This will be a thread where we can try and consolidate some things that TPTB have verified, or debunked, via interviews, podcasts, etc over the years. A lot of times in a post people will start off with, "Well TPTB said..." but possibly not remember where they saw TPTB say it. That's what this thread is for. Hopefully you'll be able to find it here in order to reference elsewhere on the board. If there's anything you feel needs to be in this list, by all means post it in this thread. I'm going to seed this thread with some help from SamG's thread over at the Fuselage and we can grow it to fit our board.
Feel free to use this material in posts, but as with anything else that hasn't been aired, some of this is considered spoilerish and therefore must be tagged accordingly.
At 32:20 of the July 31, 2006 Official Lost Podcast, recapping San Diego Comic-Con Lost panel
Q: Damon, how do you intend to only keep the show going only as long as you want it and not let the executives drag it out any longer than that? What about the rumors about possibly ending the show with a movie?
A: There’s another question we never get asked. Basically, it’s a very slipper slope. One of the things we always talk about is the X-Files, which is there is a plan to do X number of seasons and then end it in a movie. From our understanding that was the original plan. But when a show is successful, the network – the powers that be – we’re in a business so the fact the show gets good ratings is the reason we’re all here right now. We’re in a Catch-22 scenario and all we can do is stick to the original plan.
We have at least four, probably five awesome seasons planned out and at that point, after that we would have to start tap dancing which is something that we don’t just want to do. Two years from now will we be in a climate where ABC or Touchstone says “You want to end it? What is the give in return?” We don’t know. Obviously that is our preference as storytellers. And ultimately it will be up to us to put our foot down and say, “Fine, you can do more episodes of Lost but we won’t have anything to do with it.”
It’s hard for us to do that because we don’t want to hang any of the writers or the crew or the fans out to dry [Daniel Dae-Kim: Or the actors.] Or the actors!
Carlton: It is the unfortunate dilemma of network television. We wish we could announce like J.K. Rowling they’ll be seven Harry Potter books and you have that definitive sense of when it’s going to come to a conclusion. And we struggle all the time with a developed mythology but not knowing how long it’s going to play out. Yet the network invests a lot of money in the show and it’s their business and absolute right to make money off this endeavor. That’s what they’re in business to do.
Damon: There could be a plan where all of us together in this room, if we all promise not to tell anyone, that we just stopping watching the show in the fourth season and then wait for the DVD. Then they’d go, “Oh, nobody’s watching anymore, so let’s just cancel it,” and then we’d end it. But the reality of ending it on our own terms is unrealistic so we have to think around corners a little bit.
[Someone from the audience shouts: “Season 6 and 7!”]
Damon: Zombies. When in doubt (Carlton and Damon together) zombies.
We have nothing to do with the promos. They only time Damon or Carlton get involved is when they don't want something shown in a promo -- they'll call the promo people and ask them to not include shots.
'Lost' set for three more years
ABC hit expires in 2010
By JOSEF ADALIAN
In a potentially paradigm-shifting play, ABC has agreed to let the producers of "Lost" set an expiration date for the series -- three years in the future.
Skein will now wrap after the production of 48 additional episodes that will be divided into three, shortened 16-episode seasons. Final episode -- the show's 119th -- will air during the 2009-10 season.
In conjunction with the advance order, "Lost" showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have inked hefty new multi-year overall deals with ABC Television Studio to continue with the series until the end. Duo had made setting a wrap date for the show a condition for staying.
Lindelof and Cuse had wanted "Lost" to end after two more seasons. They're essentially still getting their wish: The 48 episodes they'll produce over the next three years is the same number the show produced during its first two seasons.
ABC execs, however, came up with a way to keep "Lost" on its sked for three more seasons. What's more, the 16-episode arcs will run without repeats (a la "24"), allowing the Alphabet to make the show more of an event.
"In considering the powerful storytelling of 'Lost,' we felt this was the only way to give it a proper creative conclusion," ABC Entertainment prexy Steve McPherson said.
"I always said that we would allow the series to grow and give viewers the most compelling hour possible," he added. "And, due to the unique nature of the series, we knew it would require an end date to keep the integrity and strength of the show consistent throughout, and to give the audience the payoff they deserve. "
McPherson also acknowledged that getting Lindelof and Cuse to reup "was critical to me and the network."
ABC Television Studio prexy Mark Pedowitz shared that sentiment.
"We wanted to make sure we had the team responsible for its success in place for not only the run of the show, but so that each of their future series creations have a home at the studio after 'Lost,' " Pedowitz said.
J.J. Abrams, who co-created "Lost" with Lindelof, defected to Warner Bros. TV last year and has been focusing on a new slate of TV and film projects, including the revival of the "Star Trek" franchise for Paramount Pictures. He told Daily Variety that he fully supported the advance wrap decision.
"It is the right choice for the series and its viewers," he said via an email message. "It takes real foresight and guts to make a call like this. I applaud ABC and Touchstone for making this happen."
Lindelof and Cuse, who are putting the finishing touches on the third-season finale, released a joint statement praising what they termed "a bold and unprecedented move for ABC" and thanking McPherson and Pedowitz for making it.
Cuse added that he hoped more shows will be able to follow the "Lost" lead and declare an end date.
"I think for story-based shows like 'Lost,' as opposed to franchise-based shows like 'ER' or 'CSI,' the audience wants to know when the story is going to be over," Cuse wrote. "When J.K. Rowling announced that there would be seven 'Harry Potter' books, it gave the readers a clear sense of exactly what their investment would be. We want our audience to do the same."
Cuse confirmed that devising an exit strategy for "Lost" was key to reupping with ABC Television Studio.
"In making this deal, Damon and I had two priorities: defining an end point for the show and keeping the quality bar high," Cuse said. "To do that we are both fully committed to the day-to-day running of the show right up until the very end. It's also why the 16 episodes per year was key for us. Because our show is so mythological, and because, unlike '24,' we can't reset each season, we need the extra time fewer episodes affords us to really plan out the specifics of our storytelling."
Lindelof and Cuse made public their desire for an end date during the TV Critics Assn. press tour last winter (Daily Variety, Jan. 15).
Cuse and Lindelof also wanted an end date in order to mollify critics of the show who worried producers were simply spinning their wheels as they worked through the show's layer upon layer of mystery.
ABC execs had already been talking to the producers about the idea, but they seemed taken aback when Lindelof and Cuse made the conversations public.
Indeed, it would be understandable if ABC execs had been initially cool to the concept of an early end date.
After all, with major hits a rarity in the network game, the rule is to keep hits on the air until every last ounce of success has been squeezed from them (e.g., "ER" or "The X-Files").
And despite relentless media snarking this season -- and the fact that "Lost" has lost a chunk of its fall 2005 audience -- the series is still a top-15 hit that dominates its 10 p.m. Wednesday timeslot in key demos.
In its third season, it's still drawing as many young viewers as NBC's newer, more buzzed-about "Heroes" -- and that's not counting the roughly 2.1 million viewers who watch the show after its live broadcast or via free streaming on ABC.com.
ABC could be establishing a new formula by which nets find success through serving up skeins with more and more audacious concepts but shorter lifespans than the traditional network hit.
Already, the traditional syndie business model -- the one that required studios to produce 100 episodes of a show in order to recoup their investment -- seems to be fading away in an age of instant downloads and universal streaming.
That may be one reason, according to Lindelof, that McPherson and Pedowitz "never argued that the show should keep going and going. The issue has always been when it would end and how far out in front of that ending should we herald it."
Now that the end has been announced, Lindelof promised there would be no attempts to extend or continue the "Lost" mythology on air in some other way.
"There will be no extensions or enhancements. That number (48) is absolute," he said. And "once you begin to see where we're going, I think the idea of sequels and spinoffs will completely go away."
So if he, Cuse or Abrams suddenly come up with a killer plot thread that doesn't fit into the new timeline?
"We'll do it as a radio play," Lindelof quipped.
As for "Lost," show's end game is expected to kick into high gear later this month with the broadcast of the season finale. Details of the plot are under wraps, but a person who has read the script described it as a major shakeup to the plot.
"It changes everything," the person said.
Nothing's official yet, but ABC has all but said that the fourth season of "Lost" won't premiere until January or February of next year.
By Jeff Jensen THE TEASE!
If I had to sum up tonight's episode in one word, it would be ''Kate.'' If I had to choose two, it would be ''Dharma bums.'' Three words? They would be ''Deals with devils.'' And if I had to pick four or more, I'd say, ''Let's just ask executive producer Damon Lindelof.''
''Remember last week when you were left wondering if Ben was a member of the Oceanic 6? Well, the last line of dialogue of this episode will cause the fans to ask a very similar question.''
Okay, since you brought it up, Damon: Is Ben a member of the Oceanic 6?
''Nothing precludes him from being a member of the Oceanic 6 — other than he wasn't on the plane,'' says Lindelof. ''But he does have a room full of documents and passports. He could have just, you know, done some research and doctored some records and adopted the identity of someone on the plane — someone with no family or friends who would know otherwise. So who's to say he isn't?''
So...when will we know for certain?
''By the end of the seventh episode, the audience will now know who the Oceanic 6 are.''
Well, whaddyaknow: a Doc Jensen column with some genuinely useful information for a change! And guess what?
We're just getting started.
