Gadgetory

hey we're here at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles I flew out from New York to sit down with Damon Lindelof one of the men behind lost the co-screenwriter of Prometheus and basically just an insane genius so let's go have a chat so you're busy man you've got a pretty major project that's about to be revealed to the world uh when are you ever because I got for me the-- oh yeah should I is there a sore something else that I should know about there's a you're very busy guy there's it more there's this Disney movie 1952 that we just announced Brad Bird is gonna direct but we're not talking about what it is or can you tell me a little about what it is no you just give me an idea of the plot it's a it's a it's about characters who want something and there's other characters trying to stop them you tell me who from guest-starring in this film no we don't have any I would tell you but there's no actors to animated no I'm not cousin Tina it's like check out in uh happily is that true there's a happy ending yes it's a Disney movie oh I mean you know anything's possible in this day and age it's 2012 it's a penis guarantee even to even the movie 2012 has a happy ending I've never seen it see ended I'm sorry to hear that you just love CJ is it yet credibility this is by the way not the first time 2012 was come up and people were I think Neil deGrasse Tyson was talking specifically to me about 2012 and I had no response because I didn't ever seen it no he wasn't talking about the movie no no he was talking about the movie as it relates to the universe oh of course I'm sorry to hear that yeah he said he was completely right that's how that's how it all ends that's it well it's a it's a fascinating movie not to digress but um but when you think about a movie that's essentially about the end of the world and it's John Cusack versus the end of the world like what's the ending of that movie look like like how does how does a had as one character beat the end of the world and I riff on what I think happens yet this is what this is much more interesting probably than the actual movie baby I think that give you a hint John Cusack along with a small band of survivors find some one spot on the planet that's where we're going to start over yes and rebuild humanity the way it should have been built first time around right without fossil fuels yes more or less that I got the idea I would sort of amend like small band of survivors to like four ginormous arc loads of survivors basically represent the the lottery winners slash wealthy Oleg arcs of all societies and the not you happy ended yeah but that these arcs do get to the the place that you refer to yep it's all like rich bastards most of them are rich bastards John Cusack one of them he's a stockbroker he's not a rich bastard his what if memory serves his wife has married a rich bat his ex-wife is married a rich bat okay so it's kind of like or he falls in or not he finds it he falls in with like a Russian rich bastard so it's sort of like an Independence Day how Jeff Goldblum's wife is working with the president so he ends up like with all the important powerful people sure and then save the world and his dad Harvey Fierstein no Harvey fires is not it is that is God hurt her shreya oh my gosh yeah yes he gets a he dies right they kill him off for sure I fit right in yeah you have the attractive Jew survived sure well yeah the attractive Jew here Goldblum at the edge I heard no yeah well he survives to that's right he survives they all go into the into the bunker yes where where they're keeping the alien ship yes there's a lot of Jews and in the area have to say kind of Jesus yeah and there's a real you know there's a real like well there's a very religious kind of subtext to the whole thing absolutely it's an important movie maybe talk for 90 minutes just enough it's arguable that it's more important in some ways than the Torah what then the Torah that's right you heard it here first right exactly Independence Day is more important than the Torah yes we are this exactly this exactly what I thought we'd be talking about by the way I knew it I just talked more about Judaism than I have since my bar mitzvah so you varmints was on the mine cuz you have to leave tomorrow to go to a bar mitzvah I do I did for your second first cousin once removed second cousin once we're there is some fundamental debate as to whether or not it's my second cousin or my first cousin once removed but it's definitely a person who's related to you yes that's the important thing correct the son of my cousin this is I'm sure why they sound right Dada they've tuned out now so you can say whatever let's just write so so you don't want to talk about you can't how about 1952 which has a happy ending correct and stars no one yes but but that's good but you can't talk about prometheus which is a small film that you've done independent film you've done yes Ridley Scott sure you are the co screenwriter yeah a gentleman by the name of John Speights wrote on the moon wrote the first draft of the screenplay for several first drafts he worked in the movie for about a year and then I came in after him so we didn't ever work simultaneously you kind of took when he added that's right exactly another plays yes I mean that's the that's that's the the process out here right John when I was just I was still working on the last season of Lost while he was writing on prometheus and then he went on to do bigger and better things and then I came in on prometheus and normally there's a whole chain of screenwriter so I'm proud that it's just John and alright it's a small process yeah cowboys and Aliens which is the only other movie I have a writing credit on I think there's nine credited writers does that bother you that there's nine credit writers yeah I think it would have been a better movie had to just been your name on it no I don't I would have been a better movie if my I've been nowhere near and really I just think I because I would feel if anybody tampered with anything that I did I would always feel like whatever the end result is going to be somehow bastardized a bastardized version of my version yeah but I'm yeah he's easier said than done because I'm tampering with you know when it but when I came into that movie it was between the fourth and the fifth season of Lost so I worked on it for two and a half months and uh and injected some ideas and did a draft of the script that was built on the foundation of other drafts and then there was considerable writing done after I left which is just it's weird it's sort of the equivalent of like going to the sperm bank and saying like maybe this will be used in a kid in combination with a bunch of others like you can't really do it you know if you don't have fundamental authorship so it's a worse than that in a way cuz at least with the with the kid you know it's at least one of them right the good news was I got to meet and work with Favreau Jon Favreau on that the the draft that I wrote with Alex Kurtzman and Bob warsi got John on board and then I started hanging out with him for maybe a month before I had to go back onto lost and he's a great cool guy and I loved I loved that collaboration but he seems like he seems like a guy who is incredibly powerful and rich and famous but whenever I've seen him speak anywhere or just he's not the kind of regular dude he's like a very nice guy yeah here is he a huge-ass no he's not a huge-ass at all he's one of us I mean he's when I am when I first came out to LA in 94 swingers was like the big thing and essentially he and his friends Vince Vaughn the most prominent amongst them we're sort of living the Hollywood existence that my friends and I were except they were much better looking at having much more success with women but that's what that movie was about right and so I completely and totally idolized Jon Favreau and the idea that he was also a writer and a director and started putting more time and attention into that part of his career than the acting part of his career I thought was