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Send comments or suggestions to: Web editor The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
| ". . . But I Play One on TV" Related: "The Ten Greatest Yalies Who Never Were" (February 2003) They don't come to reunions. They never turn up in the alumni notes. They're among the select few who've never gotten mail from the Alumni Fund. And yet they trumpet their Yale affiliation in books, movies, TV -- even the comics page. They're the fake Yalies. No, not real people who pretend they went to Yale, but fake people who did go to Yale -- in their creators' imaginations. We hope they hold a reunion of their own one day. The Celotex Calhoun College built for the Gilmore Girls soundstage would be a perfect venue. They're a very well-connected group, so you'll definitely want to crash the party. We've put together the following quiz to help you make small talk with your apparitional fellow alumni. 1. Yale student Rory Gilmore of TV's Gilmore Girls achieved what coveted campus
position?
2. In the recent novel Foul Lines, a street-smart statistics
genius and "Will Smith lookalike" named Jamal Kelly leaves Yale to be
a PR man for a pro basketball team. What real campus locale is mentioned in the
scenes set at Yale? 3. Which fictional Yale tycoon had to work his way through college? 4. In the 1961 film Splendor in the Grass, Kansas oil scion Bud Stamper
(Warren Beatty) is sent to Yale to forget his hometown girlfriend, Deanie
(Natalie Wood). With whom does he end up instead? 5. Writer and producer Aaron Sorkin went to Syracuse, but his films
and TV shows are populated with Ivy Leaguers. (He once framed an episode of The
West Wing around a Whiffenpoofs performance at the White House.) Which two Sorkin
characters went to Yale? 6. In the campus classic Stover at Yale by Owen Johnson, Class of 1900,
what sartorial faux pas on the part of young Dink Stover is declared
"unspeakable" by a classmate? 7. It happens all the time on TV shows with teenaged characters:
they finish high school and move on to college -- but always somewhere close
enough that they can stay in the family home, or take all their high school
friends with them. Which of these characters turned down Yale's offer of
admission for someplace closer to home? 8. For the 2002 Comedy Central movie Porn 'n' Chicken, based loosely on the supposed
X-rated exploits of a Yale secret society, what contemporary Yale administrator
(under a slightly disguised name) was the model for the students' nemesis? 9. The lesbian characters on Showtime's The L Word include museum curator and Yale
graduate Bette Porter. What real-life Yale alumna plays Bette? 10. In the 1954 film Sabrina, Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart)
was the subject of what prediction by his Yale classmates?
11. In what book (and film) does the following exchange take place
about an ill-fated alum? 12. Which film character is an Eli who, when asked "What do you
do?", echoes the sentiments of many a recent graduate by replying
"I'm not sure yet, actually"?
13. In the first of the Blackford Oakes spy novels, by William F.
Buckley Jr. '50, what notable feat does Blackford Oakes '51 accomplish? 14. What fictional (or at least unsubstantiated) aspect of Yale
secret-society life is featured in the 2000 thriller The Skulls?
15. How did the protagonist of Joe College, a Yale-centered novel by Tom
Perrotta '83, spend his vacation from New Haven? 16. In 2004, the sports-themed comic strip Gil Thorp featured two football players and
best friends who dreamed of going to Yale. But Nick, who is black, was
admitted, while Von, who is white, was wait-listed. This caused tension between
the friends as Von wondered if race was a factor. How was the situation
resolved? 17. Which Doonesbury character did not appear in Bull Tales, the original Yale Daily News strips by Garry Trudeau '70,
'73MFA?
18. In a New Republic cover story last year, Michael Crowley '94 criticized
thriller author Michael Crichton for his arguments that global warming is a
hoax. Eight months later, Crichton published the novel Next. One of its minor characters is a
journalist named Mick Crowley. What attributes did Crichton give Mick Crowley
to make it clear he's an unsavory type?
Answers: 1: a. She took over at the News after the previous editor, her friend Paris, fell victim to a staff mutiny. 2: c. Authors Jack McCallum and L. Jon Wertheim must have begun and ended their research at the Anchor: Jamal and his roommate live in something called "Prescott Hall." 3: b. See, he was Blake and Alexis Carrington's son, but he was kidnapped as a baby and raised on a ranch in Montana. It was only after his hardscrabble upbringing that he learned the truth and returned to claim his birthright. That was just before he had his brother's office painted with toxic paint so that he could . . . oh, never mind. 4: b. He's never heard of pizza and she's never heard of Kansas, but Bud seeks solace in the arms of Angelina (Zohra Lambert), whom he marries and brings home after his family fortune is wiped out by the 1929 stock market crash. 5: b and c. Josh Lyman went to the Law School, Simon Stiles to the drama school. Contrary to recent real-world history, Sorkin's fictional President Shepherd did not go to Yale. And although Sorkin favorite Joshua Malina was in the Yale Class of '88, his characters have not been identified as Elis. 6: a. Actually, it wasn't just green, but "the deep royal hue of a glorious emerald. " 7: a, b, and c. Michael J. Fox's Alex P. Keaton applied to Princeton, not Yale, but went to the fictional Leland University after the Tigers turned him down. 8: d. The fictional Dean Widehead was considerably less popular than Brodhead, though. 9: c. In a nod to Beals's pre-Yale turn in the movie Flashdance, one L Word episode includes a flashback to Bette's New Haven days that shows her in Flashdance-style duds. 10: c. Interestingly, the figure was not adjusted for inflation in the 1995 remake, which starred Harrison Ford as Linus. 11: c. Investment banker Paul Allen (presumably not the Microsoft billionaire) is the Yalie in question. He becomes one of the victims of the title character, Patrick Bateman (Harvard '84). 12: a. Charlotte, not surprisingly, was a philosophy major. 13: c. After bedding the fictional (and single) Queen Caroline in Buckley's Saving the Queen, Oakes whispers, "Courtesy of the United States, ma'am." 14: d. Of course, screenwriter John Pogue '87 may know something we don't. 15: a. Set during Perrotta's own undergraduate years, the novel shifts between Yale and the New Jersey hometown of the protagonist, who gets into trouble when racketeers move in on his father's lunch wagon business. 16: b. But the happy ending came only after Von had his consciousness raised by a racial profiling incident involving his friend. 17: d. Zonker did not join the strip until it became nationally syndicated. Since the characters by then were students at the fictional Walden College, Zonker technically can't be counted as a Yale alumnus. 18: d. Noting that the character had little or nothing to do with Crichton's plot, the real Crowley described the fictional one as "not a character so much as a voodoo doll." |