''Sometimes, a bracelet is just a bracelet.''
DAMON AND CARLTON: A SEASON 4 INTERVIEW
No cheat sheets this week. (Though may I suggest you bone up on Philip K. Dick's ''Valis Trilogy'' in preparation for tonight's episode?) No reader mail. (Next week, I promise.) And no crazy theories from me, either. Now that the strike is finally over, it's time we heard from the majordomos of Lost themselves, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof.
Last week, I had the chance to sit down with the producers for a wide-ranging conversation about the new season. Check out the new issue of EW for their thoughts on getting back to work after the strike, the return of Richard Alpert, and why you won't be getting answers to Charlotte's Tunisian polar bear this year. But in this space, you will hear the producers speak out on a variety of issues: the structure of the season; the big mysteries that will — and won't — get resolved; the relevance of extracurricular stuff like the recent ''Find 815'' alternate reality game; and the proper way to ''read'' the show's flash-forward stories. But perhaps most provocatively, the producers offer their rules for time travel and alternate realities — rules that many of you currently engaged in wild theory-making about the interpretation of time/space on Lost will find interesting, even challenging.
We pick up the conversation with Damon and Carlton discussing one unforeseen advantage of the recent writers' strike: being able to respond to audience confusion. (Note: Teases and spoiler stuff are at the end. Veggies before dessert, you know.)
CARLTON CUSE: If we were sitting down with you right now, and there hadn't been a strike, we would be in the middle of writing the finale. The entire season would have been done and the audience would have only seen two or three episodes. Now, we actually have an opportunity to react and adjust to how people are feeling about everything.
DAMON LINDELOF: Naomi's bracelet in the Sayid episode is a key point here. I got some e-mails from people who wondered if there was a connection between Naomi's bracelet and the bracelet worn by the woman Sayid killed in his flash-forward. There is no connective tissue. Sometimes a bracelet is just a bracelet. We just thought it would be a cool emotional touchstone for Sayid; Elsa's bracelet reminds him of Naomi. But some people interpreted that, ''Is there something more there?'' We might need to address that.
CUSE: But this is a commentary on how the flash-forwards work. We were very concerned if the flash-forwards would have the same emotional resonance as flashbacks because people naturally, easily understand flashback storytelling as a device. The bracelet is one example of where people, I think, can get lost.
DOC JENSEN: Some people are even wondering if the flash-forward stories in each episode are being presented chronologically. For example, did the opening sequence of Sayid's flash-forward — in which he killed the Italian guy on the golf course in the Seychelles — actually occur after his ill-fated Elsa affair?
LINDELOF: There was originally a line in that episode where Sayid said, ''I've just returned from the Seychelles,'' which would have cleared all that up. But we lost it in editing because the scene went on for four minutes. When we're presenting you with a narrative, it's always happening in chronological order.
CUSE: Lost is complex and dense, but we are very conscious of the limits. If we are going to jump time, we're not going to jump narrative order within the time jumps, too.
LINDELOF: We wrote the Sayid episode before the Boston Red Sox won the World Series a second time. So when Jack said to Frank Lapidus, ''Did the Red Sox really win the World Series?'' and Lapidus says, ''Please don't remind me,'' certain subsets of the Lost audience began asking, ''Is it possible Lapidus is actually from 2008?!'' But you have to understand: we are not writing the show for now. We are writing the show so that when you put it in your DVD player 20 years from now, you don't have to understand the nuances of the Red Sox winning the World Series, only they hadn't won it in a long time.
CUSE: But you won't have a DVD player, Damon.
LINDELOF: It'll just be downloaded into your brain.
DOC JENSEN: Another popular theory making the rounds is that we're dealing with alternate realities. For example, there are people who think the flash-forwards are merely possible future scenarios, not written in stone.
CARLTON CUSE: We want people to believe in the stakes of the show. The problem with alternative realities is that you never know when the rug is going to be pulled out from under you. We want the audience to believe that the jeopardy is real. Postulating alternative realities would be an escape valve that would be damaging that as a narrative value.
DAMON LINDELOF: You can get away with it in Heroes, where there is an apocalyptic future you want to avoid. But we're doing the opposite. We want to work toward a future where Jack is absolutely miserable and wants to go back to the Island. Everything we present to the audience has to be factual.
CUSE: We want the audience to believe that is THE future. We don't want people thinking, ''Well, since there are five iterations of this, I'm not going to invest in what's happening to the characters.''
LINDELOF: We're not going to tell you that we're against bending the time-space continuum. We are very for it. Carlton and I are PRO time-space continuum bending! But we're ANTI-paradox. Paradox creates issues. In Heroes, Masi Oka's character travels back from the future to say, ''You must prevent New York from being destroyed.'' But if they prevent New York from being destroyed, Masi Oka can never travel back from the future to warn you, because Future Hiro no longer exists. Right? So when we start having those conversations at Lost, we go, ''This show is already confusing enough as it is.'' To actually have characters traveling through time has to be handled very deftly.
CUSE: For example, the fifth episode of the season [airing next week] deals with time travel and operates in different time periods. It was a tough story to break. But we adhere to our rule: no paradox.
LINDELOF: It's been weird, though. When we got back from the strike, we had to put up a master timeline of the future, from the point where the Oceanic 6 will end up leaving the Island all the way up to where the flash-forwards will end.
CUSE: And the hard thing was charting a timeline when there's a bend in space-time: How do you illustrate that kind of timeline when time isn't entirely linear? That took us an entire morning —
LINDELOF: — just to debate the quantum physics of it all.
CUSE: We needed to bring in a professional illustrator. [They smirk.]
I have a sneaking suspicion you're pulling my leg on some of this stuff.
LINDELOF: Maybe.
CUSE: But we do feel this is a place where we can challenge the audience to create a chronology — where Sayid's story happens in relationship with Jack's story, etc. We'll be adding pieces of that mosaic over the course of these five hours that should hopefully leave you with some fairly clear understanding of what happened between the time the Oceanic 6 were rescued or returned to the real world and Jack and Kate's final scene in the season finale.
DOC JENSEN: How would you describe the general structure of the season?
CARLTON CUSE: This year, it's all about the castaways' relationship to the freighter folk. Since day one, their goal has been to get off the Island. Now our heroes will find themselves defending the very island they wanted to leave. The future hints at the fact that these folks have a deeper connection to the Island than they themselves realized.
DAMON LINDELOF: The big mystery looming over this season is, how did some people get off the Island and what happened to the people who didn't? That's the mystery that we owe the answer to at the end of the season, in addition to who's in the coffin. We could be winky about the coffin all the way through season 5. But that was one of the first things we talked about when we got back to work on the new episodes: We definitely have to show who was in the coffin. That's the primary superstructure of the season. As a result of that, certain thematic elements — the element of fate or supernatural elements as they relate to the monster and Jacob — are certainly in play but not as interesting to us this season as these questions: Why do some of the characters leave? How do they leave? What are the circumstances under which they leave? Why do some stay? Is it a choice? Is it an accident? Both?
CUSE: There are larger cosmic questions involved in that. Daniel Faraday's rocket experiment in the Sayid episode, which established a time differential on the Island, was a very important scene in that it sets the table for things that come into play in the future of the show. We've learned a lot about our characters' relationship to the Island, but now we're going to learn their relationship to the outside world once they've been on the Island. This is an important new idea to the show.
What's the deal with Jacob's shack? It keeps moving. Then Hurley saw Jack's father rocking in Jacob's chair.
CUSE: You will definitely see more of the cabin and it was very observant that many fans noted the presence of Jack's father inside the cabin. We'll shine a little bit more light on that later this season. This is stuff that is a big part of the show going forward, but in terms of the final five episodes of the season, those are not the kind of questions we'll be answering.
Hurley also saw an eyeball looking back at him. Should we be wondering about the identity of the owner of this eyeball?
LINDELOF: You should be wondering, certainly.
CUSE: One of the definitions of omniscience is to be in more than one place at a time.
LINDELOF: I always thought that word was pronounced omni-science.
CUSE: Well, you've learned something new today.
My annual inquiry: Will we be dealing with the Adam and Eve skeletons this season?
LINDELOF: No. But they will be addressed.
More Dharma Initiative intrigue this season?
LINDELOF: You haven't seen your last station. But the larger mythos, like ''The Purge'' — that's more season 5.
CUSE: We showed the Orchid video orientation film at Comic-Con — that is important for this season.
Someone at my office wants an answer to this question: Wasn't it just a little too convenient for Penny to be calling the Island at the exact same moment Charlie killed the dampening field in the season finale?
LINDELOF: Good question. Here's how we always thought of that: What we always imagined was that Penny has an auto dialer in the bedroom of her house and in various places that is constantly sending some sort of transmission to the coordinates that were revealed at the end of season 2. So when Charlie turned off the dampening field, her auto caller indicated that her call could go through.
Now that they have a satellite phone, why doesn't Desmond just call Penny?
LINDELOF: Lapidus explains the rules of the satellite phone and what calls it can and can't make in episode 5.
The Sayid episode established that Ben's got this list of bad people that need executing. What can you say about these people?
CUSE: We'll know by the end of the season that there will be two alternative explanations for why Oceanic 815 is in the trench at the bottom of the ocean. It will not be clear which story one should believe. [To be clear, Cuse is saying the mystery of Ben's list is linked to this wreckage.]
