Starve.Org White Noise Usenet Archive: "Ausiello Scoopage! Gilmore Creator Returns"

Scoop! Gilmore Girls Creator Returns!
Via the Ausiello Report at:
http://community.tvguide.com/forum.jspa?forumID=700000049

[BTW, I'm going to add a few short comments here and there in brackets
like these -- Rob]

She's baaack! Gilmore Girls' beloved, loquacious creator, Amy
Sherman-Palladino, just got the green light from Fox to begin
production on her new comedy, The Return of Jezebel James, and who did
she call first? I'm not gonna toot my own horn, but if you read on,
you'll figure it out for yourselves as I get the ousted genius to dish
not only on her upcoming series but also on her former one. She isn't
watching, but c'mon, AS-P simply wouldn't be AS-P if she didn't have
something to say about it.

Ausiello: How's unemployment?
AS-P: It's fantastic! I'm so good at it! I never knew I had a talent
for something like this!

Ausiello: Well, it sounds like you're headed back to work. Tell me
about the new show.
AS-P: It's called The Return of Jezebel James, and it's basically a
sister buddy comedy. It's about a very successful, very driven, very
problem-solving kind of woman who's a young adult book publisher. She
has her own imprint. And she decides to have a baby on her own and the
doctor says, "Whoops, you're not going to be able to do that by
yourself. Sorry, sweetheart!" And she winds up tracking down her
younger, much-less-focused sister, who's the polar opposite of her.
And she says to her, "I will cut you a deal and pay you to carry my
baby for me. But you have to move in with me so that I can watch you
and make sure it doesn't come out with three heads." And the younger
sister, having very limited options, agrees, and that's where our
series takes off. But the pilot is these two women reconnecting and
cutting a deal.

Ausiello: Is it an hour?
AS-P: It's a half-hour multi-camera, baby!

[Rob here: Oh, yay. Emily is the older sister, Lorelai is the
younger sister/surrogate mom. There is *no* way that this half-hour
sitcom isn't going to get compared to Gilmore Girls, no matter how it
turns out.]

Ausiello: Wow.
AS-P: "Oh my God, are you kidding?!?!" I'm returning to my roots. The
weird thing is I started on Roseanne and I never thought I was going
to be an hour-long writer. And then somewhere along the way, sitcoms
started to be very bad, and very hard, and the process is very
draining, and the opportunity to do Gilmore Girls kind of fell into my
lap. For me it was returning to roots that I never thought I was going
to leave in the first place.

Ausiello: So Fox is ordering a pilot, right?
AS-P: A pilot and, "Don't annoy us." That's the other order, which I
already told them I can't fulfill. (Laughs)

[Rob here: Reminder -- Fox likes fussy show creators even less than
any other network, as the guy who created The Bernie Mac Show can
attest.]

Ausiello: Have you started casting the show in your head?
AS-P: I've been thinking about casting since I started writing this
thing.

Ausiello: Can you tell me your dream picks?
AS-P: I don't wanna say because then if I don't get the dream the
second dream will have become my first dream and then she'll know that
I liked another dream and say, "You didn't like me first." And then
all of a sudden everyone's dream is mad at each other's dream, and
then all the dreams are broken. But these characters, much like what I
ran into with Gilmore, really have to be able to do a lot of things.
These are really tough-women parts. The older sister in the pilot has
to be funny and strong and cry and flip out. There's a lot of ground
covered in the 22 minutes of craziness I plan to put on the air. It's
another search for Lauren Graham. What's nice to me about these girls
as opposed to Lorelai and Rory is, Lorelai and Rory were so in sync
with each other and that bond was so deeply engrained in them. These
girls have no bond. (Laughs) These girls barely know each other's
telephone numbers. Their lives are so separate and so different. They
really are building a brand new relationship, which is kind of nice.

Ausiello: Will Dan be involved?
AS-P: I'm workin' on him. He's my partner in crime. Nothing's going to
be as much fun, and, also, he's the best that there is. I'm not going
to find anyone better than him to move forward with. He's avoiding me
right now, but I am workin' on him. (Laughs)

Ausiello: Now I have a few Gilmore Girls questions for ya.
AS-P: (Adopting a Southern accent) Oh, honey, I got nothin' to say
about Gilmore Girls.

Ausiello: At least tell me if you've been watching it.
AS-P: I have not been watching it.

Ausiello: Not at all?
AS-P: No. Couldn't do it. I think we actually talked about this in our
ginormous 12-hour marathon interview with you [last April].

Ausiello: You did, and Dan said you guys were going to watch it.
AS-P: He may've said that, but I'm a woman, honey. And women can fry
up the bacon and bring it home in a pan. Here's the bottom line: If it
was great I would feel horrible and want to throw myself off a
building, and if it was not what I wanted it to be I would throw
myself off a… either way I'd throw myself off a building. So there's
no good outcome there. You know, I still have friends there. I keep in
touch with the cast. I just felt like it's a new game and it's a new
show. Good bad or indifferent, it's a whole new thing.

