The 10 Toughest TV Farewells of the Year
Gossip Girl
DAN WAS GOSSIP GIRL. That stung. But hey: Chuck and Blair got married, Serena and Dan got married, and Jenny and Eric and Vanessa returned! So that part was good.
not the ggwriters
WE ARE NOT THE GOSSIP GIRL WRITERS.
We just like to stalk their Twitter account and post all the Gossip Girl news, spoilers, and other official information we can find.
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#2. Chuck and Blair on Gossip Girl, episode “New York, I Love You XOXO”
Blair already had the giant white princess dress at her first wedding, and Chuck has worn so many tuxedos he might as well be a penguin. So how do you dress these two for their wedding? Perfectly, apparently. Blair’s powder-blue Elie Saab dress and Chuck’s cream tux with blue accents managed to be unconventional and yet completely classic, in typical Chuck-and-Blair fashion.
Those of you furiously polishing your meticulously researched and beautifully written Gossip Girl fanfic novel, rejoice — Amazon has created a platform whereby you can not only publish it, but possibly make money from it. Whether you’ll want to use that platform remains to be seen.
Yesterday, the House that Bezos Built announced the launch of Kindle Worlds, a digital publishing platform where writers can publish fan fiction under official licenses. Right now, Amazon’s deal is limited to Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries — all from Warner Bros.’ Alloy Entertainment — but it promises more to come.
On the surface, it seems like a sweet deal. After years of conflict over the copyright issues and ethical conundrums of non-licensed works, fan writers finally have an official OK to not only write, but possibly profit from their work.
Which means, of course, that there must be a catch — or catches, as it turns out. Author John Scalzi was quick to voice concerns about the publishing agreement and the program’s potential impact on professional writers working in the media tie-in market. Wired spoke with attorney Jeff Trexler, who expressed similar concerns, pointing to a clause in Amazon’s contact that grants Amazon and the licensor rights to the text of the stories and any original elements they might contain.
“In short, if your fan fiction includes new elements that catch on with the general public, it’s likely that you’ll not be able to profit from them outside of the stories that you write,” he said. “For example, Time Warner could launch a movie series based on a character you created and not owe you a dime. While the terms state that you retain the copyright, you also give Amazon an exclusive license to your original work and Amazon in turn licenses your work to Time Warner in a license that provides nothing for you.”
Furthermore, says Trexler, if you decided to keep using that character outside of Kindle Worlds, you’d be violating the terms of your contract.
But what do the fans have to say? Betsy Rosenblatt is a professor at Whittier Law School, and chair of the legal committee of the Organization for Transformative Works, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing access to and preserving fan works and culture. She said the Organization is pleased to see Amazon taking an interest in fan works, but, like Trexler and Scalzi, she has reservations about the rights writers would be signing away, and about the restrictions on content: Amazon’s list of content guidelines nix pornography and crossovers, as well as some more nebulous and subjective qualities like “offensive content” and “poor customer experience.”
To Rosenblatt, those restrictions underline the importance of unrestricted fan platforms, like OTW’s Archive of Our Own, which “allow fans to express the full range of their creativity and appreciate the creativity of other fans through fair use.”
Indeed, given the limited licenses, draconian content guidelines, and dubious contracts, it’s hard to imagine fans abandoning open platforms for a far-from-guaranteed paycheck. While Kindle Worlds is sure to attract a fair number of fan writers excited at the prospect of working under official license and maybe even making a buck or two off their stories, for many, the most appealing route to publication will remain the one taken by Fifty Shades of Grey author E. L. James: just file off the serial numbers.
Read the whole interview here.
In stark earnestness, what made Gossip Girl a show you found worth giving your time to? I’m not talking guilty pleasure territory here, I’m asking what genuinely quality factors do you feel it had?
STC: As one of those obnoxious people who says things like “there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure,” I have to go with stark earnestness regardless. In that light, I think it’s starkly, earnestly a fun, soapy, sexy show about attractive young quasi-sociopaths getting involved in crazy hijinks. That’s either going to float your boat or it’s not, but it certainly floats mine.
Thinking about it more specifically in terms of its place in my viewing trajectory, maybe Gossip Girl was the first television show I was able to watch with the new appreciation for glam decadence that had opened up the music world for me a few years prior, I don’t know. Looking back, I think it was the first soap I ever really watched, opening the door for The Vampire Diaries and True Blood and The Young and the Restless years down the line.
