Posted by The ODI
Here is an interview from TV Guide with new Golden Globe Nominee Michael Emerson. It is nice little read and he mentions that both Terry O'Quinn and Josh hollway's performances in Season 6 have impressed so far.
Enjoy!
How did you find out you were nominated?
"I'd turned the phone off when I went to bed last night here in Hawaii, so I woke up this morning to a whole lot of messages and texts."
Have you heard from any of your co-stars yet?
"I see here on my computer screen a message from Jorge [Garcia, who plays Hurley] just popped up. He's always very sweet. It says, 'Nice job. We'll be rooting for you.'"
Showing posts with label interview. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interview. Show all posts
Friday, December 18, 2009
ODI: Bad Robot Team Talks LOST, Alias, Fringe and More
Posted by The ODI on Thursday, December 17, 2009
Here is the first part of GQ Magazine's Interview with the Bad Robot team, including JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, Bryan Burke, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci.
It is a great read and I love this promo pic as well!
GQ: JJ, is there anything in particular that you learned from the Lost experience that you brought to Fringe?
Roberto Orci [writer/executive producer, Alias; co-creator/executive producer, Fringe; executive producer/co-writer, Star Trek]: We needed Damon and Carlton.
JJ Abrams [co-creator/executive producer/director, Lost, Fringe and Alias; director/co-writer/executive producer, Star Trek]: And they weren’t available. No—my involvement with Lost really ended within the first season. And so a lot of what I learned from Lost was what people watching the show learned, which is what great characters and story looked like. I think the work that Damon and Carlton do on that show is obviously a high-water mark for TV, and the ambition. In terms of this show, it’s a very different show. Every show’s a different show. It’s easy, in retrospect, to make comparisons, but when you’re in the thick of it, when you’re working on something, even if it’s the same people, it’s suddenly a whole new nightmare challenge. And you scramble the best you can to do your best work, and it’s especially difficult when you’re doing a mythology show that’s also aspiring to be a standalone show. Lost was very lucky early on to get really good ratings. So the network was okay with mythology, and the show’s never apologized for it. Fringe, up front, said, “Hey, it’s a standalone show, and every week you’re going to get your own little separate mystery.” But the fans who come back to watch the show– and tonight, fingers crossed, that happens again– are the people who typically like the mythology. So there’s a weird dynamic that goes on that I still haven’t learned, from Alias to Lost to Fringe, how to necessarily solve.
Here is the first part of GQ Magazine's Interview with the Bad Robot team, including JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, Bryan Burke, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci.
It is a great read and I love this promo pic as well!
GQ: JJ, is there anything in particular that you learned from the Lost experience that you brought to Fringe?
Roberto Orci [writer/executive producer, Alias; co-creator/executive producer, Fringe; executive producer/co-writer, Star Trek]: We needed Damon and Carlton.
JJ Abrams [co-creator/executive producer/director, Lost, Fringe and Alias; director/co-writer/executive producer, Star Trek]: And they weren’t available. No—my involvement with Lost really ended within the first season. And so a lot of what I learned from Lost was what people watching the show learned, which is what great characters and story looked like. I think the work that Damon and Carlton do on that show is obviously a high-water mark for TV, and the ambition. In terms of this show, it’s a very different show. Every show’s a different show. It’s easy, in retrospect, to make comparisons, but when you’re in the thick of it, when you’re working on something, even if it’s the same people, it’s suddenly a whole new nightmare challenge. And you scramble the best you can to do your best work, and it’s especially difficult when you’re doing a mythology show that’s also aspiring to be a standalone show. Lost was very lucky early on to get really good ratings. So the network was okay with mythology, and the show’s never apologized for it. Fringe, up front, said, “Hey, it’s a standalone show, and every week you’re going to get your own little separate mystery.” But the fans who come back to watch the show– and tonight, fingers crossed, that happens again– are the people who typically like the mythology. So there’s a weird dynamic that goes on that I still haven’t learned, from Alias to Lost to Fringe, how to necessarily solve.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
A Chat with Damon and Carlton (with Spoilers removed)
By Will Harris (wharris@bullz-eye.com)
Interview date: 04/03/2009
Run date: 04/15/2009
It’s been a long, strange ride over the course of five seasons, but if you’ve followed “Lost” all along from the very beginning of the series, then Season 5 has almost certainly felt like a pay-off for all of the waiting you’ve endured. Indeed, the staff of Bullz-Eye has voted “Lost” into the top spot on our bi-annual TV Power Rankings for the first time in the history of the show. It would seem that this accomplishment pleased executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, given that they cheerily agreed to chat with us about the show. It will probably come as no surprise to you that they weren’t willing to unabashedly offer up spoilers about what viewers can expect to see in the weeks ahead, but they did provide us with a few teases here and there, along with clarification on how the show settled into a groove after declaring its end date and their picks for their personal favorite episodes of Season 5.
Carlton Cuse: Hey, Will!
Damon Lindelof: Hey, Will!
Bullz-Eye: Hey, guys, how’s it going?
DL: Pretty good!
BE: Excellent. Well, first off, let me get you guys to identify your voices for me, so it won’t be such a bitch to transcribe later.
CC: Sure. This is Carlton, and I have the slightly deeper voice.
DL: And Damon has the slightly more nasal voice.
BE: Awesome. Then I’m set. Well, I don’t know if you were told why we wanted to talk to you, but “Lost” has jumped into the #1 slot on Bullz-Eye’s TV Power Rankings.