commendable and then he's into all the same stuff that we are as fanboys you know he just nerd he already got he's nerdy and it comes across in his movies I mean they don't they seem like they're they have the touch of obsession no definitely which is a huge component for making these things work and also a tone is everything and I think I give massive accolades to Joss Whedon for Avengers and he did an incredible job but I think that Favreau was the guy with Iron Man that did the first like four so when you see the Avengers other than the fact that it's awesome and you want to see it again you go like why did it take so long to figure out to do this I mean these characters didn't get invented like ten years ago right why did it take them so long and the answer is it's such it's so totally difficult to pull off those movies and Iron Man was the first one where it's sort of like I'm going to take this seriously I'm never going to have the characters turn and wink at the camera but at the same time it's going to be super fun to watch right women are gonna want to go and see it and they're legitimately funny mood yeah they're awesome so I give Fabro huge props for basically kick-starting you know that whole progression of movies it's like he kind of took the and we're still way off topic of my question but it's like he took which I don't mind all he took can't wait to hear it he took well yes and there's a lot of area what I want gay talk about his point he took that that um he took comics the way comics used to be even up until the 80s were they when they really got dark in the 80s but where they were that you could tell a real story and but still have fun with it and it was actually like there was something kind of adventurous and exciting that wasn't it wasn't dark and heavy and brooding you know if it wasn't all Batman yeah and he made a movie that would did all the stuff that like a rift that a great Batman movie should do right where it's like action-packed and has serious moments but is somewhat light in a way that like is way more palatable to a broad audience yeah no definitely which is weird because it's actually really nerdy that kind of tone is kind of a nerdy weird specialist tone yeah it's it's II it's completely and totally socially acceptable right now and actually socially expected to think superhero movies are cool yeah and we take for granted that 15 years ago that was not the case this is a good bridge to talking about your new movie that while you talk about it that's right I did you but basically said no doubt go with that segue to say that and we'll move uh so prometheus is a is an arm movie it's not really a broad audience well it's obviously a broad audience but it's an adult audience yeah and I'm curious to know what your thoughts are me god movies like The Avengers that aren't very much like their four kids and therefore the kids parents as well and this seems like you specifically really and you are obviously trying to make something that is for adults yeah I think you know the first thing that I have to say and I and I mean this completely genuinely without an ounce of Hollywood you know false modesty is it's Ridley's movie John and I John John certainly contributed at a tremendous amount of ideas most of which I built on and then I came up with some stuff organically to the process but at the end of the day my job was sitting across a table from Ridley Scott asking him a series of questions like he was on 60 minutes and then based on his answers to those questions I then went and generated at a screenplay but that process that I just described to you went over the course of three or four weeks so I really felt like I just I just kind of bullied Ridley into dictating the movie to tell you what then I got to put my name on it so the movie a lot of the ideas are actually the seeds are from Ridley directly absolutely because a aside from its relationship to the original alien which is a question iterations of that question are the things that I've been asked about the most I'm looking forward to it at the end of the day when you're working with Ridley Scott who is people throw the word visionary around a lot but that's literally what he is by definition and so he's going to make the movie he needs to get the movie and it's not about me coming in and saying hey Ridley I've got this great idea do you want to direct it it's about him saying I want to direct a movie in this universe here's what I want it to be about here are the ideas that excite me here are the thematics that I'm interested in and here are the character traits that I want to demonstrate and it's it's not to reduce the process of screenwriting but I feel like in film which is much different than what I did in TV it is a little bit like Mad Libs where my job is essentially you know really saying adjectives now you know euphemism and that's how the movie was made yeah that's a and that exactly I'm sure he'll be excited when to hear that you describe the moviemaking process as Mad Libs i but i but I do feel like I I have great pride in my own lack of authorship in the movie and I feel like if the movie is a huge success it's all because of Ridley Scott and if the movie is not a success it's because I wasn't able to execute his vision successfully um and that's that's the that's the feeling that I have so let's talk about the connection between aliens or alien or universe because there's been there seems to be some and correct me if I'm wrong but I feel like people who are talking about the movie who are involved in the movie have gone not out of their way but have made a point to say look this isn't a sequel to alien or aliens or alien 3 or Alien Resurrection sure or alien vs. predator right or alien vs. predator - yes you're saying this is a different movie but it isn't mean it's not a sequel - it's a prequel if anything right you're not even calling it that well I mean I take exception to the fact that it that it's called a prequel because and and I know a lot of this sounds a lot like that you have to get a slightly defensive terrain but for me just as a fanboy when I hear the word prequel that doesn't get me excited right and the reason that it doesn't get me excited isn't because I have a negative association with prequels we have to think like what's contextualized that word the first time that I heard that word in any sort of public or social setting was in reference to the fact that George was going to do the first three Star Wars movies and I was enormous ly excited about that yeah that aside once you actually see what a prequel is a prequel is by definition a march towards the inevitable so while we know that the guy is going to get the girl or there's going to be a happy ending there's certain story beats that you hit the idea of saying I'm now just going to watch this young boy turn into Darth Vader you're leading me into the story that I already know there's certain things that I know can't happen like nothing's going to happen to obi-wan right because it's a prequel and so I and and then I went and saw the thing prequel and I loved the I love John Carpenter's The Thing and I was really excited about it but then when it ended it spoiler alert the the thing ends with a dog that has the thing inside it running across the frozen tundra as it's being chased by a helicopter that's shooting at it and when I saw that there was a small degree of satisfaction in terms of like oh this is where the other movie began and on the heels of that a tremendous amount of disappointment and going like then why did I just watch this movie it was just sort of you just wrote the prologue for me and I felt it was really important that that Prometheus was not positioned as a prologue to alien right that in fact if Prometheus were successful and there was a sequel to it the sequel to Prometheus would not be alien I also felt like alien is as close to a perfect movie as it gets and I was very reluctant to engage in a conversation that would somehow diminish alien right like that if you saw if for some reason Prometheus