Thanks to SL-LOST.com readers Jack and Jennifer for the heads up on this new Q&A with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. (Warning: there are some minor spoilers on the interview).

Chicago Tribune: How do you keep the show grounded in emotions and characters, when it seems as though this season is poised to unspool a lot of the mythology and time travel and so forth? Is that a tricky balance to achieve?

Cuse: I don’t know if it’s a tricky balance. I think that this is what we always saw as the natural evolution of the show, that it would have more overt science-fiction and fantasy elements [as time went on] and that was sort of always our plan. I guess we would say our model is any of a number of great Spielberg movies, maybe even “E.T.,” as a primary example of a movie that has, obviously, very extreme science-fiction and fantasy elements, yet at its core it’s a deeply emotional story. We hope that even though we’re introducing these elements, we’re staying true to our central premise, which is that we’re making a character-based show.

Lindelof: I think the fun part for us, and this is not so much a challenge as something we hold ourselves to, is the idea that the characters react to these crazy things in real ways. So if you’re explaining to Sawyer something about time travel, he’s not going to say, “Oh, that makes sense.” He’s going to say, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard and I don’t like it and I don’t want to be on the time-travel show.”

As long as the different characters on our show have real reactions to the things that are happening around them, [it works]. I think if every single character on the show basically accepted that it’s their destiny to be on the island, with all these characters sitting around talking about their destiny all the time, [that doesn’t work]. Whereas our show — really, Locke is the only one who cares about the island. Jack cares about Jack, and Kate cares about Kate, even Hurley only cares about being jinxed most of the time.

You guys have opened up the time element of the show in this really interesting way, but how do you stop it from becoming a giant story problem? You know, “If a train left Pittsburgh going 50 miles an hour, and another train left Dallas going 25 miles an hour…” How do you make that time element clean and clear for people who might have trouble with it?

Lindelof: Carlton and I spent five weeks last year just breaking “The Constant,” with the entire writing staff. The reason it was so tricky was all these things you’re talking about, in terms of, “If Faraday told Desmond in 1996 to tell Penny to call him in 2004, wouldn’t she say to him …”

And then eventually, you get to a point of saying, “Are we breaking any rules, according to the rules we set, is it emotionally viable, and is it confusing?” So when we were sitting down to talk about Season 5, we were like, “We’re essentially breaking ‘The Constant’ every single week now.”

I think since we’ve gone through the process the first time, we learned valuable lessons. It is very challenging to do clean time-travel stories where you can’t change the future, but also rewarding when we accomplish it.

Obviously you accomplished that with “The Constant.” The reason that worked so well was because, as you were saying, it wasn’t about time travel per se, but about this relationship between two people. Did you know that was special when you were writing it?

Cuse: I think when we wrote it, we realized it was really hard [to do]. The reason, as Damon said, it took us five weeks to break the story was because we were relentless with each other about making sure that the story — we would not consider the story to be finished until it had emotional resonance.

We had to deal with all the consciousness-traveling craziness, but ultimately we felt the story would only be successful [under the following conditions:] Not only did the time-travel stuff have to make some sort of sense and follow its own logic, but there needed to be a really genuine emotional payoff. And it took a long time to get to a place where we felt both goals were accomplished. To echo what Damon said, that really became the template for us in terms of what our goal is this year.

Yes, time travel provides a really cool device that allows us to tell what we consider to be some really great adventure stories. But at the heart, these stories are really about the characters and what we’re most interested in, on a character level, is how are they affected by the consequences of time travel? That’s really what the show explores.

And the entire season isn’t overtly about time travel. It’s an element, but I think it would get really boring [to focus too much on that]. We’re not interested in — every week, you climb into a time machine. That’s not what the show’s going to be.

Yeah, I think in terms of grounding that stuff, I think what becomes clear in the second half of the season premiere is how important Hurley is. He’s always been great as the comic relief and in many other ways, but in that episode, he’s playing the role of the audience, you know, “I don’t understand this, explain it to me,” and he’s the guy who can explain things to the audience, in ways that are funny and also clear. But he’s also the center of the emotional content of that second hour — he’s the one calling people on what they’ve all done, all the Oceanic 6 survivors. Is Hurley important in that respect throughout the season, or is it in that particular episode?

Lindelof: He’s always been important in that context, and we’ve always viewed him as the moral center of the show, because of the way he processes information. Last year, in the season 4 premiere, we were basically saying, in traditional “Lost” fashion — someone dies and the show moves forward. If eight months have gone by for the audience, are they really going to care about mourning Charlie, when [the castaways] just made their first call and the freighter folk are on their way?

We came to this decision — let’s make the episode just about totally mourning Charlie. What are the real emotional effects of this information as it lands on [Hurley]? Because he cares. While everyone else on the show has all these varied motivations, the audience cared about Charlie dying and hadn’t had a chance to mourn him.

Exactly what you said, we’ve thought of Hurley as the closest thing the audience has to a representative on the island, and we have to treat him as such.

