Via TV Guide Magazine:

Production has begun in Hawaii, are you privy to what’s happening in the season premiere?
I’ve read scripts for up to Episode 3. It sort of picks up, as always, where it left off, but then it jumps all over the place. We get very excited to pick up the scripts and read them and they’re still as confusing and baffling as ever. [Laughs] We’re still going, “What the hell is going on now?”

Is it a different atmosphere on set now that it’s the last season?
Most of the [cast] are making plans to move back to the mainland. I think there are only a couple people contemplating staying in Hawaii. I’m thinking about staying in Hawaii. My children are in school and to pull them out now would be tricky. We really love life here. One of the best things about Lost is I got to live in Hawaii.

With Sonya Walger, who plays Penny, on FlashForward, does that mean there will be even less of Desmond and Penny this season?
I really don’t know what’s going to happen with Penny. And, to be honest, I don’t know what’s going to happen with Desmond either. Are we going to see less of him than last season? I hope not, because we didn’t see much of him and there are a lot of things I’d like to know about him. I think Desmond’s character has become more of a peripheral character. I think now we are zooming to the end and there are a lot of questions that need to be answered…

Do you have a favorite Desmond and Penny scene?
I guess their first meeting—that was kind of fun when she and Desmond are packing up the crates in the monastery. I like that scene.

What Lost mystery do you want solved?
What is the Island and why the Island—that’s the essence of the show. And then there are a thousand little strings we probably won’t get answers to, but I guess that’s life and you can make up your own stuff, so the conversations will go on and on and on.

What’s next, after Lost is done filming?
Nothing at all, so I better start looking.

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1. New Interview with Henry Ian Cusick
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Having worked on both Lost and FlashForward now, what do you make of the comparisons between the shows?
“I think they’re only valid in that they’re both big ensemble shows with one big concept or premise. But after that, they part ways really quite rapidly. FlashForward is definitely not a sci-fi show. It doesn’t have the mythology of Lost. We have one major event that happens that you are asked to buy into. After that, you’re dealing with very human ripple effects – how people deal with it and how they come to terms with it. There are six-and-a-half billion people that have blacked out, so that’s potentially six-and-a-half billion stories to tell! Believe me, we’re not telling all of them. But we’re about to start [filming] episode eight and I’m so surprised by how far the ripple has been felt.”

Will your involvement in the final season of Lost affect your role on FlashForward?
“I don’t know if I’m in the final season of Lost – no-one tells me anything! My hunch is that you’ll see Penny again because I can’t believe that they would just never refer to her again, but I have no idea. Luckily, they’re both ABC shows, so it’s in-house. I’m not being traded across party lines!”

When Lost ends, do you think fans of the show will jump on-board FlashForward?
“I hope so. I think Lost is like losing a friend or a relative or someone. You can’t replace it with another one. Lost holds a very special place in people’s hearts and I wouldn’t presume to say that FlashForward will replace Lost. I think it provides a lot of the same adrenaline and fascination and entertainment. It will help ease the pain of losing Lost! I think it will appeal to the very same audience.”

Do you think that’s why yourself and Dominic Monaghan were brought on board?
“It’s hard to say. On the one hand, I hope I was chosen because I was the best person for the part. I don’t think it hurt that I was on Lost and people liked my character and people want to see what else Penny is up to. And I think the same is true for Dominic. It doesn’t hurt that either of us were on Lost and it doens’t help that John Cho was on Star Trek. It doesn’t hurt that Joe Fiennes has done many great films! Any time you cast an actor, you don’t just cast that actor; you cast all their other performances as well. Nobody assumes that just because I’m in it, the whole of the Lost audience will watch it.”

How has it been working with Dominic again? How do your characters come across each other?
“It’s funny because I’m actually filming with Dominic for the first time – our paths never crossed. We had one scene together where I was on a small TV screen, so we actually shot that apart – he was in Hawai’i and I was in Broadway doing Frost/Nixon. We never actually met until he came to do FlashForward. This far, we still haven’t done a scene together! I met him on the set and we’ve hung out at some photoshoots but I’ve yet to do a scene with him. He seems great. I’m sure he’s a lovely guy!”