didn't succeed creatively that when you went and watched alien again you'd be like this movie is now you should taste would be soured in some way why yeah why why oh I bet that so all that by way of saying that if you my hope is that if you see Prometheus and you watch alien again there will be certain things that were mysteries before about alien that you have more clarity on but not but but the mysteries that made alien great are still mysteries right and I've had a certain degree of success and failure in mystery resolution I feel some mysteries are just much more engaging than their resolution and I don't want to answer those it's like ooh where is Amelia Earhart she's rotting somewhere and the bottom of like the ocean are you like you're cheating that's the probably unless she was abducted by aliens or you know or she's living you know somewhere in you know in France like 50 and hotend and has discovered the Fountain of Youth like but the reality is is the answer to these mysteries are usually less compelling than whatever our imagination transposes onto them and so if they're I do think that we succeeded in if there's a sequel to prometheus it's not about the things that alien is about which is eggs and facehuggers and chess bursters and xenomorphs right like that that not only alien but then aliens they need to go and live off on that tangent Prometheus is launching it's servicing that tangent it's saying here's an explanation you'll understand the context of maybe where some of those things came from but it's much more interested in going off and its own duress chin and we're there a sequel to Prometheus it probably wouldn't need to trade in any of those ideas so let me let's just get nerdy for a second I'm gonna get real specific as opposed to what I would like here because you've been for the last 20 minutes you're speaking very broadly about the you know you're kind of setting the stage for this but yes but here's my impression based on the trailers and it's funny because I actually could not I haven't seen alien for years probably since not since I was a teenager or like I really young like 13 mm-hmm and it was on television we had this debate in the podcast and we were talking like how does it start because I couldn't remember mhm and it was on television I watched it and I remembered I saw a bunch of self I was like oh yes now it all makes sense so Prometheus clearly is not about Sigourney Weaver's character correct it's clearly not about I mean I think from just what I see in the trailer it's not about people fighting the alien creatures that doesn't seem to be at least that that's not what a hint of what I've seen you know yes haha but it does seem to be taking place in or on or around the the beginning of alien which is or or alien full-stop which is this large there's this large alien craft they stumble upon I mean that is it that seems to be in your in Prometheus so there is a connection some connective tissue there right I mean there's there are places that are shared there X is what I'm asking uh yes but not uh I I think that again I'm not trying to be a Crypt overly cryptic but if I answer all these questions I think that we cross that line from let me just say like there there was a two minute trailer out there the people were like I can't wait to see this movie and then there was a three minute international challenge yeah and that one extra minute of material is the line that you cross where people start to say you told me to my right and I agree I think semi-trailer was gave away so my desire to not tell you what is the relationship between my hope is and again this is frustrating to some but it's the space in which I live which is the reason to me that I loved inception was after inception was over there was stuff for me to fight about and discuss with my friends is too it meant what happened what was a dream what was in a dream like all those things that the movie left and some sort of ambiguous space and I know ambiguity is a very scary word especially when you apply it to the context of of the television that I've done however I will continue to embrace ambiguity because I find it really interesting and I have a tremendous amount of faith in the intelligence of the audience most of them are much smarter than I am and I will have an intention but the idea of not spelling it out entirely I will tell you right now that this movie even when you go and see it there is space to debate what the relationship between this movie and alien is we are not connecting the dots for you we are giving you the requisite information to make an impassioned an impassioned discussion about it you will know a hell of a lot more than you did before but it's not like this movie ends with a derelict spacecraft full of eggs crash landing on lv-426 which is the derelict spacecraft that the Nostromo happens upon at the beginning of alien that's inevitability and it's not interesting right so but with ambiguity that the danger there is it by the way I'm not just I think I'm not trying to get you to tell me like what happens in the movie yeah I guess my question was they're in the same universe because there's been a debate with people that this isn't it completely separate right universe they are they share the universe absolutely and I don't want to segue into the viral of the movie but I will say like when Ridley and I and I'm sure he and Jon and a couple of guys worth mentioning Michael elenberg who was sort of Ridley's right-hand guy at scot-free when I came on there and an executive producer in the movie and then a guy Steve as Bell who is an executive at 20th Century Fox who was like the hugest like alien compendium of information incredibly impatient creative guy those guys are worth mentioning very early on we started saying this is the question that is not going to go away is it a prequel what is it so is there a way that we can start generating content other than just the trailer to start as opposed to Ridley Scott in interviews or me an interview saying here's the movies relationship to alien where we can begin to message to the people who care about that stuff and the people who care are the people who are fans of the original the Nerds the fanboys if we're going to typecast so uh that was the birth of the the Weyland idea now Weyland was a character in John Speights draft he's a key he is a character that appears in Prometheus in a different way than he did originally but I said Weyland becomes the universal bridge because we all know the name of the the company in an alien is weyland-yutani they are the company that basically that the Nostromo works for and they're kemal t a conglomerate that's into terraforming amongst other things and so if we say Weyland is in our movie and we give the audience some context for who he is and we are then they'll know that they're happening in the same universe right and can we can we shoot a cool piece of material that's not going to be in our movie it's not a trailer it's not a scene that you see three months before the movie comes out it just exists completely and totally on its own that will begin to sort of message that to the people that care and we think it's important to do that and really completely and totally agreed and that was the birth of what evolved into this Peter Weyland TED talk right that we unveiled at ed and then and then went viral that guy Pierce who plays Waylon in the movie agreed to do and I think that it's hard to watch that in any context and then make the argument that these don't occupy the same behind line yeah so so getting back to the ambiguity point I think the danger there and for what's frustrating for people and I think that with lost I think a lot of people feel this way is that it ambiguities it can sometimes come off as not like hey here's something for discussion but you didn't know sure or like you didn't have the answer right right it's very frustrating to feel when you when you're very attached and I think alien is franchise obviously people are very very attached to lost obviously people are very