TV’s ‘Lost’ and Its Hero: Dead but Not Dead

Thanks to jackbushjohnson for the heads up.

Remember back in May when we all gathered around our television sets for the “Lost” finale, a two-and-a-half-hour extravaganza in which Matthew Fox’s character, Jack Shephard, went to his reward, and we learned that the flash-sideways universe was the afterlife or something?

Turns out “Lost” isn’t quite over yet. On Tuesday that ABC show’s sixth and final season was released on DVD, along with a boxed set containing the entire series, both with hours of bonus materials. And on Sunday the series will vie for 12 Emmy Awards, including those for best dramatic series and best lead actor in a drama — Mr. Fox, who’s nominated for the award for the first time.

Mr. Fox spoke recently with Dave Itzkoff for the ArtsBeat blog of The New York Times about his afterlife in the weird parallel universe where “Lost” has finished its run, and the day he said goodbye to Jack Shephard for good — or did he? These are excerpts from that conversation. Or are they? No, they definitely are.

Q. Does it feel strange to still be promoting “Lost” three months after the series came to an end?

A. Just because it’s done with its network run doesn’t mean that I’m done wanting the whole story to have its full effect on as big an audience as possible.

With the DVD and the box set of the series coming out, a lot of people actually see the series that way these days for the first time, so there’s still a big audience out there that hasn’t either ever experienced any of it, or hasn’t had the sixth season yet. It doesn’t feel strange at all — it feels like following through to the very end.

Q. Were you among the members of the “Lost” ensemble who went into a self-imposed media blackout immediately after the finale was shown?

A. That wasn’t an intentional thing for me — I think [the show runners] Damon [Lindelof] and Carlton [Cuse] knew that there was going to be a lot of questions about the way the show ended. I hear that there’s some people out there that were not tremendously satisfied with it. But I certainly haven’t gotten that feedback.

Q. So people were coming up to you on the streets in the days after, going, “Hey, nice death?”

A. Always in a positive way. They loved it. They really appreciated the six years of the show and all of our contributions to it. I think that the media might have wanted to create a little bit of, like, “Well, there’s some people that are dissatisfied with the way it ended,” and they want to make a story out of it. I certainly didn’t feel that in my experience. If there are people out there who were really dissatisfied, at least around me, they’re being awfully quiet.

Source: Full Article @ nytimes