LINDELOF: Both stories will be presented and both stories will have legitimate facts presented on their behalves.
CUSE: The act of taking a plane, filling it with dead bodies and putting it at the bottom of the ocean connotes a group that is pretty freakin' powerful. You should be worried about the people involved in either scenario capable of doing something like that.
Is one of these groups ''The Maxwell Group,'' a mysterious outfit introduced via the ''Find 815'' alternate reality game?
LINDELOF: We cannot say that any of that stuff in ''Find 815'' is in canon. The Maxwell Group is something that Hoodlum came up with. Last fall, we presented them with the idea that, at the beginning of the second episode, a salvage ship was going to find wreckage of Oceanic 815. From there, they came up with a story — and backstory — that led up to that event. [Some background: Prior to the strike, the producers and ABC's marketing team hired a company in Australia called Hoodlum to execute ''Find 815.'']
CUSE: We provided the creative framework but didn't oversee the execution.
LINDELOF: I'll sign off on this idea: The Christiane 1, which in the show was responsible for finding Oceanic 815, was in fact looking for the Black Rock. We established that in the show — but the people who owned the ship may have been up to a little bit more than just looking for the Black Rock.
So what's official and what's not? What's ''canon?''
CUSE: The mobisodes are in canon. The Orchid video is in canon. The videogame is not in canon. It's unfair for the audience to go to ancillary sources in order to really understand the show. Even the things like the mobisodes, which are in canon, aren't essential to your understanding of the show. These things are just added bonuses.
LINDELOF: The only true canon is the show itself.
DOC JENSEN: You've certainly picked some interesting names for your freighter folk. How should we be interpreting them?
DAMON LINDELOF: With Miles Straum, we just thought it would be cool if his name sounded like ''maelstrom.'' Charlotte Lewis was an obvious reference to C.S. Lewis and an important clue to places we're going at the end of the season.
CARLTON CUSE: And an important clue to Charlotte's own, as-yet-untold important backstory.
LINDELOF: One of our producers, Eddie Kitsis, has been pitching to us ''Frank Lapidus, Helicopter Pilot'' for years. Daniel Faraday is an obvious shout-out to Michael Faraday, scientist and physicist.
CUSE: As is Minkowski, who's on the freighter. Those names are clues related to the space-time issues that will become more significant downstream.
For the record, is the official lingo here ''the freighter folk''?
LINDELOF: I like ''freighter folk'' because you wonder if there's an album cover out there somewhere with all of them, and they have the Mamas and the Papas outfits on.
CUSE: ''Freighter folk'' is more benign. And they're not the only people on that freighter. You're going to meet some other people on the freighter who have another name, and in contrast to those folks these freighter folk are very...uh, folkish.
How about Matthew Abbaddon?
LINDELOF: ''Abaddon,'' we dug that one out of Wikipedia. When we name people, we often do Web searches on certain verbiage or if we want to pull something out of Greek mythology or Native American mythology, like, ''Who was the god of wheat?''
CUSE: I can't believe you're telling Jeff about the god of wheat now! The entire second half of the fourth season is about the god of wheat!
LINDELOF: Wasn't your nickname at Harvard ''the god of wheat?''
CUSE: No, it was god of rye.
LINDELOF: You see how I get confused.
[Sigh.]
Until next week, friends — namaste!
March 6, 2008 - Damon Lindelof interview with EW explaining a little bit about S4E5, "The Constant".
Spoiler: Tagging article for size....
'Lost': A Desmond Fact-Check
By Jeff Jensen THE TEASE!
A dollop of tasty info designed to whet your appetite for tonight's episode of Lost, the sixth episode of this fantastic fourth season, a Juliet-centric flashback outing called ''The Other Woman.'' Executive producer Carlton Cuse was gracious enough to spill the following:
''Finally! Ben's gonna tell us who sent that damn freighter!''
Whoa! Now that's a big-time tease for you! Thanks, Captain Cuse!
You know, wouldn't it be a fiendish twist if we find out that the man behind the freighter is none other than... Ben himself!? That's what reader Tom Champoux thinks. A fan of both Lost and The Usual Suspects, Doc Champoux sent me an e-mail arguing that Ben is pulling a ''Keyser Soze'' — creating a fictitious big bad to further manipulate our heroes and advance his big-picture agenda. ''I think he hired the freighter folk through some Kobayashi butler,'' writes Champoux, whose theory could explain the mysterious identity of Matthew Abbaddon. Regardless, he says, ''I think Ben was being honest when he told Michael at the end of season 2, 'I'm one of the good guys.'''
Tom, I like the crazy/scary/morally ambiguous way you think.
THE CORRECTION
Yes, Doc Jensen is capable of making mistakes. (What do you mean you already knew that?!) Last week, in this column, I said that tonight's episode would involve a trip to the Orchid, a Dharma station that was introduced into Lost mythology last summer via a bizarre orientation film released to the Web. I was wrong. You will NOT see the Orchid tonight. However, you will see a new Dharma station, rumored to be called ''The Tempest.'' Guess it's time to bone up on our Shakespeare, huh?
My apologies for the inaccuracy.
''THE CONSTANT'' REVISITED!
With clarifications from special guest Damon Lindelof!
After last week's time-tripping Desmond episode, I promised you guys some more analysis of ''The Constant'' due to the fact that I watched it while suffering through a crunch of flu-induced fever. As it turns out, it's probably good we spend some more time with it, anyway, given the intensity of passion and interest that many fans continue to have in the episode, arguably the best single outing since season 1's ''Walkabout.'' And to help us understand the story's noodle-cooking intricacies, I have some crucial insight from exec producer and ''Constant'' co-writer Damon Lindelof that I think you'll wanna know. To wit:
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO DESMOND?
In ''The Constant,'' Desmond became ''unstuck in time'' after flying through a thundercloud crackling with strange electricity. He experienced something like time travel, though not bodily time travel; instead, his consciousness shuttled between two different time periods, Island present 2004 and Desmond's past 1996. But here's the tricky twist: Desmond's Island-present mind wasn't the one doing the time traveling. When Desmond got hit with Island magic, his consciousness got knocked off-line and was replaced by his 1996 self. It was this older Desmond consciousness that toggled between present and past throughout the episode. Once Desmond '96 completed the errand of getting Penny's phone number so he could call her on Christmas Eve 2004, Desmond's present-day mind came back online, but rebooted with the new memories created by his time-travel adventure. I know: tricky stuff. But I had the chance to run all this by Damon Lindelof — and he says this interpretation is correct.
THE MINKOWSKI EXCEPTION
Desmond had the time-warp blues, but freighter freak Minkowski had Marty McFly Mania: Due to his own exposure to electromagnetic magic, he began psychically commuting back to a pleasant day on a Ferris wheel. He died desperately trying to zip-line back to this happy day one more time. Coldly poignant, I thought. Notice: Unlike Desmond's time-travel story, Minkowski's present day consciousness was making the trip. Lindelof says this difference was designed to make a very important point: ''As Faraday explains in the episode, the effect is random. Sometimes a person can be displaced by minutes, other times, years. And the direction of the effect is equally unpredictable. Our way of demonstrating this was to give Minkowski a wildly different experience than Desmond was having.'' Lindelof says none of this is arbitrary; exposure to electromagnetism or radiation plays a role. But he adds: ''Looking for specific rules for how all this works will lead you down the path of insanity.''
PARADOX R/X, or ''HOW COURSE CORRECTION WORKS''
To be clear, Desmond's past was different before ''The Constant.'' Before his time-travel adventure, Desmond never met Faraday at Oxford, never got Penelope's digits. As a consequence of changing the past, Desmond's personal history has been ''course corrected'' by The Powers That Be, beginning from the moment he walked away from Penny's apartment. Lindelof says this interpretation is also correct. But here's a Big Question: since scoring Penelope's phone number, has Course-Corrected Desmond lived his life knowing that on Christmas Eve 2004, he MUST be on a freighter in the South Pacific in order to make a call to Penelope if he wants any chance of having a future with her? Lindelof says this is indeed a matter we should be mulling. Perhaps in the future, Lost will give us an episode that replays Desmond's backstory (getting the boat from Libby; killing Kelvin; meeting the castaways) from the point of view of this knowingness.
[And with that, our friend Damon leaves the column to attend to other important matters — running a show, raising a family, shopping for cool T-shirts. We thank him for his input. From here on, the analysis is purely mine. Sorry.]
THE LIPS OF TURBULENCE
Desmond's ''unstuck in time'' nightmare began when Frank flew the helicopter into that monstrous thundercloud. The chopper was buffeted by intense turbulence. Lightning flashed. Frank pulled up and out of trouble. So what was that weird weather all about? Well, I don't think it was a passing storm. In, fact, I really don't think you can call it weather. As I explained last week, I think the Island is located inside the mouth of a wormhole, a possibly volatile anomaly in the time-space fabric. The chopper was passing over the rough-and-tumble boundary that exists between the anomaly and the outside world. (That wormhole has seriously blistered lips.) Another way of thinking about this is to think of a curtain hanging around the Island at a certain point offshore. This curtain extends from the sky to the ocean floor — hence, why The Sub also encounters turbulence when traveling to and from the Island. (See: Juliet's backstory in ''One of Them.'')