attached to and it's frustrating when you when you love something and you really care for it and you want there to be real answers you know for comic book fans and like like fanboys mm-hmm getting the answers is really important sure and so I think that the fine line you have to walk it with it with being ambiguous is was it ambiguous because the person you know doesn't have the answer or is it ambiguous because they want you to ask the question right and and I think that that that's what's that can be that's what can be frustrating I mean I I told you I was going to ask you at the summit so just get into it now I mean I'm a person who watched lofts all the way through again and thought the ending was extremely disappointing okay disappointing because it felt like if I felt like the praat there was a promise of something much more and not profound maybe not more moving certainly not more moving in my opinion but something smarter right and it felt like it ended on this in this way that was like well so what was the point uh-huh and so there the ambiguity was not I mean there was there stuff that was specific and stuff that was ambiguous but I think there was it felt like well they didn't have the answer right this was the neatest way to wrap it up share without having to answer any of the questions or you know avoiding some of the questions right do you does that now haunt you like that kind of sense of people being of needing the answer and not getting it and you having to answer for it I mean I know you tweeted about Mass Effect the end of Mass Effect 3 sure you said I wasn't involved in the ending of rewrite people have been disappointed with some of its ambiguity and sure does that feel like it's haunting you and it does it haunt you with this I think haunt is probably not as accurate a word as I think haunt sort of implies like it's it's it's something that creates a tremendous amount of stress and sadness and fear for me as much as it is something that I accept as a part of the legacy of that show and do I embrace it I embrace it in the same way that Matt Damon embraces Robin Williams and Good Will Hunting like under duress and wanting to punch it too so like it is a it is a it is a deeply conflicted ongoing battle that I have but I have is is is obnoxious and entitled as the sounds I also have no regrets about it like so in order to be haunted by it like I think regret is part of haunting where it's sort of like you know I if I could go back in time I would do it differently and for me I just sort of feel that and again my own authorship and lost I have to say there were a bunch of other writers on the show there was JJ at its inception there was Carlton all the way through there were amazingly talented writers in the writers room but I take responsibility an authorship for lost in in terms of my own feelings about the ending and I make no apologies for it I do feel like that was the ending that I wanted to do and I was always comfortable with the ambiguity of the show and I think that that there were times over if there was one regret that I had there there were times over the course of the show where in interviews I said the answers are coming but if you I challenge you to look at any interview that I gave post the middle of season 3 which was the turning point when they said you can we can now give you an end date to the show because up until then there was there was a degree of improvisation that had to occur because we didn't know how many of these things we were going to do or how long we were going to be around to be doing them once we said there's going to be 48 episodes left at that point a firm plan had to come into motion then from that point on I think that I started saying publicly if you are watching the show for the answers to your mysteries you're not going to like the ending and I will I will pull you know at least 10 instances of Carlton and I saying this in interviews and major publications in on television and I'll say hey you know if if you didn't do your due diligence and listen to what we had to say you were warned right and I just it's not that I didn't care about the mythology of the show I just feel like many shows have come and gone that are very focused on their mysteries and their mythologies and their and there is no were seen in the history of genre than the architect explaining to neo everything that happened in the matrix I wasn't going to touch that with a ten-foot pole that is a particularly awful instance of over explanation of like feeling like you owe it to the audience right okay so we have the architect and then we have lost and the lost lost is not enough and the architect is too much and somewhere in between is just right and I'm going to always be closer to lost than I am to the architect because that is just not interesting to me right and I think like I my own storytelling the things that capture my imagination and make me want to re-engage are sometimes frustrating and challenging but for lost it was like by the way I will actually answer any questions that you have about the show but I won't say oh here's what it was I will actually refer you I'll give you the required reading if you're worried about what the numbers were all about or what was Walt's purpose or those are the things that actually bothered me I was sitting here I've just been sitting here listening you talk about and I realized I wasn't disappointed with like that with lost not giving me answers at the end what I was actually disappointed with the answer gave which it felt like the answer was all the things that just happened didn't really mean anything they kind of didn't happen that was that my takeaway from it what do you mean they didn't it was like all the things that happened all these things that were set up as you know you've got to stop the man in black because X Y & Z sure uh it didn't matter right wooly because it wasn't real yes it was well but not really and it was like it was like a shared fantasy I mean it didn't seem like there was like I mean what no so so so the things that were gone on the island were happening in the actual world yes I cannot believe we're talking about this by the way cuz I had no plans to get into a detailed conversation about it so they were happen in like our timeline correct I mean yes I mean there's no oceanic Airlines in our no no I mean but but in the real world not in it's like kind of like moment before death fantasy world where everybody's trying to find each other so they can go to heaven no correct so at the end of the show the last frame of the show Matthew Fox closes his eyes closes his eye and dies you know that happened like in our context of happening like that happened that's all it's then from the moment that he closed his eye all that other stuff that we did in the in the sixth season of the show the flash sideways where nobody knows each other and the plane never crashed that is whatever your interpretation is I'm not going to talk about what our intention is but that's what you would define is not having happened or happening but everything that we ever showed you anything that takes place on the island and lost happened you know absolutely 100% the plane crash those people survived everything that you saw throughout those six seasons like some whole struggle between good and bad that's like a really meaningful thing that actually occurred yes that would have threatened the universe had not been the Dharma Initiative Israel the island is real all those Hurley right now right now at this moment in time Hurley and Ben and with help some with some help from Walt are actually running things on the island maintaining it this is the or the ending good thing about this for the for the movie that could have potentially happened no I mean I what well look III again I don't want to ruin the mystery and ambiguity of the show in terms of talking about our intention but I do feel like one of the things that we always wanted to do and we're very passionate about doing was exploring the idea of purgatory both figuratively and