The Mark Twain House and the Mayflower Inn
The place that birthed the show
In the run-up to Gilmore Girls’ release on Netflix tomorrow, Vulture has posted some great Gilmore articles, including an interview with Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of Gilmore Girls.
Of particular interest were Amy’s comments on the Mark Twain house – or more specifically, where she stayed when they went to visit the Mark Twain house:
Amy … we were kind of obsessed with the shit that Mark Twain did in his house, so we were like, Let’s fly to Mark Twain’s house because it’s creaky. So we went to Connecticut, and we stayed at this inn… and the concierge was a French woman, and I went up to the room, and I said to my husband, “What if I placed the show, like, here? Like, in this place?” He goes, “Sure, why not?” And I sat down, and I got out the pad from the hotel, and I literally wrote, like, the first three scenes of Gilmore Girls on the pad. The inn is called the Mayflower. It’s now gotten a lot fancier.
Now this struck me like a lightning bolt for a couple of reasons. First, because I worship that spark of inspiration that flows from a single-minded creator – like Jim Henson with the Muppets and Aaron Sorkin with The West Wing, they bring these wonderful creations to life – and like Gilmore Girls, their creations suffered after their creators departed. Could you imagine a series of Buffy without Joss Whedon? I’m dry retching just thinking about it. These shows are expressions of that one person’s soul. A lot of people help to bring them to fruition, but without that person, there’s simply no show.
That’s the Mayflower in the photo above. The birthplace of Gilmore Girls. Which leads me to the second reason… without knowing any of the above, I’d already earmarked the Mayflower Grace as a possible location to convene a meeting of sorts, just because it’s in Washington Depot. Actually on Woodbury Road. I might need to sell a kidney (or two) to stay there, but now it’s a pilgrimage.
Read Amy’s interview at Vulture here and catch Gilmore Girls on Netflix from tomorrow!!
Will you be re-watching on Netflix?
Has anyone carved their (craftily reversed) initials into the sideboard at the Mayflower Grace?
And who wants to start the spitball rolling for a Gilmore Girls convention in 2015 – a Stars Hollow Con, if you will?