Category Archives: Jack Bender

New LOST footage!

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were surprise guests at Jeff “Doc” Jensen and Dan Snierson’s “Entertainment Weekly Presents Totally LOST One Year Later” panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con yesterday afternoon.

Darlton said they had a scene from the Season 1 finale that had never been shown before — and that it would prove, once and for all, that they had planned the ending from the start.

It was actually a joke, as the footage was shot last week. It’s pretty funny, though:

“Yahoo for you and your light.” LOL.

The new footage was shot by Jack Bender on a back lot at Disney.

Here’s a good write-up of the event: LOST producers reunite at Comic-Con.

Schedule for LOST Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Desmond Hume Henry Ian Cusick LOST 6x11 Happily Ever After

Desmond in 6x11 Happily Ever After

Again this week there will only be the new episode, and no pop-up-enhanced rerun of last week’s (6×10 The Package) — the rerun will again be bumped by a Dancing With the Stars results show.

U.S. Schedule for Tuesday, April 6, 2010:

9:00 – 10:02 New episode 6×11 Happily Ever After

Official ABC description: “Desmond wakes up and realizes he is back on the island.”

Behind the cameras, they brought out the big guns for this episode — it was written by Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, and directed by Jack Bender.

The Press Release has a major spoiler about a guest star: Press Release for 6×11 Happily Ever After.

(Show is an hour earlier for Central Time)

Screenshot of Desmond is from the 6×11 Sneak Peek

Damon and Carlton talk about Season 6, boldness, and going off the grid

Maureen Ryan, who writes The Watcher column at the Chicago Tribune, recently talked to Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, for over an hour, about Season 6. She published a column with the highlights of the interview and will be posting the full transcript soon.

Here are some highlights of the highlights:

Damon and Carlton will write the Season 6 finale, and Jack Bender will direct it.

Season 6 will start where Season 5 left off. Carlton said:

There’s an eight-month gap [between seasons], but when you actually buy the DVDs, you’ll put the finale in for Season 5 and then you’re put the first disc in for Season 6 and it will feel like a very continuous experience.

Carlton said that this season’s central concept will be bold:

Last year, we committed to this concept of time travel with a certain expectation that some people really might not respond to it. I think the most pleasant surprise was how much people embraced it, because it was difficult and it was much more overtly science fiction, and yet people really seemed to like the season,” Cuse said. “But we have the same anxiety about what we’re doing this season. We kind of feel like the fundamental tenet that we’ve tried to follow as storytellers is ‘Be bold.’

He expressed uncertainty that the bold Season 6 approach would be well-received, but perhaps he doth protest too much:

But in being bold sometimes you fall on your face. So, we committed to a narrative approach this season which we feel is bold and it’s different than what we’ve done before. And if it works, it’ll be exciting, but it might not be everybody’s cup of tea either.

Damon said they really did plan everything out far in advance. Really, really, truly:

Despite what people think or say, so much of it has been talked about and planned for years now that you’re just kind of executing the plan to the best of your ability and changing the plan when it’s not working, but otherwise, you’re kind of married to the inevitable — the stuff that we want to do.

Carlton said it will be up to us to interpret the show, when it’s all over, and they won’t get in our way. Will they really be able to resist putting in their two cents? I wouldn’t, if it were me:

Cuse said the duo is going “off the grid” after the finale airs in order to avoid “having to interpret the ending.” More from Cuse on this topic: “We’ve always felt that one of the compelling elements of ‘Lost’ is its intentional ambiguity. The fact is, it’s open for interpretation and discussion and we feel like we would be doing a disservice to the fans and the viewers to say, ‘No, you must only look at this in one way.’ We don’t think that is really good for the show or for people’s ability to read into the show what they want…. We really feel we are very committed to this notion of not sort of stripping the show of its essential mystery. I mean, mystery exists in life …. There are sort of fundamental elements of mystery and magic to the show that are unexplainable, and any attempt to explain them would actually harm the show, and in our opinion, the legacy of the show. So we’re trying to find that kind of right blend of answering questions, but also leaving the things that should be mysterious, mysterious.

Finally, there’s great news for all of you (or is it only me?) who love to hear the LOST actors sing:

I jokingly suggested that this season we’d see either the much-discussed Zombie Season or at the very least a “Lost” musical. Unfortunately it was a no on both counts, but Cuse did say that in Season 6, we will see “a character singing.”

See Maureen Ryan’s full column, along with new Season 6 cast publicity photos here: ‘Lost’ photos and info found: A few thoughts from Cuse and Lindelof on the end of the island drama

Damon, Carlton and a Polar Bear picture via Lostpedia

The elusive J.J. Abrams

J.J. Abrams speaking at SoHo Apple store, May 2006

J.J. Abrams speaking at SoHo Apple store, May 2006

I had a question from Alfredo Gonzalez, who asked how he could contact J.J. Abrams.

J.J. Abrams apparently does not want to be contacted.

He’s not on Twitter. There was an account for a JJ_Abrams, but it was a hoax and was taken down.

