LOST Media Mentions - DarkUFO

Thanks to Sam from Lostpedia for the heads up on this interview they conducted with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse!

This is a cool read and is Part 1 of the interview.

Enjoy!!

Carlton Cuse: This is Carlton with the slightly deeper voice.

TheAma1/Alex: (laughs) Hey Carlton!

Damon Lindelof: And I'm Damon, the other one, with the very nasally voice.

Alex: And I'm Alex.

Damon: Excellent.

Alex: Ok, so I know you've mentioned already a couple of times, in DVD commentaries and such, Lostpedia. So we were just wondering what your relationship is with the website. Do you just know it by reputation, or do you generally have any form of interaction with it?

Damon: You know, obviously one of the questions that Carlton and I get asked very often is like “Is there a Lost Bible that has all the details of the show? Is there a database?”, and our answer to that question is “Yeah we have this guy named Gregg Nations, who is the keeper of all the information”, but there is also a website that is like Wikipedia, that is sort of fan aggregated, that has sort of every little detail about the show, they have still frames, but they are also... You know, what differentiates Gregg from what Lostpedia does, is that Lostpedia is speculative. That is to say, it has to assume something, because it's not run by us. So, you know, I think there is sometimes a perception out there that Lostpedia is kind of branded by the show, as opposed to a seperate fan community, and we find ourselves having to differentiate those two things. That being said, when we've visited the site we are incredibly impressed with sort of the level of detail. There are occasions where we basically say “What was Juliet's husband's first name?”, and if Gregg is not sitting in his office we will log into Lostpedia to get that answer.

Alex: Great. So have you ever used fan sites to gauge how well fans interpret the various answers on the show?

Carlton: We have a couple of guys in our office whose job is to sort of... They read a broad section of the fan sites after every episode, then they sort of give Damon and I the sort of reader's digest, synopsis, of what people responded to in the episode. This is good for us number 1: because we're still busy making the show, we dont have the time to search all the websites, but is also gives us the sense of what sense questions are percolating up, what assumptions people are making based on what they've seen. Have they puzzled something together. Do most people for instance, you know, we were well aware that many of the hardcore fans pretty much already figured out that Marvin Candle, or Pierre Chang, was Miles' dad. One of the questions that's been percolating up on the fan-sites has been “Well how come Sun didn't move on the airplane along with Kate and Jack and Hurley?”. You kind of become aware of what questions people have in their brains, and you know, that's helpful feedback for us.

Alex: Have you ever seen any theory that has come close to solving any major mysteries? Like the Smoke Monster or Jacob?

Damon: You know, the answer is not really, because... Sometimes, like for example, there were popular theories probably about a year ago, or maybe as long as two years ago, right around the time I guess Eko died. About the Smoke monster's function was some sort of judge. It basically took your memories and processed your life and decided whether you were worthy of living or not, and that is certainly, kind of, one of it's functions. We've dealt with that more specifically now on the show, but the audience simply does not know enough yet to make an educated guess about where all of this is leading. You will know a lot by the end of the Fifth season, probably a lot more to begin to get a much better sense of what the end game of the show may be, but we've had to hold a lot of that stuff back so that people wouldn't get it too early or that all the answers were coming in the penultimate season of the show. Considering what the audience has to work with, they've proven to be incredibly resourceful and insightful, but there are some clues that we have not yet presented them that are really intricall to figure out what the real endgame of the show is, so there's no way that they could really, you know, really...

Alex: ...grasp...

Damon: ...get at it. Yes.

Alex: Before an episode airs do you usually have a general idea of what the public's reaction will be? Or have you ever been surprised by any reactions towards an episode?

Carlton: Uhh, yeah, I would say not in a huge way, but I would say some times episodes that are Damon's and my favorite episodes are not necessarily the same as the ones the fans like, but it's usually just a matter of degrees. You know, we're here working on these things really intensely, and some of them we love more than others, but, you know, sometimes an episode we think is just okay the fans will really embrace and vice-versa. So there's a little bit of a difference sometimes between our perception and the audience's perception, but in major things there's pretty much agreement. For instance, we had already decided to cut bait on Nikki and Paulo before the audience had even seen their episodes. So the audience's negative reaction to them was sort of reaffirmation that we had made the right decision, but we had already made the decision to cut bait on them.

Alex: So, speaking of Nikki and Paulo... For a couple of years now you've been joking around a Seventh Zombie season so to speak . Are we ever going to get with the Season Six DVD set some kind of Zombie special episode?

Damon: That is a very engaging question! You never know.

Alex: Moving on to more show, or so to speak, related questions. In the special alternate reality game The Dharma Project from last year. A lot of fans want to know, since basically funding was pulled out of the Dharma project last year, what was going to be the final revelation of The Dharma Project? Since The Lost Experience was about the numbers, and Find 815 was about the fake wreckage, so, what was going to be the final act of The Dharma Project?

Damon: Essentially the whole idea was to signal to the audience that our characters: Jack and Kate and Sawyer and Hurley and Juliet and Sayid were going to end up in Dharma times, and Faraday too, sorry, and Miles of course, strongly imply that our characters were going to appear in Dharma times. So that would be something that would be sort of set up in the Internet experience. I think some people believe that they hear Faraday's voice in the Comic-Con experience. These events are sort of partially canon but more promotional than they are canon. Giving the audience a sneak peak as to what the season is about.

Alex: A foreshadowing of what was coming basically?

Damon: Right, and clearly our characters arrive in Dharma times in the seventh episode, in LaFleur, so, we knew that we were gonna be spending with them almost half the season in Dharma times, but we weren't going to be starting to tell the audience that story until after 6 episodes had aired, so uh, sorry, LaFleur is the eighth episode, but that entire story was basically setting up the audience for those stories.

Posted By: The ODI

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