AVC: You mentioned the road map you generally have for each season. How detailed is the map for the rest of the series?
CC: The most liberating and significant event that's happened for us was getting an end date for the show, negotiated with the studio and the network. Before that, Damon and I didn't know if the mythology we'd created was supposed to sustain us over two seasons or six seasons, so it was very hard for us to do any sort of planning. But once we agreed upon a number of episodes before we were going to end the show, then we were able to start a situation where we could sketch out the rest. Once we finish writing the finale, we'll have a mini-camp on season five. We have a mini-camp every year, but because we're getting close enough to the end, the mini-camp on season five will also involve a lot of discussion about what's going to go on in season six.
AVC: Do you both already know what's going to go on?
DL: Do we know the absolute end of the show? Yeah. We've had that in mind for quite some time. But can we hand you a script for the last episode of the show right now? No, because there are market fluctuations that we are unaware of at this point. Certain characters that you want to write more for sort of wear out their welcome sooner rather than later. New characters are introduced, and pop in unexpected ways. The essential nature of that last episode is more specifically about what the last three or four scenes are, and us working toward those has always remained pretty constant.
AVC: At some point, is Lost going to have to shift from flashing forward and flashing back and having mysteries and character moments, and instead become a straightforward action-adventure, in order to get to that big finish?
CC: In terms of abandoning mysteries, no. Fundamentally, Lost is a mystery show, so I think that would be stripping the franchise of sort of its essential nature. In terms of how we'll tell the story, that's something very much in flux. This year, the degree of difficulty went up, as Damon was alluding to before. Before, we were putting the tiles of the mosaic in the present and in the past. Now, we're putting tiles in the present, the past, and the future. But what you consider the present, the past, and future is dependent on where your point of view is. The only rule that we have about that is that we're not bound to any rules. We will basically tell the remaining stories in the way we think is most compelling from a narrative perspective.
AVC: Is it right to think of Lost as one big narrative, like a novel, or should it be thought of as episodic?
DL: You know, both. Ultimately, the legacy value of the show will function more as a novel. On your bookshelf there will be a DVD set, or maybe on your hard drive, you'll be able to click on any episode you want to watch at any time. That's the way people read books. Fundamentally, you can digest what will be all 122 hours of the show over the course of a marathon viewing session in one week. Or, you can watch one every couple nights, or however you want. Ultimately, that's the way the show is going to live on. The way you're watching the show now is incredibly unique. You know there's going to be a season finale on May 22, and then you'll have to wait all the way until the end of January 2009 to see the next episode, whereas three or four years from now, people who are experiencing the show for the first time will basically only have to wait a day or an hour or a minute before they decide to slide in the next DVD. It's like Harry Potter. Now, all seven books exist, but when we were reading them, we waited up to two and a half years between books. We're writing the show to stay in the zeitgeist as it's airing. We have to write finales that are compelling enough to bring the audience back for the next season. But at the same time, the superstructure of "every season is a book" is the way we've always talked about it, and every episode is a chapter in that book. That feels like the most apt metaphor.
AVC: Going back to your comment about "market fluctuations" and how they affect character arcs, are Fisher Stevens and Zoe Bell going to be returning?
CC: You know, I think we'll duck that question.
AVC: How about this: Were the "tailies," particularly Eko, Libby, and Ana-Lucia, always going to be funeral-home fodder, or did you have other plans when you first introduced them?
DL: Our deal with Michele Rodriguez was always for a season-long arc. And then when we came to the moment when Michael was going to kill her, we also thought that if we killed Libby, it would be a one-two punch. Because Ana-Lucia is a character that a lot of the audience had mixed feelings about, but Libby is a character that nearly everybody loved. So to make Michael's act as heinous as possible, Libby ended up dead. Eko… there were deal complications with the actor going into that season, and though we did have plans for that character that would have extended well beyond season three of the show, as a result of the practical considerations of producing a show, it just didn't pan out.
AVC: So with a show as well-planned as yours, what do you do in that case? Do you move pieces of Eko's story to somebody else, or do they die along with him?
CC: Television shows aren't made in a vacuum. They're made in the real world, and the real world is complicated by the fact that you are coordinating your creative plans with hundreds of other people. In the case of Adewale [Akinnuoye-Agbaje, the actor who played Mr. Eko], he wanted to go back to London. People go to Hawaii, and either they love it or they get island fever, and Adewale was sort of in the latter camp. He just wasn't happy being in Hawaii, so we had to accommodate that. We made adjustments. You can sort of dictate to a certain degree what you want the show to be, but you have to listen just as hard to what the show is telling you it wants to be. Certain actors we write for and they pop, like Michael Emerson, and we find ourselves doing a lot more with him than we originally planned. Other ones like Mr. Eko, we had bigger plans for, but, just on a practical level, they didn't mesh with that actor's desires.
DL: We've got time for one more question, by the way.
AVC: How about a two-parter? a) During your partnership, have you ever have any major disagreements about the direction you want to take the show in? And b) Are there any story decisions that you now regret?
CC: Do you want to take A or B?
DL: I feel like we've talked about B ad nauseum, so I'll take B. As obnoxious as this sounds, we really regret nothing. Though we acknowledge that we've made significant mistakes, the reality is that the intent behind all those mistakes was the right intent. You take something like Nikki and Paolo, or spending nine episodes with our characters trapped in cages—at the time we made those decisions, our heart was in the right place. For Nikki and Paolo, we kept hearing fans saying, "What's going on with the other 30 people on the island? Why don't they go on any adventures?" And we were like, "That's a good and legitimate gripe, and let's see if we can figure out a way to get some of those guys into the show." And fundamentally, it just didn't work, but we don't regret having made the decision, or else fans would still be griping about [the background players]. Plus, it was a question we had ourselves.
As for the people in the cages, it's been pointed out to us recently that when we were writing that arc, basically we were trying to negotiate for an ending to the show. We ourselves as storytellers felt like we were trapped in cages. And the story could not progress until it was progressing toward something. Which is why the second half of season three really felt like we were answering questions, moving forward, introducing Cooper, having Locke and Sawyer acknowledge their mutual connection to the guy, and so on. All of those things were about us being able to move forward, as opposed to finding new ways to stay in place. We don't regret having written that storyline, with everybody trapped in the cages. It was an issue of necessity. You have to make mistakes in order to get it right.
CC: You know, I think for us, we're always going to try to push the envelope with the show, and when you try to push the envelope and fly close to the sound barrier, that plane is going to shatter, and sometimes it's going to break apart. And sometimes it's going to blow on through, and it's going to be exciting when it goes supersonic. We're always going to keep trying that, and sometimes, we're going to miss. But I think if we didn't do that, then people would really get upset.
As for your first question, the kind of beautiful thing about the show is how well we do collaborate. We see eye to eye on virtually everything. Occasionally, when we do see differently, it really just comes down to who feels the most passionate. We've always agreed that if one or the other feels more passionately about something, then the other one will yield. But you would be surprised how infrequently that happens.
DL: And Carlton and I aren't writing this show in a vacuum. There are six or seven other incredibly talented individuals that we spend many, many hours with in a room. The fact is that nobody can get territorial about any one idea, because it fundamentally always becomes a hive mind, and the best idea always wins. Carlton has always said, and I think he's right, that we're just trying to write a show that is cool for us. And the reason that we all work so well together is, we all think the same things are cool. We've never gotten to a point where somebody pitches something, and they think it's really cool, and everybody else goes, "Oh, that's not cool." We all sort of get onboard and rally around it.
« Previous | 1 | 2
- Comments