[Via Digital Spy]

Related posts:

1. Elizabeth Mitchell, Dominic Monaghan, Ian Somerhalder & Sonya Walger – TV Guide Magazine’s Fall Preview
2. Sonya Walger (Penny) on “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”
3. Oceanic Airlines in “FlashForward”

Joseph Fiennes, Sonya Walger and Dominic Monaghan from FlashForward.
Photograph by Smallz & Raskind at Eden Roc, a Renaissance Beach Resort.

Elizabeth Mitchell, Scott Wolf and Morena Baccarin from V
Photograph by Brian Bowen Smith.

Nina Dobrev, Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder from The Vampire Diaries.
Photograph by Kurt Iswarienko.

For more on your favorites, check out TV Guide Magazine’s Fall Preview issue, on stands now!

[Via TV Guide Magazine]

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3. Season 5 Trailer 5

ABC just posted a new audio podcast with Damon and Carlton:

[audio:http://ll.media.abc.com/podcast/audio/itunes/LOST_512_audio_podcast_40c5019d-05b1-4d05-a91e-c044eb571bad_2075593.mp3]

[Via ABC.com]

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Episode 5.03 “Jughead” Sneak Peek #2

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Episode 5.03 “Jughead” Sneak Peek #3

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Source: DarkUFO

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Source: Eonline.com

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Here’s another review of the Season 5 premiere from TV Squad:

As amazing as Lost is, I still hate it for one tiny reason – every time a new season begins, I get terrified that I won’t “get it.” If that happened, it would completely deflate my enjoyment of the show. While Lost has had its fair share of WTF episodes, most of them are decipherable after repeat viewings; season five’s first two installments definitely fall into that category. It’s like playing the sequel of your favorite video game – for the most part, the controls and game-play are the same, but there are enough changes that it still takes you a few hours to get a handle on it.

So get a handle on this: John Locke and Ben Linus did move the island. The big question is where… or when – and to quote Daniel Faraday from “The Shape of Things to Come” – “when is kind of a relative term.”

That query, along with about a bajillion others, takes center stage over Lost’s double-episode season five premiere. Scheduled to air next Wednesday, January 21st , starting at 9PM, “Because You Left” and “The Lie” are arguably two of the greatest episodes of Lost to date. To call them a “game changer” would be the understatement of the year.

I actually screened the two episodes over a week ago. Then I screened them again. And again. By then, just about everyone else out there had posted their early review and I decided to hold off – just to see how much others were willing to reveal. The consensus – lips are zipped and I’m following suit. So rest assured that what follows is only a teensy bit spoilery.

It’s no secret that the idea of time travel was going to play a role in Lost‘s final two seasons. It was hinted at heavily in season four and then Ben actually did it – jumping into the future after giving the ol’ “Frozen Donkey Wheel” a push. Without giving away how the plot unfolds as the season opens, suffice to say that you’re pretty much not allowed to blink your eyes because it makes your jaw drop the same way that it did when we found out that Jack and Kate’s “we have to go back” conversation was a flash-forward. It can be confusing at times, but once you grasp it, prepare to get a headache.

In the same way that the Oceanic Six were fragmented prior to getting off the island, they’re spread just as far apart back on the mainland as season five begins. However, that doesn’t last for too long as Ben (Michael Emerson is stellar in these two eps) and Jack begin what they started in last season’s finale – reassembling the gang! Meanwhile, back on the island, the remaining Losties, freighties, and Others buckle up as the island takes them on what I can only imagine is the most nauseating Tilt-A-Whirl ride ever.

The premiere heavily features Daniel, Sawyer, Sayid, Hurley, Juliet, Charlotte, and Ben and one of them ends up having a major connection to an important, yet minor, character who also makes an appearance by the end of the second hour. Fans will also be happy to hear that one other favorite makes a brief return in the most unexpected of ways.

A few other goodies…

• Every other early review I’ve read mentions this, so I almost feel obligated – ladies will be pleased to know that Sawyer is shirtless. A lot.
• Richard Alpert’s conversation with young John Locke (from “Cabin Fever”) and his six items finally starts to make a little bit of sense. A little.
• Penny and Desmond fans will be happy.
• I’m going to be cryptic with this one: apparently Ben has a soft spot for a really good porterhouse steak.
• After the first two minutes of the premiere, you’re really going to want to know just what the hell else Daniel has written in that notebook of his. (This video from ComicCon relates directly to what I’m talking about. A hint? Listen to the voice behind the camera before you make any assumptions.)

