The 'Lost' weekend: It's over; it's really over

April 26, 2010 6:25 am

What did you do over the weekend? Maybe you hung out and caught up on some chores. Maybe you watched some TV or took in a movie. Well, you obviously aren't Twitter user @wopsican, because then you'd have gone to the "Lost" wrap party.

How did he get in? I don't know. He leads "Lost" tours in Hawaii, so that might be the connection. But regardless of how it happened, he's got all kinds of photos with the cast and crew from the event. Here's his Twitpic feed, which features the photos he took at the last official "Lost" event ever. Because, yeah, "Lost" wrapped filming. There may be some additional dialogue recorded at some point or something like that, but the series is done filming. And now we get to wait and see how it all plays out.

But that wasn't the only "Lost" stuff up on the Internet this week. Just being selfish for a moment, check out my latest appearance on "Orientation: Ryan Station," where I think Maureen Ryan, Ryan McGee and I had a fascinating conversation about the season so far and where we think it's all heading. Now, I make a lot of crazy predictions in this podcast, and I'm sure many of them will not come true, but that's half the fun, isn't it? And it's even better to share them with two critics and fans who have obviously thought as much about this show as I have. (I figured out the other day that I'll have written nearly 400 pages worth of "Lost" material for Show Tracker when the season is over, and Maureen and Ryan both write about the same amount as I do. That's three novels!) Listen to the podcast, and queue up the episode as you listen so you can get an idea of just what it is that's prompting our thoughts.

Meanwhile, if you're a giant "Lost" geek, you'll probably make this image (from sl-lost.com) your wallpaper as soon as you see it. I'm not going to say that that's what I did, but ... OK, yeah. I did it. It's a little ... OK, a LOT ... nerdy, but it's a great image, and I love the way the image blends all six seasons of "Lost" and the motif of the famous "Star Wars" posters. It's a really cool image, and however much work it took for P-L Boucher to make it, it was worth it.

I've also been combing the Net for some good "Lost" theories, and I found one at the forums for Oscar tracking site Awards Daily. It's by poster "guany," and I like it, even if I don't think it's going to pan out like this, because it seems a little needlessly cruel. I like all of the clues he's picked up on in the individual frames:

"David Shepherd is the Man in Black. There is just something about him. Especially in The Last Recruit. Concerning his dead grandfather, he tells Jack I feel sad for you in a manner that is very similer to how the Man in Black would try to, and has, manipulated others. Also, Jack, Desmond, and Claire all signed in at the front desk of that lobby, with the sign that said All visitors must sign in. David did not. He created the flash-sideways, and is thus not a visitor. He is also the only seemingly important flash-sideways character who is not in the original timeline. This fake relationship is what Jack would/will have to sacrifice. Or am I reading too much into this?"
Cool, right?

Tumblr user "lindseycathryn" assembles this collection of screen grabs from "Ab Aeterno" that plays up that episode's visual similarities to the show's pilot (which, if you haven't heard, will be airing again on May 22, the night before the series finale). It's been obvious for quite some time that the show is deliberately playing up similarities to season one, but seeing it illustrated so dramatically like this is terrific.

Finally, when life gives you "Lost," sometimes, you just need to make "Lost" robots. The guys over at The Daily Robot have been turning out a new robot version of one of the "Lost" cast members every week this season, and all of them are great. My favorite is probably this Sayid-bot, but I'm sure all of you will find others that you like just as much. It's a funny way to take the show and work it into the site's mission statement.

And with that, I'm gone for a week, unless ABC unexpectedly announces there will be a seventh season all about Desmond as a Timecop with Vincent as his resourceful canine pal or something over the next week. Hang tight, and I'll see you all on May 4 for "The Candidate."
--Todd VanDerWerff (follow me on Twitter at @tvoti)http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2010/04/the-lost-weekend-its-over-its-really-over.html

Lost—not all will be explained

September 7, 2009

Today at Seattle’s music and arts festival Bumbershoot, three writer/producers of Lost announced that when the show finishes its sixth and last season next year, not every skull-scratching, mind-blowing, jaw-gaping-mouth-breathing mystery will be answered.

This is a good thing.

