Talking as Fast as I Can

by Lauren Graham

  I’m gone. Destroyed. A sniffling mess.

  Later, as everyone is filing out, Amy and Dan find me and tell me that what’s funny is that Carole doesn’t even know the episodes are named after her song, or that they’re in that very order because of it. They haven’t even asked her yet if they can use that song somewhere in the show, although they want to. It’s just the song she chose to play. Another incredible coincidence.

  I nod and blink back more tears. At this point, I’m not even that surprised. I’ve come to accept this unique, magical time. Charmed days, and another funny miracle.

  FRIDAY, MARCH 18

  It’s the night we’re filming the last scene of the show, the final four words. Anyone who comes to set has to sign a confidentiality agreement. Alexis and I shoot the ending, and that’s followed by these incredible sequences with dancers flitting by in gauzy skirts. Scott pushes me on a sort of rolling cart through a tunnel of greenery, and I feel like I’m flying, like I’m Alice in Wonderland.

  Scott and I have one very brief dance move. It lasts a few seconds at most. But Marguerite, the choreographer, says she can tell I have some natural ability. I’m sure she just said it to be nice. But I still haven’t stopped bragging about it around the house ever since.

  MONDAY, MARCH 21

  I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about coffee. Is Lorelai drinking enough coffee? Personally, I’m practically made of the stuff at this point, but I make a mental note to ensure she is too.

  Mae comes to do her cameo, but she’s very, very, ill. She has a terrible stomach flu. So if our brief scene seems a bit off to you, it’s because our main intention was to get through it before she needed the vomit bucket again. Hollywood! It’s all glitz and glamour!

  Michael Ausiello also has his cameo today. He sends me a nice note about it afterward, telling me how emotional it was to be there. I feel you, bro.

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23

  Today we’re filming the opening shot of “Winter,” and of the whole series. Even though we’ve been shooting for a while now, I’m so nervous I hardly slept. Overnight, the town has miraculously been decorated and covered in snow. I’m not sure what they make it out of, but I’m pretty sure I still have some on my Ugg boots from the first time we made the show. Alexis and I walk arm in arm through the town, as we’ve done so many times before. I’m all right in the morning, but a bit later I can barely get through the line “I smell snow.” We’ve been at this for a while now, but I still can’t seem to get a grip.

  TUESDAY, APRIL 5

  “Hey, is that the same bike as last time?” a random crew guy from another show calls out as I go whizzing by.

  “New bike, same character!” I say. I’m having déjà vu, and so, apparently, are other people.

  My editor, Jen Smith, visits, and is worried about the book deadline. She spends the day on set and sees how many hours I’m working, how short the writing time between setups is. “Do you think you’re going to make it?” she asks. She looks very nervous. I feel bad. I wonder if we’ll ever work together on a project where I’m not actively raising her blood pressure for months at a time. Let’s be honest—probably not!

  Melissa does Ellen and announces she’ll be a part of Gilmore Girls, then comes to visit the set afterward. I haven’t seen her in ages, but it’s like no time has passed. She’s wearing a gorgeous floral dress that she designed. Melissa has always been an incredible decorator with great taste, and we had fun comparing notes when furnishing our first houses, which were right down the street from each other. We all stand around chatting—Melissa and her husband, Ben, me and Yanic and Amy and Dan—until work finally calls us back. Just like old times.

  Today’s scenes are with Kelly, where Emily Gilmore has read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and has decided to get rid of almost everything in the house. There are Gilmore antiques strewn about on every surface. It’s a funny scene on one level, but it’s also about how Emily is struggling to move on, and Kelly is characteristically fantastic in it.

  The Entertainment Weekly cover about the show isn’t supposed to be out for another week, but we learn it’s been leaked online. The publishers are shocked—the only other time they had a breach like this was when someone got hold of their Star Wars cover before publication. Nice company! Thanks, Internet hackers!