Is it hard to write for both the hardcore fans of mythology, of the Dharma Initiative and all that stuff, and to also write for the people who tune in maybe a half dozen times a season? I can’t get enough of the ’70s Dharma stuff, and so of course I want to know, will we be getting more of that in Season 5?

Cuse: It’s always a case of, “The porridge is either too hot or too cold” [for various fan groups]. We have learned over time that it is impossible to strike the perfect balance between satisfying the mythology fans and satisfying the character fans. So our solution in the season premiere is to provide heavy doses of both.

For the mythology fans, they will hopefully engaged by the fact that we are overtly discussing the time thing. And for the character fans, Sawyer’s got his shirt off for the whole first hour.

And God bless you for that.

Lindelof: You know, when I was a latchkey kid and had to fix my own dinner, I would eat these [Hungry Man dinners]. I would buy a baked fish dinner because it had a cherry pie. I never ate the fish, I would just eat the cherry pie.

The point being, as long as there is cherry pie in an episode of “Lost,” for everyone who watches it, they will sit through the entire dinner. They may not touch their entree, but if there’s a little bit of Marvin Candle, they’ll sit through anything. For some people, their cherry pie is the mythology, and for some people, their cherry pie is the romance story, for some people their cherry pie is Hurley. You just make sure that there is always something for everyone.

That speaks to the alchemy of the [writers] room, a few of the writers are really interested in the mythology of the island, and all they want to talk about is when the monster is going to show up again. Some of the writers don’t give a [darn] why Marvin Candle has five different names, all they want to know is, “Is Kate going to choose Sawyer or Jack?” So we have a small polling ground for the audience at large.

“Lost” was at the forefront of a wave of shows that have played around with or experimented with the concept of time. Why do that? Is it a new and different narrative frontier for TV? Is it just fun?

Cuse: Our narrative choices are based completely on, “What’s the best way to tell any individual story?” That’s why this year, we’re not strictly sticking to just flashbacks or flash-forwards. And you can probably just call them flashes, because whether they’re flash-forwards or flash-backs is very relative — it depends on where you place yourself in the story.

It’s maybe not as radical as one thinks, if you examine the way we as people tell each other stories. You will find that the way in which we tell each other stories is not a linear narrative. “Let me tell you this, and then this happened, oh let me fill in these three pieces, and then this part had consequences.”

[For the show,] we examine whatever story we’re going to tell and then we basically dissect it and say, “What’s the best way to tell it?”

We view the show as this mosaic, and we’re placing tiles in the mosaic. A lot of the success from the storytelling comes from the way in which you place that tile. There are two phases, one is, “OK, what story are we going to tell?” And then there’s a separate discussion of the best way for us to tell it.

Obviously the big Season 5 question is, why do they have to go back to the island? Why is it so important that they go and why do they all have to go? In some ways, is that the story of this season?

Lindelof: The why of it all is always the hardest mystery to deal with on the show. If you were to say, “Locke tells them, ‘Hey, this is all happening for a reason,’” and then you’d say, “Well, what is that reason? Why were all those people on that plane?” Obviously that stuff is coming downstream. Probably much of it will be hinted at in Season 5, but why these people, why this time, why this place, why that plane? It’s Season 6 territory.

In terms of the very specific rules of — in order to get back to the island, why do they need to bring back as many people who left the island as possible? There will be some further explanation of that stuff sooner rather than later from a source outside our characters speculating.

We’re told that bad things happen once the Oceanic 6 left the island. When will you get into that? Is that also Season 6 territory?

Cuse: Part of it unfolds this season, part of it unfolds next season. But obviously the fact that the island was moved by Ben sets in motion a chain of events, and that chain of events has very dramatic consequences. That’s really a very important question for the people who were left behind on the island — what the hell is going on here and what are the consequences of the island being moved. What does it mean for us?

We were talking before about keeping the show on a character level, that’s really what it comes down to. Yeah, [a particular thing is happening this season; see note below], but what are the consequences of that for them in terms of their survival, in terms of their relationships, in terms of whatever their ultimate destiny with the island is? Those are the pertinent questions.

Ben says something in the Season 4 finale about not being able to return to the island once he’s moved it. Is there also a catch for the Oceanic 6, in that they won’t be able to go back to the regular world if they go to the island? They’ll have to stay there?

Lindelof: That’s certainly a question that we should be asking. When Ben says that whoever turns the wheel is never allowed to return to the island, is that a rule or is it a law? Those are two entirely different things. One would basically say, it would be impossible for him to get back to the island, no matter how hard he tried. The other would say that he could get back to the island, but if he did, he would be punished for it. So that’s going to unfold over the course of the season, based on whether or not Ben is successful in getting back himself.

The season seems to be structured around the Oceanic 6 getting back to the island. Is that something that doesn’t happen until the end of the season? Or is it mid-way? When do the Oceanic 6 and the island people meet up again?

Cuse: We wouldn’t want to say exactly, but we will say that we feel it would be very frustrating for the audience to have to wait until the end of the season for that to happen. The audience will be, I think, somewhat surprised at the speed of our narrative storytelling. We’re not taking our foot off the pedal this year.

