[Via ABC.com/LOST]

Related posts:

1. The 16 Best LOST Promos
2. LOST In 8:15
3. Damon and Carlton Comment Fans’ Favorite Episodes

“Live Together, Die Alone”

Official Synopsis: Events come to a head as Michael leads his friends across the Island to confront the Others. Meanwhile, Desmond returns to the Island on a sailboat, and he and Locke make a decision to see what happens if the countdown in the Swan goes beyond zero. This episode was also Desmond’s first flashback episode.
Written by: Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof.
Directed by: Jack Bender.
Original Airdate: May 24, 2006.

Related posts:

1. Sundays LOST Rewatch: “Man of Science, Man of Faith”
2. Sundays LOST Rewatch: “Exodus”
3. Sundays LOST Rewatch: “Pilot”

“Man of Science, Man of Faith”

Official Synopsis: One of the castaways is chosen to descend into the mysterious hatch, and Shannon stumbles upon a shockingly familiar face in the jungle.
Written by: Damon Lindelof.
Directed by: Jack Bender.
Original Airdate: September 21, 2005.

Related posts:

1. Sundays LOST Rewatch: “Exodus”
2. Sundays LOST Rewatch: “Pilot”
3. Announcement: ‘Sundays LOST Rewatch’

[polldaddy poll="2275472"]

Related posts:

1. In Preparation for Season 6, Poll #1
2. Poll: Do You Like the Season 5 Cast Promo Photos?
3. Interactive, Globe-Spanning LOST Timeline

Via The Washington Post:

As “Lost’s” plot skips back and forth through time and boomerangs around the globe, we capture the action in this interactive timeline — allowing you to explore the show by year, location or season. Remember, locations and dates are based on information gathered from the show and should be considered approximate (and fictional). And we know we missed a few — so please submit more!

Project Credits:Jen Chaney, Jennifer Crandell, Liz Kelly and LostPedia | Development Credits: Dan Berko, Chris Buddie, Jesse Foltz and Steven King.

Related posts:

1. LOST In 8:15
2. RECAP OF THE FIRST THREE SEASONS, BY SKY ONE
3. William Mapother Talks about Ethan

Visit our LOST Store to pre-order both seasons on Blu-ray. All pre-orders will ship on June 16.

Related posts:

1. LOST Season 5 on Blu-ray & DVD Trailer
2. Season 5 Trailer 8
3. Season 5 Trailer 5

Tvshowsondvd.com is reporting that both seasons are coming on Blu-ray on June 16th:

This past January a press release was issued by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment at the CES show, detailing their Blu-ray Disc plans for 2009. Among those plans were high-definition releases for the first two seasons of Lost, but no timetable or details were given at the time. Today, just a short time ago, the studio formally announced two separate Blu-ray Disc releases, one for the rookie year, and one for the sophomore year of the show.

June 16th will see the release of both Lost – The Complete 1st Season on Blu-ray Disc, AND the high-def version of Lost – The Complete 2nd Season: The Extended Experience. Each will be priced at $69.99 SRP (which is what the fourth season on Blu went for, and we expect the fifth season BD set – already up for pre-order, but without a release date – to get adjusted to that price when it gets formally announced). All episodes on both sets will be presented in high definition 1080p resolution. Audio on the episodes is available in Uncompressed English 5.1, with options available in English and French 5.1 Dolby Digital, and Spanish 2.0 Dolby Digital. English, French and Spanish subtitles are also boarding for this flight.

All the bonus material from the DVD releases appears to be intact, presented in 480i video resolution and English 5.1 Dolby Digital sound, and with subtitle options in English, French and Spanish. No word about any new-to-Blu extras is mentioned, but it’s noted that the current information is still subject to change.

Related posts:

1. Season 4 DVD and Blu-Ray available for pre-ordering through sl-LOST.com
2. William Mapother Talks about Ethan
3. RECAP OF THE FIRST THREE SEASONS, BY SKY ONE

Thanks to Jack and Cynthia for the heads up!

In this interview with “Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof, we look back on some of the behind-the-scenes decisions for season four, why some fans may be troubled by season five’s emphasis on time travel, and why the worst episode in “Lost” history was also the most important episode in “Lost” history (from a production standpoint, anyway).

What material did you have to leave out because of the strike that you won’t be able to get back to?

