Category Archives: Special events

Damon says they decided on the ending between Seasons 1 and 2

Here’s the first video clip from the LOST event at the Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF) on October 17, 2009.

In the clip, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse talk about the people who know how the show ends (mostly just the writers); how J.J. Abrams enjoys watching the show now as a fan; how they maintain secrecy; and whether the show is going to end in the place they always thought it would, or if it has evolved into something they hadn’t foreseen when the show first launched.

On that last question, Damon said that the ending they are using is the one they had decided on after Season 1.

We’ve always had a plan, but like in life, anyone who has a plan has to presuppose the plan is going to actually work. We feel that one place that we’ve been very good is that we try to be fans of the show that we’re writing. And sometimes our plans don’t work. When it’s not working, we have to figure out a way to either change the plan or amend the plan.

But that being said, for the last four or five years, pretty much between Seasons 1 and Seasons 2, we began to talk about how the show was going to end if they allowed us to end it. And right now, that’s the ending that we are doing, and I can’t imagine anything that would change our mind. We’re so committed in terms of the story-telling to achieving that end. So yes, though the route that we took to get there was wildly different from anything that we could have imagined, the destination is the same.

Video by Aohora

Exciting line-up for the Hawaii Film Festival LOST panel

hiff banner

Carlton Cuse tweeted that the special guests have been confirmed:

Michael Emerson (Ben), Jorge Garcia (Hurley), Yunjin Kim (Sun), and Terry O’Quinn (Locke) will all be joining Darlton (Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse) in a panel at the Hawaii International Film Festival on Saturday, October 17.

That should be quite a show! I’m looking forward to seeing the video on YouTube (hopefully, some nice person will post it).

Daniel Dae Kim in trailer for the Hawaii International Film Festival

Daniel Dae Kim looking at an ink blot

Daniel Dae Kim looking at an ink blot

Daniel Dae Kim, who plays Jin on LOST, stars in this trailer for the 2009 Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF), playing a writer who finds inspiration in an ink blot:

The Festival will have a special celebration of LOST on October 17, 2009, with master-class seminars during the day with producers Jean Higgens and Jack Bender, and with some of the show’s production, prop, and costume designers. In the evening, there will be a panel discussion featuring Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse with “special guest appearances from cast and crew members.”

The LOST alternate-reality videos from Comic-con

"Thirty years with a perfect safety record"

"Thirty years with a perfect safety record"

These are the three short videos shown at the 2009 Comic-Con LOST panel which appear to depict an alternate reality, universe, or timeline.

The Oceanic Airlines ad:

Hurley’s ad for Mr. Cluck’s Chicken Shack. “Ever since I won the lottery, I’ve had nothing but good luck.”

Here’s Kate on America’s Most Wanted. A different man, not Kate’s stepfather, was killed in Kate’s explosion.

(Reposted these to have them all in one place, for easy reference.)

Bumbershoot part 2: ‘Fortunately, Damon loves time travel’

Bumbershoot 2009 logo

Carlton Cuse (at an earlier event)

Carlton Cuse (at an earlier event)

In this segment of the LOST panel at Bumbershoot (the Seattle arts festival named after an old slang term for umbrella), producer/writers Carlton Cuse, Eddy Kitsis, and Adam Horowitz talked about what it’s been like to write the show.

Host Jeff Jensen asked them what was the most difficult thing to write, and they all agreed that it was time travel. They had to put detailed charts and graphs on the writers’ room walls so that they could keep track of where they were.

Carlton said, “Fortunately, Damon really loves time travel.” They spent, he said, a great deal of time trying to figure out the mechanics of it.  Maintaining their concept of non-paradoxical time travel was tricky, and when they opened a time loop, they had to put a lot of thought into making sure they could figure out a way to close it.

The panelists then talked about how getting an end date changed what they were able to do with the show.

They also said some fascinating things about how they write. It’s a collaborative process. Nine of them sit around a conference room table. They start writing each episode by deciding which character it’s going to be about.  Each episode has three stories — an Island story, an off-Island story (which may be a flashback or a flashforward — or, Carlton said, “whatever that might possibly be in Season 6” … hmmm), and a little C-story. Then they fit it all into a six-act structure.

They wrote the show like fans of the show.  “What would be cool?” they asked themselves.  “Wouldn’t it be cool if we actually showed the statue?” And so they did.

Video by Alextsway

Bumbershoot part 1: Sawyer’s hair versus Jin’s abs

Bumbershoot 2009 logo

Damon and Carlton may not be conjoined twins after all!

Damon and Carlton may not be conjoined twins after all!

Last week, three LOST executive producers gave a talk at Bumbershoot, a large annual music and arts festival in Seattle. Jeff Jensen, of Entertainment Weekly, hosted the talk with producer/writers Carlton Cuse, Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. (Was this the first time Carlton Cuse was ever seen in public without Damon Lindelof by his side? Perhaps they are not conjoined twins after all.)

A fan shot a 3-part 2-part video. In this first part, you can’t see much, but you can hear what they are saying. The LOST folks answered questions such as: Why isn’t there more sex? Why does Jack remind us of that annoying guy we used to date, who always had to get up early the next morning to train for a triathlon? In a battle with Sawyer’s hair and Jin’s abs, who would prevail?

They also showed the 3 alternate-reality videos that they had shown at Comic-Con. Carlton said there were “some definite clues that are embedded” in them. (The videos are the Oceanic Airways ad, Hurley’s ad for Mr. Cluck’s, and Kate on “America’s Most Wanted”.)

Video by Alextsway

Picture of Chang & Eng Bunker, the famous “Siamese twins,” is a watercolor painting on ivory, done in the 1830s. From Wikipedia.

Michael Emerson was “flummoxed” by the ending of The Incident


As always, I love to listen to Michael Emerson talk, and I love the way he has the same questions about the show that we, the viewers, do:

Q: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about The Incident, what your take-away from that was, and what questions you’ve been asking yourself during the hiatus.

ME: Since the finale …

Q: Yeah.

ME: I’m flummoxed. (Laughter from the audience.) Honestly, it wasn’t one, but it was two big old earth-shattering cliffhangers, and I’ll be damned if I know what either of them mean, or what either of them lead to. Honestly, what can be the next breathing moment of the show? I have no idea, and I won’t know until two days before the camera rolls, I’ll get a script, and I will read it with some relish, because I’m curious to see where do we go from there.

I don’t know if Jacob is a killable entity. We’re always plunging knives into things, or shooting things on LOST, but it doesn’t mean that they go away. (Laughter) It may just trigger them to transform into something else.

Emerson goes on to talk about the “psychological landscape” of the scene where Ben stabbed Jacob. Then he takes questions from the audience.

This interview was conducted by EW’s Doc Jensen and Dan Snierson at Comic-Con 2009. I found it via LOST: On the Road, a very cool blog totally focused on Michael Emerson.

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