Darlton Live!!

OK, I’m going to try to make this quick because I was supposed to get writing done today and I STILL haven’t seemed to crack it. It hasn’t been a good week for writing (I took the week off to work on Finding Lost: Season 6) and see, I’m used to taking a week off work and returning having written somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 words (I type quickly). This week... not so much. I won’t say HOW pathetic (my editor might be reading and it’ll give her heart failure) but trust me, it’s pathetic. Every time I finally get deeply involved in something, the phone rings. Argh. But this book will happen, I promise.

SO. Last night (instead of writing) I was out at the LOST Live Talk with the NYT that was broadcast into movie theatres everywhere. (And I ran into redeem147, SenexMacDonald, and Question Mark!! It was totally awesome.) I sat with Mark Askwith at Space, and at one point we both whipped out notebooks at the same time, looked at each other and said, “GEEK.” I might ultimately post the full transcript (how do I have a full transcript? You might ask... good question. Ahem.) but for now, I’ll just post highlights (DL is Damon, CC is Carlton)...

• When asked how they come up with new ideas, Carlton said they just roll the dice. Damon added, “A TWENTY-SIDED DICE!!” and when the audience laughed he nodded approvingly, saying these were definitely his people.
• When working on the ending they said, if we were fans of the show, what would we want to see... and then they also decided they wouldn’t shy away from big emotion, and those two things were what helped form the finale.
• They said they needed to acknowledge just how BIG the finale was for the fans, that this was almost a spiritual thing, with anticipation and excitement and jitters, and treat the finale like the holy thing the fans think it is.
• Damon said the #1 question they get is, “Am I going to be really disappointed in the finale?” And he said, “Talk about performance anxiety!!” Haha!! He said they came up with an ending that satisfied THEM. One that also made the 425 people working on the show happy, and they knew if they could make them happy, they’d make the audience happy, too.
• Darlton went down to Hawaii for the shooting of the final scene, and said to the actors, “If you want any illumination of the final pages of the script, we’ll be right here to explain it to you,” and the actors were like, “Um... why would we start NOW?” They said for years the actors just get the scripts piecemeal, and just as in life, they don’t know what’s coming next, and they just go with it and never ask questions.
• CC said that the finale became real to them when they went and saw Giacchino recording the live music over the scenes for the score, and Damon got kicked out of the room because he was crying so hard. :::sniff:::
• They said the community that’s formed around Lost has become so important to them (yay!).
• They showed the clip from “Orientation” where Locke is about to push the Execute button for the first time, but doesn’t, telling Jack he needs to do it. There’s the whole, “Why is it so hard for you to believe?” “Why is it so easy for you?!” debate, followed by Locke appealing to Jack that this is a two-person job and he can’t do it alone. This made me really think a LOT about the finale, thinking that maybe Jack WON’T be the lone candidate, and that they’ll all realize he was right when he said if they don’t live together, they’ll die alone. I don’t think anyone is going to be doing that job alone.
• CC said one of the ideas going into the series was to explore the costs and consequences of faith, and that’s something they’ve explored throughout the 6 seasons.
• There was a question about the mirroring of the seasons, and they said that was deliberate (obvs) and that in this last season it’s about getting to know the character again but in a slightly different way, it’s like going back to S1 but we’re getting slightly different backstories for them.
• DL said the scenes of the mirrors are to give a sense of displacement. This idea of fans not liking new characters because they’re different is an attempt to make audiences have that who am I, how am I, where am I displacement that you sometimes get when looking in the mirror.
• At the end of season 1/beginning of season 2 they really knew where the show was going to go and they constructed the series’ overall mythology. Then before every season they would put together the detailed architecture of that particular season. CC said “We’re not JK Rowling; we collaborated with 425 people so it was obviously going to evolve as we went.”
• DL said they look at the show like it’s an organic entity, and they often let the show tell them what it wants it to be. (I loved here that they were talking about the show like it was the island!)