I don’t think that there’s anything that just got basically junked. There’s stuff that got truncated, so you’re getting the Cliff’s Notes version of the story. Whereas there might have been an entire episode that was Charlotte’s flashbacks if there hadn’t been a strike, now you get the story but not the flashbacks. I think the complete jettisoning of a story plan would take the whole Jenga tower down. We have to do all that stuff to get to where we’re going. Nothing was so expendable that you could just say we couldn’t get to do this. The show would suffer for it. But the Michael story, we wanted to do something that was more redemptive for him than staying with the bomb and allowing Jin to get to the deck as he was spraying liquid nitrogen onto it. But it ended up having to be that, as opposed to something that was probably more heroic, more emotional, by virtue of the fact that we had to collapse our time frame. Originally, we were going to do an hour less than we wound up doing, and we had to beg for that. We were still rolling film, like, 11 days before it was on the air. It was all we could do to cram everything in there, and you go, “What are the major story points you can play?” and you need to connect the dots. The primary story focus was on the Oceanic Six, and everyone else had to defer. We had to explain how Jin died, and so that gave us less time for Michael’s redemptive arc, and we regret that.

One of the things you and Carlton talk about a lot, and I never quite understood until we got to “There’s No Place Like Home,” is that you’re always afraid of doing these episodes where people stand around and explain stuff and you give a lot of answers at once. Those three hours answered most of the questions of that season, and while it was good, it definitely felt like, “Okay… okay… alright…” It was not as thrilling as the hours leading up to it.

Sure. For us, we always think the reason that the show is a water cooler show, or still generates the audience it does and the Internet culture that it does is the audience wants to talk about the show. If the characters are talking about the show, you basically have a scenario where they’re so interested in catching each other up that you can’t propel the story forwards. Now if they need to share info for the purposes of story, then you have to write the scene. But the season four finale was really about bringing everything together. The drama of knowing, “How are these guys going to get off the island?,” well, you’ve known that they did get off since the end of season three, so now we’re just going back and showing you things you didn’t already know about it, like that Penny picked them up. It’s a big reveal, but everything else is, “Oh, they’re in a helicopter… the helicopter’s going into the water… is Demond going to survive because he’s not one of the Oceanic Six?” So you can kind of do these things, but things like the press conference, Kate having dreams about Claire, you need to do them, but they’re more about filling in blanks than moving forward. That’s the nature of the year. You’re telling a story out of sequence, and so the finale wound up being a lot of middle.

Let’s get back to the question that I asked at the summer tour: Watching last season and seeing the Oceanic Six in the present, I start building up scenarios in my head. “Why these six? Why do they have to be so secretive?” And in the end it just turned out that those happened to be the ones who were on the helicopter, and Jack, for whatever reason, gets into his head that they need to tell this specific lie to avoid the wrath of Widmore. Did you know that was how it was going to play out going in?

We knew that the season was going to start with Locke and Jack splitting up, Locke taking a group of people with him, Jack a group with him, Jack group’s mission was to get off the island, Locke’s group mission was to stay on, and when we got to the end of the season, Jack and Locke would have one more scene. And in that scene, Locke would basically say to Jack, “We’re supposed to be here, it’s our destiny, you’ve gotta stay.” And Jack would say, “(Bleep) you, I’m leaving.” And Locke would say to Jack, “If you’re gonna leave, you have to lie.” So the idea to lie is Locke’s. That we knew with great specificity. We also knew for over a year that Locke was in the coffin and that all the actions Jack is going through in the season three finale, reading the obituary, suicide attempt, are in the wake of Locke’s death. The Jack/Locke of it all was incredibly mapped out in detail. The intricacies of the lie were, Jack is lying because Locke told him to, and there’s a part of him that realizes maybe Locke was right. He’s not consciously ready to accept that yet, so the lie’s going to be sloppy, and he’s making that up on the fly…

I pitched to the DVD team that it might be fun to have a documentary crew poke holes in how (bleepy) the lie is, on every level. You see those things about the WTC, on that trajectory. I thought it would be fun, but these guys came back with the film and I was, like, “Wow, the lie’s even worse than I thought.” It’s one of those things where you basically say, if this really happened, if these six people showed up on some island in the South Pacific and said, “Here’s what happened,” no one would ever think to question the story. If there’s any conspiracy, you have to start with the premise, “Why did they lie?”

How did you choose the Oceanic Six?