Carlton Cuse: "Negotiating the end date (of ‘Lost’) was really a critical thing for us, because we had a mythology, but we just didn’t know if that mythology had to last two years or nine years, and as a result, we were sort of paralyzed. We were stalling, and I think the audience very much felt like we were stalling."DL: That’s very exciting!
CC: We’re flattered.
DL: Yes. That’s awesome.
BE: It’s the first time the show has ever held the top spot, I believe. It’s hovered in the top 10, but it’s never been #1 before.
CC: Who did we knock out of the top perch?
BE: “Mad Men.”
DL: Oh, wow! As a huge fan of “Mad Men,” there’s no greater honor than to at least temporarily take the spot away.
BE: So how much of a release was it for you guys once you locked down a definitive end date for the series? Or did you have enough of a vision for your end game that it wasn’t as big a deal as it might’ve seemed?
CC: No, basically, negotiating the end date was really a critical thing for us, because we had a mythology, but we just didn’t know if that mythology had to last two years or nine years, and as a result, we were sort of paralyzed. This was all around the beginning of Season 3, and we had our characters locked in these cages, and I think it was because Damon and I…we were figuratively locked in cages. Well, okay, we were literally locked in cages, too. But because we just didn’t know how much time we had to make the mythology last for, so we were stalling, and I think the audience very much felt like we were stalling. And the end date kinda helped un-jam the log jam with the network, in terms of everyone recognizing that it was probably the best thing for the show for us to work out and announce when the show would be finished.
BE: With this season, you’ve really been hitting it out of the park, so I’d say the un-jamming was very much a success.
DL: Indeed.
BE: So did you find that the writer’s strike gave you a chance to, if not actually sit back and truly write, at least consider ideas for the next season?
DL: No, to be completely honest with you, during the strike, we didn’t talk about the show at all. We took the sort of mandate of the strike very seriously, in that you can’t even talk about story without violating the guild agreement. What it did provide us with was a break between the first eight episodes of Season 4 and what ended up being the last six, so we actually got an opportunity to kind of see what everyone thought about those episodes before we came back and started writing the final six. Otherwise, it would’ve been a lot more like it was in Season 5, this past year, where the bulk of the writing was done before the show even premiered. It’s always nice to rest your brain when you’re working on a show like “Lost,” but it’s not like the hundred days that we were on strike allowed us to plot out major story points.
BE: How hard is it to keep secrets under wraps on a show like “Lost,” where everyone is constantly trying to figure stuff out?
CC: Well, I think there’s a small segment of the audience that wants spoilers and wants to know what’s happening. Y’know, there are 425 people on the show, and we shoot the show in Hawaii, and basically every beach in Hawaii is free and open to the public, so it’s possible for people who want to spoil the show to get in there and take long-lens pictures of us shooting the show and find things out. We do try very hard to keep everything under wraps. All of our scripts are watermarked, and we try to keep the show as secretive as possible, but we realize that it’s almost an impossibility. But we really hope that most fans want the experience of “Lost” to be a surprise, and that’s one of the things that’s one of the most…I mean, almost more than anything else, that’s what we’ve tried to do as storytellers: to make the show surprising and unexpected. If you go and get those things spoiled for you, you’re just not going to enjoy watching the show as much.
BE: I was very happy to see Hurley address the time-travel headaches of this season.
DL: You’re not the only one.
BE: But, of course, it’s also been a good excuse to bring back a few more guest stars from previous seasons.
DL: What, the time travel?
BE: Yeah.
DL: True. But the fact of the matter is that the show has always been a little bit of a time-travel show, in that for three seasons it was flashbacks, and then last season it was flash-forwards. So the idea that you were hopping around time in a non-linear storytelling fashion allows you to bring back characters who are dead and, in some cases, buried. But now that the show is not just doing time travel in terms of the way the story is told but time travel is the story itself, it opens up even more doors. So when an actor reads that they’re getting killed off on the show, they’re basically, like, “Okay, but…should I still bother to show up next week?”
BE: So was the time travel aspect something that you’d had in mind from the very beginning, or was it something that came up on the fly?
Damon Lindelof: "Hopping around time in a non-linear storytelling fashion allows you to bring back characters who are dead and, in some cases, buried. Now that time travel is the story itself, it opens up even more doors. So when an actor reads that they’re getting killed off on the show, they’re basically, like, ‘Okay, but should I still bother to show up next week?"CC: No, I mean, I think that, if you actually look back at the show, there are some big hints about time travel. Obviously, we started with the flash before your eyes. We saw Desmond, sort of as a result of getting zapped when the hatch imploded, had an ability to sorta kinda see future events and then ultimately started consciously traveling. And we had Sayid listening to a radio broadcast, and as he’s spinning around, we’re hearing ‘40s radio music, we saw a glimpse of the statue with four toes. We sort of felt like we’d laid the pipe so that it wouldn’t be unexpected when we made time travel more overt. So it was something that we’d known about from very early on, but it just couldn’t be deployed until we got within striking distance of the end of the show.
BE: Even with all of the people who’ve popped up during the course of the season, has there been anyone who you’d wanted to bring back but hadn’t been able to manage because of scheduling conflicts?