That’s all I’ve got. Lost is back and it’s – wait for the cliché – better than ever! No, seriously though. It is. If I can make a suggestion, re-watch the season four finale. You’ll be much clearer in the head with some of that stuff fresh in your mind… even though you’ll forget about all of it once you see these two new episodes.

Source: TV Squad

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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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3. The Writers Describe Season 5 as “Non-Paradoxical”

Below are the most interesting excerpts from Lindelof and Cuse’s audio commentary of The Constant from the Season 4 DVD:

Carlton Cuse: This was one of the hardest story breaks on the show.  It took us about 5 weeks, normally it takes 2 weeks to break an episode.  It just was a really hard episode to figure out what was sort of above the water line.  When we think about stories we use a metaphor of an iceberg.  You have to construct the entire iceberg, but only 20% of the iceberg is ever actually seen. The same is true with a story.  You have to make a lot more of the story up and you have to make it all make sense but then you just show the part on screen that you want to show.  A lot of the challenge here was how much explanation goes on.  We didn’t want to bog things down in a lot of esoteric conversation about time travel but we wanted to find an emotional through line.  And that emotional through line became the essence of the show in “What is Desmond’s constant?”  Yes he’s time traveling, yes he’s experiencing an existence in two different consciousnesses, but the emotional constant that was taking him through it was Penny.

Damon Lindelof: When he [Minkowski] just said “I was on a ferris wheel” I cannot wait to do a scene at some point in the next two seasons where in the background we just see Minkowski riding a ferris wheel and we realize “Oh, that’s where he leapt to.”

Carlton Cuse: The one thing we insidiously avoid when it comes to time travel on Lost is what is known as paradox.  This whole notion that you show up and see your same self in another period of time.

Damon Lindelof: We’re going to come to paradox in a moment, but essentially this is our flux capacitor scene.  Desmond has just come to Faraday and here’s a key line here:

Daniel Faraday: You can’t change the future.

Damon Lindelof: There it is.  You can’t change the future.  Those are the rules on Lost which are very had to adhere to.  Because if you tell the audience that something that Desmond does in 96 can alter the present, you go back to the episode we did last year where Ms. Hawking comes to Desmond and says no matter what you do the course of time will find a way to course correct.  So you can save somebody’s life who’s supposed to die but eventually the universe will find a way to kill them anyways.

Mark Goldman (editor) : So you can change the immediate future?

Damon Lindelof: Yeah, you can change the immediate future.

Carlton Cuse: What we’re trying to illustrate here is that this process was also not a constant process.  People experience it differently.  What’s happening to Minkowski is not the same as what’s happening to Desmond and what’s happening to Desmond is not the same as what’s happening to Eloise.  The fundamental process is the same but the results vary.  Sort of like how different people can take steroids and have different results.  Different people can be exposed…

Damon Lindelof: As Carlton was basically mentioning Eloise’s consciousness was just sent an hour into the future where she already knows how to run the maze.  Desmond’s past consciousness is traveling into the future as well whereas Minkowski’s present consciousness is traveling to the past because as we will soon learn he has no future to travel to since he’s about to die on the boat.

Carlton Cuse: Now you know why it took us 5 weeks to break this story.  And the thing was we had to work out all of these permutations and we’re trying not to violate the concept of paradox.  That’s the part where we find that time travel is not engaging for the audience.  You want to see the people move back and forth between the two different time zones but the kind of encounters with themselves and alterations of the future was something we really are opposed to.  We want people to be invested in the future.  We don’t want the audience to think they’ve seen Kate and Jack have this intense conversation in a flash forward at the end of Season 3 and then discover somehow that it means nothing; that basically a new parallel future could be constructed in which that is rendered as having not ever existed.  No.  That was real.  It means something.  That can be the only inevitable course of events.

Damon Lindelof: Minkowski was absolutely essential to this story because this is another tenet of successful time travel stories and the function that essentially Q played in “All Good Things” which is there is someone who is undergoing and understands the same series of events as our protagonist.  Faraday can speculate as to what’s happening to Desmond but Minkowski actually knows what is happening to Desmond emotionally.