  SATURDAY, APRIL 9

  Mae surprises me by booking massages for us at our favorite place. Usually we have to book weeks in advance, and I ask her how she got us in with such short notice. She admits that she pretended to be my assistant. Apparently my assistant’s name is Mindy, and she’s “cordial but firm.”

  MONDAY, APRIL 11

  Rachael Ray is here! She’s a total doll and does a fantastic job in her scene.

  TUESDAY, APRIL 19

  Roy Choi is here! He’s extremely nice, but I forgot to ask for a photo. He’s an intense and smart guy and comes extremely well prepared for his scene. In between takes, he discusses the similarities between being a chef and acting, noting that both professions require individual precision while maintaining an awareness of the whole. Whoa.

  During the scene about whether or not we should fire Roy, Yanic keeps saying “baloney” instead of “abalone,” which cracks everyone up. Apparently he’s never eaten either.

  Gary. I still need to find a part for Gary.

  The props man, Mike, has asked me every day this week what I would like to eat in the upcoming camping scene instead of the dehydrated meatballs that are scripted. He needs to make them ahead of time and make sure he has plenty on hand in case we do a lot of takes. Chocolate meringue balls? Coconut macaroon balls? Veggie burger balls? For some reason, I can’t decide. “Can I tell you later?” I ask.

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20

  Mae and Alexis are cast in a reading together! Really, worlds, could you collide any more? I wish I could’ve been there to see the magic of my two most special ladies on a stage together!

  FRIDAY, APRIL 22

  We just heard that Prince died yesterday. Amy was a giant fan and saw him in concert many times, and everyone is generally depressed about the loss.

  My high school yearbook from my senior year appears in the mail. The wife of a friend from high school found it in storage. I gave it to her now-husband to sign on the last day of school, and he forgot to return it to me. So that’s how I can finally reveal to you my other longtime passion, one I’ve never before discussed: the time I spent dedicating my young life to Interbuilding Communications.

  Um, huh? That’s my high school boyfriend, Charlie, over my left shoulder, which may have had something to do with my involvement in this club, but I have zero memory of it otherwise. I guess if you ever find yourself in northern Virginia and you’re wondering whom to thank for how well all the buildings there seem to be getting along, well, that would be me and my bangin’ sweater vest.

  The props guy is back. He really needs to know what I would like to eat in the dehydrated meatball scene. Granola cluster balls? Turkey meatball bites? Actual dehydrated meatballs? I still can’t decide! I ask if I can let him know later. He sighs.

  SATURDAY, APRIL 23

  From the first time I read the script for “Fall,” where Lorelai goes off on a wilderness adventure, I knew that Peter had to play the role of Park Ranger. In some ways in real life, Peter is a park ranger, and doing something outdoorsy and nature-related for a living is definitely another way his life could have gone. Plus, the character appears late in the show and I thought it would be a fun surprise for you to see him. His ABC show, The Catch, very kindly cleared him to do it. But now it’s two days before he’s due to work with us and something has come up—they’ve lost a location for an important scene and have to do some switching around. Which means now they can’t spare Peter for the whole day. Park Ranger is in two lengthy scenes, both in Malibu, which is easily an hour from anywhere else in Los Angeles. So we have to think fast! Maybe we can split the two scenes into two different roles? But who else can we
call at this late date? How can we pull this off?

  MONDAY, APRIL 25

  We pulled it off! Thanks, Jason Ritter!

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27

  Someone casually mentions that today is our last day on the set of Lorelai’s house. Wait, what? For the first time I realize we are really and truly near the end. Ten days left of filming. How did that happen? It occurs to me that I should take something from the set as a memento. For years journalists have asked whether I took anything from the set of the old show, which I didn’t, since we had no idea at the time that our last day was our last day. My blue coat was something I went home in one day and sort of forgot about until it was time to come back. Besides, they always seem more interested in intentional hardcore theft anyway. I’m not sure at what point taking things from sets became a time-honored thespian tradition—I can’t picture Ingrid Bergman stealing from the set of Casablanca. But I know I’ll be asked, so I start looking for something. I text Alexis to see if she wants anything. She hasn’t left for the day yet, and says she’ll come down to the set and look too.

