I found an article published on TV.com back in 2005 which said that Spinner had sued ABC, J.J. Abrams, and Damon Lindelof in August, 2005, claiming they stole the idea that he had pitched to the network in 1977 — the same claim he is making in the new lawsuit he filed this week.
That 2005 lawsuit must be the one that TMZ said was dismissed for procedural reasons.
Posted in Stolen idea lawsuit
It looks like LOST is being hit with another lawsuit, on top of the sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Henry Ian Cusick in April.
Anthony Spinner, who was a producer on Baretta and Babes in Toyland, claims that he wrote a 121-page TV pilot script called Lost for $30,000 in 1977.
My opinion: this doesn’t smell right.
What about all the stories Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have told, over and over in podcasts, and panel discussions, and episode commentary, about the origins of the show, about how it started off as a twist on Survivor and they didn’t really know where it was going, figuring it out as they went along. Could all that have been a ruse to distract people from their having stolen the story? I don’t think so. (If true, it would have been such a spectacular long con that even Sawyer would have impressed.)
As for the question of why Spinner waited to bring the lawsuit now, rather than four years ago when the show started, Spinner said that it took three years of litigation to get his former employer to concede that he, personally, had the rights to the script. So that part of it, I guess, is plausible.
I’m betting, though, that nothing will come of this.
Sources: TMZ and Courthouse News Service
You can see a copy of a list (PDF), filed in the lawsuit, of supposed similarities between Spinner’s pilot and LOST (via TMZ).
Picture of the gavel from Wikipedia.
Posted in Stolen idea lawsuit
I think this is one of the best pictures of Josh Holloway without his shirt that I’ve seen — and that’s saying a lot. It’s from a print ad:
Josh Holloway in an ad for Cool Water cologne
This is a screenshot from a TV ad for the same cologne:
Josh Holloway, emerging from the ocean, in screenshot from TV commercial
Editing to add: I just found a copy of the commercial on YouTube, so I’m adding it in here:
And these are some screenshots from a video about the making of the ads. The first one does stray from the without-his-shirt theme of this post, but he looked so good there, I had to include it:
Josh Holloway, with stubble, in the "Making of" video
Josh Holloway, in "Making of" video, getting ready to dive
A blog devoted to men’s grooming products has posted what appear to be publicity stills from the making of the commercial. I especially like the one of Josh in jeans and no shirt, lying on his back, surrounded by the camera crew:
Josh Holloway lying down
Print ad and videos (c) Davidoff Parfums
Several print ads, the TV ad video, and the “Making of” video are all available on the Cool Waters site.
Fanatic Sawyer fans (you know who you are) can also download wallpaper-sized high-resolution copies of the first image, as well as screensavers for the PC or Mac, on the Cool Waters “Goodies” page.
The “Josh Holloway lying down” picture is from The Grooming Guru, where you can find a much larger and higher-resolution copy, along with other high-resolution pictures from the commercial shoot. Editing 7/19/09 to add: Here’s one more!
Michael Emerson in "Ask Lost" part 2
This is the 7th short video in the Ask LOST series. It appears to be the last one that ABC is going to put out, at least for now. So it’s fitting that this portion of the series ends where it began — with Michael Emerson.
He’s my favorite actor, of all the LOST actors, to watch being interviewed. I just love the way he thinks about what he’s saying — you can almost see the gears turning in his head. I love the sound of his voice, as I’ve mentioned before — his stage actor’s diction. Most of all, I love his sense of humor. A great example of that is in the last segment of this video, where he gently pulls our leg with an almost straight face — and then, holding off until the very last moment, he breaks out in a grin.
I do disagree, though, with Emerson’s notion that Ben hasn’t fundamentally changed. I think Ben changed a lot, in this last season — or else we are seeing a radically different side of him that we had never seen before. Ben had always been such a powerful presence, the alpha bad guy, but in Season 5 he became greatly diminished, losing alpha status first to Locke (or, rather, to notLocke), and then to Jacob. In his last scene in the Finale, he seemed to regress back to being a wounded child, which was something far different, though no less lethal, from the terrifying puppetmaster he had been in Seasons 2, 3, and 4.
Posted in Ask Lost, Ben (Michael Emerson), Interviews
Those of you who used to read my old blog might remember the series of posts I did called “Without Their Shirts.” I thought about that today, after I found the pictures of Matthew Fox without his shirt in Rome. I thought it might be fun to redo the series here, and it would be a good chance to freshen it up with some new video clips, because so many of the clips I used before have subsequently been pulled off of YouTube.
I think that LOST combines highbrow and lowbrow impulses in a way few other TV shows do. It’s full of literary references and sophisticated character development, but also contains many action sequences and a generous sprinkling of unabashed beef- and cheesecake.
This first clip, which shows Kate taking off her shirt while standing in the ocean, is LOST at its most cheescakiest. There is no reason for this scene to exist other than to show her taking off her shirt. And at the end, she simply stands there, looking fabulous in her bra and thong — just posing for the camera.
In this next clip, Kate again takes off her shirt, but this time Sawyer is watching. This scene doesn’t feel gratuitous, the way the first clip did. It shows a key moment in Kate and Sawyer’s relationship. It is also, although only a few seconds long, one of the sexiest scenes ever shown on LOST, in my opinion:
The scene of Kate in the ocean is from the Season 1 Pilot, part 2. The scene of Sawyer and Kate in the cages is from episode 3×04, Every Man for Himself.
A photographer snapped several pictures of a shirtless Matthew Fox standing on his hotel balcony. I guess the weather must have been nice!
Matthew Fox, without his shirt, on a balcony in Rome, July 2009
You can see a full set of 18 pictures of Matthew’s day — many pictures of him with his wife, son, and mother, seeing the sights of Rome, as well as a few more balcony shots, one showing off his tattoo — on JustJared.com.
I also found an interesting description of Tuesday’s Fiction Fest event, written by Elisabetta, an Italian blogger who was there with a group of fellow hardcore Matthew Fox fans. They showed up wearing Dharma jumpsuits! Elisabetta writes about how they were screaming — so they may have been the ones whose screams you can hear on the video of the master class when Matthew Fox walked onto the stage. Read a detailed description of their day, and see a picture of them in their jumpsuits, on the Foxy and Jack Rule blog.
Photo from JustJared.com, (c) Bauergriffinonline.com
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