The problem with wormhole theory is that wormholes don't stay open on their own. Theoretically, they require a constant (and literally astronomical) supply of energy to stay in business. This past week, popularmechanics.com (which frequently ruminates on the science of Lost) speculated that this could have been why The Button had to be pushed every 108 minutes — to harness and discharge wormhole-sustaining electromagnetic energy.
Of course, now that the Hatch is gone, does that mean the wormhole is closed? Here's my theory: I think the failsafe key protocol (initiated by Desmond in the season 2 finale) called for one last blast of energy designed to keep the wormhole open for an extended period of time so that final business could be conducted. But when that time elapses, it's hasta la vista time-space anomaly. And maybe, bye-bye Island, too.
TIME PASSAGES
The chopper left the Island at dusk, but didn't arrive at the freighter until afternoon the next day, even though the flight lasted about 30 minutes. This bit of weirdness inspired the following question in my mind: Do different trajectories away from the Island lead to different points in time? Lapidus flew a trajectory (A) that took just 30 minutes; the chopper landed about 18 hours later. If Lapidus had flown a slightly different trajectory (B) that took roughly the same time, perhaps he might have arrived sooner. Or even later. Or possibly never. Why might this be important to season 4? Because if I'm right — if every different route away from the Island leads to a different point in time — then you have to wonder about those coordinates Ben gave Michael and Walt at the end of season 2. The question isn't just ''Where did Ben send them?'' — it could also be ''When?''
TIME DIFFERENTIAL: BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD?
For a couple weeks now, we've been trying to figure out the significance of Daniel Faraday's rocket experiment, which seemed to establish a 31-minute time differential between the Island and the freighter. However, ''The Constant'' suggested (at least to me) another possibility: it could be that the Island and the freighter are in synch, and that the rocket gained the extra time while flying through the turbulent perimeter of the anomaly. This is all to say, I think we need to reconsider the idea that ''time passes more slowly on the Island'' until we get more data.
MINKOWSKI GOT ''THE SICKNESS''
I tip my hat to Lost blogger Vozzek69 (at darkufo.blogspot.com) and some of my own readers for catching this one: It seems most likely that the time-travel illness that killed Minkowski is the same mythical ''sickness'' that killed The French Lady's fellow scientists wayyy back in the day. I really love this idea. I was never fond of the idea that ''the sickness'' was a Dharma hoax. It just didn't feel right. But this — this feels right. And if it is right, I love it even more for the way this answer was basically left for us to puzzle out, as opposed to having some dude explain it all to us. I expect that in the coming episodes and seasons, more Lost mysteries will be resolved this way.
But enough of this stuffy science stuff! Let's kick some old-school, pop-nutty Doc Jensen lunacy:
LOST'S EMPIRE STRIKES BACK SEASON
Over the years, many connections have been made between Lost and Star Wars. But I got to thinking the other day: If Lost really did correlate to the original Star Wars trilogy, then season 4 — the middle of the Lost saga — would obviously correspond to The Empire Strikes Back. And it does! Think about it:
Hoth, hideaway home to ragtag rebels fleeing the big bad Empire people = The Dharma Barracks, hideaway home to ragtag castaways fleeing the big bad freighter folk.
Boba Fett, dangerous bounty hunter hired to bag Han Solo for Jabba the Hutt = Miles Straum, dangerous bounty hunter hired to bag Ben for mysterious master.
Cloud City, a distant locale that seems to offer hope for our heroes but actually houses hidden dangers = The freighter, a distant locale that seems to offer hope for our castaways but actually houses hidden dangers. It even has its own...
Lando, an old friend to our heroes but actually working (against his will) for their hated enemy = ''Ben's spy,'' an apparent friend to the castaways (probably responsible for opening that door for Desmond and Sayid in ''The Constant'') but actually employed by big bad Ben himself. (If the spy is Michael, as I believe it is, then we'll have the ''old friend'' connection that makes the Lando link complete.)
Obi-Wan Kenobi, dead guy who deactivated the Death Star's tractor beam in the last movie and in Empire appears to Luke as a ghost and urges him to go to Dagobah = Charlie, dead guy who deactivated the Looking Glass's jamming device last year and in season 4 appears to Hurley as a ghost and urges him to return to the Island.
R2D2, heroic and very cute robot who can fix broken computers, spaceships, and other electronic stuff in a jiffy = Sayid, heroic and handsome, who this season alone has already worked on Frank's helicopter and fixed the phones on the freighter. C'mon. You know it's true!
And finally, a not-yet-confirmed link, but in the spirit of bringing this column full circle:
Space Slug, a giant worm that lives inside a hole in an asteroid and nearly gobbles up our unlucky heroes = The Wormhole, a giant anomaly that contains the rock that is the Island; it has gobbled up our unlucky castaways, but we know that six will get out. And by next week, I'm told, we'll know all of them...
May the force be with you! = Namaste!
May 9, 2008 - TPTB make good on missing episodes (strike-related)
Spoiler: Article text...
Time may move wonky for those on the Island, but for those simply watching it, it'll march on as expected. And as contractually obligated.
ABC has confirmed that, before Lost moves on to that big hatch in the sky in 2010, the network will make good on the three episodes missed due to the writers' strike.
Prior to the start of this season, producers and the network hammered out an endgame, agreeing that Lost would continue for 48 episodes, or three seasons of 16 episodes each.
Even with the recently added second hour to this year's May 29 season finale, however, producers were still two eps shy. Not anymore.
"[Coproducer] Carlton [Cuse] and I did an interview yesterday, and they asked what about the two episodes that didn't get done this year, and we reiterated as we have in many interviews we will probably do 17 next year and 17 the following year," show overlord Damon Lindelof tells E! Online's Watch With Kristin TV blog.
"Poststrike we always said we would make up the ones that got dropped," Cuse added.
That settles that. If only those other numbers were as easy to decipher.
First of all, damn you guys and this show. It was such a good episode, I was up all night trying to wrap my head around everything.
Damon Lindelof: Carlton? You know we don’t understand it either.
That is comforting. Well, congratulations, I think the fan response has been so positive this season. There were some people who were frustrated in season three, and I feel like all those people who were cynical are back into the fandemonium of the show.
D.L.: My feeling about is that it feels great, and we're enjoying it more than we ever enjoyed it before, for having gone through the dark times. And at the same time, our attitude isn't, "I told you so! We're awesome!" because I know we still have 34 episodes to go, and it's a roller coaster. And at the end of the day, people put a lot of weight on the finale, because the finale is the taste left in their mouth for the next eight months. Nobody's talking about the undefeated season that the New England Patriots had—everybody's talking about the fact that the Giants won the Super Bowl. So until the finale is aired and people respond to that, there are no laurels to be resting on.
Carlton Cuse: Me, I'm just happy, with no qualifications whatsoever.
How are you feeling about the finale about this point? Are you feeling pretty confident about it?
C.C.: Yes, we were up until the wee hours last night editing the finale. I think we're pretty pleased. We want to be cautious in our optimism, but it feels like the film that we are getting back from Hawaii is fantastic. Jack Bender is doing a great job directing it, and I think that people will be surprised by the finale. Not in the literal M. Night Shyamalan way that we surprised the audience last year, but I think emotionally satisfying and also intriguing—and we'll leave people very excited and interested to figure out what season five is going to be about.
D.L.: Yes, there's a sense of completeness this year in terms of what we set out to do in season four: to tell the story of how the Oceanic Six got off the island, why they are lying and what happened in the immediate aftermath of them being rescued, all the way up to Jack yelling at Kate, "We have to go back!" And we feel we've accomplished that, and beyond that, there's an indication in the finale of what the future may hold. We're really glad that we got the extra hour from ABC. That made a huge difference in being able to do the two-hour finale, or else it would've felt...We were sitting in the editing room last night watching one of the scenes, and we looked at each other, and said, "I can't believe we ever thought we were going to be able to do this in an hour." The scope is large.
Was this season considerably different then it would've been had we not had the strike, or do you feel that you accomplished what you had originally set out to accomplish?
C.C.: I think in a funny way it was probably better because of the strike, for two reasons: First, we just put the pedal all the way down to the metal to get everything done with two fewer hours. A lot of the more languid, contemplative material went out the window. And two, I think we were fresh after 100 days off. We came back, and we jumped into the show. We were recharged, and we've had a real energy to attack these last six episodes. Normally, at the end of a season, it's like running a marathon. You're exhausted, you've used every good idea that you've had and you have fatigue from having written 17 episodes. We came in fresh, really energized, and I think that really helped the batch of episodes.
D.L.: It's crazy because you've now seen three episodes of the poststrike work, and we didn't even start writing them until Valentine's Day, and now they've aired. It's a tremendous amount of energy put in by the writing staff, the production staff, the actors and the editors. Right now we literally have four editors and assistants all working around the clock just to get the finale done. And Jack Bender is still shooting today, and we're going to air this two-hour movie two weeks from last night. So we're really proud of the fact that we were able to write and produce six hours of television in a 12-week period, which is essentially the same amount of time we had to produce the pilot.
And we found out that there will be one more episode in each of these seasons. Are you happy about that?
D.L.: I don't know where that came from. I think Carlton and I did a KROQ interview yesterday, and they asked about the two episodes that didn't get done this year, and we reiterated as we have in many interviews we will probably do 17 next year and 17 the following year. And now everyone's presenting it to us like it's an official announcement.