Carlton Cuse: We wanted Desmond at some point in this story to see himself and see what he looks like.  His consciousness you realize — this story is told from the point of view of the 1996 Desmond  — so that’s is the first time he really gets to see himself looking like Eddie Vedder [...] The hardest thing to crack on a story level is here you have a very complex time travel episode and we wanted it like everything else on the show not to be just hard core genre.  So we had to figure out a way to really have the episode have some emotional resonance.  We like to refer to both of our mothers.  This is one of those episodes where they might not really understand everything that’s going on but they were clearly set up for the big emotional payoff that’s coming up.  I think the show succeeds at its best when it does both things.  It provides fodder for the mythology fans and we can take on some cool genre things and put our own spin on them but always first and foremost look at those emotional connections which we believe is why the larger part of the audience is watching.

Damon Lindelof: What does he have to achieve in the past that’s going to help him in the present?  The idea that we came up with is he has to get Penny’s number. This very stupid idea that when a guy first meets a girl he’s just trying to get her number now suddenly the entire future of this relationship — and in fact the season finale of season 4 hinges upon Desmond’s ability to convince a 1996 Penny to give him her phone number and not change it.

Damon Lindelof: And this is a fairly intriguing little coda that we stuck on to the end of the episode that was always in the script: “If anything goes wrong Desmond Hume will be my constant.”  Obviously this is all setup for Faraday’s own story.  One would certainly ask why he didn’t remember having ever met Desmond if in fact this had occurred.

Carlton Cuse: And that is a good question.

Damon Lindelof: And that is an excellent question to be asking, and that is your first clue.

Thanks to blog.timelypersuasion.com for the transcript.

Buy Season 4 on DVD to hear the complete commentary.

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Thanks to Lostph for the heads up.

At its best, Lost rips your heart out while it ties your brain in a knot. This season 4 episode did both expertly. Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) has been experiencing premonitions of the future since becoming “unstuck in time” (a la Slaughterhouse Five) earlier in the series. It turns out that he’s been time-traveling, or rather, his mind has: his consciousness is journeying between present, future and past. (It makes sense when you watch, trust me.) The unfortunate side effects of this condition are madness and death, avoidable only by focusing on a “constant”: a person or thing present in each time one’s consciousness visits. Desmond’s constant, he learns, is Penny (Sonya Walger), the girlfriend he left behind when he was stranded on Lost’s mysterious island. His journey into his own past to find her in the present is tear-jerking and mind-blowing.

Source: TIME

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Below is a new article from IGN.com. (It contains some minor spoilers).

LOST‘s executive producer/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse spoke yesterday at Creative Screenwriting’s 2008 Screenwriting Expo, for an informative and fun Q&A about their creative process on the fascinating series.

The duo talked about their history together, dating back to when Cuse hired Lindelof as a writer on Nash Bridges. Cuse recounted how he’d specifically asked to see something original Lindelof had written (as opposed to a spec script based on an existing series), and was very impressed by the 17 page sample he was given of a one-act play Lindelof wrote… only to later discover Lindelof had hastily written those pages specifically for Cuse to see.

Nash Bridges star Cheech Marin plays Hurley’s dad on Lost, and Cuse revealed another Nash alum, Patrick Fischler, will be guest starring on an episode in Season 5. Mad Men fans will recognize Fischler for his recent role as Jimmy Barrett.

After working on Kevin Williamson’s Wasteland, Nash Bridges and Tim Kring’s Crossing Jordan, Lindelof recalled a meeting where he was told he’d have, “‘a great chance for you to meet J.J. [Abrams],’ who I’d been stalking for years, since Felicity and Alias.” When Abrams made it clear he had no interest in running Lost on the heels of four years each of Felicity and Alias, and also thanks to his interest in features, Lindelof knew he, “needed someone with experience” to help him, and turned to his old boss Cuse.

Lindelof admitted he was initially intimidated by the “insane creative challenges” of Lost, recalling that while they were waiting to hear if the project would be picked up as a series, he had people at the network telling him, “Yeah, the pilot is great, but there’s no series there. How are you going to do this every week?” Lindelof joked that his reply was, “I have no f**ing idea. Please don’t pick it up!”