DL: You know, not so much anymore. Certainly, back when we were doing 23 or 24 episodes a season and we ran from September to May, that sort of a scheduling conflict would be a huge issue for us. But now, because we’re able to shoot over a wider range of time before the show actually has to be on the air, we have a lot more latitude with actors’ availabilities. Fionnula Flanagan, for example, who plays Eloise Hawking, is a regular on the Showtime show “Brotherhood,” and she was not available for us when we needed her at the end of Episode 2, and she was barely available for what ended up being Episode 6, the one entitled “316,” but we shot those scenes at a later date and slotted them in appropriately because it was so important to the story to have Eloise Hawking be that character. So we’ve been lucky so far in that there has not been any story that we wanted to do that got hamstrung by actor availability.
BE: Okay, I’ve got a series of reader questions now, so brace yourselves.
CC: Uh-oh.
BE: Is it possible that the so-called “Losties” could be stuck in some sort of time-loop where they keep time-traveling and never age?
DL: Huh.
CC: I mean, one of the things that we really try to do very studiously is avoid confirming or debunking theories. That’s sort of the great social aspect of “Lost,” that you get to sort of sit around and say, “What’s this thing?” You make your own interpretations. For us, it’s a huge part of the show, and we leave things intentionally ambiguous so that those kinds of conversations can arise and take place. So I’ll just say that it’s a very interesting theory, and we will neither confirm nor deny its accuracy.
(See Spoiler page: Richard Question)
BE: Whose idea was it to slide in the line about “your friend with the eyeliner”?
CC: You know, I think it was just one of those things where…y’know, one of the things that we’ve learned as writers is that, if people are making certain observations, then it’s better to address them. And people were asking, “Is that guy wearing eyeliner?” And the answer is “no, it’s just a particular reflection,” but since we had about five people ask us that, we thought it would be funny to throw it into the script.
BE: I was at the TCA panel when someone called ya’ll out on that.
DL: Yeah, some woman asked that question, and we were, like, “Well, thank God we had Sawyer mention it!” That episode had already been shot a few episodes prior to the asking of the question, and it was very tempting to say, “Oh, just keep your eyes peeled, we’re going to deal with it in the show,” but then it would’ve spoiled the surprise.
(See Spoiler Page: Woman behind Sun, Why Sun landed in 2007, Where Bernard & Rose are)
Carlton Cuse: "One of the things that we really try to do very studiously is avoid confirming or debunking theories. That’s sort of the great social aspect of “Lost,” that you get to sort of sit around and say, ‘What’s this thing?’ You make your own interpretations. For us, it’s a huge part of the show.”
BE: Will we ever find out why Libby was in the mental institution and if she knew Hurley pre-island?
CC: No, we feel like we resolved Libby’s fate, and for the fans that are still obsessing about Libby, maybe at some point someone will write sort of a “Star Wars”-like novel about the story of Libby, but we don’t consider that to be a major story thread for us.
BE: This may be along the same lines, but…will we ever find out what Boone was trying to tell Shannon before he died?
DL: Oh, you mean what were his dying words going to be had he made it another five seconds? I don’t think we’ll ever find out, because Boone is dead and so is Shannon, so if ever something was moot in the history of the show, it would be that.
(See Spoiler page: Will Walt return)
BE: Are we ever going to see more of the front of the giant statue?
DL: Why, you didn’t like his back?
BE: Sorry, we need more.
DL: What about his side? Or what about an overhead view? Let’s negotiate here.
CC: The problem is wardrobe, really. When it comes to statues, a lot of them are naked, it takes a lot of cloth to cover them, and Standards and Practices are trying to find a garment that’s appropriate to cover the statue before we can show it.
BE: So it’s kind of a Doctor Manhattan thing, then.
DL: That’s exactly right. Except that “Watchmen” was rated R, and we’re on ABC. So, you know, you will not be seeing the statue’s fifth toe, if you know what we mean.
CC: (Bursts out laughing)
BE: Will we be seeing more of the statue before the end of the season?
DL: (Hesitates) Before the end of the series, right, Carlton?
CC: Uh…we will see it before the end of the series.
BE: One of the other writers wanted me to compliment you on your use of the rarely-utilized “romantic square,” with Jack, Sawyer, Kate, and Juliet.
DL: We actually refer to it as the quadrangle. That’s a lot more fancy than the square, but I guess a four-sided shape is a four-sided shape.
CC: No, because the thing about the quadrangle is that sometimes the lengths are closer than others, and that’s actually a more appropriate metaphor, because sometimes two sides can be much closer than the other two sides, whereas in a square, the sides are always at the same distance.
DL: Wow, I’ve never heard such geometric precision applied to intercharacter relationships.
CC: That’s pretty much my entire knowledge of math in, like, two sentences.
DL: If only that were true.
(See Spoiler Page: Death)
(See Spoiler Page: Jacob)
DL: I heard that Sir anthony Hopkins was going to be playing Jacob. That’s the rumor I heard.
BE: I’ll see if I can’t keep that going.
DL: Okay. Good luck with that. (Laughs)
BE: All right, this one is a little complicated, but it has the potential to be revealing. If you had to pick one book for “Lost” fans to read to understand what’s going on, should it be “Slaughterhouse 5,” “A Wrinkle in Time,” “A Separate Reality,” the “Narnia” chronicles, or “Valis”? And I have to admit that I’m not familiar with the last one.
DL: It’s a Philip K. Dick book. Um…I think my own personal poll would align with Carlton, which would be the “Narnia” books. A, it’s a series of books that sometimes tracks the same characters but sometimes abandons those characters to track entirely different characters, and B) it’s a more epic story that builds toward an equally epic conclusion. There will be many parallels, we feel, between that universe and the “Lost” universe when all is said and done.
CC: Especially when it comes to fauns.