• DL said sometimes we make mistakes, and Nikki and Paulo was one of them (HAHAHAHAHA!!!!) They went on about N&P for a long time, and I loved EVERY MINUTE OF IT. They said Exposé was a polarizing episode because the fans who didn’t realize they were even there in the first place hated that they brought them to the fore for no reason, whereas the haters (like me!!) loved this episode because they just enjoyed the horrible death they gave them. They wanted Sawyer to be the voice of those haters, the “who the hell is Nikki?” line echoing what we were saying. Haha! They introduced N&P at a time when they didn’t have the end date, so they were sort of biding their time bringing things forward. He said, “We packed our fridge with food, some of which we never want to eat.” HAHAHA!!! DL said it’s obvious they’re going to make these mistakes, and he compared it to things like going to see a tightrope walker, where sometimes we enjoy the mistakes and seeing it happen... he said you sit in the audience at the circus going, “Wow, it would be HORRIBLE if he fell... but I’d still kinda like to see it!”
• Damon then made some sports joke about how even if you don’t know where the ball is going to go, you’ll swing the bat. Then he said, “At least I think that’s what you do in sports... I know nothing. Is that true, Carlton?” Carlton said, “Yes. In baseball you swing a bat.” Damon said, “Sorry, that metaphor just wouldn’t work with Orcs.” HAHAHA!!! Oh Damon I ♥ you!!
• DL said there will be a prominent Star Wars reference in the first 7 minutes of the finale. CC threw his hands up in the air like he’d just given a huge spoiler and then they bickered about what a spoiler was. ;)
• Question: What TV show made you go, “I want to do that.” CC said he watched tons of reruns when he came home from school, sitcoms and westerns mostly like Gunsmoke and Petticoat Junction. DL said it was watching Twin Peaks with his dad, where, when it was over they’d sit and talk about it for 2 hours and he said his dad said we should go rent David Lynch films, and he realized there was a creator hiding behind this show making it week after week and he wanted to be that person. He loved that there was a creator making this stuff that you’d want to discuss beyond the hour it was on.
• They talked about Eddie Kitsis being the guy who brought background characters to the fore, like Frogurt and Lapidus (getting the flaming arrow in Frogurt was Eddie’s favourite moment). He said Kitsis and Horowitz are the soul of Hurley. They have a very collaborative writing environment in the writers’ room. He said they never argue; it’s more like jury deliberation. You know the guy is guilty, you just have to convince everyone in the room to be on the same page.
• CC said “The greatest blessing of this show has been our partnership,” referring to Damon. Awwwwww....
• They said usually an ep takes a week and a half to break, and The Constant took 5 weeks. They showed the phone call from that episode, and when they came back DL looked really choked up. They said this was this mindbending episode that really challenged people and they realized the only way to keep the audience on board with the whole thing was to turn it into a love story at the end.
• They talked about how the premise of the show was that the characters were all solo acts and they needed each other to get over their stuff. AGAIN, it was reinforcing this idea of living together so you don’t die alone, which made me think differently about what is coming in the finale.
• What was your hardest plot choice? Killing Charlie. They said they tried to justify it (they even joked that they were like, “Um... Desmond’s actually been telling you that you were going to die for a LONG time, like, weren’t you listening??” but then they watched the episode and were absolutely in tears and realized that was a jerk thing to have done. ;)
• When asked about how fans seem to glom onto certain questions, they said they thought they’d explained or debunked certain things along the way but the fans don’t accept the explanation. For example, Aaron = special. The only person who ever said he was special was Richard Malkin, the psychic, and in the Eko episode they debunked him as a hoax, thereby removing the possibility that Aaron was special. He said the fans don’t accept that, and continue to think Aaron is special and that Malkin really meant it when he wanted Claire on that plane even though they’ve shown him up. This one really resonated with me, actually, because I’m sorry, but I’m in that fan camp simply because... what did Malkin have to gain by getting her on that plane? HE BOUGHT THE TICKET, for goodness’ sake. Why did he want her on that plane? Why did he give her money back? Why keep calling her in the middle of the night? There’s a difference between a hoax and a crazy person, and if he didn’t actually mean any of that then he’s a complete loon. Or it’s just really bad storytelling to deflect it, and I don’t think they’re bad storytellers. SO that was a little odd to me.