We basically looked at it as a very simple equation first, which is, “Who would want to leave the island, and who would not want to leave the island?” and that’s what the whole season’s about. Kate kind of waffles, Sawyer doesn’t want to leave the island, and leaps off the chopper when he has a chance to do so. He’s perfectly fine where he is. And clearly someone like Juliet would want to leave the island, so we had to figure out geographically, where people would want to be, and present a lifeboat situation where Billy Zane’s running around the Titanic with a gun, and it’s whoever can get on the chopper in time. Jack and Kate we had committed to, obviously, but when we talked about who the Six would be, we realized the majority of storytelling in season four would involve those people. But we were also setting things up for the ultimate endgame of the show which will hopefully reveal some more specificity about, “Why them?”

I’ve wondered about the team from the freighter, Faraday and those people. When we initially see them being put together, Naomi’s supposed to lead them, they have some specific mission that apparently requires a mercenary, a physicist, a medium and an anthropologist and a chopper pilot. Are we still going to find out what that was? Did that get left by the wayside by the events of season four?

The intent was that their mission was to find Benjamin Linus, then call the mercs and they’ll show up and remove Ben. But Faraday and Charlotte are both there for personal reasons. He’s doing time/space experiments while he’s there, Faraday has a lot of story yet to reveal. As does Charlotte, as does Miles. But the mission they’ve been tasked with to find Ben.

And this particular combination is the best Widmore could put together?

One would assume Miles was selected for his unique abilities. As to why Faraday comes, I think that the strategic thinking in sending those guys over first is, Faraday is the one who can figure how to get from the freighter to the island safely. Charlotte’s an expert in anthropology and dead languages, and Widmore thinks that skill-set would be useful for locating Ben for some reason. Hopefully, once you have all the information from season five, that will not be as much of an unanswered question, and you’ll have a little information as to why those people.

Time travel plays a big part in this season… This gets back to what I’m always asking you about: long-term planning. Obviously, some things get changed on the fly depending on what’s working and what isn’t, but did you know from the start how important time travel would be to the show, or is that something that evolved?

We were being asked, certainly as far back in season two, “Are you guys ever going to do time travel on the show?” And we responded, “Who says we haven’t already?” The time travel elements of the show have been built into the DNA of the show all along.

Obviously, the big question going into this year is this idea of, there’s only two fundamental approaches to time travel. There’s the “Back to the Future”/”Heroes” approach where you can go back and change things, that stepping on a butterfly, suddenly, there’s a different president, people have anetnna, George McFly’s a best-selling author. And the other way is, if you went back in time and tried to kill Hitler, you would fail, because Hitler wasn’t assassinated. What would happen if you were in the past and tried to change the present as you knew it, would you A)Fail, or B)Succeed, or C)Cause the thing you were trying to prevent. And that’s really interesting to us, because there’s no (do-over’s).

You’ve been covering the show since the very beginning. There’s been this very interesting thing for me, in terms of certain audience’s members to grasp the idea that they’re not watching a genre show. To them, I’m like, “What show were you watching? When the big column of smoke is in Eko’s face in season two and he stares it down and it retracts into the jungle, that’s not a genre show?” And they say, “No, it’s not.” And it makes you go, “Okay, this is how there can be both evolutionists and creationists.” You can take the same data and apply it to your own spectrum. You can go, “Oh, it’s not a genre show, because I don’t like genre shows, but I like ‘Lost.’ Therefore, ‘Lost’ is not a genre show.” That’s the logic they apply. Well, we’ve been writing a genre show from the word go. We’re sorry that it’s getting more genre.

The biggest audience that ever watched the show was the premiere of season two, where we revealed that Desmond was down in the hatch pushing the button every 108 minutes because he’s told the world will end. The show had a critical mass at that point, we’d just won the Emmy, people were talking about it, and they tuned in to see, ‘What is this thing?” And they saw that, and went, “Alright, it is exactly what I thought it was. No thank you. Not for me.”

But there’s been a steady attrition over the years, because the show demands that you watch every episode. And Lord knows, I wish there was a way we could do the show where the casual viewer could come along, but once you start writing for those people, the long-term fans will (bleeping) kill you, as well they should. We always thought it would be a cult show, and that’s the show we’ve been writing. But the fundamental strength of the characters — and our ability to say, “Nobody’s perfect, we’ve made mistakes, we’ll continue to make them” — as long as everyone’s acting in a way that makes sense, even when the story doesn’t entirely make sense, you can understand why they’re behaving the way they are. If you introduce a time travel element on the show, maybe one character will say, “I don’t want to be on the time travel show. I don’t like time travel.” That might make it more palatable to those viewers who don’t like it, either.