literally and this was so obvious to the audience that within three or four episodes of the of the first season of the show they were like it's purgatory right they're all dead and we kept saying we swear to God they are not all dead this is really happening but the audience is telling us that they really want some sort of clinical evaluation of an afterlife right and purgatory is about judgment and this show has never really offered up what I would call Christian Judeo judgment in terms of there's a deity it's always about self judgment so the idea of like and you know does Jack think that he's worthy or Sawyer can Sawyer forgive himself for his sins or did Kate kill her stepfather justifiably so I always felt like if the characters can forgive themselves then they can then then the show's over show's called lost it's not because they're on an island it's because they're lost so right so how are we going to creatively demonstrate that self forgiveness we're going to we're going to do this idea and so there was an interpretation I think largely a large part of it came from ABC's decision to run footage of the plane wreckage over the end credits of the finale and we publicly got out and said oh my god that was not our idea right don't don't it that was kind of like well it did almost a race a lot I think that that was the feeling but we also anticipated your reaction in terms of and here's the thing is I can't logic anyone who is disappointed in the finale and is suddenly being undisciplined with it right you have a visceral reaction to things you either like them or you don't like them and I honor your your your feedback among and the feedback of other dissenters that is to say though that in the fun I think that in the final scene of the show that proceeds the church where basically Jack's father Christian Shepard says some things to Jack one of the things that Jack says is like wait a minute hold on is this is this real like did any of this happen like because josh is going to be busting Damon's balls about this and Jamie's going to new year a few years after the famines going to need to say something we edited that part out because it would have been weird for you uh-huh like you would have been like oh my god this is strange but then his father says it's all real it all happened everything happened you know and so I was like that's going to make it pretty clear but yeah I wasn't clear enough I have to say it's been so it's been I mean when did the show and how many years ago was it two years two years ago which is seems like a long time lot of stuff exactly like it ended you it ended May 23rd of 2000 the 2009/2010 sorry I I mean I am distant from it now but I just remember that I had that feeling of going well this none nothing matters that's interesting now I want to go back and watch it having heard this from you let me now that I've got you on the couch though because I'm actually I've actually got you on the couch but that's fine I find this refreshing because I am actually really interested in in gait few people will engage me on their level of disappointment because it's an uncomfortable thing to do that's like telling somebody works so I yeah but I like it and what I would say to you is coming into the finale the night that the finale is going to air like before you even sit down to watch it can you honestly tell me that you felt optimistic that at the end of those two and a half hours you would be satisfied or were you already like this no I think that something could have happened rather be really satisfied right you up until that point in the show you were like I love I because you guys had been you your faith had not wavered prior to oh no no my faith had wavered plenty there were three whole seasons that I was like this is why am I wasting my time watching this show because they were just very disappointed I have a quest and I actually want to ask about that because I feel like to me lost felt like a show that was meant to be fewer seasons than it actually was and you even said there was some filler there oh my god sure I mean to me it felt like and this actually gets to it so let me be before I get into this question and we will talk about prometheus at some point I was look if you guys had had revealed that the entire thing was some thereof in space it was part of an alien experiment going on with thousands of other groups of humans that they'd been plucking off the planet yeah I was riffing by the way I've just I have been like okay this is like some weird philip k dick stuff that's how it's going to end it's gonna be like slaughterhouse-five and I could get totally behind that right because it was like it would have made sense to me that a lot of things didn't make sense and it would have also been a really upsetting ending share sort of a nada I feel like the ending was almost like a happy ending and which to me I didn't see coming or kind of didn't want right by the way I'm one man amongst millions and millions of shows people I mean admit I know there are millions of people who love the end are very satisfied by it sure but but yeah there were things that I think that going into it I felt like if there had been I wasn't my mind wasn't set against there being a conclusion that I would have been happy with if Bob Newhart had woken up and it had all been a dream that he was having which I talked about for years as a ninja with my wife I would have been completely satisfied with that ending and would have thought it was the most brilliant thing that was ever put on television sure we wouldn't be having this conversation right now yeah I mean I guess I'd be I we resigned ourselves either correctly or incorrectly fairly early on to the idea that whatever mythological construct we came up with for what the ultimate ending of the show was and I feel personally speaking like one of the most unsuccessful episodes of lost is this one across the sea which basically tells the origin story of Jacob and the man in black and it's just kind of rife with like fundamental explanation it's as close to the architect scene as we got and it also needed to set up like here's where the end the end game of the island is going to play out that that's sort of like I wasn't really emotionally invested in that episode because it didn't feature any of the people that I had been told to care about in the preceding 115 episodes it wasn't that Jacob and the man in black weren't interesting characters they were but it was sort of like wait a minute I thought the show was about any time you say to people what's lost about it starts with like well there's this plane crash and therefore they don't say like well centuries and centuries ago in fact millennia ago if they say that you go like boom out so I always just felt like the the show that the ending that we were shooting for was going to be one that the dealt was sort of the emotional reality of the characters and gave some fundamental explanation for why what did these people get out of this plane crash right and the and the answer is corny as it sounds was the one that appealed to me the most which is each other that's what they got they were all sad individuals who were lost in their own lives and hated themselves and somehow they found some fundamental community amongst each other they hadn't met each other and spent all that time on the island then they would never have been able to forgive themselves for their past sins and break through to some sort of level of self awakening and forgiveness it is new agey it is okay but it's the story that I wanted to tell it's interesting because I feel like now my the alien ending that I just talked about seems very cynical and mean-spirited in comparison to what you were talking about like I wanted to find each other and be happy well which is like they are doomed in space to go through alien experiments but the thing is when you go for anything there's going to be some fundamental polarization so that like life on Mars for example the American version I will not spoil the ending for anybody who wants to embark