Lost had a very expensive pilot, costing 11.5 million dollars. Cuse and Lindelof recalled that the ABC executive who greenlit it, “knew ABC was going to fire him, so this was sort of his final f**k you to them.”

Discussing the flashbacks on the series, Cuse said it was really exciting in the first year, answering the question, “Who are these guys?”, as the flashbacks could reveal big surprises about the character and their history. However, Cuse said eventually the problem became, “There’s only so many revelatory flashbacks,” and that by the time you get to flashbacks answering, “‘Why does Jack have tattoos’ and ‘Why does Desmond call everyone brother’, it’s a fairly good illustration that these flashbacks were running out of steam”

Cuse and Lindelof expressed their thankfulness they they’ve firmly established an end date for the series, saying the challenge of the flashbacks were one illustration that, “there’s a finite amount of material” in the story of Lost.

However, Cuse noted how helpful the flashbacks were early on, bringing up the example of the episode where Sawyer is trying to kill the boar – by showing flashbacks that helped explain why Sawyer could become so obsessed with something seemingly so random, it could flesh out the character without having him stop to deliver a long monologue, which Cuse said would have consisted of, “Here’s why I need to kill that boar, because it represents X!”

Asked if they know the answers to all the questions they raise on the show right away or sometimes figure it out as they go along, the duo said it was a combination of the two. Lindelof recalled how the entire pilot was put together – including writing, casting and production – in 12 weeks, which didn’t allow much time to come up with any long-term mythology. However, once the series was given a full season order, beyond the initial 12 episode order it received, Cuse said he and Lindelof sat down and discussed, “What the overall mythological underpinnings of the show would be. We quickly landed on the ending, and then constructed this broader road map of other mythological points we’d hit on this story.”

While each season of Lost is mapped out, the duo said you have to, “let the show organically tell us what it’s going to be,” bringing up the character of Ben Linus as an example. Ben was originally only intended for a three episode arc, and Lindelof and Cuse were playing a bit of wait and see as to whether or not he would turn out to be the leader of the Others, based on how things went with the actor playing the part. But once Michael Emerson was cast, “he was so good, we ended up writing eight episodes for that guy,” in Season 2, and then made him a regular. The decision to extend the original Ben storyline, in which he was held captive within the hatch, then had an influence on other storylines – Lindelof said they’d already decided that Michael, forced to help the Others to get Walt back, would kill Ana Lucia and Libby. But by extending Emerson’s time on the show, Michael’s specific task now became to free Ben.

Lindelof said they also knew from the start that Kate had killed someone and that it was probably her father – but, “the question became ‘when do we pull the trigger on [telling that story]?” and that the key was to, “bring it to an emotional point where it’s relevant to what’s happening on the island. “

However, Lindelof and Cuse said that things had changed considerably now that they know the end of the show, with Lindelof explaining, “Certainly since we got an end date, that sort of fly by the seat of your pants story is gone now. Showing scenes [set] three years from now, you can’t change it.”

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.”

Lindelof laughed that, “We sort of suckered people into this show but not presenting it as a science fiction show right out of the gate,” noting that there were elements early on that were, “like a Rorschach test”, saying that when Flight 815′s pilot is killed, someone who didn’t like sci-fi would think, “there has to be a rational explanation.” Even the reveal that Locke could walk on the island was tempered by the fact that they still hadn’t revealed why he was in the chair in the first place, leaving the opportunity that, “it could be psychosomatic.” Lindelof said Raiders of the Lost Ark was a great example of a story that has blatantly science fiction elements, noting, “Nazis melt and ghost fly out of this ark,” but that it waits a long time before presenting these elements, allowing the audience to fall in love with Indiana Jones first. Lindelof said he felt shows like Invasion probably had a harder time finding a wide audience because, “They said ‘Alien!’, right out of the gate.’”

Lindelof said that when it came to slowly building into more science fiction, “Lost has really been about the long con, because by the time we get to season 6, it’s going to be f**king crazy!”

The duo stressed that while they have introduced time travel and flash-forwards into Lost, they’ve firmly decided to never do a paradox story, with Cuse saying, “It’s not like Heroes,” where the future is always something that can be prevented or changed, but in fact on Lost, “There’s nothing you can do to stop it from happening, and the more you try to stop it, the more potential there is for you to be the cause [of that future event].”