Ausiello: Have you heard what they're doing story-wise?
AS-P: I'm really disconnected. Is one of them possessed?

Ausiello: Lorelai and Christopher are married.
AS-P: Wasn't that on the cover of TV Guide?

Ausiello: It was. We weren't very discreet about that.
AS-P: You weren't very discreet at all. You just threw it right out
there, baby. I still read Mike Ausiello. That I read.

[Rob here: I do NOT believe for a second that she doesn't still watch
the show. IMO she's too much of a Lauren fan not to. I think she's
being very diplomatic here in refusing to answer any questions about
it 'cause, well, she's damned if she says what she continues to like
about the show besides Lauren-- particularly if she approves of the
current storyline -- and she's damned if she says what she hates about
the show in how that would affect the cast to hear it in public.]

Ausiello: What was your reaction when you saw the cover?
AS-P: Look, it's a new regime, it's a new world. There are plenty of
people who were not thrilled with me last year, so maybe they're
happier with the road that's being taken now. I had my own ideas about
everything, because I am me and, to me, my world and everything around
me is really all I give a s—t about. So I had my own plans for this
year. I had my own plans for a second year. And for a finale. But that
didn't happen. So they've got to go their own way. I have no contact
with that staff. They've done it totally on their own. I wish them all
well while I'm at the Century City Mall. (Laughs)

Ausiello: If they asked you to come back for the finale, what would
you say?
AS-P: Because I don't know where they've gone or what they're doing,
that's almost an impossible question for me to answer because, like I
said, I have it in my head how I want it to end, but that may not at
all jive with what they're doing now. I would say I don't really see
how that would happen, because it would be so weird for me to go, "OK,
these writers have set their paths, so I'll just do that." That ain't
Amy. Amy can't follow someone else's path. Then she wouldn't be the
delightful human being that she is.

Ausiello: What if your ending will still made sense in the context of
these new stories?
AS-P: Well, if it still made sense, then it's definitely something we
could talk about. I love that show. That show was my child. It was my
everything. Dan and I did nothing but that show for six years. We're
still staring at each other like, "What do we talk about now?" And I
love the crew there. My best friend, Helen, still works over there.
And I adore Lauren and Alexis. I love them. I miss them very, very
much. I miss not seeing them and working with them. So I can't say
that it wouldn't be fun as hell to go back there and hang with them
for a while. I'm just not sure if that's really going to be possible.
Our storylines were very meticulous. Dan and I crafted arcs to go way,
way, way back — for good bad or indifferent. Whether you liked it or
not, we really put a lot of time and energy into setting up very early
what we could pay off at the end, and I'm not sure that would be such
an easy thing to pull off. I won't say no, because it might happen.
But I can't see it right now.

[Rob here: Okay, it's official, the show got custody of Helen in the
breakup. ;) ]

[Rob here, again: I'm picturing Amy speaking the following answer
entirely in Babette's voice . . . and consequently, it cracks me up.]

Ausiello: Have you made peace with the way the whole thing ended?
AS-P: All those suckers can bite my ass, ladies and gentleman. It's a
business. I think they were wrong. (Laughs) I will always think that
they were wrong to not sit down with us and figure out how this could
work. The fact that there was no sit-down ever, no face-to-face with
the studio or network to try and hash out what we needed and what we
were asking for… that everybody just played it off like a negotiation…
but that's Hollywood. That will always piss me off, because it's so
frustrating that things get turned over to business affairs and then
get reduced down to a strategy, as opposed to, "We've been in this for
six years together. Can we sit down and talk about how we could make
this work?" So, no. I'm still pissed off at something that was done to
me in third grade. I'm very Russian in the, "You cross me and I take
your picture off the wall once you defect and I don't know you
anymore." It wasn't personal, it was just what [Warner Bros.] felt
they had to do. I'll always be sad that I don't get to close out
Gilmore, because it was my kid. But I've got a new kid now. I've got a
new baby now. I've got someone else to annoy me and make my ass
chair-shaped.

[Rob here: You don't suppose Fox got Amy to sign a non-disclosure
agreement? LOL. Also, my impression of what Amy said in her
interview with Ausiello last May is that it's not "what [Warner
Bros.]" -- ie: the studio -- "felt they had to do," it was The WB,
the *network,* which was keeping secret the impending merger with UPN
to form The CW, that was stonewalling last December when Amy went to
the network and studio to ask for a bigger staff and start the ball
rolling. This sounds to me like the clarification in the brackets was
likely Ausiello's fault and not Amy's in the recollection.]

-- Rob
--
LORELAI: I am so done with plans. I am never, ever making one again.
It never works. I spend the day obsessing over why it didn't work
and what I could've done differently. I'm analyzing all my shortcomings
when all I really need to be doing is vowing to never, ever make a plan
ever again, which I'm doing now, having once again been the innocent
victim of my own stupid plans. God, I need some coffee.