C.C.: Poststrike we always said we would make up the ones that got dropped.
Obviously the big question after last night's episode, leading into that finale, is: "How are they going to move the Island?" which is a fantastic twist. Also, "Is Claire dead?" Is that a question you are wanting the fans to be asking at this point?
C.C.: I think we want the fans to ask, "What's happened to Claire?" I don't think it's "Is she dead?" I think it's like, "Where is she?" and, "What's going on with her?"
D.L.: What's fascinating with Lost is there's a scene where Claire is in the cabin, and she is sitting next to a guy who is dead, and nobody is saying "What's up with that?" They're all asking "Is she dead?" I think the more operative question is "What is dead?" That's a good question to ask, and one you will certainly be asking over the long hiatus.
Can you say if time travel is definitely a part of the series?
C.C.: Yes.
How do you keep all of the different timelines straight? I have to imagine there's some huge board somewhere where you have all of the timelines because there's so much overlap at this point. Is it difficult keeping all of that straight, and how closely do you guard that room where all the secrets are kept?
D.L.: We have a guy, Gregg Nations, who is now coproducer on the show who has been our script coordinator since the very beginning, and that's been his job maintaining the continuity of the show. The easiest continuity to keep is what's happening on the Island starting on Sept. 22, 2004, up until where we are now, which is roughly about day 100 on the Island, as of what you saw last night. That's fairly easy. And then the flashbacks—they start becoming confusing relative to each other. It's not that hard to say Jack ratted out his father and got him fired before he went to Australia, but all of that happened after he broke up with Sarah. [What is hard to sort out is] how those scenes take place in relation to Hurley winning the lottery or Sayid leaving Iraq...so that's all Gregg's job.
Once we moved into the future this year, it has become incredibly daunting for him, because all the Oceanic Six are intertwined, and you will begin to see in the finale, as we begin to fill in these missing pieces in the future, trying to understand the conditions under which the Oceanic Six left the island, and why are they lying. That gets incredibly tricky. And you will finally get a sense of when the scene you saw in last year's finale takes place in relation to all of these other scenes where Jack and Kate are on the tarmac.
So, there is no physical document, it's all sort of in Gregg's head. If he were to leave the show or have a massive coronary, it would take Tom Hanks from The DaVinci Code to piece it together, which is how we like it.
C.C.: But he's, just to be clear, he's the keeper of everything that's been done on the show, not the stuff that will be done. He doesn't have to live in a locked vault, because he doesn't have the stuff that is yet to be seen on the show. It's enormously beneficial to have Gregg as a resource because we ourselves sometimes have a hard time figuring out where events happened relative to other events.
Well, you guys know that the fans are very passionate about how the romantic storylines go on the show. In the last episode, obviously, we had some really great Jack and Kate stuff. Does it make it tricky to write the romances knowing that the fans do feel so strongly about it? And how much do you take into account how they are going to react to a Kate and Jack scene or a Kate and Sawyer scene?
D.L.: At the end of the day, we haven't done any official polling, but it feels like there's a 50-50 Skater-Jater spilt, and Juliet is sort of the Ross Perot. The people who are passionate about Jacket are very passionate, but ultimately the triangle is a product of Kate and will she end up with Jack or Sawyer. It's not like Carlton and I are both rooting for Jack on any given day. We feel like Kate's character is bound to explore relationships with both those guys and that both those guys are going to be responsive to her various advances. We know who she ends up with ultimately, but we think the trail leading there is obviously going to include a little bit of ping-ponging.
C.C.: We're both Skaters and Jaters at the same time.
This is a question I don't know if you can or will want to answer: Does Richard Alpert age?
C.C.: Does Richard Alpert age? I think it's a good observation to say that Richard Albert has been observed in various time periods looking the same, but I think that's all we want to say at this point in time. However, you will learn a lot more about Richard Alpert as the show goes on. He is going to become more prominent in the future of the show.
And it seems like the series has branched off in so many different directions. The scope of what has happened on Lost is just so vast and so intricate. As the series continues for the next few seasons, will things start to come together in some sort of cohesive way or are you still branching out further?
C.C.: We were actually laughing about this the other day. How, back at the beginning, finding water was sort of the crisis, not whether the island can be moved. The stakes have definitely risen.
We have two seasons left, so we think there will be more incredibly compelling complications for the characters before we get to the end, but again, the great virtue of the end date is that we will start wrapping things up, and we will be trying to tie up all the story threads.
We keep a list of unanswered questions, and we will be trying to answer most of those. Obviously, mystery is a part of life, and mystery is a part of the show. I guess we'll all have to see at the end of the day how satisfied people are, but it is our intention to try to wrap things up. I don't know if the show will become simpler, but hopefully in the wrapping up of these questions, it will be satisfying.
D.L.: There are some questions that are very engaging and interesting, and then there are other questions that we have no interest whatsoever in answering. We call it the midi-chlorian debate, because at a certain point, explaining something mystical demystifies it. To try and have a character come and say, "Here is what the numbers mean," actually makes every usage of the numbers up to that point less interesting.
You can actually watch Star Wars now, and when Obi-Wan talks about the Force to Luke for the first time, it loses its luster because the Force has been explained as, sort of, little biological agents that are in your blood stream. So you go, "Oh, I liked Obi-Wan's version a lot better." Which in the case of our show is, "The numbers are bad luck, they keep popping up in Hurley's life, they appear on the island."
C.C.: I heard that Obi-Wan had actually experienced the numbers. That's actually a big secret that's now been revealed.
D.L.: But if you're watching the show for a detailed explanation of what the numbers mean—and I'm not saying you won't see more of them—then you will be disappointed by the end of season six.
Do you see Penny and Desmond as a central plot for the show? And if Penny were to die would Desmond die because she's his Constant? Is that a fair assumption?
D.L.: Desmond and Penny are an incredibly important part of the show, and one of our favorite romances and relationship to write on the show. Obviously, Sonya Walger is an incredibly busy actor, and as a result of that, it limits our ability to go to the Penny and Desmond well, but every time we do, it's very special as something that we do not get to explore every other week. All we can say is that there's a lot more to tell about that story, but hopefully you will have a better sense of that over the summer.
And how much do you know about what you'll be doing next season. Do you know who the cast will be for season five? Have you figured that out?
C.C.: We are just starting our minicamping process for season five. That's sort of where we take the big ideas for season five and try to break 'em down into a season-long story arc. So it's a little too premature for us to say specifically what season five is going to be like, in great detail—and once we figure that out we probably won't say anything anyway.
D.L.: We know what the story for the two remaining seasons is, but the big questions on the table now are what goes on in season five and what do we hold for season six. We don't want the audience to think that season five is just a big tap dance. It's not The Two Towers in The Lord of the Rings saga where it's just a big battle for three hours until you get to the volcano.
C.C.: We hope it's going to be more like the Empire Strikes Back, in Star Wars, in which the penultimate chapter in the first saga was the best.
D.L.: We can say, as a result of the reduced episodic order though, that we are not shifting out of question-answering mode. You'll still get some new, interesting questions along the way in season five that will pay off in season six, but there are a lot of engaging mysteries that we will be addressing right out of the gate.
March 25, 2009 - Damon and Carlton explain the mixup regarding Charlotte's age.
Spoiler: Article text
An ugly dispute between Rebecca Mader and her former Lost bosses over the correct age of her late character, Charlotte, appears to have been settled. Thanks, in part, to, well, me.
But first, let's flash back to the most recent Lost podcast, during which exec producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse -- in attempting to explain how Faraday could have seen a young Charlotte in 1974 when she wasn't born until 1979 -- alleged that Mader changed the age of her character from 28 to 37 in an earlier script "because she did not really want to brand herself as 37, which is what she would have had to been had we stuck to the initial script."
Mader fired back on her Facebook page, accusing Team Darlton of throwing her under the bus. "The timeline error was their mistake," she harrumphed, "and they are making it out to be my fault. Not cool."
Reached for comment this evening, D&C now concede that they got their facts wrong. "Rebecca is absolutely right and we apologize to both her and the entire fan community for screwing up the story," the pair said in a joint email. "By way of explanation, here's what happened:
There were a gazillion questions about the timeline discrepancy in that young Charlotte clearly exists in 1974, but wasn't supposed to be born until 1979, per a single line of dialogue courtesy of Ben back in episode #402. When we inquired as to how this happened, the intel came back that we used Rebecca Mader's birthday, July 2, 1979 because she was actually eight years YOUNGER than the character as originally conceived/scripted. We misremembered this as having come from Rebecca herself on the set, but in fact, it came several days earlier when our continuity expert Gregg Nations pointed it out and suggested using Rebecca's actual birthday for Charlotte. And so, the mistake was OURS. Rebecca's production draft DID have the date as being 1979.
Our first mistake was the timeline gaffe, but the much more significant one was wrapping Rebecca up in this when she had nothing to do with it. Not her fault on any level. It was our bad. One hundred percent. We will say as much in a very special "Eating Crow" edition of our Podcast tomorrow. Speaking of which, what a wonderful world we live in where we can make a comment in a Podcast that triggers a response on someone's Facebook page and that triggers a mea culpa on someone else's blog. Ah, technology."