Cuse said he felt that if the future is always alterable, the stakes are lower, and they wanted to “set the bar higher. What they saw [in the future] is what actually happens. That is going to inevitably occur.”

As for the end of the series, and whether every question will be answered, Lindelof noted, “Sometimes we’re presenting things that are not really questions for us, but they become questions for the audience, and we don’t have an intention of answering them.” He said that something like what is causing that roar in the jungle they certainly intend to answer, but, “that’s not to say there won’t be some questions left,” depending on the individual viewer and what they become fixated on.

He went on to say, “There’s a fine line between The Sopranos ending and the way we plan on ending our show. There are going to be a lot of mythological wrap ups, but our suspicion is most people really care how the characters end up – who’s going to end up with who? Who lives? Who dies? Those are the questions we’re really interested in answering.” Cuse gave an example he’s given before, The Phantom Menace‘s infamous midichlorians, of how you want to be careful of going too far explaining things that probably don’t need to be explained. The duo noted that there are certain questions specific people can get hung up on that aren’t integral to a story – two examples given were “Why are certain people born with the ability to use magic?” in Harry Potter and “Why is the wardrobe a portal to Narnia?” in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Acknowledging the failure of Nikki and Paulo with the audience, Cuse answered a question about the oft-confused Steve and Scott and said that not only would there not be an episode focused on them, but that there is “a very tragic event that happens this season.” Lindelof said the original plan for Nikki and Paulo was to have them be like Rose and Bernard, “and occasionally have these characters melt out of the chorus so they had a voice. We weren’t going to make them part of the grand story arc.” Cuse said that when they decided to write Nikki and Paulo out, they took plans they had for their overall back-story, and “put it into one episode. We would have played that out over a much more elaborate set of flashbacks. Instead we compressed it into one episode.”

Discussing how Mr. Eko became a much shorter-lived character than originally intended, Lindelof noted how it stemmed from actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who did not like living in Hawaii. Lindelof said, ” Our Mr. Eko plans very quickly derailed. Adawele’s unhappiness was almost instantaneous. On his second episode, he was expressing extreme dissatisfaction.” This led to them quickly changing Mr. Eko’s storyline to one that would only last one season. Asked what might have happened with Eko had he been the long term character he was going to be, Lindelof answered, “Originally he was going to be someone who challenged Locke for the spiritual leadership of the castaways.”

Talking about Desmond and Penny and the fact that they reunited at the end of Season 4, Cuse and Lindelof said they liked putting a big dramatic beat like that in well before the end, instead of saving it all for the final episode. Lindelof also said that having played out their separation for so long, “If we’d waited any longer to get them back together, it would have risked people going, ‘Enough already.’” That being said, going forward, “It’s a challenge, because they’re together now.” Evoking other famous TV couples like Ross and Rachel, and on the negative side, David and Maddie, Lindelof said the question becomes, “Do we still have compelling stories to tell with these characters?”

As the panel ended, moderator Jeff Goldsmith jokingly asked the duo their “Favorite scene from the Season 6 finale.” Cuse’s answer was obviously a joke, as he said his favorite scene was, “the set up for the zombie season.” Fans can speculate however on whether Lindelof was joking or giving any sort of real hint, when he said, “It involves a volcano.” Come May 2010, we’ll find out.

Article taken from IGN.com

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Congratulations, Jack and Kate!

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Here is an extract of an interview with Henry Ian Cusick.

Love in Time

With his consciousness jumping all over different time periods, as well as risking his life to save his fellow castaways, Desmond has truly been a constant source of adventure, heroics and thrilling storytelling. During the summer hiatus, HENRY IAN CUSICK very kindly sat by our beach fire on the shores of Oahu to talk exclusively about the past season…

Season four was a huge year for Desmond, so were there any moments that really stood out for you or that you were particularly proud of?
Not really — I’m a really tough critic on myself! There are so many things that I hate about my scenes when I see what I do on TV. But then I’ll watch it again and see that it wasn’t that bad [smiles].

