Getting LOST

You might not want to watch this if you

haven't seen Lost yet.

'Cause it's gonna ruin everything.

You have been warned.

Hello. This is the orientation video for

a documentary about Lost.

In this documentary, we will be examining

the legacy of the show,

Its impact on the television landscape

and community of fans that were brought

together to attempt to solve the mysteries of the island.

Please sit back and enjoy the movie. Thank you.

Namaste and good luck.

Lost is so much more than a television show.

Lost changed my life.

It changed the lives of many people.

The idea immediately struck me that

if it weren't a regular island,

that's a show that would intrigue me.

It really did

make you question what you believed in.

Are you a man of science

or are you a man of faith?

There was nothing that had prepared us

for the scale of Lost.

These are all deeply flawed people.

They're all seeking redemption.

And that's incredibly compelling.

I don't think people realize just how

much it transformed the television landscape.

Lost was a huge deal at the time.

It was gigantic.

It was a really special time.

It felt historic and we didn't know

it would have such an amazing response from fans.

But we knew it was

sort of go big or go home.

Should we start at the beginning?

I think that's the only place to start.

The inception of the show as we know it

started with Lloyd Braun

who was the president of ABC.

Lloyd wanted the show to be a high

budget, quality drama

version of Survivor.

I said, "here's my thought about it".

I said, "this is going to be a

weirder show than you're thinking.

This is not Cast Away.

In this version, the island's just not a regular island.

There's a hatch. There are other people

that are there. You know, there's

creatures in the jungle.

This is not what you want."

He's like, "I love it."

He was smart enough to get J.J. on board,

get Damon Lindelof on board,

introduce them to each other,

which is insane.

That that hadn't happened yet.

And then greenlit an outline that was

written in five days.

I wrote a draft of basically an outline

for what the pilot could be.

J.J. and I got together, notes'd each other

rewrote the outline

and then sent it in.

So I had met him on Monday

and that was Friday night.

And then for it to become the biggest hit

on their network ever.

And he also greenlit Desperate Housewives

and Boston Legal and Grey's Anatomy.

Huge, huge shows.

That's an insane batting ratio.

Like, is that what they call it?

Batting average? Or what is it?

I don't know sports.

And then on Saturday morning,

my phone rang in my house and the

voice on the other end says,

"Hey, is this Damon?" And I said, "Yes."

And he said, "Damon, it's Lloyd Braun."

Who is it? This guy from my old

neighborhood, Lloyd Braun.

And J.J. had been prank

calling me all week.

And so when I got this call,

I was like, "Hello, Lloyd."

And he just paused and he was like,

"Well, anyway, I read the outline."

And I was like, "Holy shit, this is the

actual Lloyd Braun."

And he said,

"we're green-lighting this pilot."

To me and a lot of people, the pilot of Lost

is the perfect pilot.

Oh, this is it. There is before I watched

this hour of television and there's after.

Everything came together on that pilot to

make it one of the most memorable

two-hour long television pilots.

I guess they kind of cheated, you know

It's like a double album. But it worked and

I'm not angry about it.

It's just staggering everything that they did,

shooting on location,

getting the actual plane.

It was so expensive and it showed and

that was not a thing that existed.

I don't think anyone understands now

because everybody spends

so much money on TV shows.

That didn't exist then. And now every

pilot is directed by some huge director.

So it's not a big deal anymore. It was a

pretty big deal back then.

J.J. is always excited. Super excited about

everything he does. Everything

he does is super cool, right?

And he was like times 10.

He was so excited about this.

And I remember asking J.J.

like, "What's the look of it?"

You know, usually a cinematographer meets

with a director and goes, "Let's watch

movies. Let's look at photos and kind of

get the look of this."

But he never had time to talk about it.

So one day I remember finally going to

his house and I showed him my lookbook.

He said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all fine.

This is what I want.

Just make it look good.

Try to win an award."

Okay? Cool.

It was crazy for all of us because nobody

knew what we were doing.

We just loved it.

It happened so quickly there wasn't time

to plan out what Lost would be.

J.J. had said at one point, "It feels like

we're in film school and the teachers are

letting us do whatever we want to do."

I remember we were writing the pilot on

the plane and it's a weird place to be

writing the pilot of Lost.

I really believe that when J.J. wrote the pilot

he was inspired.

I will stand by the fact to this day that

I really believe J.J. is a genius. Not in

Not in that swanky LA, "Oh my God,

you're such a genius" way, but like actually a genius.

I mean, he stepped into the mystery.

He didn't know where it was going. He didn't

know exactly how it was going to pan out.

He just felt inspired. And that was why I

believe the show was

so powerful and special.

Even though on the surface it was just

Gilligan's Island on steroids.

He pitched me what the show was and

I'm like, "That sounds like the worst idea

I've ever heard in my life."

And I was a huge Gilligan's Island fan, but I

was like, "You're going to dramatize that?

Like, that's going to be really shitty."

And I think if I'm not

mistaken, I was right.

They were in the process of buying the

fuselage of an L-1011

That was going to be taken to Hawaii.

So a lot of things were firing on many

cylinders before the conceptual framework

for the show was even ready.

And it was like, "What?"

You know. And we had 10 or

11 weeks to write it and cast it and film

it and cut it and turn it in.

It was complete and utter

chaos at every single level.

The first priority was casting.

I do remember they were still putting

together the cast. They were writing it

as they were casting.

It was informed by the people we were

meeting as much as it was by our instincts.

And so it was happening simultaneously.

Yunjin Kim came in and read for Kate.

They're back. Where's the doctor?

The doctor's gone.

Like, she's not a Kate, but we like her.

We want to bring her in.

And boom, let's give her a husband.

Now Daniel's got a job. You know, it's like that.

And that was cool. And it also

created this diverse cast without anyone

being a token anything.

There was an international cast. I mean,

thank God, because they're on an