LOST At Screenwriting Expo 2008


IGN TV has an excellent write up of a Q&A session LOST producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse gave. They talk about decisions about which characters stayed and which left, how they dealt with flashbacks, and the direction of the final season of LOST. One quote:

Cuse said that while they know the fans love to dissect the mythology, “We probably spend 80% on character, and 20% on mythology,” stressing that he thinks the focus on the characters, is “Why the show crossed over to not being a small genre show.” That being said, he acknowledged, “This year will probably be a little bit more science fictiony.”

Via IGN TV

LOST: Caesar will be played by Said Tahmaoui


The role of “Caesar”, in the upcoming season of LOST, has been cast. The actor Saïd Taghmaoui received the role after impressing the producers.

“He has an innate intelligence, intensity, and danger we really responded to,” says Lindelof, who declined to specify whether Caesar is good or bad. However, Cuse teases that the character will be playing “an important part of the setup for the final act of the show in season 6.”

Via EW

LOST: Interview with Charlotte


One of the new actors in season 4 was Charlotte, the red-head that we first saw dig up a polar bear skeleton in the desert. In an interview with IGN, she discusses what it’s like to be on a new show, what it’s like to be in Hawaii and how much the producers let her know about the show’s secrets:

Oh god, nothing! None of us know anything! It’s funny when people ask, “What do you guys do on your downtime in-between scenes? Do you all sit down and talk about the show?” I say, “No, none of us know anything. We’re all sitting there talking about the iPhone vs. the Blackberry,” you know what I mean? [Laughs] That’s about it.

Via IGN

LOST’s Dance With The Emmy Awards

If you were one of the producers of LOST, and you were told to pick ONE episode that best represents the show last year, what would you have selected to put in front of a panel of judges? Stumped? So were Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. So, they put together their own panel.

Lindelof thinks, in any event, that assembling a panel to prejudge another panel’s reaction was a canny move.

“(ABC Studios) put together a group of people who don’t watch Lost, and screened a couple of episodes for them,” Lindelof explained. “And they were able to determine for us which they thought was the best and most self-contained, and we moved forward with their selection. We’re really grateful, because they invested a lot of time and energy in this.”

The panel’s choice? The Constant, written by Lindelof and Cuse, which aired on Feb. 28.

I think that’s a very good choice. Let’s hope it makes it!

Read the whole article at The Vancouver Sun

Lost: Naveen Andrews Interview


Digital Spy has a new interview with Naveen Andrews, who plays Sayid on LOST. In it he discusses, among other things, what he thought was wrong with season 3, and how season 4 became better:

We all know what the executive producers, Damon [Lindelof] and Carlton [Cuse], were going through because they had this burden of an endless show. I don’t think it’s what Damon wanted in the first place. He always used to say to me ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we were a bit like the Sex Pistols and did just one season of great television and then bang, that’s it?’ Sort of smash and grab. Obviously you can’t do that on primetime network TV but he wanted a limit to the show. He managed to do a deal where he was able to achieve that. Now that we have an ending to aim towards, I think it’s inevitable the quality will get better.

Read the whole interview

Michael Is Glad To Be Back On LOST


Harold Perrineau, who plays Michael on LOST, took a brief hiatus from LOST, but is glad to be back:

Nausea aside, the actor is relieved to once again be part of the Lost crew. His character, Michael, hadn’t been seen or heard from since motoring off the island in the Others’ boat with son Walt at the end of season two, leaving fans to wonder what the holy smoke monster had happened to them.

“It was time to come back,” Perrineau says. “Even if Michael was going to die, I [wanted] him to finish, as opposed to just disappearing.”

Question is, how long will Michael stay alive?

Discuss: EW’s “Jacob, reveal thyself”


This week’s Doc Jensen EW.com story about LOST, “Jacob, reveal thyself”, and as usual it’s great reading. A few points:

In the premiere, we had Hurley telling Jack, ”I should have gone with you” instead of Locke — not only begging the implicit question ”Why?” but also ”How would have things been different?”