As a fan of the show yourself, were there aspects of the fourth season that you really enjoyed watching?
You know, I really enjoyed Matthew Fox’s work a lot last season. He gave some truly great performances. I think he, in particular, had a really great season.

Lost often does focus on the tragic and Desmond has certainly experienced a lot of it in three seasons. So it was one of the most shocking moments of the series when, in There No Place Like Home Pt. II, Desmond and Penny are finally reunited. Did you see that coming?
I was surprised at how quickly that get-together happened, yes! From having the phone call earlier in the season to seeing Penny, it was so fast and so sudden that I was really surprised. It also made me think, “Well, now that Desmond and Penny are resolved, where does it go now?” Because they could just sail off quite happily and that’s it, if they wanted to.

For a lot of fans, these next few months are going to be panic-stricken before it’s revealed whether Desmond will be back to the world of Lost anytime soon. Did you feel the same way when you read the season four finale?
Yeah, there was that feeling. There always is about whether or not you’ll be back for the next season, especially for me with my story ending so nicely. But then you look at what else is happening — especially with the ‘Ben versus Widmore’ story with the idea of “You killed my daughter… so I’ll kill yours.” There’s a possible storyline there. So we’ll see… [smiles]

Read the full interview in issue 19 of The Official Lost Magazine – on sale October 14.

Source: ABC.com

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Which of these questions are going to be answered before the season ends, in your opinion?

1) Is Aaron’s mummy going bye-bye? With Aaron now living with Kate and calling her mama, one could assume that Claire is either a) dead or b) back on the island wielding the least effective Amber Alert ever. Is a tender sign-off in her future?

2) How did Alex end up with Ben? Poor Alex grew up thinking Ben was her father. How did that “happen”? And isn’t it a little strange that it took a hardcore jungle survivalist like Rousseau 16 years to find her?

3) Why does Hurley see dead people? Is there more to these visions than just a mental disorder? Hurley’s imaginary pal Dave helped him overcome his shyness and the reappearance of Charlie kick-starts Hurley’s desire to return to the island.

4) How did Michael and Walt get back to New York? Desmond’s storyline has shown that leaving the island is not a simple process. “Meet Kevin Johnson” revealed that the pair made it back to New York, but how?

5) Are you buying this “constant” nonsense? Stuck in a time travel loop, Desmond is headed for a Minkowski-style aneurysm, but after a little chit-chat with Penny, his “constant,” he’s fine? Does this make sense?

6) How does Sayid end up working for Ben? What — or who — could Ben possibly have in his corner that would make the forthright military man end up gunning-for-hire for His Otherness?

7) Will we ever learn all of Jack’s father’s secrets? We know that he’s both Jack and Claire’s dad, but is there more to the late Dr. Shephard Sr. (John Terry)? For example, is he maybe not dead? Is he maybe — oh, I don’t know — Jacob?

Is Jin really dead? We saw Sun bring her newborn daughter to Jin’s grave, a grave that showed Jin’s date of death as September 22, 2004, the date of the crash. Did he really die, or is it some elaborate Oceanic Six cover-up?

9) Where is Penny’s boat? OK, now that we know what is NOT PENNY’S BOAT, where is her dang rescue party? Surely not still poking around the Arctic, right?

10) What is Smokey the Monster? Rousseau called it a security system that protects the island. We learn something new about Smokey every time we see him. So far he has made some noises and attacked and/or killed people. What’s next?

11) Can Juliet be trusted? At this point, Juliet has double-, triple-, and quadruple-crossed nearly every character on the island. We know she wants to leave the island. We know she hates Ben and loves Jack. Or do we?

12) Who are the bad guys? Ben is fond of saying that he’s one of the good guys. More recently, he’s pointed an accusatory finger at Charles Widmore (Alan Dale, pictured), Penny’s dad, as the guy who faked the crash of Oceanic 815.

13) How did the island cure Locke and Rose? Locke was paralyzed and Rose had cancer before they boarded Oceanic 815. But now they’re both cured. That’s some talented electromagnetism they got there, ay?

14) Who is in the coffin? It seems to be of smaller than average size. The funeral parlor appears to be in an African-American neighborhood. Nobody shows up for the funeral. Who is it? And why does Jack take his or her passing so hard?

Source: TV Guide

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