• They get asked “So... what’s up with Walt?” DL said, “Malcolm David Kelly is now 39 years old and six foot five!! By the end of the season you could hear that Peter Brady twitch of puberty in his voice and we were saying, ‘We gotta get that kid on a raft STAT!’” LOL!!!! As to whether or not Walt will appear in the finale? CC did give the answer. If you want to see it, just highlight the next line and you’ll see it, and otherwise you can move to the next question.
• YES. To which DL said, “Oh come ON, I say we’ll make a joke about Star Wars and it’s a spoiler, and you think THAT wasn’t?! Oh it is ON.”
• They showed the clip of the Miles/Hurley time travel argument, and said it was a re-enactment of the discussion they had in the writer’s room.
• When asked if they cast the parts for particular actors ever, DL said when writing the part of Ben, they said, “Who do we know who could convincingly play someone who was deceitful, untruthful...” and then a scream went up from the NYT audience because Michael Emerson walked onto the stage.
• Emerson was asked who his favourite person to act scenes with was, and he said recently he’s really enjoyed being paired with Jorge Garcia, because they’re polar opposites and it’s really interesting to have that... and this one delicious scene was... and then Jorge walked in. He joked, “I was standing backstage saying, ‘Do I go now? How about now?’ and the girl was shrugging and I was worried if I didn’t move soon Michael would start talking about working with someone else and I’d miss my window of opportunity.” HA!
• The next question was from a fan from Guelph, Ontario, and CC laughed and looked into the camera and said, “Hello all you fans out in Guelph! I hope there wasn’t too long a line!” Oh you JEST, CC, but I bet there was just as long a line in Guelph as anywhere else! GO GUELPH!!
• Now it moved to open mike questions (which always worry me... they should have been vetted.) They were asked, is a rule breakable? In S1 it looked like Smokey was going to kill John Locke by pulling him into the hole but Jack saved him. DL said he might not have killed him, and they talked around it and got past that one.
• They were asked a long-winded question about faith, and CC said the show has allowed them to illuminate their thoughts on faith, and the whole live together, die alone thing is where they went with it, that people form a community and find strength in that sense of common spirituality. On the show they lifted each other up (ooh, Desmond reference!!) To them that’s what’s important... finding the people to lift you up in this world.
• Re: Widmore: Coming on the freight he was going to do bad things because he felt remorse and anger at having to lose his son, but this past week he explained that Jacob visited him and he saw the error of his ways. DL said the way they wrote that was for the audience: We’ve given you all these clues over the years that Widmore is not to be trusted. Now we’re going to put this line in his mouth: Do you believe him? How are you going to use the stuff that you know to be true in this scene? So they’re leaving that up to us to see if we believe it or not. (Interestingly, I took it to be true because they played the Jacob music in the background, but now they’re suggesting maybe I shouldn’t have followed that musical cue; and also, DL referred to this as the scene of Widmore’s “demise,” where I was starting to wonder if the guy had been wearing a bullet-proof vest and wasn’t actually dead. Hm.)
• A fan asked specifically, “During the Tour de Stade scene (he’s referring to the scene where Desmond and Jack first met in the stadium) Desmond said, “You’ve got to lift it up, bruthah,” and he was hoping that would be a line that comes back in the finale. Again, for spoilerphobes, you have to highlight the next point to see Damon’s response.
• DL simply said, “You will not walk away from the finale disappointed.”