And the other thing is, nothing on “Lost” lasts forever. These are books in a series of six books. If season five gets a bit too far out there in terms of its genre for you, it’s just 17 hours in the grand mosaic of the show. Our hope is that, I feel like the greatest achievement that the show could have in terms of its legacy value, is that, 10 years from now, there’ll be an active debate about what were the best and worst seasons of the show, and two people will be able to say to each other, “My favorite season was this season,” and the other would say, “That’s my least favorite season! It was terrible!” And they’d still be fans of the show as a whole.

Let me put it to you this way, then: Up until the time you cut the deal to end the show (after season six), you and Carlton had to write not knowing when you could move certain stories forward. If you’d somehow known going in that it would be six years and out, what things would you have done differently in those first three years?

It’s a question that’s impossible to answer, because that wasn’t the condition of it. I think there probably would have been less internal pressure to introduce new characters into the show, but at the same time, new characters make it fresh. What would the show be without Ben and Juliet as series regulars? I think many shows that are on the air for a long time require a certain degree of cast turnover. We were certainly going to be killing people off and you then need to bring new people in.

But I think there would have been a lot more confidence in the storytelling, particularly in season’s two and three. There’s a stutter-step feel to season two and the first part of season three where you’d take two steps forward and one step back and one step forward. Even though the storytelling was emotionally-based, we’d realize that we didn’t need to do 25 episodes in a year, we only needed to do 17. For us, the big win wasn’t just setting an end date; it was also that the remaining seasons would have a reduced episodic order, so you could never get to a point where you’re like, “Wow, we really want to activate the endgame of the season, but we’re seven episodes away from that, so we need to just do a rollicking boar-hunting episode.”

That being said, some of my favorite episodes of the show are ones like Hurley in the van. Which doesn’t advance the plot in any way at all, except that they find Ben’s dad, that’s cool, but did you really need any of it?

No, but it’s a really good episode.

A good episode of “Lost” is not necessarily one that gives you major plot revelations. It’s one that works emotionally and kind of justifies its own existence. And there’s some episodes that never needed to have existed.

I think that’s what would have been different. If we’d known we could be six and out, we wouldn’t have done 25-pisode seasons, the narrative would have been a lot tighter, but I wonder if those episodes like finding the Dharma bus would have existed. So I don’t know that I would go back and change it.

Not only was it a good episode, but it sets up that wonderful moment in “Through the Looking Glass” where Hurley saves the day with the magic bus.

That’s right. That was all (Edward) Kitsis and (Adam) Horowitz (who wrote “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead”), that pitch. They were saying, “Well, Hurley finds this bus and then uses it to save them in the finale.”

What’s interesting is, it’s almost a time travel conundrum, which is, if I could go back in time and be more convincing about saying, ‘I will write this pilot, but we need to be six years and out,’ and therefore those episodes don’t get written, would I do it? The answer is no. The journey is the journey. But more importantly, if “Stranger in a Strange Land” — which, universally, is (considered) the worst episode we ever produced — had not been produced, we would not have been able to convince the network that, “This is the future of the show: how Jack got his tattoos. Everything we’ve been saying for two years about what’s to come, is now all here on the screen. You argued that an hour of Matthew Fox in emotionally-based conflicts, it doesn’t matter what the flashback story is, it’ll be fine. But now that we’re doing his ninth flashback story, you just don’t care.”

We can’t go back and apologize for the creative mistakes that we made, because we had to make them. If that episode hadn’t been made, we weren’t able to get a notes call that said, “We don’t like this episode,” and where we could then say, “We don’t like it, either, but it’s the best we can do if we’re not moving the story forward. And we’re now at a point, guys, where we can’t move the story forward.” And they asked, “Well, what would you do if we allowed you an end date?” And we said, “Give us an end date, and we’ll tell you what we’ll do.” And the conversations then reached a new pitch.

Everything has to happen the way it happened.

You brought up the introduction of Ben before, and people who are agnostic to atheistic about the idea of a master plan will say, “Well, geez, they hired (Michael) Emerson to be a day player for an episode or two, and now he’s the fulcrum of the show.” Could you clarify?