DL: Oh, what a big spoiler!
BE: Is there any flashback from one of the earlier seasons that didn’t work as well as you’d intended when you originally came up with it?
CC: Well, we were very excited in the writer’s room and then obviously proceeded with the idea of doing a flashback about how Jack got his tattoos, but that was not an episode that, when we looked at it, was a high water mark of the show. That was the episode where we were more convinced than ever that we must negotiate an end date, so we didn’t have to find out how Jack got his athlete’s foot. That was the point in the series where we were feeling like…it was at the point where we negotiated the end date where we were able to sort of deploy ourselves deeper into the mythological timeline, and that was enormously helpful. The realization was that those flashbacks were finite. The first ones, where you find out that Hurley’s a lottery winner or Kate’s a fugitive or that Locke was in a wheelchair, those were really exciting, but when you get down to the fifth or sixth one, they become exponentially less compelling. So for us, the Season 3 flashbacks…that was sort of the turning point for us, that particular story.
BE: And, lastly, what’s been your favorite episode of the fifth season thus far?
DL: Personally speaking, I think “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” was the one that was the coolest for us to write, and just on a purely acting level, I think Terry (O’Quinn) was incredible. When we first talked about and wrote the scene where, basically, it starts as a man about to hang himself and ends with him getting murdered, it’s one of those scenes where you’re, like, “Wow, is there any way that we’re going to be able to make this work?” And I think it’s a testament to Terry and Jack Bender, who directed the scene, that it doesn’t seem like the most ridiculous thing ever. Obviously, Carlton and I and the writers have known about Locke’s visits to all of these characters since Season 3, because in the Season 3 finale, Jack is showing Kate the obituary and he’s been to the funeral home, so he’s mourning Locke’s death. And Locke’s death is what’s compelling him to shout out, “We have to go back!” So we’d been sitting on this episode for so long that, when it finally came time to tell the story and write it once all of the piece had fallen into place, it was, like, “Whew!” It was like the desk was never clean until we got to do it. It’s a script that I’m personally very proud of, and I really liked the way the episode turned out.
CC: You know, I would say that, when you talk about episodes of the season, we’ve seen an episode that…well, it’s going to be the 14th episode of the season. It’s called “The Variable,” and that’s a pretty damned good episode as well. We’re very excited about it and proud of it. And it also happens to be, coincidentally, the 100th hour of the show. It wasn’t as though we…we didn’t set out to do something particularly special for the 100th hour of the show, but this particular episode came out really well, and we’re very excited for the fans to see it. Obviously, I don’t want to say anything specific about it, other than to look at the title. But it’s one that we think is going to be very well received. I agree with Damon, though. I think that “Bentham” is my favorite. But if I had to pick another one, I would say “The Variable.”
BE: Oh, one last one for you, Damon: since you’re going to be one of the writers, are we going to see Khan in the new “Star Trek II”?
DL: Uh, no comment. But way to sneak that in there.
BE: (Laughs) Figured I’d save it for last. Thanks for talking to us, guys. I really appreciate it, and I know I speak for all of us when I say that we’re psyched to see the rest of the season…and the series…unfold.
CC: Thanks a lot!
DL: Thanks! And please pass along to everyone at the site and all of the fans who frequent it that we are enormously flattered and feel very grateful to hold the top spot, and we will do everything we can to live up to that lofty ideal.
BE: We’re keeping our fingers crossed for you.
DL: (Laughs) Thanks.
Interview date: 04/03/2009
Run date: 04/15/2009
It’s been a long, strange ride over the course of five seasons, but if you’ve followed “Lost” all along from the very beginning of the series, then Season 5 has almost certainly felt like a pay-off for all of the waiting you’ve endured. Indeed, the staff of Bullz-Eye has voted “Lost” into the top spot on our bi-annual TV Power Rankings for the first time in the history of the show. It would seem that this accomplishment pleased executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, given that they cheerily agreed to chat with us about the show. It will probably come as no surprise to you that they weren’t willing to unabashedly offer up spoilers about what viewers can expect to see in the weeks ahead, but they did provide us with a few teases here and there, along with clarification on how the show settled into a groove after declaring its end date and their picks for their personal favorite episodes of Season 5.
Carlton Cuse: Hey, Will!
Damon Lindelof: Hey, Will!
Bullz-Eye: Hey, guys, how’s it going?
DL: Pretty good!
BE: Excellent. Well, first off, let me get you guys to identify your voices for me, so it won’t be such a bitch to transcribe later.
CC: Sure. This is Carlton, and I have the slightly deeper voice.
DL: And Damon has the slightly more nasal voice.
BE: Awesome. Then I’m set. Well, I don’t know if you were told why we wanted to talk to you, but “Lost” has jumped into the #1 slot on Bullz-Eye’s TV Power Rankings.
Carlton Cuse: "Negotiating the end date (of ‘Lost’) was really a critical thing for us, because we had a mythology, but we just didn’t know if that mythology had to last two years or nine years, and as a result, we were sort of paralyzed. We were stalling, and I think the audience very much felt like we were stalling."DL: That’s very exciting!
CC: We’re flattered.
DL: Yes. That’s awesome.
BE: It’s the first time the show has ever held the top spot, I believe. It’s hovered in the top 10, but it’s never been #1 before.
CC: Who did we knock out of the top perch?
BE: “Mad Men.”
DL: Oh, wow! As a huge fan of “Mad Men,” there’s no greater honor than to at least temporarily take the spot away.