on it but the concept of life on Mars is that basically a detective played by Jason O'Mara and the British in the American version basically he he he is without explanation suddenly finds himself in the 70s as a cop and so the series is asking he gets in a car crash and then he wakes up in the 70s as a cop and so the series starts to ask the question of like well how is this possible and they did 13 episodes the show was cancelled but they did resolve the the ending of the show well there was a resolution it was an explanation for how that happened and I would say that it is very much in the wheelhouse of what what your solution was and there were some people who said that that was great and clever and there were a lot of people who said that they didn't like it right and um if there is a perfect ending out there for a long form sort of mythology serious the Newhart ending doesn't apply because it was a sitcom they just did a very clever last scene right for the entire series but well that's extreme that one is really like but there are no more question right but it's almost like saying elsewhere like they did the crazy snow globe ending but this but it was just a hospital show it didn't even require that right but if I said to you like let me ask you something do you like the x-files are you asking me that round asking oh I love it what happened at the end of the x-files in the last episode and just anything that happened so loose you remember Airy last episode yeah I'm trying to think it's been year uh I don't remember right so I said oh releasing I have I remember the universe I kind of remember with the resolution like what happened to the warring alien fat boy ler alert whoever's watching yeah it's been long enough screw you you should have seen it yes uh you know I remember that you know what happens the smoking man oh is he is he I don't know I feel like I am gonna spoil it for people but I kind of remember what happens but you have a question here what is your question it wasn't a question it was at least you remember being really disappointed in the way lost ended and you have very specific memories of why you were disciplined - right but you know it's it's what had an ending that was very clear yeah I'll say that it wasn't in any that I particularly liked yes but it had an ending it had an ending yes it definitely added and something you could you know say specifically happened to the characters right and I feel like at the very least no matter what your interpretation is you do know that everyone that you ever cared about died and and that you got treated to some version of an epilogue how it is they died and how that all fits together discuss amongst yourselves I feel like we were pretty clear in it but one of the things that I didn't want people to do is like well when's the movie coming out right sort of like when The Sopranos ended and people were like I hope there's a Sopranos movie I'm like if they do a movie it completely nullifies the brilliance of the cut to black yeah and there were people who didn't like the cut to black because they felt like they wanted more resolution or that there was a promise of more resolution and at the end of the day like they didn't even understand that a movie would completely and totally erase the boldness of that decision it's just like that's it like that's the last time you ever will see Tony Soprano is eating onion rings in that diner with this family that's all you get I also imagine that ends by the way that's an alien experiment yes I know some and guess what spaceship no one can prove you wrong that's right even David chances well that's why it's so brilliant why it's perfect so so so actually let's bring this back around to what you're seeing right we're talking about alien space alien spaceships but but the the creating something that goes on for six seasons or longer seems like a kind of a challenge to on the creative process of telling a story I mean it seems like a finite you know a book I mean you do have books like you know the game of Thrones books that are obviously they're going on and on right and that works yes but it does often feel like in the creative process you want to have some you want to know there's a finite amount that you can you can say right now I feel like dark shows that work really well because they're like you know the office the British office for instance yes they said we're gonna do two seasons and we're done yep and it isn't special any Christmas special right where they answer a bunch of questions wrap ups and absolutely we finally understand we know what happened with made the operands kick yeah yeah sure uh is it more satisfying to you in some ways to work on something like Prometheus where you have you're like look I've got two hours to deal with this thing there's not going to be any filler I've got to tell this story succinctly and answer questions in a relatively short amount of time is that more satisfying them to you now you you know you've obviously done both things what do you get more satisfaction out of and do you think it's actually I mean because I I'm sorry I'm gonna let you answer that question but I have a follow-up to it yeah I mean it is very satisfying to to do a movie that has a beginning middle and end and you know exactly what you're getting into when you start the job television you don't know what you're getting into you don't know how many years it's going to be on for you don't its hubris to say I have a plan for the entire second season of the show because no one's even watching it yet they have to like it for you to get to that point so they're you know and I talk about this often so I won't belabor the point but the two things that sort of came up all the time during lost where question number one are you making it up as you go along and the answer to that question is no like that's what people want you to say no we absolutely have a firm plan and there's a binder over there and that's where our plan is and we've got it and you're in good hands mommy and daddy know where we're going don't worry about you have a map that's question number one question number two how much input does the audience have and the answer to that question is a lot we listen to you guys all the time we want to know what you like and what you don't like and we will adjust accordingly are these your actual answers these are the that people want these are the answers that people want yeah you know nobody wants to be told you don't matter like the audience like we don't care what you have to say about the show we're doing it the way we want to do it and nobody wants to hear we don't have a plan we're kind of winging it and whatever feels right we're going to do like the true those the real answers they are not the real answers the real answers I've given an is politic as they may sound the real answers are there is a plan and when the plan doesn't work we change the plan and the other answer is yes we really listen to what you have to say but norm like 98% of the time we agree with you before you've said it because the episode that you've just hated we hated six months ago when we first wrote it and we started fixing already so there's a space between the seasons where you're where it matters a lot because we haven't started writing the next season of the show yet but while the show is on it's we can see the iceberg that you are telling us to not hit but we can't turn off the ship we can't turn off the engines in time to not hit it we've already written those episodes so those are the those are the true answers but the bit the inherent contradiction between those two ideas of you you you want to listen to us but at the same time listening to us would require you to deviate from the plan that we want you to have it feels like it's a catch-22 which is exactly what it is but I love being in that catch-22 like I love doing that dance and I do feel like I there's a lack of safety and television that's so exciting to me and that's why I watch TV because I sort of feel like anything can happen it can sort