I’d add: I think Hurley found out something that he’d be happier not knowing…

Perhaps Jacob will give us a few more hints tonight. I suspect he knows SOMETHING of altered realities. In this creepy entity, whose only line to date has been, ”Help me,” I sense a trapped soul who has had something stripped from him, and I don’t mean his body. I wonder if here, on an Island that seems to stand at the crossroads of All Possible Worlds, what/who we see trapped here inside this otherworldly outhouse is a man who never really was. In other words: Could Jacob be the version of Charles Widmore that somehow, some way got flushed out of existence? Maybe

I doubt that Charles is Jacob. I think the whole “The island is mine” rant that Widmore went on is that he considers it “his”, because he pumped money into it back in the Dharma days.

I’ve said “the cross roads between worlds” theory before. I think it’s more likely that Jacob is somehow stuck between worlds, not corporeal, but still able to communicate.

There is a prevalent fan theory that Alpert is an electromagnetically energized long-lived survivor of the Black Rock, the slave ship beached in the middle of the Island. I’m willing to accept that Alpert would be several centuries old — IF he was actually, technically alive. Yep: I think this Tricky Dick is dead — or at least as dead as, say, Christian Shepherd. Judging from the way we saw Grandpa McBoozy cradling Aaron last week, these Island ghosts are more materially substantial than the typical ethereal entity, although clearly Alpert is a higher caste of specter than Christian, at least for the (relative) moment.

Bingo. I said that Richard Alpert might be dead too earlier this week.

And this particular point:

Lost season 4’s most conspicuous literary reference, C.S. Lewis. In The Great Divorce, Lewis offers a parable for life on earth by presenting a vision of Heaven in which the newly departed MUST leave their earthly baggage behind if they wish to enter paradise — or, decoded, to grow spiritually. They are helped in this endeavor by ghosts who’ve preceded them in death, though initially, these ”shining beings” come off as tough-love antagonists. ”Others,” if you will.

That beats around the bush a bit. It could be that the island is not only a crossroads between worlds, but THE crossroad between the worlds, where judgements (by The Smoke Monster?) are made where people end up in the afterlife. Some of those people are held to correct things that are happening on the island (Yemi, Horace, etc), all part of the grand plan to correct things the way they “should” be and make those course corrections.

Read the article, and tell me what you think!

Season 4 of LOST Will Be Shorter Than Expected

Jack’s Mad
The Writer’s Strike is ending and it appears that Season 4 will be a total of 13 episodes, rather than the planned 16.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Cuse said he’s happy with the outcome of the strike and can’t wait to go back to his day job on “Lost.”

“We’re going to have to hit the ground running, go from zero to 100 mph in a matter of days to make as many episodes as possible,” he said.

The goal for Cuse and co-showrunner Damon Lindelof is to produce five more episodes this season, a tall order given the time constraints and the scope of storytelling and production on “Lost.” Even with five additional hours, Cuse and Lindelof will be three episodes short of the premapped fourth season.

“We will have to condense some stories,” Cuse said.

(Thanks to Andy)

Writer’s Strike Almost Over – What’s Next for LOST?

There’s an article in the LA Times talking about what the producers and writers for TV shows are up against now that the strike looks like it’s over.

But no question will have more effect this season than the one co-show runners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse face as the end of the strike approaches. When the walkout began in November, eight of the season’s 16 scripts were completed. Will ABC order the final eight to be aired this TV season? Or will some of the episodes get tabled for future seasons?

“I think the big task ahead of us is to basically come up with the best plan both creatively and logistically for ‘Lost’ moving forward,” Lindelof said. “If they go along with what we kind of want to do, my guess is it will be fairly aggressive. So every day counts.”

If all goes as planned, the producers will begin talking about stories with the writers on Wednesday, Lindelof said. The difficulties, he added, might lie in remembering all of the characters, mysteries and island secrets.

Like the Dharma Initiative? (If you don’t know what this is, it will take the length of another strike to explain.)

“Everything I’ve forgotten about the Dharma Initiative is best left forgotten,” Lindelof said. “The good news about time away from the show is that you remember the good stuff. If you’ve forgotten about it, it’s probably best not to be reminded. We’re looking forward to executing the resolution of Season 4. Who are all the members of Oceanic 6? What happened to everybody else? What is the secret the Oceanic 6 are keeping and why are they keeping it? And who are these freighter folk?”

The article covers other shows, like My Name is Earl, so check it out!