BE: So how much of a release was it for you guys once you locked down a definitive end date for the series? Or did you have enough of a vision for your end game that it wasn’t as big a deal as it might’ve seemed?
CC: No, basically, negotiating the end date was really a critical thing for us, because we had a mythology, but we just didn’t know if that mythology had to last two years or nine years, and as a result, we were sort of paralyzed. This was all around the beginning of Season 3, and we had our characters locked in these cages, and I think it was because Damon and I…we were figuratively locked in cages. Well, okay, we were literally locked in cages, too. But because we just didn’t know how much time we had to make the mythology last for, so we were stalling, and I think the audience very much felt like we were stalling. And the end date kinda helped un-jam the log jam with the network, in terms of everyone recognizing that it was probably the best thing for the show for us to work out and announce when the show would be finished.
BE: With this season, you’ve really been hitting it out of the park, so I’d say the un-jamming was very much a success.
DL: Indeed.
BE: So did you find that the writer’s strike gave you a chance to, if not actually sit back and truly write, at least consider ideas for the next season?
DL: No, to be completely honest with you, during the strike, we didn’t talk about the show at all. We took the sort of mandate of the strike very seriously, in that you can’t even talk about story without violating the guild agreement. What it did provide us with was a break between the first eight episodes of Season 4 and what ended up being the last six, so we actually got an opportunity to kind of see what everyone thought about those episodes before we came back and started writing the final six. Otherwise, it would’ve been a lot more like it was in Season 5, this past year, where the bulk of the writing was done before the show even premiered. It’s always nice to rest your brain when you’re working on a show like “Lost,” but it’s not like the hundred days that we were on strike allowed us to plot out major story points.
BE: How hard is it to keep secrets under wraps on a show like “Lost,” where everyone is constantly trying to figure stuff out?
CC: Well, I think there’s a small segment of the audience that wants spoilers and wants to know what’s happening. Y’know, there are 425 people on the show, and we shoot the show in Hawaii, and basically every beach in Hawaii is free and open to the public, so it’s possible for people who want to spoil the show to get in there and take long-lens pictures of us shooting the show and find things out. We do try very hard to keep everything under wraps. All of our scripts are watermarked, and we try to keep the show as secretive as possible, but we realize that it’s almost an impossibility. But we really hope that most fans want the experience of “Lost” to be a surprise, and that’s one of the things that’s one of the most…I mean, almost more than anything else, that’s what we’ve tried to do as storytellers: to make the show surprising and unexpected. If you go and get those things spoiled for you, you’re just not going to enjoy watching the show as much.
BE: I was very happy to see Hurley address the time-travel headaches of this season.
DL: You’re not the only one.
BE: But, of course, it’s also been a good excuse to bring back a few more guest stars from previous seasons.
DL: What, the time travel?
BE: Yeah.
DL: True. But the fact of the matter is that the show has always been a little bit of a time-travel show, in that for three seasons it was flashbacks, and then last season it was flash-forwards. So the idea that you were hopping around time in a non-linear storytelling fashion allows you to bring back characters who are dead and, in some cases, buried. But now that the show is not just doing time travel in terms of the way the story is told but time travel is the story itself, it opens up even more doors. So when an actor reads that they’re getting killed off on the show, they’re basically, like, “Okay, but…should I still bother to show up next week?”
BE: So was the time travel aspect something that you’d had in mind from the very beginning, or was it something that came up on the fly?
Damon Lindelof: "Hopping around time in a non-linear storytelling fashion allows you to bring back characters who are dead and, in some cases, buried. Now that time travel is the story itself, it opens up even more doors. So when an actor reads that they’re getting killed off on the show, they’re basically, like, ‘Okay, but should I still bother to show up next week?"CC: No, I mean, I think that, if you actually look back at the show, there are some big hints about time travel. Obviously, we started with the flash before your eyes. We saw Desmond, sort of as a result of getting zapped when the hatch imploded, had an ability to sorta kinda see future events and then ultimately started consciously traveling. And we had Sayid listening to a radio broadcast, and as he’s spinning around, we’re hearing ‘40s radio music, we saw a glimpse of the statue with four toes. We sort of felt like we’d laid the pipe so that it wouldn’t be unexpected when we made time travel more overt. So it was something that we’d known about from very early on, but it just couldn’t be deployed until we got within striking distance of the end of the show.
BE: Even with all of the people who’ve popped up during the course of the season, has there been anyone who you’d wanted to bring back but hadn’t been able to manage because of scheduling conflicts?
DL: You know, not so much anymore. Certainly, back when we were doing 23 or 24 episodes a season and we ran from September to May, that sort of a scheduling conflict would be a huge issue for us. But now, because we’re able to shoot over a wider range of time before the show actually has to be on the air, we have a lot more latitude with actors’ availabilities. Fionnula Flanagan, for example, who plays Eloise Hawking, is a regular on the Showtime show “Brotherhood,” and she was not available for us when we needed her at the end of Episode 2, and she was barely available for what ended up being Episode 6, the one entitled “316,” but we shot those scenes at a later date and slotted them in appropriately because it was so important to the story to have Eloise Hawking be that character. So we’ve been lucky so far in that there has not been any story that we wanted to do that got hamstrung by actor availability.
BE: Okay, I’ve got a series of reader questions now, so brace yourselves.
CC: Uh-oh.
BE: Is it possible that the so-called “Losties” could be stuck in some sort of time-loop where they keep time-traveling and never age?
DL: Huh.