Partial transcript of the Official LOST Podcast (February 20, 2007) regarding "3 mysteries revealed" in S3E9 Stranger In A Strange Land:
Spoiler: Beginning at timestamp 24:43
Damon: The ABC promo people have promised that there will be 3 huge mysteries revealed in this episode.
Carlton: Why do they do that? It just sets us up for, you know, ridicule.
Damon: Carlton and I are pretty, we're fairly sure, there's one big mystery revealed and that's how Jack got his tattoos.
Carlton: The other 2 might be just sort of, you know, promo-mania.
Damon: Yeah, I'm not exactly sure I would color that as a big mystery revealed. Although we'll see some familiar faces, uhm, as you have been watching in promos for the last 9 months. We might be seeing a certain member of the tail section.
This is very good, and strikes me as the the type of thing that ought to appear with the special features in the left column of page 1.
N.
__________________
"Trying to know 'something' following a system of thought will simply create a result,
i.e., 'something', produced by that system of thought, not knowing something."
Location: trapped in an inner product space containing a lattice
Posts: 8,841
Re: That's What They Said (TWTS)
NICE COLLECTION !
great idea !
__________________ quantum computing tip : One major problem is keeping the components of the computer in a coherent state, as the slightest interaction with the external world would cause the system to decohere hatch computer tip : "Do not use the computer to contact the outside world"
After going back and reading every article, it appears TPTB have changed their minds several times.
They said themselves they had a general idea early on, but things would evolve on the way.
Quote:
"The route we take between these landmarks is what we make up as we go along," Cuse says. "And those landmarks are the answers to the mysteries."
I guess it's more like "That's What Originally They Said".
Oh, I just typed out that acronym and that did not look right at all.
Initially would probably fit better.
TWITS
I almost made a whoopsie!
So, are you ready for us to start bringing you links?
Spoiler: "Over the year, there were plans to kill off more characters that were abandoned," Mr. Lindelof said.
Anxious to See How It Ends? So Are the Writers.
By NED MARTEL
Published: March 14, 2005
A few weeks ago, over eggs and turkey sausage on Sunset Boulevard, two young television writers talked shop about their network hits, until a phone call from the Hawaiian set of "Lost" demanded Damon Lindelof's attention. Josh Schwartz, the creator of "The O.C.," could guess the problem.
"To myself, I'm thinking, 'Script supervisor calling, actor doesn't want to say a line,' " Mr. Schwartz said, comparing Mr. Lindelof's call to the chaos in his life one year earlier. Back then, an actor on "The O.C." insisted he could no longer appear villainous, throwing a hastily written finale into disrepair. "And Damon answers the phone and goes: 'Hello? Unhh! What line won't he say?' " Mr. Schwartz recalled.
"Lost" and "The O.C.," along with "24" and "Desperate Housewives," are high-profile serials with substantial, devoted audiences, but no one - not writers, not network executives and not viewers - knows exactly how they will end their seasons. Their writers, like others in Hollywood, are trying to devise the perfect season finale - with little time to spare.
According to interviews with writers from all four shows, their finales are unshot, and mostly unwritten.
"The monster of production is at your back; you're writing closer and closer to deadline," said Mr. Lindelof, the "Lost" writer, who compared his mind-set to that of a marathoner who learns at Mile 15 that the race has been extended by two miles.
Mr. Lindelof listed his show's many leaps into the unknown: a locked hatch on the jungle floor, a marauding polar bear, an man-eating monster and more survivors from a previous plane crash. As adept as the writers, led by Mr. Lindelof and the "Alias" creator J. J. Abrams, have been at adding new mysteries, they now must subtract some. There's a hard-to-quantify moment when an audience stops feeling tantalized and starts feeling manipulated.
Mr. Lindelof committed to killing off a series regular by season's end; also by that point, the raft that some castaways have been building will have set sail, he said. But just who will live or die has always been a problem for this writing staff. "In the original pilot, Matthew Fox's character died halfway through," Mr. Lindelof explained. "We made him a real living, breathing, three-dimensional guy, so that his death would be shocking. And what happened was people, ourselves included as writers, said, 'Wow, I kind of don't want to kill this guy off anymore.' " The writers enjoyed the options for this character, Jack Shepherd, a doctor who could treat fellow castaways. Then, as "Lost" writers created glimpses each of 14 characters' pre-crash histories, other survivors won immunity. "Over the year, there were plans to kill off more characters that were abandoned," Mr. Lindelof said.
This link is good, but you had to pay for the story.
Damon Lindeloff Chat interview 3/28/05 As promised, Lost-tv had a brief IM with Damon today. He even reveals who dies! (Not!)
Read on!
DAMON: HEY!
DAMON: I'm avail now if you wanna do this...
LOST-TV: I'm good!
LOST-TV: meeting over?
DAMON: that one is, but I've gotta get into editing ASAP, so now would be prime time.
LOST-TV: then let's do it!
LOST-TV: Why don't I start and when you have to go, just tell me.
DAMON: Perfecto.
LOST-TV: ok. Here we go --
LOST-TV: I'm going to save the chat and post it on lost-tv, just so you know.
LOST-TV: that way I won't misquote you and say like who dies and stuff like that!
DAMON: As long as you correct my spelling errors!
DAMON: Sawyer dies. But don't tell anyone.
LOST-TV: Deal!
LOST-TV: ok, here we go.
LOST-TV: This is kind of a big one, so maybe you can think of say 3-5 key things that have changed since this time last year --- when the pilot was in production to NOW when you guys are finishing up episode number 24.
DAMON: Wow -- that IS kind of a big one.
LOST-TV: well maybe I can narrow it down -- this time last year you're looking at 9 episodes and MAYBE the network will pick you up.
DAMON: I guess the key (not a word) thing that's changed is that we're in it for the long haul now.
LOST-TV: Maybe I should say: was it a "now what do we do?" moment when you found out the network wanted a bunch more episodes.
DAMON: What could have been a story that ended, as you say, in just eleven episodes, now goes on indefinitely.
LOST-TV: with an absolute phalanx of ((I might add ) very good looking writers.
DAMON: Not really. It was always our goal to GET them to order more episodes...
LOST-TV: ah, I see.
DAMON: I was not aware we had a phalanx.
LOST-TV: in other words, you had lots of stuff in reserve, rather than just HOPE ideas would come to you?
DAMON: And as for good-looking, well, Javi has a halo effect on the rest of us.
LOST-TV: well he's cute--
LOST-TV: here's an interesting question:
DAMON: No. Javi ISN'T single.
LOST-TV: darn the luck.
DAMON: Oh -- were you gonna ask something else?
LOST-TV: yes.
LOST-TV: standalone episode re: redshirts.
LOST-TV: Will we ever see the point of view of the OTHER nameless survivors? I mean, what do they do all day long? What's THEIR take on the action? We see if from the POV Of the principals but what about "striped shirt girl" etc?
DAMON: All I can say is this issue is addressed by season's end.
LOST-TV: oh goodie.
LOST-TV: (as he plays his cards close to his vest)
DAMON: The focus on our fourteen regulars has been so intense, we didn't wanna take away from them by starting the stories of the other castaways.
DAMON: But it's coming.
LOST-TV: wow.
DAMON: And how did you know I was wearing a vest?
LOST-TV: I'm psychic.
DAMON: It has buttons on it -- like Bennigan's.
LOST-TV: now, some fans have been frustrated by the number of reruns between new episodes.
DAMON: I feel their pain. I HATE that!
LOST-TV: and some episodes were NOT rerun. How much control do you guys have over the rerun thing? Which ones and how many?
DAMON: We have, literally, NO control.
DAMON: The way TV works is you do an episode every eight days.
DAMON: Basic math says that if you start shooting in mid-June, you finish mid-April if you're doing 24 episodes.
LOST-TV: but the season goes to--- May?
DAMON: This gives the actors (not the writers) a "hiatus" for six-weeks.
DAMON: Yes, we finish SHOOTING in mid-April.
LOST-TV: and you have season left over - -hence, reruns!
DAMON: Right. Because the airdates catch up with you.
LOST-TV: well that should provide SOME solace for our episodes starved constuency!
DAMON: All I can say is we do as many as we can with the time we've got, but there are fifty-two weeks in a year and only twenty-four episodes.
LOST-TV: Now there's a lot of talk about the death of a regular cast member.
LOST-TV: Was the death of whoever is gonna die this season determined early on, or was it a recent decision?
DAMON: Really? I hadn't heard that.
LOST-TV: (he's a funny man, that Damon)
DAMON: We had ALWAYS talked about one of our regulars dying from the very beginning...
LOST-TV: Did plans on which character would "go gently into that good night" change as the season progressed And what factors went into deciding who would die?
DAMON: The primary question became "Who and when?"
DAMON: Ultimately, I don't want to comment on WHEN the decision was made, suffice to say the very first person we called was the actor.
DAMON: (I refer to females as actors, as well btw)
LOST-TV: my goodness, he/she must have been very --- not happy
DAMON: He/She was a total and complete PRO.
LOST-TV: I guess they all knew it could have been one of them.
DAMON: Not happy to be leaving the family of the show, but completely understood the process.
DAMON: I could not have asked for a better reaction.
LOST-TV: Will wee see this person in flashbacks?Or is that if? We don't see them any more?
