Welcome back, Pointers.

I’ve started compiling a list of all references in media (sans unremarkable non-fiction) to Grosse Pointe. I’ve tried to include the specific episode for any TV series mention, and I’ve only left out a few (e.g. Northern Exposure has dozens of uninteresting mentions). If the entire work is about Grosse Pointe, I left out any specific reference, or only mentioned notable quotes.

Below is a graph of all Grosse Pointe n-grams in print media, according to the Google N-gram project, from 1800 - 2019.

Direct references

Film, TV:

• Grosse Pointe Blank
• The Virgin Suicides
• Grosse Pointe (sitcom, 2000)
• Roger & Me (mentions searching for Roger Moore in GP)

• Klute (1971)

  “Comes from Grosse Pointe, has a big house, eight servants…”

• Northern Exposure (1993)

  Pilot

  “Grosse Pointe. Isn’t that an ugly name for a rich city?”

  The Big Kiss

  “Grosse Pointe wimp!”

  Heal Thyself

  “I grew up with a washer and dryer.
  In Grosse Pointe? Mmm.”

  “Well you’re not in Grosse Pointe.”

  “This looks like the Grosse Pointe Country Club.
  Heaven is the Grosse Pointe Country Club?
  For you. It’s your dream.”

  “We are very pro-labor.
  Right. I’m sure you spent your weekends… at the Grosse Point Country Club discussing minimum wage.”

• The Boys in the Band (1970)

  “Sure. He’s back in Grosse Pointe, living at home. He just got separated from his third wife”

• Mrs. Harris (2006)

  “She’s a gutsy woman, up and moving to Philadelphia the way she did, leaving a comfortable marriage in Grosse Pointe behind.”

• The Simpsons (Dude, Where’s My Ranch?, 2003)

  “Homer, those are elk.
  I still hate them.
  Go back to Grosse Pointe”

• Criminal Minds (#6, 2013)

  “And I gave Dr. Reid as detailed a map of Detroit and Grosse pointe as I could.”

• Murder, She Wrote: Something Borrowed, Someone Blue (1989)

  “You were right, Mrs. Fletcher. That phone call you suggested I make to Grosse Pointe proved it.”

• Detroit 1-8-7

  “Well, what about the party he said she went to?
  Yeah, in Grosse Pointe, thrown by some rich kid… Brett McCord”

  Stone Cold (2011)

  “Well, his office says he’s shooting a video down at Grosse Pointe Farms. Big pimpin’.”

• Medium

  Allison Rolen Got Married, 2010

  “Grandma and Grandpa Dubois wanted big wedding in Grosse Pointe, overlooking the lake, so we ended up in California, overlooking the ocean.”

  In the Rough, 2005

  “It’s back home in Grosse Pointe. That’s where she belongs”

• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006)

  “The guy in Grosse Pointe just killed everybody and then himself.”

• Perception (Ch-Ch-Changes, 2013)

  “You are Caroline Newsome. You grew up in Grosse Pointe.”

• Low Winter Sun: Revelations (2013)

  “I took, like, the bus out to Grosse Pointe, and I don’t know what I was thinking, you know?”

• Gran Torino (end scene is Lakeshore)

Books, writing:

• Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
• The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
• “The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise: A Tale of Possession in Old Grosse Point”, Thomas Ligotti
• The Onion: Marilyn Manson Now Going Door-To-Door Trying To Shock People (https://www.theonion.com/marilyn-manson-now-going-door-to-door-trying-to-shock-p-1819565904)
• Constance Fenimore Woolson, “St. Clair Flats”
• The Stand, Stephen King

  Richie didn’t know for sure where McFarlane would keep a big order like that—it wasn’t healthy to know about such things—but he had heard it said at different times in passing that if the cops ever got a search-writ for the Grosse Pointe house that Allie had bought for his great-uncle, Allie would go away until the new moon turned to gold.

  Richie decided to take a walk up to Grosse Pointe. After all, there was nothing better to do.

  He got the Lake Shore Drive address of one Erin D. McFarlane from the Detroit phone book and walked out there. It was almost dark by the time he made it and his feet hurt. He was no longer trying to tell himself that this was just a casual stroll; he wanted to shoot and he wanted to bad.

• “Tennis, Trigonometry, Tornadoes”, David Foster Wallace

  By the time we were fourteen, Gil Antitoi and I were the Central Illinois cream of our age bracket, usually seeded one and two at area tournaments, able to beat all but a couple of even the kids from the Chicago suburbs who, together with a contingent from Grosse Pointe MI, usually dominated the Western regional rankings. That summer the best fourteen-year-old in the nation was a Chicago kid, Bruce Brescia (whose penchant for floppy white tennis hats, low socks with bunnytails at the heel, and lurid pastel sweater vests testified to proclivities that wouldn’t dawn on me for several more years), but Brescia and his henchman, Mark Mees of Zanesville OH, never bothered to play anything but the Midwestern Clays and some indoor events in Cook County, being too busy jetting off to like the Pacific Hardcourts in Ventura and Junior Wimbledon and all that. I played Brescia just once, in the quarters of an indoor thing at the Rosemont Horizon in 1977, and the results were not pretty. Antitoi actually got a set off Mees in the national Qualifiers one year. Neither Brescia nor Mees ever turned pro; I don’t know what happened to either of them after eighteen.

Music:

• Insane Clown Posse. “Taste”, Carnival of Carnage, 1992

  Yeah, we headed for Birmingham, Grosse Pointe, and Beverly Hills
  I thought you knew, ‘cause we in a devilish mood

• Gregg Alexander. “Wear Your Love Beside You”, 1992

  Wake up, kid (No!)
  This ain’t (No!) Grosse Pointe, no (damn!)

Oblique references, rumors:

• Rumor: The library in The Breakfast Club being based on GP South’s library

For additions, email william.h.angell@gmail.com