But GG always had that deliciously incoherent mixture of celebration and satire of the lifestyles it was depicting, giving it an is-it-or-isn’t-it edge that most of those other shows, however much I enjoy them from time to time, can’t really match. This was especially the case when the characters were all supposed to be 17 years old—what can I say, I’ve been a sucker for teenage sensation since I was one myself. But the decision to go full-on pervy with the love interests in the final season—Nate goes jailbait, Ivy goes Oedipal twice over, Serena and Lily have both been to seventh heaven with the same guy, etc.—showed that the show never really lost its knack for being dirty even as the kids grew up and the show lost its must-see-tv buzz. You never knew when GG was going to pull something as shiny and sleazy as a mid-’00s Goldfrapp single out of its sleeve.
Did I mention it was sexy? I mean, I sincerely appreciate that, I truly do. For squeezing Blake Lively into all those toothpaste-tube dresses, for playing lingerie dress-up with Leighton Meester time and time again, for crafting a dandy-of-the-underworld look for Ed Westwick, for every glimpse of Penn Badgley’s chest hair, for every close-up on the inhumanly beautiful face of Chace Crawford, Gossip Girl did humanity a great service.
Finally, Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf are terrific characters, as memorable as any on TV. It took them a while to get a handle on Chuck, obviously, but once they figured out what they had with him and Ed Westwick, a simultaneous Batman-and-Joker that would make “Batdance”-era Prince jealous…hoo boy. And Blair’s manic perfectionism as expressed by Leighton Meester’s chirpy caffeinated porcelain doll face—hoo boy again.
Would you like to own a piece of Gossip Girl? Have some money just burning a hole in your pocket? Interested in donating to a good cause?
Then check out this auction featuring one-of-a-kind reproductions created by APF artists especially for Gossip Girl sets (Lily’s stairwell, Chuck’s kitchen, Serena’s bedroom) and benefiting the APF (Art Production Fund):
http://www.paddle8.com/auctions/apf
The online auction runs through April 23rd, and all proceeds benefit the APF’s public art initiatives, which endeavor to reach new audiences and expand awareness through contemporary art.
We Want Gossip Girl Back trending worldwide right now.
At last night’s From Scotland With Love’s annual Dressed to Kilt celebrity charity fashion show, I ran into the amazing Eric Daman—former male supermodel (no, seriously, he’s starred in Calvin Klein campaigns alongside Kate Moss and has appeared on the cover of L’Uomo Vogue) and costume designer for Gossip Girl and The Carrie Diaries.
Anyway, apropo of the occasion, Daman was wearing a kilt—and he paired it with a pleated tuxedo shirt, camouflage jacket, and a jaunty scarf. When I asked him if he had already been a kilt-owner or whether he had to procure one specially for the event, he confessed that the kilt was actually from the set of Gossip Girl—it was what the waiters wore in the episode where Blair Waldorf launched her clothing collection at Barneys! AND to top off his outfit, his jaunty scarf is THE Chuck Bass scarf.
Is Eric Daman’s Gossip Girl IRL outfit the best TV-referential look ever? I think so.
I’m taking an hour-long break from required readings for a course, and Sex and the City has the shortest episodes so… I started watching a third-season episode, Running with Scissors (3x11). And who did I see six minutes in? The Captain! Approaching Samantha! He’s one GG dad I didn’t remember seeing on SATC. It’s sort of creepy, really. Apart from Dr. Van der Woodsen (EDIT: and Rufus Humphrey, who I completely forgot about), they all made an appearance. Don’t believe me? I have episode numbers!
So…
Blair’s dads:
Harold Waldorf (i.e., John Shea): Dominic, a (the?) guy who broke Samantha’s heart (2x11);
Cyrus Rose (i.e., Wallace Shawn): Martin, a friend of the Russian (6x18)—he had no encounters of sexual kind with anyone on the show, though :), at least as far as I remember;
Roman (i.e., William Abadie): Tony (6x05, the imbd says) but I don’t really remember him;
Chuck’s dad:
Bart Bass (i.e., Robert John Burke): Walker, a lover of Miranda’s (4x13, 5x5);
Nate’s dad:
Howard Archibald (i.e., Sam Robards): Tom, the male version of Samantha :) (3x11).
I guess that’s what you get when you film two shows in NYC for quite a few seasons. :)
Okay, I’ve procrastinated for fifteen minutes, yet it feels like I’ve also done some research. Mission accomplished. xD
Warner Bros. donates “Gossip Girl” Wardrobe
Film Biz Recycling recently re-distributed wardrobe items from the New York production of Warner Brothers’ hit show “Gossip Girl” to three charities in the New York - Career Gear, Bottomless Closet and Goodwill Industries, renowned organizations that operate public and private reuse centers offering employment, job training and other community-based programs for those facing challenges to finding employment.
Canal Creatures shot and produced this video documenting the process of the Gossip Girl wardrobe’s journey from Film Biz to the three charities.
