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‘Lost’ creator Damon Lindelof speaks. A little.
I grabbed a few minutes on the phone Thursday with “Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof in advance of his two panel appearances at the 2009 Austin Film Festival. The catch? The upcoming final season of “Lost” was off-limits.
Sigh.
Well, we could always talk about the weather, as in “hey — how’s the weather on that island y’all shoot on and for GOD’s sake how are you possibly going to wrap this all up in one more season and is Locke really dead and did Jack’s plan work? Will the whole season be a reboot to before the crash like he’d hoped?”
No, probably not. My friend and co-worker, tech reporter Omar Gallaga, suggested I ask him for “Mad Men” spoilers. So I did.
“I suspect massive emotional pyrotechnics and let’s see, I guess Don will probably cheat on Betty and someone from Sterling Cooper will be fired. Those are my big guesses,” he said.
Lindelof is happy with the way the final season is shaping up. “It feels a lot like we’ve spent the last 5 years planning for a wedding and now we’re actually getting to have the wedding,” he said. “With all the sort of emotional feelings that go into that, that’s the closest to what it feels like.” That’s about as introspective as he’s willing to get.
“I’m trying not to project emotionally too far past (the series’ end) for fear of not enjoying the process itself,” he explained.
I mentioned to Lindelof how I have a friend who has just recently started to watch the “Lost” on DVD, starting at the beginning, and how it is just such a completely different show now.
“I think when people first saw the pilot, they would rightly say, ‘How is this show going to sustain itself? Why would we want to watch people fumfering around on a deserted island for more than, say, 8 or 9 episodes?’ he said. “It’s amazing that we are writing the 113th hour of ‘Lost’ right now. If you’d have told me that when we were writing the pilot I would have laughed in your face.”
Lindelof’s other irons in the fire include co-writing a “western with science fiction elements” called “Cowboys and Aliens” (Jon Favreau will likely direct) and working on “Star Trek 2,” the sequel to this summer’s reboot clandestinely premiered at the Alamo Drafthouse. Lindelof lured in rabid “Trek” fans by telling them they were going to see 1982’s “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.”
“We thought, we’ll show it to the biggest fans of ‘Trek’ and if we can make them happy, maybe we have a chance,” re recalled. The film went on to gross nearly $385 million worldwide.
Lindelof’s first AFF Panel, at 10:45 a.m. Saturday, is “Write What You Know: Fantasy/Sci-Fi.” He’ll appear with David Hayter and Roberto Orci (“Fringe” producers and Lindelof’s “Star Trek 2” co-writers) and discuss writing for those genres. At 3:45 p.m. Saturday he’ll appear on a “TV Development” Panel with “Freaks and Geeks” creator Paul Feig and writer/producer Chuck Sklar in which he’ll discuss the ‘Lost’ pilot.
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