CC: I mean, one of the things that we really try to do very studiously is avoid confirming or debunking theories. That’s sort of the great social aspect of “Lost,” that you get to sort of sit around and say, “What’s this thing?” You make your own interpretations. For us, it’s a huge part of the show, and we leave things intentionally ambiguous so that those kinds of conversations can arise and take place. So I’ll just say that it’s a very interesting theory, and we will neither confirm nor deny its accuracy.
(See Spoiler page: Richard Question)
BE: Whose idea was it to slide in the line about “your friend with the eyeliner”?
CC: You know, I think it was just one of those things where…y’know, one of the things that we’ve learned as writers is that, if people are making certain observations, then it’s better to address them. And people were asking, “Is that guy wearing eyeliner?” And the answer is “no, it’s just a particular reflection,” but since we had about five people ask us that, we thought it would be funny to throw it into the script.
BE: I was at the TCA panel when someone called ya’ll out on that.
DL: Yeah, some woman asked that question, and we were, like, “Well, thank God we had Sawyer mention it!” That episode had already been shot a few episodes prior to the asking of the question, and it was very tempting to say, “Oh, just keep your eyes peeled, we’re going to deal with it in the show,” but then it would’ve spoiled the surprise.
(See Spoiler Page: Woman behind Sun, Why Sun landed in 2007, Where Bernard & Rose are)
Carlton Cuse: "One of the things that we really try to do very studiously is avoid confirming or debunking theories. That’s sort of the great social aspect of “Lost,” that you get to sort of sit around and say, ‘What’s this thing?’ You make your own interpretations. For us, it’s a huge part of the show.”
BE: Will we ever find out why Libby was in the mental institution and if she knew Hurley pre-island?
CC: No, we feel like we resolved Libby’s fate, and for the fans that are still obsessing about Libby, maybe at some point someone will write sort of a “Star Wars”-like novel about the story of Libby, but we don’t consider that to be a major story thread for us.
BE: This may be along the same lines, but…will we ever find out what Boone was trying to tell Shannon before he died?
DL: Oh, you mean what were his dying words going to be had he made it another five seconds? I don’t think we’ll ever find out, because Boone is dead and so is Shannon, so if ever something was moot in the history of the show, it would be that.
(See Spoiler page: Will Walt return)
BE: Are we ever going to see more of the front of the giant statue?
DL: Why, you didn’t like his back?
BE: Sorry, we need more.
DL: What about his side? Or what about an overhead view? Let’s negotiate here.
CC: The problem is wardrobe, really. When it comes to statues, a lot of them are naked, it takes a lot of cloth to cover them, and Standards and Practices are trying to find a garment that’s appropriate to cover the statue before we can show it.
BE: So it’s kind of a Doctor Manhattan thing, then.
DL: That’s exactly right. Except that “Watchmen” was rated R, and we’re on ABC. So, you know, you will not be seeing the statue’s fifth toe, if you know what we mean.
CC: (Bursts out laughing)
BE: Will we be seeing more of the statue before the end of the season?
DL: (Hesitates) Before the end of the series, right, Carlton?
CC: Uh…we will see it before the end of the series.
BE: One of the other writers wanted me to compliment you on your use of the rarely-utilized “romantic square,” with Jack, Sawyer, Kate, and Juliet.
DL: We actually refer to it as the quadrangle. That’s a lot more fancy than the square, but I guess a four-sided shape is a four-sided shape.
CC: No, because the thing about the quadrangle is that sometimes the lengths are closer than others, and that’s actually a more appropriate metaphor, because sometimes two sides can be much closer than the other two sides, whereas in a square, the sides are always at the same distance.
DL: Wow, I’ve never heard such geometric precision applied to intercharacter relationships.
CC: That’s pretty much my entire knowledge of math in, like, two sentences.
DL: If only that were true.
(See Spoiler Page: Death)
(See Spoiler Page: Jacob)
DL: I heard that Sir anthony Hopkins was going to be playing Jacob. That’s the rumor I heard.
BE: I’ll see if I can’t keep that going.
DL: Okay. Good luck with that. (Laughs)
BE: All right, this one is a little complicated, but it has the potential to be revealing. If you had to pick one book for “Lost” fans to read to understand what’s going on, should it be “Slaughterhouse 5,” “A Wrinkle in Time,” “A Separate Reality,” the “Narnia” chronicles, or “Valis”? And I have to admit that I’m not familiar with the last one.
DL: It’s a Philip K. Dick book. Um…I think my own personal poll would align with Carlton, which would be the “Narnia” books. A, it’s a series of books that sometimes tracks the same characters but sometimes abandons those characters to track entirely different characters, and B) it’s a more epic story that builds toward an equally epic conclusion. There will be many parallels, we feel, between that universe and the “Lost” universe when all is said and done.
CC: Especially when it comes to fauns.
DL: Oh, what a big spoiler!
BE: Is there any flashback from one of the earlier seasons that didn’t work as well as you’d intended when you originally came up with it?
CC: Well, we were very excited in the writer’s room and then obviously proceeded with the idea of doing a flashback about how Jack got his tattoos, but that was not an episode that, when we looked at it, was a high water mark of the show. That was the episode where we were more convinced than ever that we must negotiate an end date, so we didn’t have to find out how Jack got his athlete’s foot. That was the point in the series where we were feeling like…it was at the point where we negotiated the end date where we were able to sort of deploy ourselves deeper into the mythological timeline, and that was enormously helpful. The realization was that those flashbacks were finite. The first ones, where you find out that Hurley’s a lottery winner or Kate’s a fugitive or that Locke was in a wheelchair, those were really exciting, but when you get down to the fifth or sixth one, they become exponentially less compelling. So for us, the Season 3 flashbacks…that was sort of the turning point for us, that particular story.