• Someone asked why they give away big surprises of guest stars in the opening credits (I’ll admit I was disappointed this week to see “Mira Furlan” in the credits because I would have LOVED the surprise of seeing Rousseau jump out of the car). He simply said, “If I were you guys, I’d hold up your hand to the bottom of the screen during the finale because it’s ALL going to be given away...” They said the obvious, that they’re contractually bound to put the actors’ names at the beginning, and they can’t tell an agent, “Oh, and by the way, we won’t be crediting your client in the show because we don’t want to ruin the surprise.” ;)
• Emerson said the best part of season 6 was getting to play two entirely different characters.
• Someone asked, “Why must there be a human presence on the island?” Damon said, “Wow. A softball.” Ha!! He said “Because the non-human presence would be boring.” He said in the Garden of Eden everything was lovely until humans screwed it up and they’re going with that. Jorge joked that there’s only one bird on the entire island, and then added, “He was special and killed off all the other birds.” HAHAHA!!!
• DL looked at Jorge and said, “You’re not just an actor on the show, but you’re a fan of the show. Why didn’t you want to ask us any questions after getting the full script?” Jorge thought about it for a second and said, “As a fan... I think I got it.” Big applause in the room.
• Jorge added, “Next fall, when you find that show you love, and you watch it, go into work the next day... and talk about Lost.” HAHAHAHA!!!
• I was annoyed by some of the questions, I’ll admit. Someone asked CC what his faith leanings were, and frankly I found that too personal and it had no bearing on the show. He handled it with grace. Someone else posited a theory about how the two timelines would come together and sort of put everyone on the spot, because if they say yes you NAILED it, then, um. Well. But if it’s wrong, they’ve eliminated a possible theory. I just thought these questions were STUPID.
• Someone asked what will ultimately be the significance of Eloise (like SERIOUSLY you can’t wait 3 more friggin’ days??) and they said when a character is inserted in the scene to catch people up really quickly on something, they call that the “Johnny the Explainer” character, and Eloise has been that for a few episodes.

And those for me were the main highlights. There was a lot more (best parts were all of DL’s geeky references, and them talking about how the two of them just sit and chat together in CC’s office over breakfast every morning) and it was SO much fun. You know, one of the things I’ll miss the most about Lost is these two. They’ve said that after the finale they will not be out there talking about it and doing interviews, and they want the audience to come to those conclusions. They’re not going to do the explaining for them. It was a great night. Thank you, Darlton!!

UPDATE: OMG, I can't believe I completely forgot to mention they showed us a clip from the FINALE!!!! For spoilerphobes, once again it's in white:

So Sawyer's hiding behind these bushes looking at Smokey by the well, and Ben comes up behind him and basically says, "Don't lurk, if you're here to join us, then join us." Sawyer rolls his eyes and wanders over with his hands up, and Smokey is his usual aloof self and asks Sawyer what he's doing. Sawyer said he heard Des was in the well so he was here to help him out. He leans over and says, "Looks like someone beat me to the punch. Oh well." Nice pun! So then Ben makes some caustic comment and Sawyer clocks him in the mouth with his elbow and it looks like Ben might have lost a few teeth or something, and then Locke says, "Do you know what I wanted with Desmond?" Sawyer says, "Sure, you probably wanted him to help you destroy the island." Smokey stands there, pause... as if, "Um... actually that was EXACTLY why. You totally ruined my Dum dum DUM!!! moment)" and then he says, "Exactly." And Sawyer says he's not that interested, and steps back, and Smokey looks at the shocked Ben, who's all, "Wait, WHAT? I didn't think you literally meant destroy the island, I thought that was figurative" and Smokey's all, "Oh, sorry... you mean because I promised to give you the island? Yeah... I forgot to mention it would be at the bottom of the ocean when you presumed ownership over it." and Ben looks pissed, and then someone (can't remember who) looks down at the base of the well in the dirt and says, "Hey, are those dog pawprints?" and they ARE and the whole audience just freaked out. I yelled out, "VINCENT!!!!" YAY!!! And that's where it ended.