  There is no stranger feeling than the two of us wandering around our house trying to find what we want to take. “Was this here before?” we keep asking each other. So much has been reconstructed, plus Lorelai’s kitchen has been updated, so everything is sort of familiar, yet also new. Alexis takes a Yale banner down from the wall of Rory’s room. I take a pink flamingo made of tin that hung on the wall in the kitchen. I had no particular connection to this flamingo, but I do now, because it will always be the story I’ll tell about the thing I took. I also take a few framed photos and an apple-shaped magnet with Rory’s face on it that says YOU’RE THE APPLE OF MY EYE. Alexis cracks open a split of champagne she’s been saving, and Alexis, Amy, and I share a brief toast before going back to work. So long, Lorelai’s house! It’s sad to say goodbye, but at least this time I know it’s our last day together. Although…does anyone else notice that the ending is really more of a cliffhanger?

  THURSDAY, APRIL 28

  The producers of The Royal We, which I’m supposed to be adapting right now, call to ask how the script is coming. I take a deep breath, put my most professional writer hat on, and call them back and say something like “La la la la la la, I can’t hear you.” Luckily, they’re nice about it.

  We find a part for Gary! He can play the docent in the whaling museum scene with Kelly. But the part shoots Monday and Gary is in New York. Can Gary get to L.A. by Monday? Gary is going to look into it.

  MONDAY, MAY 2

  Three delayed airplanes and one harried overnight journey later, Gary makes it from New York! After his scenes, we sit in my trailer, catch up, and talk about all the long days and late nights we shared for seven years. For some reason, reminiscing with him makes me realize, really for the first time, that we’re almost done.

  TUESDAY, MAY 10

  It’s the second-to-last day of work. Getting Melissa back was the final, and in some ways to me most important, piece of this puzzle. I can’t tell you what a joy it was to be back in the kitchen as Lorelai with my best friend, Sookie. I’d missed Melissa terribly in real life too.

  After work, Melissa and Yanic and I go out for a drink. We talk for hours, and I could have stayed for hours more, but I have to try to get some sleep. Tomorrow is our last day, and it’s going to be a long one.

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 11

  The day we’ve all been waiting for is finally here! I’m not just talking about our final day of work—it’s also the day I must answer the deep philosophical question this book’s been asking, which is what will I eat instead of dehydrated meatballs? I think you’ll be relieved to know I went with coconut chocolate balls. Finally, with this global political issue settled, you can return to your lives!

  Alexis and I spend most of the day shooting a scene that takes place in a New York City hotel room. Rory comes back after having a fling and worries it was a mistake. Lorelai tries to counsel her. Alexis plays the scene with a perfect blend of panic and humor. The rest of our sets have been taken down already—this is the only one left—and as we finish up the scene, I’m already feeling sad. I’m going to miss Alexis so much, as well as the special connection we share.

  The last shot of the night, and of the show, is a re-creation of a sort-of tunnel that Lorelai, Luke, and Rory go through, a short pickup of a shot that we started outside at night but didn’t have time to finish on the back lot many weeks ago. It will make sense when you see the show, but it’s part of a sequence that’s sort of magical; it’s set to the Sam Phillips song “Reflecting Light,” and has no dialogue. I can count on one hand the number of scenes I had over the years on Gilmore Girls that didn’t have dialogue, which adds to the strangeness of it all. Some people have started to assemble near the monitor: members of our production staff, our ADs and their assistants, some folks from the office. There’s nothing to see exactly, but I know they’re gathering around us to say goodbye, to be there for the end, and there’s an electricity in the air. We three pass silently together through this passageway five or six times.

  And then, finally, that’s a wrap.