We have plans, but the big plans have trap doors. Basically, the plan on the table was Rousseau captures the leader of The Others, but doesn’t know who he is. She turns him over to Sayid, Sayid tortures him, he claims he’s a balloonist, it’s a case of mistaken identity, and it becomes a David E. Kelley story of “Will Sayid believe him or will he not?” It’ll be a three-episode arc, at the end they’ll realize he was lying all along and he’ll escape. That was the plan all along. The trap door of the plan is that, once it’s revealed that he’s an Other, he’ll admit to it and talk about the leader of The Others being a great man, in the third person. So if the actor is awesome, he’s referring to himself. But if the actor is not awesome, he’ll just be a lieutenant. He’ll go running off, or get killed, and we’ll meet the actual leader of The Others in the finale of this season when Jack and Kate and Sawyer and Hurley are double-crossed by Michael. We already had the spinal surgery story in our back pocket, and that’s where the story was going. Emerson basically, not quite guaranteed, that the story ballooned from a three-episode arc to a six-episode arc that tied into Michael’s return and the killing of Ana-Lucia.

At the beginning of the year, we have all these ideas, but we’re writing a script every eight days. I love that people think we’re smart enough — I understand why there are atheists and agnostics out there, because they believe in a subjective reality of it. They believe that JK Rowling outlined all seven Harry Potter books because she had unlimited time, nobody to answer to and an unlimited budget. She could make her characters do whatever she wants. WE can’t make our characters do whatever we want; our characters are played by actors. if we were just writing a novel, “Lost” would be uncompromised in its vision, and probably a lot worse than it’s been for being realized by a cast and crew of 500 who helped realize it in their own separate ways. The idea that Michael Emerson, the way he played Ben, is more Napoleonic — when you had thought of the leader of The Others, you thought of a big scary dude, and the fact that it’s him is fascinating. Which was our thinking when we cast him. We cast the leader of The Others, but we didn’t commit to it until Michael said, “You guys got any milk?”

Okay, lightning round. The story keeps moving forward, and therefore there are certain things you might never get back to. You don’t have to tell me what the answer is to any of these mysteries, just whether they’ll come up again

Okay

The four-toed foot?

You will see it again.

Why Libby was in the hospital with Hurley?

Hopefully, but contingent on factors beyond our control.

What happened between Alex and Rousseau during the brief period between their reunion and their deaths? Or was that another casualty of the episodes you lost to the strike?

Nope. Casualty.

Will we ever find out why Dharma (or someone else) is still making supply drops to the island?

I sure hope so.

Will the superpowers (or lack thereof) of Others like Ethan (superstrong and/or healing factor?) and Richard (immortal?) ever be clarified or explained?

Ethan works out a lot. And everyone heals fast on the island. Hasn’t Sawyer been shot like, fourteen times by now?

Source: NJ.com

Related posts:

1. 31 Video Interviews With The Season 5 Cast
2. Producers Lindelof and Cuse Give a New Q&A on LOST
3. Damon and Carlton Comment Fans’ Favorite Episodes

[hana-flv-player
video="http://video.ak.facebook.com/video-ak-sf2p/v1182/233/37/1033192188360_41548.mp4"
width="625"
height="355"
player="3"
autoplay="false"
loop="false"
autorewind="true"
splashimage="http://www.sl-lost.com/vplayer.jpg"
/]

Source: EW.com

Related posts:

1. Dharma SA – Week 4 – Damon and Carlton Answer to Fans’ Questions
2. Damon and Carlton Talk about the End of the ARG
3. Dharma Special Access Announcement 3 With Damon and Carlton

In my opinion, ABC’s LOST promos tend to reveal too much information (last year, Michael Emerson said that his wife skips the previews for the next episodes) but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t as exciting as the show itself.

Here’s my list of the best LOST promos that have been aired so far. Feel free to use the comments section  below to post your personal picks!