As executive producer Carlton Cuse explained, sometimes not knowing the whole story is more interesting and more fulfilling than knowing, and he wisely offered Star Wars’ midi-chlorians as an example. What gives mysteries their power is, well, how mysterious they are, and taking that away can take away the fun. So not everything on Lost will be made clear, but Cuse (along with executive producers Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz) said that the creative team does have a road map of what they think must be explained. My question is, are the things I desperately need explained the things that the writers want to explain? I damn well hope so.

Other tidbits from the panel, some of which may be outright lies, include:

-Many faces from past seasons will appear in season six, including Charlie and possible Cindy (the flight attendant).

-While it normally takes the Lost writing team two weeks to plan an episode, “The Constant” took five. “Time travel is hard. It’s a lot of math!” —Kitsis.

-The boat sailed so well, its chase boat couldn’t keep up with it.

-Season six will have a fairly significant spiritual bent.

-The final shot of the show is already planned.

-While the producers have no personal plans for future incarnations of Lost, Cuse pointed out that it’s a powerful franchise and Disney would be foolish not to capitalize on that. So I think we can expect more Lost of some stripe in the future (or the past, because there’s often time travel involved.)

-Taking up that topic, Kitsis proclaimed that there really, really should be a Saturday morning cartoon show called Locke and the Monster in which Locke and the Smoke Monster teach kids lessons and build things. Coming this fall.

—Brooks
http://popdistillery.com/2009/09/07/lost%E2%80%94not-all-will-be-explained/

Under Locke and key: The mystery of how ABC's 'Lost' keeps its secrets

By Ethan Sacks
Wednesday, May 13th 2009, 8:39 AM

By this time Thursday, you will know as many of the secrets of ABC's "Lost" as the enigmatic Ben – or at least, as much as Michael Emerson, the actor who plays the sociopathic former leader of the Others.

"At the beginning of each season when we have eight or ten episodes in the can, I know a lot more of the storyline than the audience," said Emerson, "By the end of the season, like right now, I know two more hours than you know….the script of what airs on Wednesday night and that's it."

He's as curious as everybody else.

And that's just the way that executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof like it heading into Wednesday's Season 5 finale. Short of building a bunker on a remote, deserted island, they've taken steps to protect their closely-guarded secrets from the hordes of spoiler seekers that regularly float around the show's Oahu set.

"We write fake sides when we cast guest actors since those scenes have to be faxed all over town to actor's agents," Cuse told the News by email. "Actors are cast never actually having read or having auditioned doing the real scenes they will be doing in the show."

Emerson knows that full well, having debuted on the show in what was originally intended as a guest spot. He flew to Hawaii, and in his words, "and the next morning I was hanging from a tree.

"I had sort of reached the point where I thought where I was now beyond the world of action, so that what ever heavy lifting I was going to do from now on would be cigarettes and martinis," said Emerson. "Now, I'm handling more weapons than I ever dreamt."

A number of Web sites are dedicated to showcasing photos uploaded from cellphone cameras that show scenes being filmed in Honolulu – which doubles for a number of far flung city exteriors on the show, The show's brain-trust has been accused of leaking "foilers" – fake spoilers like doctored script pages – to throw nosy fans off the scent of major developments.

Their greatest success was hiding one of the biggest plot twists in TV history: the flash forward at the end of Season 3, said TV Guide Magazine reporter Rob Moynihan, who covers the show. Lindelof and Cuse had teased reporters in the weeks before, calling it "the snake in the mailbox," because they bragged it was going to shock everybody. "It absolutely took me by surprise," said Moynihan.

Actor Matthew Fox told Entertainment Weekly in 2007 that most of the cast and crew didn't see that episode's script until their scenes were being filmed.

Often the fear of igniting fans' ire keeps journalists in line, said Moynihan.

"People are purists and they don't want anything to ruin it for them," said Moynihan. "There are viewers who turn off the television before the teaser for next week's episode is shown."

Even co-creator J.J. Abrams professed to be kept in the dark where the show is going during an interview for his new movie, "Star Trek."

"My role on that job is to watch in amazement at what they're able to do," Abrams said.
Just like Emerson and the rest of us.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2009/05/13/2009-05-13_the_mystery_of_how_lost_braintrust_keeps_their_secrets.html