 2: and she wrote half the series before she even took
Speaker 2: on a writing partner. And going from talking to her
Speaker 2: and her experiences, and then talking to people who worked
Speaker 2: on Gill and were very familiar with Amy's Amy's ways
Speaker 2: and her writing process, and then Amy and Dan, there's
Speaker 2: there's just something about both of those. Those people had
Speaker 2: a love of language that comes through in the scripts.
Speaker 2: I mean Gilmour especially. You can spot certain references that
Speaker 2: you know, people have spent the last twenty some years
Speaker 2: tracking down the references, and it makes you feel like
Speaker 2: you're part of a club when you do.
Speaker 1: Oh, without question, you know, I don't know really anything
Speaker 1: about Dan's background. But I know a little bit about
Speaker 1: Amy's background, and she had an interesting upbringing, didn't she.
Speaker 1: If did you interview Amy.
Speaker 2: For this were there were people I reached out to
Speaker 2: that that I spoke with about forty people for this book.
Speaker 2: There were there were some people that, for lack of
Speaker 2: a better phrase, I couldn't get past the gate keepers,
Speaker 2: which I mean that they're there for a reason. You know,
Speaker 2: if all you're doing is fielding interviews, you have very
Speaker 2: little time to work.
Speaker 3: She was. She and Dan were two that didn't.
Speaker 2: Get to speak with, But I spoke with enough people
Speaker 2: had worked with her and also just indeed her her background.
Speaker 2: She was the daughter of Don Sherman, who was this
Speaker 2: famous Cat Skills comic who also acted and wrote for
Speaker 2: a number of big, big shows in the day.
Speaker 3: And you can tell.
Speaker 2: Very early on, actually you can see, especially in The
Speaker 2: Marvelous Missus masl after Gilmore, you can see basically Amy's
Speaker 2: life recreated in a lot of those episodes. There is
Speaker 2: actually an episode or two that takes place in the
Speaker 2: Cat Skills and it's like you can see you can
Speaker 2: see the continuity between Gilmore and that show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that was the show she was on Earth
Speaker 1: the right that one you think, you think it's Gilmour,
Speaker 1: but that was really her right.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you were to choose a character in Gilmore that
Speaker 1: you thought represented Amy and Dan, who would they be?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: My, I think that's always that's always a kind of
Speaker 2: a trick question, because every writer will tell you that
Speaker 2: there's a little bit of them in every single character.
Speaker 2: I'd say, if a gun into my head, probably.
Speaker 1: Rory oh really yeah.
Speaker 3: First part of her life, and probably Laura Lai afterwards.
Speaker 1: Kay. So who did you interview from the cast?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: My?
Speaker 2: Uh, the late ed Herman, Kelly Bishop, Sean Gunn, Kiko
Speaker 2: Kiko just quite quite a just went.
Speaker 3: Down the line.
Speaker 2: Michael Winners was I think was the first person I
Speaker 2: spoke with for the book.
Speaker 1: He's yeah, he's fascinating. What was it like interviewing Kelly Bishop, to.
Speaker 2: Talk to both her and at Herman. It's it's not
Speaker 2: even being in the presence of royalty, but just people
Speaker 2: who are so professional and have seen so much and
Speaker 2: have done so much. I felt very humbled just being
Speaker 2: able to speak with them. But it's it's I don't
Speaker 2: get starstruck very often, but I think Ed Herman, especially,
Speaker 2: he spoke so well and was so warm that and
Speaker 2: knew so much that you feel like, Okay, well, this
Speaker 2: is my one chance to learn the secret of the universe.
Speaker 2: What question do I need to be asking?
Speaker 1: Uh huh? And what did he reveal to you that.
Speaker 2: I think we bonded over, you know, speaking of iHeart
Speaker 2: radio ed. Herman hearted radio big time, especially at old radio,
Speaker 2: and I think we we bonded over that. His his
Speaker 2: favorite was Bob and Ray back in the days. But
Speaker 2: that love of radio is really a love of theater,
Speaker 2: and I think that's something that comes across really quite
Speaker 2: a bit in Gilmore Girls. There is a theatricality to
Speaker 2: it in the love of language, which everything always comes
Speaker 2: back to the love of language with Gilmore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just watched this episode. You know, you miss
Speaker 1: a lot because you're laughing too much, So I didn't
Speaker 1: have the time to rewind. But I think people stop
Speaker 1: it if they're rewatching it and rewind and to get
Speaker 1: what they didn't, you know, that passed them by. So
Speaker 1: this happened three or four times while I was watching
Speaker 1: this particular episode. It's just so chock full of jokes
Speaker 1: and great ones and great situations. What did Ed reveal
Speaker 1: or Kelly reveal any behind the scenes drama they give
Speaker 1: you any juicy tidbits, I.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't call them juicy tidbits. That the one story I
Speaker 2: came away with from from Ed really really hit home
Speaker 2: for me was just the way that he kind of
Speaker 2: took a Lexus Fladell under his wing during this time
Speaker 2: she was she was so young and so inexperienced, and
Speaker 2: so out of her element.