#16: 2×07 – “The Other 48 Days” Promo

#15: 4×02 – “Confirmed Dead” Promo

#14: Season Two Finale Promo

#13: 3×06 – “I Do” Promo

#12: 4×11 – “Cabin Fever” Promo

#11: 3×13 – “The Man from Tallahassee” Promo

#10: 4×09 – “The Shape of Things to Come” Promo

#9: 3×20 – “The Man Behind the Curtain” Promo

#8: Season One Finale Promo

#7: Season Three Promo

#6: Season Two Locke Promo

#5: Season Four Promo

#4: Season Three Finale Promo

#3: Season Five Promo

#2: Season Three Finale UK Promo

#1: Season One UK Promo

Related posts:

1. Two New Season 5 Promos
2. TWO NEW LOST 4X02 PROMOS
3. LOST 4.07 “JI YEON” ABC AND CTV PROMOS

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

Related posts:

1. Lindelof and Cuse Enjoy an Evening in North Hollywood
2. LINDELOF AND CUSE ON “JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE”
3. LOST Producers: “Season 5 Will Be Like ‘The Two Towers’”

Video | YouTube

You can download the song from Amazon.com on this link.

iTunes: Click here to suscribe to the sl-LOST Video Podcast and start watching the show on your iPod! For more info, please visit the Podcast section.

Related posts:

1. In Preparation for Season 5, Episode 15: The Enemies
2. In Preparation for Season 5, Episode 12: The Oceanic 6
3. In Preparation for Season 5, Episode 5: “Lovers” – Votation Results

The 15th episode focuses on the enemies that the 815 survivors have faced since they crashed on the Island.

YouTube|link

iTunes: Click here to suscribe to the sl-LOST Video Podcast and start watching the show on your iPod!

For more info, please visit the Podcast section.

Related posts:

1. In Preparation for Season 5, Episode 12: The Oceanic 6
2. “In Preparation For Season 5″, Episode 9 : Benjamin Linus
3. “In Preparation For Season 5″, Episode 5: Lovers

William Mapother talked to e’Guide about his experience working on the show.

e’Guide: So far, you played the part of Ethan Rom in nine episodes and on one mobisode. How did you prepare for playing this role? Did you get enough information to play him perfectly, or was it just intuitively?

WM: I was hired the morning that “Lost” premiered in the US. My agent called to say I had been offered two episodes (in other words, I didn’t have to audition because they knew my work from the movie “In the Bedroom”). I told her I hadn’t heard of the show and she said, “It starts tonight.” (I had to cancel a trip for a reunion with old college friends, and they were really annoyed with me. Now, however, they realize that I made the right decision!) The next morning, when I flew to Honolulu, the show was already a hit. I went right from the airport to the set. They didn’t seem to know everything about Ethan yet, so I had to play him intuitively. Also, we shot many different versions of the scenes, so they had lots of choices in the editing room.

e’Guide: Your character died during season one, but we saw him in season two and three again. How was returning to the set of “Lost”? Do you have personal contact to the other actors?

WM: It was a blast to return, because the cast and crew are marvelous to work with. The producers assembled a great group of people for that show. I keep in touch with several of the actors, yes.

e’Guide: In Germany the fourth season is airing right now on Pay-TV. Do you still watch the show over there? Who’s you favorite character? What’s your own theory of the things happening on the island? And what do you think about the fourth season and the development of the show?

WM: I’m a huge fan of the show and never miss an episode. And whenever my own scenes come on, I get a bit impatient, like, “Get that damn Mapother off the screen, so I can focus on the show!”. I tend to like the characters who are a bit mysterious and unpredictable, like Locke and Ben. I have NO idea what’s happening on the island, and I love it that way. I thought the fourth season was great. The only thing missing was Ethan!

e’Guide: Ethan Rom was last seen in a mobisode, where he talked to Matthew Fox’s character Jack and mentioned that his wife died in childbirth along with the baby. Where you surprised about this new aspect of your character’s motivation? Are there any plans to make him return in season five or six? Would you like to play him again?

WM: Yes, I was like, “Whoops, I have a wife and child???” I also didn’t know that I was a surgeon, which Ben mentions in Jack. That’s part of what makes it fun acting on the show – we always have more to add in future performances.

Sources: Eguide-online and DarkUfo

Related posts:

1. Matthew Fox Talks To ABC About Us, The Fans
2. MATTHEW FOX TALKS ABOUT LOST
3. Ken Leung Talks About Barack Obama

Related posts:

1. LOST In 8:15
2. FIND 815- CHAPTER ONE RECAP
3. NEW PROMO OF THE PREMIERE OF SEASON 4

Related posts:

1. OFFICIAL: LOST RETURNS NEXT MONTH
2. First Season 4 Promo
3. A BRAND NEW TRAILER OF SEASON 4!