The website for his production company, Bad Robot, has a page with the company logo and nothing else.

Clicking on the URL of a fan site, the J.J. Abrams Universe, gives an error message, at least when I checked.

It seems, in the immortal words of Greta Garbo, that he vants to be left alone. Or perhaps he just vants to avoid receiving truckloads of random screenplays.

On the other hand, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the joined-at-the-hip, writing-slash-executive-producing, often-joking, panel-discussion-appearing, interview-granting, commentary-track-recording dynamic duo, provide the public face of the LOST team and are easy to find. Both are active and interesting Twitter users. You can follow them at @DamonLindelof and @CarltonCuse.

By the way, according to Lostpedia, “Abrams will not be involved with Season 6, as he thinks that Damon and Carlton themselves should finish what they have been doing with the show. He also rejected the idea of directing the series finale, since he thinks Jack Bender has earned himself that right.”

Picture of J.J. Abrams by Steve McFarland via Wikipedia

Daniel Dae Kim in trailer for the Hawaii International Film Festival

Daniel Dae Kim looking at an ink blot

Daniel Dae Kim looking at an ink blot

Daniel Dae Kim, who plays Jin on LOST, stars in this trailer for the 2009 Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF), playing a writer who finds inspiration in an ink blot:

The Festival will have a special celebration of LOST on October 17, 2009, with master-class seminars during the day with producers Jean Higgens and Jack Bender, and with some of the show’s production, prop, and costume designers. In the evening, there will be a panel discussion featuring Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse with “special guest appearances from cast and crew members.”

Damon, Carlton, Jack Bender and Matthew Fox in Rome

They sure are getting around! They conducted a master class today at the Roma Fiction Fest, an event, now in its third year, dedicated to television drama.

Here’s the opening of the LOST program. It’s fun to hear the way people scream “Matthew!” when Fox walks onto the stage.

In the next video, the master class begins. Damon, Carlton, and Jack Bender talk about the early days of the show, why they think it is special — and how they got away with doing weird things. Questions are in Italian and answers in English:

It looks like the master class lasted about an hour and a half. There are nine videos covering it, which you can find here: LOST at Roma Fiction Fest on YouTube.

Videos by griffin13508822008 and Vale1187

Transcript now available for Damon, Carlton, Jack Bender’s talk in London

TV Overmind has posted a transcript of the July 3 London panel discussion with Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, and Jack Bender that I mentioned in my last post.

Highlights:

Season 6 will have 16 episodes, with the first and the last each being two hours.

They will start shooting Season 6 soon — on August 24.

Producer/writer Damon Lindelof

Producer/writer Damon Lindelof

Damon, on Jack and Locke and things happening “for a reason” (give that man a duck with $100):

I’m a huge fan of whenever Jack and Locke talk to each other. We’ve been very judicious in having those guys talk to each other. It happens very rarely. I go back to White Rabbit and that six or seven minute long scene where they’re just sitting in the jungle. And Jack says he’s following the impossible, and Locke says what if it’s not impossible and we were all put here for a reason. And that scene is the genesis for those guys’ relationship. And if you think about how that was the third episode shot out of the pilot, here we are now, 100 episodes later, and now Jack is finally saying “Y’know, Locke might be onto something.”

(I think this is the scene in White Rabbit that Damon was talking about):

Producer/writer Carlton Cuse

Producer/writer Carlton Cuse

Carlton, on how they write an episode (I love these little glimpses into the screenwriting process):

We spend a lot of time breaking each aspect of the story, and once we have the story worked out from beginning to end, we’ll put it up on whiteboard and then pitch it back to ourselves. And we’ll have scenes in different colors, with an on-island story, an off-island story, and a C-story, split it into six acts for the commercial breaks, and structure it so you’ll want to come back after each act. Then we’ll give it to some writers to rewrite and send back, and we’ll give our notes, make some changes.

Carlton, on destiny and how it relates to the writers themselves:

Q: You make a lot about the characters searching for their destiny and their purpose. Do you feel that you yourselves had a purpose in your own lives being involved in the show, or you’ve learned something about life from doing it?

Carlton: I think as writers we use the show to explore personal issues, spiritual or otherwise. We’re mainly concerned by how much faith and how much control do you have over your own destiny, something which is very fascinating to us… The writers’ room is diverse and that diversity gets worked out in the characters.

Damon, on the ending:

Q: I want to know about the end of LOST. Michael Emerson said in an interview this week that he suspects it will be quite bittersweet or melancholy. Is it going to be an upbeat ending or ambiguous? Just any kind of hint to the flavor of the ending.

Damon: All of the above. We are aspiring for an ending that is fair. Bittersweet comes with the territory. The ending will be different as for once, we won’t leave you on a cliffhanger. You will stay on the cliff this time.

On the cliff! Ha ha. I can’t wait.

Read the full transcript for lots more interesting tidbits.

Photos of Damon and Carlton from Lostpedia (not taken at the London event).

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