DAMON: When J.J., Carlton and I made the call, it was literally one of the hardest things to actually SAY ever.
DAMON: Never say never.
LOST-TV: I'll be that was a hard conversation to have.
DAMON: Some conversations are supposed to be hard.
LOST-TV: Well this is true.
LOST-TV: If it was all easy, it wouldn't be drama.
DAMON: It would be "Seventh Heaven" actually.
LOST-TV: *sticks finger down throat*
DAMON: Hey -- that show is STILL massive after like, eight years. They're doing SOMETHING right!
LOST-TV: now as far as fan influence!
LOST-TV: how much influence does fan reaction and discussion on message boards have?
LOST-TV: Have you ever changed or adjusted certain plot lines according to fan reactions, like from the Fuselage or lost-tv?
DAMON: The fan reaction has a LOT of influence.
DAMON: If people like something, we do more of it. If they don't like it, we do less.
LOST-TV: Could you give us a couple of example?
LOST-TV: s?
DAMON: But sometimes they don't know where we're GOING, and since they don't have the benefit of seeing the bigger picture, we continue on the course we've chosen, right or wrong.
DAMON: The biggest example is that we began to sense a real frustration from the fans that we weren't answering any questions and just asking new ones...
DAMON: That this was sending out a message -- "We don't know what we're doing or where we're going."
LOST-TV: But you DO know where you're going. That's the big message, right?
DAMON: So we advanced some of our "mythological wheels" and gave the audience MORE answers than we were originally planning to give as we came down the stretch.
LOST-TV: For instance, will we know by the end of season one how or why the plane crashed and why so many good looking people survived?
DAMON: We know where we're going, we just haven't figured out which route we wanna take to get there.
DAMON: The first part, no. The second part -- well, if you think the WRITERS are good-looking, I'm not sure how qualified an expert you are.
LOST-TV: I saw them -- they were easy on the eyes!
DAMON: Then I suppose it will remain a mystery as to how only the good-looking ones survived.
LOST-TV: LOL. Now as to theories,
DAMON: If it's any consolation, lots of good-looking ones died, too.
LOST-TV: you and JJ have denied the purgatory one. Are there others that stick in your mind that are NOT the answer to the mystery/
DAMON: What mystery?
LOST-TV: the mystery of the island. The infamous “they’re dead an in purgatory"
LOST-TV: All the fans have a theory: it's the Island of Dr. Moreau, it's an experiment. Any of these theories come to mind which NOT the answer are -- but which kind of make you think, "Wow, that was cool."
DAMON: I think it's really interesting that people think there is ONE definitive answer.
DAMON: Here's something that it is NOT...
DAMON: This is not a fictional reality that is playing out in someone's brain.
LOST-TV: well thank goodness for that.
DAMON: Like I've heard that they're all different personalities inside Locke, or something.
LOST-TV: "Emily, I just had the weirdest dream I was an innkeeper in Vermont"
DAMON: To this I say, "Yes. I saw 'Identity,' too. And I did not like it."
DAMON: Newhart. Well, THAT was classic.
LOST-TV: This is good to know. We were discussing that last night at lost-tv chat, btw.
LOST-TV: That, was, btw, the BEST finale in all of television
DAMON: I do not disagree.
DAMON: But most finales don't end on there own terms.
LOST-TV: oh here's a good one: there seems to be a disparity between the number of male survivors versus female.
DAMON: And thus, feel forced.
LOST-TV: was that deliberate?
DAMON: Nope.
DAMON: Just the way it shook out.
LOST-TV: ah, ok.
LOST-TV: Have any of the cast members run into real life dangers while shooting?
DAMON: Not that I'm aware of...
LOST-TV: and who tends to "screw up" the most (miss lines, miss their mark)
DAMON: I know this isn't the "fun" response, but they're ALL so professional, it's crazy. We don't even have enough for a gag reel.
LOST-TV: well that bites! We love blooper reels!
DAMON: ME TOO!
DAMON: I'll make some calls and tell them to stop being so good.
LOST-TV: on the DVD that's coming out in September --- who will be on the commentary and which episodes will have commentary.
LOST-TV: and yes-- tell them to screw some things up. There is such a thing as too good!
DAMON: Both parts of the pilot will have commentary by J.J., myself and Bryan Burk.
LOST-TV: which other episodes will have commentary?
DAMON: Walkabout will have commentary by David Fury and Terry O'Quinn.
DAMON: Hearts & Minds has Carlton Cuse, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Maggie Grace and Ian Somerhalder.
LOST-TV: ok, so the writers and the actor will comment on "their episode", is that it?
DAMON: And there are plans to add one more special commentary track, but I don't wanna give it away.
LOST-TV: oh, nail biter time,huh?
LOST-TV: What is the episode you're the most proud of -- of the ones you wrote?
DAMON: Can we do three more questions? I gotta run soon.
LOST-TV: actually we're about done!
LOST-TV: so timing is great!
DAMON: It's hard to answer that question because the ones with my name on it aren't reflective of episodes that I worked on any harder than all the others.
LOST-TV: 1. your fave episode of the ones you wrote, 2. has ABC given you the greenlight for season 2 and 3. Will we see more of Danielle?
DAMON: In fact, the episodes I'm proudest of do NOT have my name on them.
LOST-TV: ok, which ones?
LOST-TV: your fave episode?
DAMON: Walkabout and ...in Translation.
DAMON: No word yet on future seasons. Sorry.
LOST-TV: Danielle? More of her and/or Ethan?
DAMON: Rousseau will be back. Big time.
LOST-TV: good.
DAMON: And Ethan got shot!
DAMON: And buried!
LOST-TV: yeah, well.....
LOST-TV: I saw Pet Sematary.
DAMON: What kind of island do you think this is?!?
LOST-TV: LOL
LOST-TV: Damon, you're the best.
LOST-TV: Thank you ever so for your time!
DAMON: You guys are the best!
DAMON: My pleasure -- sorry about the scheduling fiascos!
LOST-TV: join us in lostv chat sometime -- the kids would LOVE it!
DAMON: I will do my darndest...
DAMON: But you should tell them to come to the Fuselage.
LOST-TV: Xander and a few do....
LOST-TV: I do periodically....
DAMON: It's hard for me to spread the love too thin...
LOST-TV: (cross pollinate).
LOST-TV: LOl.
DAMON: But I do want to interact directly with the fans.
LOST-TV: They appreciate this, believe me.
LOST-TV: they feel they're part of it.
DAMON: And they ARE.
DAMON: Okay. I must go!
DAMON: Bye, Kit.
LOST-TV: ok, be well!
LOST-TV: bye Damon!
DAMON signed off at 2:39:49 PM.
Spoiler: Carlton: I’m a non internet executive producer. I don’t go on the websites.
Damon Lindeloff Comicon interview published 7/17/05 Lost-TV was privileged once again to talk to Damon Lindelof at the 2005 San Diego Comic Con. Damon found time for us at the end of the autograph signing at the Inkworks booth. And joining us as well were Bryan Burk and Carlton Cuse.
Lost-TV: We have a question! The British promo for Lost-TV is the oddest thing! Whose idea was that?
Damon: Dave La Chappelle, who did the promos, he just directed this documentary called “Rise.” He’s a photographer. He was commissioned by Channel 4 UK to do whatever he wanted... It was his idea. We didn’t know anything. He sent us some concept art, and we said, “Wow! This is very European!” Very artsy and cool and people dancing and ethereal. What we liked about it was that it really focused on the characters. And it wasn’t like the US promos where are plane crash! Explosion! Weird monster! My wife LOVED the first one. She thought it was so WEIRD and romantic.
Lost-TV: Are we still going to see flashbacks in Season two?
Bryan: Yes.
Lost-TV: We are? How about post crash flashbacks? People thinking back to stuff we might not have seen on the island when we were focused elsewhere.
Bryan: You never know what you’re going to see on the island (grins knowingly)
Lost-TV: Oh, one of our guys wants to know, what was the purpose of introducing Leslie Arzt and then blowing up him?
Damon: What was the purpose? I think it was exactly that. Just the idea that first off we felt there needed to be a character who was representative of all those people who mill around in the background and then to give that character a shocking and heroic death that was very surprising.. That was the purpose.
Lost-TV: And somebody else wants to know was the marshal really a marshal?
Damon: Was the marshal really a marshal?I’m gonna go ahead and say yes.
Bryan: At least he plays one on TV.
Damon: I don’t want to be vague in that instance. He is actually a marshal.
Lost-TV: And then we have, ‘Are there eyes in the smoke?’ We have a lot of people thinking there are eyes in the smoke and they have done screen caps.
Damon: A lot of people saw some interesting things in the smoke, and I would say sort of like a Rorschach test. Whatever you see in there is what you see in there.
Bryan: There is nothing on that show that is an accident.
Lost-TV: The Black Rock. Is the ship the Black Rock or is it a red herring for another Black Rock?
Damon: That’s the Black Rock.
Lost-TV: Ok, mo more Black Rock.
Damon: Even when we answer mysteries people say, “ But…but..”
Bryan: There could be the blacker rock.
Lost-TV: So how many scripts do you have finished so far for Season Two?
Damon: Zero. We start filming season two in two weeks.
Lost-TV: You know where you’re going, you just don’t have anything written yet?