BE: And, lastly, what’s been your favorite episode of the fifth season thus far?
DL: Personally speaking, I think “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” was the one that was the coolest for us to write, and just on a purely acting level, I think Terry (O’Quinn) was incredible. When we first talked about and wrote the scene where, basically, it starts as a man about to hang himself and ends with him getting murdered, it’s one of those scenes where you’re, like, “Wow, is there any way that we’re going to be able to make this work?” And I think it’s a testament to Terry and Jack Bender, who directed the scene, that it doesn’t seem like the most ridiculous thing ever. Obviously, Carlton and I and the writers have known about Locke’s visits to all of these characters since Season 3, because in the Season 3 finale, Jack is showing Kate the obituary and he’s been to the funeral home, so he’s mourning Locke’s death. And Locke’s death is what’s compelling him to shout out, “We have to go back!” So we’d been sitting on this episode for so long that, when it finally came time to tell the story and write it once all of the piece had fallen into place, it was, like, “Whew!” It was like the desk was never clean until we got to do it. It’s a script that I’m personally very proud of, and I really liked the way the episode turned out.
CC: You know, I would say that, when you talk about episodes of the season, we’ve seen an episode that…well, it’s going to be the 14th episode of the season. It’s called “The Variable,” and that’s a pretty damned good episode as well. We’re very excited about it and proud of it. And it also happens to be, coincidentally, the 100th hour of the show. It wasn’t as though we…we didn’t set out to do something particularly special for the 100th hour of the show, but this particular episode came out really well, and we’re very excited for the fans to see it. Obviously, I don’t want to say anything specific about it, other than to look at the title. But it’s one that we think is going to be very well received. I agree with Damon, though. I think that “Bentham” is my favorite. But if I had to pick another one, I would say “The Variable.”
BE: Oh, one last one for you, Damon: since you’re going to be one of the writers, are we going to see Khan in the new “Star Trek II”?
DL: Uh, no comment. But way to sneak that in there.
BE: (Laughs) Figured I’d save it for last. Thanks for talking to us, guys. I really appreciate it, and I know I speak for all of us when I say that we’re psyched to see the rest of the season…and the series…unfold.
CC: Thanks a lot!
DL: Thanks! And please pass along to everyone at the site and all of the fans who frequent it that we are enormously flattered and feel very grateful to hold the top spot, and we will do everything we can to live up to that lofty ideal.
BE: We’re keeping our fingers crossed for you.
DL: (Laughs) Thanks.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Neil Wilkes interviews Naveen Andrews for TubeTalk (not entirely G-rated)
What did you make of the season finale?
"I was really pleased with it, because it's the closest we've come to season one in terms of the standard of excellence. They needed to get it back on track and they have."
You were quite critical of season three, weren't you?
"So was everyone else, as far as I know. I'm not alone in that. It's difficult not to feel proprietorial towards the work. When you feel a drop in quality, it would be dishonest to yourself if you didn't acknowledge that."
What do you think the problems were?
"The writing. 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."
What would have been your ideal number of seasons?
"Ideally, five, for me. Five or six. Actually it does work out to five because we've got shorter seasons now."
What have you learned from doing Lost? You seem to have found it a bit of a burden...
"That's an interesting word we keep returning to. 'The burden of writing'..."
'The burden of Lost.'
"Come on, it's not a ****ing burden. You're being paid, obviously - I don't ever remember being paid in England, even though the quality was there with things like The Buddha of Suburbia. I don't think it's a burden being paid, but it's a real discipline to play the same character over years rather than months or weeks. It requires a certain amount of stamina."
There are two seasons to go but each has fewer episodes. What does that mean for you, production-wise?
"It's a shame because we've been ****ed by the strike. We have an impending one and we had the one with the writers, which came right in the middle of the season and meant we had a few months off and had to go back to work. It ****ed up our hiatus. The whole thing was like 'oh, you just have to do six months in Hawaii instead of ten, then you can have the other six months to do films.' Well it didn't work out that way, did it? It looks like it won't work out again."
What did you make of the flash-forwards this season?
"I thought it was a bonus, for me personally. It's a challenge to be able to play a character in the present and then zoom ahead to a point when they may have undergone great changes. I felt in season four, Sayid was spiritually dead [in the future], and something awful happened to his soul. To be able to play that and then go back to the island, where he's still quite active in life, was good."
How much are you told about the character, doing these future scenes?
"Absolutely **** all."
Then how do you prepa..
"****** only knows. I was talking to Jorge [Garcia, Hurley] about that yesterday. I was saying 'I got my script a week and a half before we shot' and he said 'I got mine three days before we shot it'."
So you get no guidance on how Future Sayid is feeling?
"Absolutely not. I don't know if this is a good thing or not, but at this point, the writers feel they can trust us with whatever we're going to do with it."
As a viewer of the show, which I assume you are...
"No, I'm not. I only saw the pilot. But anyway, go ahead."
...which of the many twists do you want to find out the answer to?
"The foot with the ****ing toe missing. What was that and is it going to come back? Is there going to be two feet next time, with a geezer on top as the rest of the body?"
What do you make of Harold Perrineau's comments last week suggesting that race played a part in his exit?
