Gilmore Girls: The Movie "What Do You Think?"

Rachel ****** posted:
Gilmore Girls 'The Movie'?
"So, what do you think?"

Okay I've been thinking about this for five days now and I think I've come to terms with certain parts about it. Part of me thinks this is obviously a horrible idea, the part that thinks the show should be contained within it's seven seasons for better or for worse. It's well known that the cast, crew and network even were sick of the show by season six. The show's very own creators wouldn't even stick around for season seven (though their reasons are understandable, legitimate, etc.) after having lain some (mostly) brilliant pieces of characterization, plot, drama, etc. for the soul-crushing heart-shattering ending it needed. So for everyone to be so tired, too tired to even give season seven it's proper due, I can't believe that anyone would want to go back and do a movie. Not to mention, the cast is older (minor flaw), the network is probably going to want a unreasonable amount of control (conjecture), the show's creators are divorced (it worked for Fleetwood Mac; this could be their Rumours), and they would probably protest involvement out of spite anyway (more conjecture).

There are so many ways for this to fail at first glance that I can't support it. Of course, the other side is that I would always love to have more Gilmore Girls. Always. I can't honestly say I wouldn't love to see more of the show no matter how well or poorly it was articulated. Granted that part of me is impetuous and not very bright because Gilmore Girls done poorly betrays all of the awesomeness before it (see Season Seven). And that should be okay because intellectually I'm getting more of what I want, more Gilmore Girls. Right? But I, and probably a lot of fans, would be excessively harsh if they actually made a movie because we want every next episode to play as we would like it even though we have no control over it. We think of it as our world, as our fantasy but it's not. It's a creation and portrayal of fantasy world (haha) conducted by a hundred or so people who merely being paid to do a job. It's not ours in any way, and yet we demand that it conform to our personal standards. We are but consumers and consumers alone. It's selfish and idiotic...I digress.

I think the only way to make this movie is to get Amy Sherman (creator) back and have her rewrite the last two episodes of season seven and make everyone follow her lead. I think this could work for a few of reasons:
1. A feature length film is essentially two Gilmore Girls episodes (perfect)

2. You're asking the creator of the show to

a. end it on their terms (central power is reasserted), which
b. consequently gives the show the ending that was conceivably intended (conjecture, but surely it's more true than anything else listed)

3. It allows for all the crazy antics of season seven to remain in the story at-large (doesn't alter the general plot-line of the last two episodes, perhaps to the chagrin of Amy Sherman)

4. Prevents re-contextualization of past (up to the aforementioned last two episodes) and creation of present and future (which would surely result in failure)

This last point is important to note because there are a lot of ways I've come up with that would make a mockery of the series.

• Rory is installed in President Obama's cabinet as Press Secretary
• Dean works at Dosey's. Still.
• Jess overcomes a crippling cocaine addiction and has to move back to Stars Hollow
• Sookie has five more kids bringing the total to eight
• Logan buys himself into the Facebook empire
• Logan has a threesome with Gisele Bündchen and Miranda Kerr
• Logan fails to overcome a crippling cocaine addiction while buying into the Facebook empire and having threesomes with Gisele Bündchen and Miranda Kerr on the reg
• Lane and Zach move to Brooklyn and finally evolve into the yuppie hipsters we always knew they were
• Kirk wins Palme d'Or
• Lorelai and Luke are back together. She breaks up with him at the altar of their wedding just because. They get back together. This time Luke breaks it up accidentally after inadvertantly tripping balls on opium tea that Jess had made from a recipe he found online. The next day they get back together, but only for a few weeks when Lorelai breaks up with him again. In an act of desperation Luke threatens to kill himself on Lorelai 's porch with a harpoon gun his Dad owned and she agrees to go back out with him. They almost get married but then Loralei gets food poisoning the night before by Chris, who by the way has a crippling Oxycontin addiction. The same night, feeling high on a attempted murder, Chris tries to rape Rory, because emotional rape wasn't enough, but fails because Rory embraces the grotesque advance of her father ("rape" must be forced upon). Lorelai finds out about the altercation between her daughter and daughter's birth father the day of the wedding from Miss Patty and "postpones" the wedding until she "can begin to wrap her head around this ridiculous f#^&ing bull-#*$!". Lorelai goes to visit Chris shortly thereafter. Cops arrive as she takes her first sip of coffee to serve a warrant for running a forging operation in his basement making Euros by printing out copies he made on a flatbed scanner. As he's being placed into the cop car he proposes to Lorelai, who accepts. Rory runs out of the house half naked (YES!) and proposes to her father by getting down on one knee in front of the car holding a ring. Chris accepts Rory's offer at the same time Lorelai accepts Chris'. Somehow they all get married in prison after Chris is sentenced to a year in jail. Luke finds out and kills himself. Etc.

Fan-fiction aside, the main criticism of this premise of two episodes of a moderately popular television show that has already been written, produced, and aired reeks of revisionism. What with all the remakes of previous movies have we not learned to leave well enough alone? As valid as that may be, I think it's still an oversimplification because not all remakes are bad, just almost all of them are. Given the benefit of the doubt a remake could be really good (see Vanilla Sky, Ocean's Eleven (stop laughing), The Fly) but a lot of it largely depends on context. Does a film that remakes the last two episodes of a television show only girls watched, many years removed seem as ridiculous as making the A-Team movie? There are certainly a lot worse ideas out there but that's not reason alone to make this movie (though the overt would argue there's no reason involved in making 99% of the movies we see today).

In this case I think revisionism is demanded and I don't think anyone suffers for it. Those last two television episodes should have carried more weight. I should have been crying for almost the duration but I wasn't and however unjustly I felt, I shouldn't have because it should have been a slam dunk. Everyone says goodbye and Loralei ends up with Luke--that's it. Even if the Luke-Lorelai relationship is left sort-of open as it was in the final episode, which I actually kind of liked, it should have carried more weight and that weight should have buried everyone in tears. I don't think it did, which is why I think it should.

But why pray-tell do we make a movie of a television show that never drew more than a 5.2 audience (Neilsen rating)? The same reason they made a movie based on a sci-fi series (Firefly) no one watched. Without begining to feign knowledge of the market for successful movies these days, and at the risk--no, certainty--of sounding like a clueless asshole, I think it's clear that movies, like most sectors of popular art, are becoming more niche oriented. Firefly may not have drawn a large audience, but it drew one large enough to successfully produce a feature film with little to no publicity, no stars, and only an inkling of public interest in a space-western. Gilmore Girls: The Movie could perhaps play to a large audience like a Sex And the City That Could. Some of the elements are there: You have an automatic female audience, a large willing-to-spend movie-going demographic. You have some moderately recognizable faces in Laren Graham and Alexis Bledel. You have an easy-to-get-behind plot line (mother and daughter are best friends; mother winds up with male friend after all; daughter finds her way in the world; etc.) And then the built-in Gilmore Girls audience to boot.

There are pieces for this to work this one particular way and it never will. It will never happen and that's okay. We have seven mostly awesome seasons and an endless imagination and that should be enough. And as much as it should be, I hope that it's not for our own sake.