Speaker 1: She was.
Speaker 2: She'd I think she was living in an LA apartment
Speaker 2: on her own, her away from Texas where she was from,
Speaker 2: and just being thrown into not just a TV show
Speaker 2: for the first time, but you know, carrying a TV
Speaker 2: show as a co star with Lauren Graham, and that
Speaker 2: is a lot to put on a kid who I
Speaker 2: think she was like eighteen at the time. And the
Speaker 2: way he spoke of her, it was very much like
Speaker 2: a you know, a grandfather or a father would would
Speaker 2: talk about somebody just saying, you know, I didn't want
Speaker 2: I wanted to protect her from things I wanted to,
Speaker 2: but at the same time, I wanted her to appreciate
Speaker 2: what she was experiencing at the time, you know, walking
Speaker 2: in the footsteps of these these great stars that came before.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Yeah, so he gave her that perspective. Did he
Speaker 1: say that that changed her experience in a positive way.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't think he ever really knew if it did,
Speaker 2: but he felt that it was. It was kind of
Speaker 2: his role in all of this to do that. And
Speaker 2: I believe he said that the producers had also asked
Speaker 2: him to just kind of keep an eye on her
Speaker 2: just to make sure she's okay. And I appreciate you
Speaker 2: asking me these things because I'm starting to remember little
Speaker 2: little tidbits. I think Kelly Bishop had said she was
Speaker 2: amazed at l Lauren Graham for the way she interacted
Speaker 2: with Alexis physically like a mother would a daughter, and say,
Speaker 2: I just think it's wonderful how you touch her all
Speaker 2: the time, and you know, you really get the sense
Speaker 2: of affection. And Lauren said, most of the time it
Speaker 2: was I was just gently trying to guide her to
Speaker 2: her mark because she was she was she was stepping
Speaker 2: outside her mark and she was gonna be blurry. So
Speaker 2: so but she they came up with this kind of
Speaker 2: very this shorthand that was very much utilitarian, but it
Speaker 2: was also getting across a very warm relationship between this
Speaker 2: mother and daughter, and Kelly Bishop at one point says,
Speaker 2: you know that there's a point in in the show
Speaker 2: where she just brushes some hair away from Rory's face,
Speaker 2: and it's it's something that pops up in the opener,
Speaker 2: and she says, I don't know if that was to
Speaker 2: do something to discuss you wanted to get the hair
Speaker 2: out of her face, or if it was a loving,
Speaker 2: nurturing gesture. But this is this is how you would
Speaker 2: want your mother to be with you, Just constant reassurance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she uh, yeah, that first year was something. You know,
Speaker 1: she was at NYU and film school and she had
Speaker 1: no prior acting experience from what I can gather, maybe
Speaker 1: she was an acting class. She was living in New
Speaker 1: York obviously and modeling on the side, right, and went
Speaker 1: in for the audition and I believe she was sick,
Speaker 1: she had the flu or something, and she was stuff stuff,
Speaker 1: stuffy and sneezy and coldy and fluey. So I think
Speaker 1: she appeared a bit dismissive towards Amy and just kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to get out of there. They hired her
Speaker 1: for it because of it. She flipped was like she
Speaker 1: flipped and she was great in the park, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anybody's so vulnerable, such a such
Speaker 1: a vulnerable soul right there on your screen, right, no artifice,
Speaker 1: no tricks now, I mean, what you see is what
Speaker 1: you get. Yeah, But as she got through that first year,
Speaker 1: so imagine going from that to the isolation of being
Speaker 1: by yourself in a new situation and working that many
Speaker 1: hours every single Monday through Friday and not getting any
Speaker 1: rest and just this is all you do. So at eighteen,
Speaker 1: that must have been very heady.
Speaker 2: Stuff, definitely, And it's one of the things I was
Speaker 2: going to say about your work, Gilmour, was I thought
Speaker 2: you were one of the few people that wasn't really
Speaker 2: a character in terms of I felt like your performance
Speaker 2: was so naturalistic that, you know, everybody had this kind
Speaker 2: of a little bit over the top character except for Luke.
Speaker 2: And Luke you could see as just being a person
Speaker 2: that you would know. And I was always I was
Speaker 2: always flummexed by that because I was like, you know, there, yes,
Speaker 2: Luke can be grumpy, and Luke Luke has his secrets
Speaker 2: and all, and you know, maybe he isn't as sure
Speaker 2: as of himself as as he may come across. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, you know, he wasn't Kirk, he
Speaker 2: wasn't Taylor, he wasn't you know, he didn't have this
Speaker 2: characteristic you could just pin down. And I thought that
Speaker 2: was really cool that, you know, you feel like you
Speaker 2: could go into this any town and you and Luke
Speaker 2: would actually be somebody that you you would meet.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Interesting. How how has the book uh changed your
Speaker 1: life or has it changed your life at all?