of go off a cliff and the more fast and loose and dangerous you play the more exciting it is to watch and sometimes that means creatively and I I sort of embraced that idea I did learn lessons you know from loss that I feel rolled into Prometheus and what's interesting about the original alien is you can watch that movie and be like I'm curious as to what what's the story with that space jockey in this derelict ship but that isn't important the movie isn't telling you that that's important the movie is telling you that the thing that just jumped out of the egg on that ship and is now stuck to John hurts face that's important that's what you're supposed to worry about now and then and then the sequel and so on and so forth but the idea that Prometheus now enters into a more and maybe this is why Ridley and those guys sought me out in the first place into the movie is asking very specific questions the characters are saying we want answers to these questions some of the answers they get some of the answers they extrapolate and but then something happens that leads the resolution of the questions is secondary to their own survival I think all of this stuff is already endemic people don't want to see Prometheus like a bunch of people sitting around a table pondering the meaning of life they want to see like what happens when you open Pandora's Box like that's fundamental sci-fi storytelling the scientist wants to make giant Tomatoes to feed the world and the next thing you know there's enormous ants and spiders like crawling through Albuquerque eating people and it's it's that idea of like we want to there's a line we shouldn't cross the line we all know we shouldn't cross it we shouldn't fly too close to the Sun we shouldn't steal fire from the gods we do it anyway we can't help ourselves we're humans and then we pay the consequences that's sci-fi 101 that's the story that really wanted to tell that's why I loved Blade Runner it's it's why I loved alien and it's like almost every alien movie is essentially about an iteration of the same theme which is no matter what these things do to us the company keeps feeling there's a way to monetize all right you know right it's like all right well you think we would have learned our lesson a second got it I know last word did I well yeah exactly this is gonna be it right it is odd you would think for such a smart group of people they would just go you know what but that's us I mean we can't help ourselves and we wanna everyone says like oh my god like when people are in a scary you know in a house and they hear a noise in the Attic and then they're like we should go check that out you just moan to yourself like ah but if they just left the house like what's that movie right you know or but in but in your life you would I mean you would you go investigate the sound I guess maybe you would I'll tell you what I would do I would call the police that's what I do just and depends on the sound maybe just like a little like a squeak or something you're not gonna call the police no I will go and check it out what what sound what how what kind of sound would have to be to get you to call the police let me ask you a question like is the house like a people been murdered in the house before yeah you bought a house you got a summer home for your family yes and you found out when you guys were moving in that family had been murdered there right and then I hear a noise in the Attic you're a noise it sounds like a person moaning yeah uh I do not go and check that you call the police right well I send my wife or that's nice you know he's just I'm sure your wife would be so happy can you guys see with the screaming right on it is yeah that's really wonderful um I probably don't do anything you know I probably just like that's a really scary noise like we should just stay down and flip the house right for profit sure absolutely bad try not to do trinomials like no betcha the murder think we're grandfathered in we weren't murdered yeah you were there for a whole couple of days right exactly Prometheus viral stuff yes you first off what is your level of involvement in the in the viral things like the the David video and and you've got a new one new viral video that's yeah that just could've just came out the the viral stuff that stuff that we did on lost all the time I'm really into viral stuff for other movies I did not invent viral by any stretch of the imagination but it's always been something that I've really been interested in one of the one of the failings I think sometimes a viral content is that it doesn't feature the actors from the movie so it's just like it's kind of like just for the Nerds so it's like put together the trailer for the movie or whatever and I love doing that stuff but I'm essentially like for something to really like be interesting and compelling like it should have the same production value of the movie and for that you need the resources so it's like who's going to have the balls to say to Michael Fassbender can we take you for a day and do this cool idea that we had but Ridley the great there are so many great things about him but he and Tony run this company RSA which is essentially their commercial production house so they have all these brilliant like young commercial directors who are enormous ly innovative individuals used to basically just kind of conceptualizing and figuring out on their own laptops Adam content and so we had that resource at our disposal and so Michael elenberg and I essentially started saying like the first idea I had was I was just really into TED Talks and I was like we should do a TED talk with Weyland and it'll be we'll get if we can talk guy into it we don't have to do a full 18 minute TED talk but we can talk about some of the themes of the movie but it'll be like in the future like we'll set it in like 20 23 tab and like um we just have to ask Ted if they let us use their branding otherwise it'll be like a Fred talk and it'll feel like cheap and disingenuous right and I know this guy Tom Reilly who is um who's sort of um you know this very plugged in super tech-savvy very cool geek at Ted who when I went to the conference was sort of like my conduit in there I called him up and was like would you guys be open to letting us use the Ted branding and he said I'll do you one better what if you showed it at Ted you know what if you unveiled it at Ted and we and you could use even the Ted website to show this thing and so everybody got super excited about that when we pitch it to Ridley and then he essentially I wrote the TED talk and and then his son Luke Ridley's son Luke directed a guy through the TED talk and then produced that entire thing through our essay and then the I said the other idea that we had was we should do a commercial for David the Android I was like there's there's commercials for iPhones this is before Siri came along I was like there's a commercial for an iPad or an iPhone wouldn't a robot have a commercial light and what would that look like and so this guy Johnny hard staff that's his real name come on you know what his porn name is like Glen Frankford like it's completely innocuous no his name's Johnny Hart right of course I would have to be he bit he basically took that idea the David idea and ran with it and I wrote some some consum dialogue for that but a lot of the visual ideas were totally Johnny's and and were produced by those guys and then the first piece of viral was new we really want a new Mira pass to basically be the star of the movie and she had done girl with a dragon tattoo and was already doing the Sherlock Holmes sequel but I think Fox just wanted to see to see her on film to do a screen test with her and so I wrote this this transmission that she makes to Wayland in an effort to try to convince him to fund her crazy mission and so that it would just be a monologue for her because there wasn't really any there weren't really any monologues in the movie and so we gave that to new me and then she did it and it was super Ridley didn't shoot like it wasn't just new Mira Paz