"I was very pleased to see Harold back and very disappointed that it didn't continue. But I can't comment until I've read what he said - or if I'm honest, until I've spoken to Harold and heard what he says he ****ing said!"
When we last spoke you said you knew how the show would end, "geographically" speaking.
"Yeah, the island. I still presume it's going to be the island. I think season five's going to be Matthew [Fox, Jack] rounding up us lot to go back to the island, or whoever he can get to go back - maybe some people don't, because they can't be ****ing bothered - and they go back and then there's this big kind of conflagration on the island. Will good triumph over evil? I don't know. It's just a rough idea."
So you know nothing solid about the future seasons, then?
"It's been like this from day one. They've never told us anything."
Do you want to know?
"At first, yeah. It's like your spiritual development. You're like three steps forward, five steps back. You'd think after four years you'd be used to being kept in the dark but every now and then you do get frustrated and think 'come on, for ****'s sake, tell us something!'"
Once Lost is done, would you do a network series again?
"To be honest with you, I think you've got to go where the good writing is, whether it's film or TV. There's a lot of crap films around at the moment. So to answer the question, wherever the good writing is."
Would you be open to the possibility of doing a spinoff of Lost?
"I can't believe they would do that. If they did it would be hilarious. Maybe it could be Locke... and Ben... and a baby! You know what I mean? Come on!"
So that's a 'no' then.
"I just don't think it'll ever happen. It's a preposterous question. If it happens then Damon should be shot!"
Lost returns in February 2009.
"I was really pleased with it, because it's the closest we've come to season one in terms of the standard of excellence. They needed to get it back on track and they have."
You were quite critical of season three, weren't you?
"So was everyone else, as far as I know. I'm not alone in that. It's difficult not to feel proprietorial towards the work. When you feel a drop in quality, it would be dishonest to yourself if you didn't acknowledge that."
What do you think the problems were?
"The writing. 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."
What would have been your ideal number of seasons?
"Ideally, five, for me. Five or six. Actually it does work out to five because we've got shorter seasons now."
What have you learned from doing Lost? You seem to have found it a bit of a burden...
"That's an interesting word we keep returning to. 'The burden of writing'..."
'The burden of Lost.'
"Come on, it's not a ****ing burden. You're being paid, obviously - I don't ever remember being paid in England, even though the quality was there with things like The Buddha of Suburbia. I don't think it's a burden being paid, but it's a real discipline to play the same character over years rather than months or weeks. It requires a certain amount of stamina."
There are two seasons to go but each has fewer episodes. What does that mean for you, production-wise?
"It's a shame because we've been ****ed by the strike. We have an impending one and we had the one with the writers, which came right in the middle of the season and meant we had a few months off and had to go back to work. It ****ed up our hiatus. The whole thing was like 'oh, you just have to do six months in Hawaii instead of ten, then you can have the other six months to do films.' Well it didn't work out that way, did it? It looks like it won't work out again."
What did you make of the flash-forwards this season?
"I thought it was a bonus, for me personally. It's a challenge to be able to play a character in the present and then zoom ahead to a point when they may have undergone great changes. I felt in season four, Sayid was spiritually dead [in the future], and something awful happened to his soul. To be able to play that and then go back to the island, where he's still quite active in life, was good."
How much are you told about the character, doing these future scenes?
"Absolutely **** all."
Then how do you prepa..
"****** only knows. I was talking to Jorge [Garcia, Hurley] about that yesterday. I was saying 'I got my script a week and a half before we shot' and he said 'I got mine three days before we shot it'."
So you get no guidance on how Future Sayid is feeling?
"Absolutely not. I don't know if this is a good thing or not, but at this point, the writers feel they can trust us with whatever we're going to do with it."
As a viewer of the show, which I assume you are...
"No, I'm not. I only saw the pilot. But anyway, go ahead."
...which of the many twists do you want to find out the answer to?
"The foot with the ****ing toe missing. What was that and is it going to come back? Is there going to be two feet next time, with a geezer on top as the rest of the body?"
What do you make of Harold Perrineau's comments last week suggesting that race played a part in his exit?
"I was very pleased to see Harold back and very disappointed that it didn't continue. But I can't comment until I've read what he said - or if I'm honest, until I've spoken to Harold and heard what he says he ****ing said!"
When we last spoke you said you knew how the show would end, "geographically" speaking.
"Yeah, the island. I still presume it's going to be the island. I think season five's going to be Matthew [Fox, Jack] rounding up us lot to go back to the island, or whoever he can get to go back - maybe some people don't, because they can't be ****ing bothered - and they go back and then there's this big kind of conflagration on the island. Will good triumph over evil? I don't know. It's just a rough idea."
So you know nothing solid about the future seasons, then?
"It's been like this from day one. They've never told us anything."
Do you want to know?
"At first, yeah. It's like your spiritual development. You're like three steps forward, five steps back. You'd think after four years you'd be used to being kept in the dark but every now and then you do get frustrated and think 'come on, for ****'s sake, tell us something!'"
Once Lost is done, would you do a network series again?
"To be honest with you, I think you've got to go where the good writing is, whether it's film or TV. There's a lot of crap films around at the moment. So to answer the question, wherever the good writing is."
Would you be open to the possibility of doing a spinoff of Lost?
"I can't believe they would do that. If they did it would be hilarious. Maybe it could be Locke... and Ben... and a baby! You know what I mean? Come on!"
So that's a 'no' then.
"I just don't think it'll ever happen. It's a preposterous question. If it happens then Damon should be shot!"
Lost returns in February 2009.
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