Speaker 2: I think it definitely definitely changed it at the time
Speaker 2: that I was writing it and that it first came out.
Speaker 2: And keep in mind, this was this was I was
Speaker 2: working on it in the early twenty tens, so Facebook
Speaker 2: was a thing, but it was still kind of growing.
Speaker 2: It was still kind of stuck in Farmville and Mafia
Speaker 2: Wars and didn't quite know what it wanted to be yet.
Speaker 2: And so during the writing of this whole book, I
Speaker 2: kept a blog and would just post what was going
Speaker 2: on with the you know, I spoke with so and
Speaker 2: so today, or this occurred to me, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: this is something. And I heard from a lot of people,
Speaker 2: and not just in the US. One of the most
Speaker 2: fascinating things to me is I heard from fans around
Speaker 2: the world regularly. I mean they became friends, and I
Speaker 2: was like, how are you, How are you watching Gilmore
Speaker 2: Girls in Croatia?
Speaker 3: How are you?
Speaker 2: And you know, I had one person in Germany who
Speaker 2: they were broadcasting it in Germany in German.
Speaker 3: But it'd be late.
Speaker 2: And after a while she got so hung up on
Speaker 2: the show that she didn't want to wait for the
Speaker 2: dubbed German version, so she put together what English she could.
Speaker 2: She would somebody would upload the show and this is
Speaker 2: you know, two thousand and six, two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: so it would upload show to the internet. She would
Speaker 2: get up, set her alarm, get up at like two
Speaker 2: or three in the morning, download it, go back to sleep,
Speaker 2: and then watch it in the American version the next morning.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's how dedicated she was.
Speaker 2: And when you think about how American Gilmore Girls is,
Speaker 2: you know, the references are almost all you know, American
Speaker 2: pop culture, you know, obscure bits of American history, and
Speaker 2: you know, I would go on to the blog and
Speaker 2: people would be like, oh, this is this is kind
Speaker 2: of cool.
Speaker 1: So this this, this brings me to my next question, why,
Speaker 1: Aaron do you think this show is not only as
Speaker 1: popular as it's ever been, but it seems to be
Speaker 1: getting more and more popular as the years go by.
Speaker 1: Why why is that happening?
Speaker 3: I think it's because.
Speaker 2: The world is getting tougher rougher, a place that you
Speaker 2: don't really want to be at least, and I think
Speaker 2: it's become a star's hollow, is becoming this place that
Speaker 2: you know, if we all just dropped our differences for
Speaker 2: a minute, maybe we could This is what we could have.
Speaker 1: Final question, Sure, what do you hope fans take away
Speaker 1: from your book?
Speaker 2: I hope that they get past just the actors and
Speaker 2: the stories themselves and actually get an appreciation for all
Speaker 2: everything that went into creating this show. There was a
Speaker 2: lot of behind the scenes drama just to get it
Speaker 2: going and to keep it going, and a lot of
Speaker 2: people yourself in concluded, worked very hard to do this
Speaker 2: day in, day out, eight day schedules for seven years,
Speaker 2: and the creative process, to me, has always been so
Speaker 2: much more interesting than just kind of the soap opera
Speaker 2: aspect of what's going on on screen, as much as
Speaker 2: satisfying as that is, because if you think about it,
Speaker 2: to get that many people to cooperate for any length
Speaker 2: of time to do anything is a momentous feat. And
Speaker 2: to get them to do it so consistently well for
Speaker 2: so long as you know, hats off to.
Speaker 1: Him, Aaron, thank you so much for coming on. The
Speaker 1: book is called The Gilmore Girls Companion, A very thoughtful
Speaker 1: trees stay on one of the iconic shows produced in
Speaker 1: Hollywood in the last well forever. I guess huh it's
Speaker 1: looking like anyway, Thanks so much for your time, Thank you.
Speaker 3: So much for having me so a pleasure talking to you.
Speaker 1: Pleasure talking to you too, And everybody, get out there
Speaker 1: and by Aaron's book, I'm going to get it, and
Speaker 1: it looks like a fascinating read. I want to see
Speaker 1: what all these people have to say. Anyway, thanks for
Speaker 1: your time, eron and good luck with everything.
Speaker 3: Okay, you too, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: All right, take care, bye, all right, bye bye, da
Speaker 1: hey everybody, and to forget Follow us on Instagram at
Speaker 1: I Am All In podcast and email us at Gilmore
Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com