on video he filmed it like she was in costume you know it was there was incredibly high production value it was like well this should go on the DVD and he's like screw the DVD this should be a piece of viral like if I saw this on my laptop like on YouTube I would find it enormously compelling I'd wanna I want to go see that movie right and so that was that was sort of the genesis for for that idea so in Fox marketing I have to say like it's easy to blow smoke because essentially they're my bosses but all the people over there from bumble Ward and and and Katharine covert and Nathan Marcy of all like so embraced the viral idea they completely understood what it was and so the idea of using that to kind of bolster the more traditional trailers because there was this period where nobody was talking about prometheus is it a prequel what is it and then very quickly we just flooded everybody with all this materials so then the conversation became about like well what is this what does this mean how does this how does this fit into the overall puzzle of the movie and they just the way that they doled it out and however they told it out created a zeitgeist where there there was no as I guys there was only sort of curiosity bordering on frustration yeah because it's that thing of like you've got to give me something right and I think the viral became an answer to all right look this is the something that we're giving you what's really interesting about it too is that it creates this grout it somehow makes the it makes the film so much larger it broadens that universe of the movie right it's like suddenly it feels like it's got gravity they didn't have before because there are artifacts from that universe that have you know it's kind of clear the David commercials not going to appear in the movie yes right you wouldn't deserve that in the middle of the film but it gives the idea of this universe so much more wait to have these little artifacts that live outside of the film itself which i think is really fascinating it's something that we now have a medium where we can we can you can you can do the film for theater yes right and but we've got this amazing fluid flexible medium of the web that allows you to show the masses these other little pieces that kind of flesh out some way that the universe that you're trying to create for the big screen and I think that as a native people are so hungry for any additional content because it creates this sort of this this feeling of being in the know being a super fan of something you have sort of a stock and trade so you're able to say like hey did you see the David video and other people are like no and you're like oh I'll send you the link and then that suddenly makes you a purveyor of content you're you're on the inside and I think it's like again to go back to like kind of what Marvel did by at the end of Iron Man by just dropping in that reference to the Avengers and having you know Nick Fury pitch that Avengers initiative and that became the first piece of viral for like I have a better word you know that led us down the road to Avengers but suddenly what started happening is for any Marvel movie the entire audience will just sit there through all of the credits just to have the experience of watching 90 seconds more of content and uh it and it's like did you did you need to do this Joss Whedon you did not you're giving this to me this gift like you've already got my 14 bucks and you're not only going to give me like one post-credit scenes but now like if I sit through the entire movie there's yet another one and thank you like any kind of sort it's a premium is what it is because you know as opposed to looking at at viral as marketing to get you to see the next one which by the way that's what the Tony Stark Nick Fury scene at the end of Iron Man it's viral marketing they're essentially saying go buy a ticket for the Avengers right like if you didn't know what coming like you and I knew what the Avengers were before we saw Ironman but my wife didn't she was like what's Avengers yeah and I was like homeboy just wait yeah do you have like two hours you start with the Infinity Gauntlet yeah that's that's I mean that is interesting I mean to think that well it's actually I think a viral is purely for the Internet but it's interesting to think about it as something that now is we're like putting Easter eggs and movies because they're essentially Easter eggs in some way right because fanboy culture has bled so much into the mainstream that people are looking for it like you said like people are like looking for these little clues viral is Sasha Baron Cohen showing up at the Academy Awards and spelling Ash's on Ryan Seacrest and that's you know it becomes web content because you heard that it happened but when it first happened it was live theater it was you know it was that it was that idea of a shell being in the audience so viral by definition is any form of a Content that gets you more excited for the product that its steering you towards right is Prometheus an action movie and before you answer I want to set this up a little bit it seems like modern-day science fiction cannot exist without it having an action component and if you look at you know a movie like 2001 I would not classify it's it's not an action of it correct something else yes so did you is prometheus an action movie or is it something else I couldn't describe it as an action movie any more than I would describe inception as an action movie but there's a lot of explosions and people shooting guns and the entire you know that entire final set piece and inception that takes place at the snow fortress is actually an x action set piece you know it just doesn't feel like an action movie so I wouldn't describe it that way I think not that I'm putting Prometheus and Inception on the same in terms of they're the same movie I'm just answering your question in that way was saying like first and foremost I think it's a sci-fi movie and I think I think that it's safe to say prometheus is as much an action movie as alien is horror movie which is it trades on those genre elements obviously just from the trailer you've seen there's there's much more of an action fuse on Prometheus than I think then I then I then I think alien but I would say aliens is an action movie yeah and Prometheus is much more if it feels a lot more like alien than aliens to me in terms of its storytelling I think it takes its time and and it's not just about getting to the next set piece that being said once that fuse gets lit it's a there there is a fair amount of sort of scope and sizzle to it bollocks and really really wanted to do that stuff I think one of the things that I've been hearing both again in in the reoccurring theme of this interview you take the good with the bad is the good side it's like this feels a lot like the original alien like because there's motifs in the original alien there's an Android you're not entirely sure you trust there's people in cryosleep there's a there's a female lead there's clearly something happening to these people that is reminiscent of those ideas there's creeping around through dark corridors with flashlights like so people go this feels a lot like alien and then there's other people who are saying like this feels a lot like alien so like it's just that it's just more of the same sex and look and you that that's what you're up against when you are courting that fan base and I'll take it every day of the week like that's the price of doing business because I I'm just as critical of of other content and I would rather have people say to me for the rest of my career you screwed up a Ridley Scott movie then not say that to me because I'm like hey like I got to be involved in a Ridley Scott I got a screw up a rivers go Maasai fight not only did I screw up a really Scott movie I screwed up the first Ridley Scott's sci-fi movie in 30 years like that if that's not going to go on your headstone then what should I think that's a good place to edit Kamin thanks so much my pleasure really off thanks