Would it be accurate to say, at this point, that there’s a struggle between a Ben Linus faction and a Charles Widmore faction for control of the island? Or is that too simplistic?

Lindelof: Based on everything you’ve seen up to this point, we know that Ben and Widmore don’t get along with each other and that Widmore wants to control the island and believes that Ben has taken the island away from him. You don’t understand the context of that. You don’t know what their past is or their relationship. So if you’re going to look at it as, there’s a Ben side and Widmore side, I’d say, “Well, then what side are the Oceanic 6 on? Our castaways — are they on their own side?”

Basically, the only two sides that matter in any grand, epic storytelling are good and evil. Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? And for so long, Ben Linus has been identifying himself as a good guy, but we’ve been seeing him engage in behaviors that would lead us to believe that that is not entirely the truth. The only question that matters is, what is ultimately a force of good and what is ultimately a force of evil, and what side of it are our characters going to end up on? Will some go one way and some go the other?

The people who Locke is now leading, the Others, they are kind of the wild card in this mix. Are we going to get more into him, into the Others this season? I’m intrigued by the whole Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) thing, I was glad to read that Carbonell is going to be in nine episodes this season.

Cuse: Yeah, he’s on the show a lot. We have all these characters that are in play — Alpert, Widmore, Ben, Locke. What you don’t really understand is, what is their inter-relationship to each other? You’ll learn a lot more about that stuff this year.

I just wanted to ask you a lightning round of quick questions, if I could, about various characters this season. Pierre Chang/Marvin Candle — is he around this season?

Lindelof: All we’re willing to say is that [he does appear this season; see note below].

[Note: Part of this paragraph has been taken out; the full text of this answer will be posted after the season premiere airs.]

Charles Widmore — Is he more of a force this year?

Cuse: Widmore is very much a part of the show this year. Obviously there was a very intriguing scene in last year’s finale, with him and Sun, and what that means, and what their relationships is, and how Widmore figures is something that we’re exploring. I think the audience isn’t fully invested in exactly who Charles Widmore is, but as they are, I think they will find him increasingly intriguing. He is very important to this season.

Jin? I’ve read that Daniel Dae-Kim will be back this year, but is he an ongoing presence on the island, or will he just be back here and there?

Lindelof: All we can say is, Daniel is still a series regular on the show, but Jin is not on the Season 5 poster. Sort of extrapolate what you will from that. Whether or not Jin is alive or dead does not preclude him from being on the show.

Can you talk at all about new characters coming on the show, when we might meet them — if they’re major presences or just coming in for a few episodes here and there? And by the way, I think the casting of the people we met last season — Faraday, Miles, Charlotte, Lapidus — I thought they were great additions to the show.

Cuse: We don’t really want to say anything about who’s coming on the show, but we will say that we never really got our chance to  finish the freighter storytelling last year. There’s a lot more to be learned about those guys.

And I think that right up front, you’re going to really have a good dose of [information about] the science team that was on the freighter. Particularly Faraday is someone who really steps to the front of the show, he’s really intriguing and we learn a lot more about him. That was the one thing that, based on the strike, we really didn’t get a chance to do. We’ve made up for that this year.

Lindelof: One of the byproducts of moving toward an end point is that we do not need to constantly introduce new characters into the mix of the show to keep it fresh and entertaining. Especially when there are so many questions about Alpert or about Miles or about Charlotte or Faraday or Lapidus. There’s still so much storytelling to do with those guys.

And what happened to Desmond and Penny over the course of the three years between the Oceanic 6’s rescue and where we are now? We’ve got our hands full without needing to go shopping for new toys.

One of my favorite questions I ever heard at Comic-Con was something a fan asked you guys there two years ago, so I’m going to steal it. What question haven’t I asked you that I should have asked you?

Cuse: The question is probably, “Are you going to end the show where [fans will then go have to watch a theatrical movie to see the ending”]? The answer is no. We’re not ending it by going to black or saying it was in a snow globe. We’re ending it in a way we feel is definitive.

Speaking of that, how much of Season 6 is mapped out? I’m assuming it’s not set in stone, but are all the pieces laid out?

Lindelof: I think we have all these puzzle pieces for Season 5 and Season 6, and they’re two separate puzzles because they’re two different seasons. But all the pieces were mixed together. It’s sometimes time-consuming to take a piece and say, “Which season does this fit in better?” And some stuff is definitely in Season 6 because it’s end-of-show stuff.

We have to walk that line between giving the audience enough information so that they don’t get confused, and put off, and giving them too much information, so they’re not like, “Well, you gave me everything I care about in Season 5. So why watch Season 6?”

One thing we all decided was, the biggest mistake we could make in Season 5 would be to hold back or slow down or go back to a stalling modality. We’ve basically been feeding the audience crystal meth for a year, to cut them off cold turkey and give them a pack of chewing gum and say, “We’ll give you more crystal meth in Season 6,” would have been a disaster. When you piss off a junkie, they will do almost anything to get their drug.

Source: Chicago Tribune

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