  I’ve shed so many tears over these weeks and months that while I’m very emotional, I’m also nearly dry-eyed—almost like I’m in shock. Amy and I hug. Scott and I hug. Dan and I hug. Alexis and I hug. We all stand around, a bit awkward, not exactly sure what to do next. We take some pictures, trying to capture a moment that’s impossible to capture. In them, I look completely dazed.

  Later, still dressed in the pajama bottoms I wore in the scene (and a top too, don’t worry), I meet some cast and crew at the Smokehouse, our neighborhood haunt, and we talk for a bit and say thank you and look at each other, still a little dumbfounded. We did it! Right? I mean, we did it, didn’t we? No one knew if it would ever happen, and we still almost can’t believe it really did.

  After a drink or two, I head back to my trailer to pack up a few more things before it gets too late, and I realize I can’t find my blue coat. Did I leave it on set, like I always do? A call down to the stage tells us it’s not there. The ADs get on the walkies. They’ve all seen this coat around me, or on me, or near me almost every day, so everyone knows exactly what they’re looking for. Plus it’s long and puffy and blue—it can’t have gone far. But no one has seen it. When was the last time I had it? Today? I don’t think so. It was boiling hot all day, just like it was yesterday…yesterday! I remember now. It was cool in the morning, but by lunch it had heated up. I walked my bike over with Yanic and Melissa to the stage where they were serving our farewell lunch, then left the bike outside the stage, with both the green leather jacket I’d been wearing in the scene and my blue puffy coat draped over the handlebars. I wore the green leather jacket in a scene again today, so wardrobe must have picked up the blue coat too. Phew. They’re still here packing up—Brittany probably sent it to the cleaners for me. But, in the wardrobe trailer, she tells me that when she grabbed the green wardrobe jacket from my bike yesterday, the blue coat wasn’t there.

  In all the years I worked there, I thought of the back lot as a sort of extension of my house. Since I often spent more time there than at my actual house, it made sense. But it’s different on the lot now. Warner Brothers gives tours there now, which means it’s much more crowded than it used to be, and there are a lot more people passing through. But still, throughout this whole shoot, I’ve left things all over the place and they’ve always come back to me. So I don’t want to think the worst, but maybe tweeting that picture when the show was announced made it a desirable or fun collector’s item for someone who was passing by? (By the way, if that someone is you, no hard feelings, but can you mail it back to my manager in Los Angeles, John Carrabino, no questions asked?) And for you at Scotland Yard, here’s the last documented sighting of my blue coat:

  It’s just a coat, I know, but I held on to it for so long. I never wore it once after work ended on the original series, because how obnoxious would it be if you saw me wear
ing it in the grocery store, like, oh, oh, look at me! I wear a big puffy blue coat that says Gilmore Girls! I’m not even sure why I kept it. When I put it back on for the first time, there was a dried-out sugar packet in the pocket from 2008—I hadn’t touched it since then. We once had a terrible winter of moths eating all our sweaters, but somehow they spared this coat—even they must have known I was going to need it again. For Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, it was with me every day. It kept me warm and dry, and billowed out behind me as I rode my bike across the lot in the wee hours of night. So I can’t help feeling a little sad it’s gone.

  But it’s our last day, and the coat has served its purpose. Our work is over, and it’s May in Los Angeles. The sun is blazing, and I don’t need it to keep me warm anymore. Of course, for sentimental reasons I’d prefer to have it. But I think of the seventy incredible days of this shoot, all the people I’m so thankful for, all the love that went into making this show. I think of Emily in her Marie Kondo scenes, giving things away because she’s learning a new way of being thankful for the past, realizing it’s just as important to welcome and embrace the future. And while her scene is about choosing to give things away, rather than losing them or having them taken, in the spirit of what the book suggests I decide that, rather than mourn the loss of my jacket, I will be thankful for the time we had together. I thank it for hiding itself in the back of my closet with only a dried-up sugar packet to keep it company all those years. I thank it for standing by, for somehow letting me know I was going to need it again. I thank it for getting me through all seventy days of “Winter,” “Spring,” “Summer,” and “Fall.”