Damon: We’re writing, we just don’t have anything completed yet.
Bryan: We find it more challenging (not to have finished scripts)
Lost-TV: But you love that challenge!!
Damon: Put our backs against the wall is the only way it works.
Lost-TV: We won’t keep you any longer, just a picture for the site. You guys are becoming rock gods!
Damon: Well….
Bryan: Damon’s already a rock god.
Lost-TV: Xander wants to say hello!
Damon: Is he ever going to come to the States?
(We are introduced to Carlton Cuse and tell him about Lost-TV-TV as the first Lost-TV fan site on the ‘net.
Carlton: I’m a non internet executive producer. I don’t go on the websites.
And with that we thanked them for their time and we look forward to more Q&A with Damon in the future!!
August 20, 2005
Spoiler: What's In The Hatch
What's in the Hatch Why Damon Lindelof Didn't Reveal What's in the Hatch in Season One: “What’s in there is really, really cool and we decided that whatever it was they found in there was going to change their existence on the island. So instead of it just being something that they see and then leave, it forces them to reevaluate everything they thought they knew about where they are and why they’re there and what they’re supposed to do there more importantly. The hatch instead of just being something in the first couple episodes is going to go all the way through season two.”
Damon Lindelof on Creating the Hatch: “The first day that I met J.J. Abrams, Monday afternoon, we started talking about the show and started saying, ‘There’s no way to make the show work. There’s no way you can do an island show on network television unless you do that.’ So we started riffing out ways the show could conceivably work, ‘But they’ll never let us do that.
They’ll never let us have 40 main characters on the show and they’ll never let us do weird science fiction storytelling’ but she enough the network and the studio said, ‘Yeah, you can do that. You can do that.’ So that first day, JJ said, ‘Oh, and they should find this hatch. They should find something in the ground.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, what’s in it?’ He’s like, ‘I don't know, we’ll figure it out later.’ But that idea was born on that first day.”
Damon Lindelof on Figuring Out What's in the Hatch: “Then over the course of subsequent weeks as we were writing the pilot and casting the pilot, we kept talking about what would be in this hatch. Then Carlton Cuse came on around episode four or five and he joined the conversation. We said the rule will be they would not find the hatch until we know what is in it. And we finally figured it out and said okay, this is awesome.
They found the hatch around episode 10 or 11. We always knew they would not open it until the end of season one and we would not go in until the beginning of season two which has frustrated people a little and I totally get that. I would be frustrated too, but if we had shown them just a little bit of what was in the hatch, they’d be 1000 times more frustrated than they were with seeing nothing because it would have made no sense. It would have had no context.”
Damon Lindelof on Lost's Magic Numbers: “How far out we thought about the numbers is irrelevant to the fact that they landed in a way that we never, ever imagined. They were always going to be an incredibly important part of the island mythology and all I’ll say is the first three episodes right out of the gate, you’ll have a much clearer understanding of not what they mean but what they do.”
Damon Lindelof on Lost's Indefinite Schedule: “If J.J. and I and Carlton decided we’re done, they would say, ‘Okay, we’re just going to bring somebody else in to run the show.’ That’s what happened to Chris Carter. People look at that show and say, ‘I’m disappointed with the way The X-Files ended’ but Chris Carter wanted to do four seasons and a movie. The movie would have answered everything definitively but Fox said, ‘Great, you can leave the show but we own the show and we’re going to keep doing the show.’
He said, ‘I would rather run my own show into the ground than let somebody else do it.’ I respect that. Hopefully they will not make the same mistake with Lost and hopefully we will be able to dig our heels in because we have an ending of the show, we know when it is, we know how many episodes it is, but we have to talk to the powers that be, the people who paid for the show in order to execute that. I think it would be very hard if we did our ending for anybody to come into the show after.”
Spoiler: Is Danielle related to any of the castaways? Genetically? No.
INTERVIEWS Every so often The Powers That Be provide one of us the opportunity to ask a few questions. Its good fun and better reading. Here are the results of some of those interviews.
Damon Lindeloff E-Mail interview 9/21/05 The lovely Mr. Lindeloff took time from his busy schedule to answer a few questions! I am posting it here because some of this may be spoilerish.
1. Locke: and this appears to be critical. We see him as so omniscient at the beginning, then he falters. He falls for Danielle's story, he was powerless to help Walt, he was responsible in part for Boone's death. Does this foreshadow something in his character arc? That maybe Locke is fallible?
Very perceptive. Hell yeah it foreshadows!
2. Are we going to see a Danielle-centric episode in Season Two?
No comment.
3. In an interview some time ago, Dom mentioned that he would like to or thought that Charlie would become more of an Iago type -- manipulative, secrets, whispers, that sort of thing. Is this in Charlie's future?
You betcha. We love Dark Charlie!
4. Things we'd like to know more about besides the numbers: The "Adam and Eve" skeletons and the black and white stones. What put Locke in the wheelchair. Will we find out what happened from Charlie and or Claire's POV when they were captured by Ethan?
Are you serious? You really expect me to answer these questions? These are the most massive spoilers in play for the show right now! Serioulsy guys, you're killin' me here. You might as well ask what Kate did, too!
5. Christian Shephard: will we know why he picked Australia?
So Jack would go there and end up on 815 of course!
6. Is the "bumper car" significant?
That's the car that hit Walt in the parking lot? You mean Locke? Sorry -- not intentionally significant.
7. Is Danielle related to any of the castaways?
Genetically? No.
9. Sayid tells Danielle that Nadia is dead. Why would he do that if he was on flight 815 in the first place to go see her?
He lied.
10: Is there any direction the story has taken that you now regret?
Oh, brother. Not even gonna touch that one.
11. If the monster is busy trashing the jungle, why don't we ever see the evidence of uprooted trees etc?
This question has officially taken you guys out of the "fan" category and into the "busting our chops about small details" category.
But for the record, there are plenty of uprooted trees in the dark territory.
12. One of our gentleman wants to know if Sun will take another sponge bath soon.
Ha! Nope. Sorry. They're out of sponges.
13. Needless to say I want to know if Charlie will be taking off his shirt ala Jack and Sawyer.
Your wish is our command.
14. Will we see Rose's husband, Bernard? We also think that the private detective that Locke hires to find his father is Bernard.
Bernard was in the tail section. And you saw what happened to the tail section. That detective is NOT Bernard.
Spoiler: Paul: Yes...we know we have an intelligent audience...not the Nascar group...
Interview with director Paul A. Edwards by cccourt 12/7/05I live in a small town north of Houston. Paul A. Edwards is from the same town. What follows is a brief phone interview I had with him this morning.
Paul: My mom told me I had to phone you before I left for L.A.
ccc: Our site thanks you for taking the time.
Paul: Do you have the book, LOST Chronicles?
ccc: No.
Paul: It is written by Mark Cotta Vaz and published by Hyperion. It will answer all questions about everyone who works on the show. He came to Hawaii and interviewed everyone. He interviewed me on a truck. I had avoided him the whole time he was there.
ccc: I will pass that along...but I want to ask you about being from Conroe and how you got from here to there.
Paul: I graduated from University of Texas in 1977. I tried to find work in Texas for awhile. I got in my car and drove to L.A. in 1980. I started getting work there and just worked my way up.
ccc: How do you go from camera operator to director? Do Abrams and Lindelof offer opportunities to everyone who works on the show?
Paul: They are a nurturing group of people. They do give lots of opportunities to us. Abrams has pretty mush left the show to Lindelof now.
ccc: Because of MI-III?
Paul: Well, he got it started...but most of the people working on the show have been with him since Felieciy and Alias. They are close..and Abrams trusts them. He trusts Lindelof with the show. My patron was Jack Bender.
ccc: Do you know our site? Have you heard of the "green" site?
Paul: No. I understand there are over 2500 sites for the show.
ccc: Well, we were the first. The young man who started the site did so after seeing the test premiere in the Philipines. He started the site in March, 2004.
Paul: Amazing. I have heard there are two sites dealing with the numbers..only the numbers.
ccc: I don't doubt it. The people who watch the show are a cut above as TV viewers go.
Paul: Yes...we know we have an intelligent audience...not the Nascar group...no offense to Nascar fans...I mean the viewers enjoy the challenge of the show.
ccc: Yes. Every angle is discussed, every bit of dialogue.
Paul: We are grateful to your site and the fans. We know our show is reaching people who aren't ordinary tv viewers.
ccc: And all ages. ( I could tell he was hurrying this up at this point...)
Paul: I really encourage you to get the book. It can answer all the questions you might have for me and about the show.
ccc: Thank you for taking the time to call and talk to me about LOST. The site and I appreciate your time.
Paul: I will be back next summer, and maybe we can meet and talk more then. I have spent two days in Austin, and am leaving for Los Angeles right now.
ccc: That would be great. Thanks.
November 29, 2006 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xq2...n-cuse-intervi
Out of all the interviews I have seen, this is the one that I haven't forgot.
It is an interview with the TV Guide channel where Carlton Cuse states,
Quote:
""We don't spend a lot of time worrying too much about the audience. We really spend a lot of time worrying about just making sure that we are happy with the show we are putting out..."
Thank you Brian, this almost makes up for your defense of AnaL.
But please clarify the spoiler tags thingy is it just outside this thread or do we have to be careful here too?
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That works. 
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