Special thanks to SL-LOST.com reader Mikey for this detailed report from last night’s Emmy Nominees Panel at the Writers Guild Theater in Los Angeles:
7:45 PM: Darlton among first to show up at front of auditorium waiting to take the stage. Carlton - short sleeved black shirt over jeans. Damon - brown baseball hat, blueshirt/tie. They chit chat sitting next to writer Jack Burditt (30 Rock).
- Moderator Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office) is on the stage with his WGA award trophy in hand.
- Rainn to Darlton: “First question: can I be on your show?” (Darlton huddle…then “NO!”)
- Damon to Rainn Wilson: “One of the best things that happened in the history of the show was when Dwight Shrute interrogated cousin Mose on his farm and quizzed him “what is the Dharma Initiative?”.
- Carlton to Rainn: we went to visit Steven King in Maine for an EW article who first told us: “you have to end the show!”. Discussion of negotiating with ABC to stretch the show over 3 months.
- Rainn to Darlton 2 times: “what the fuck is the smoke monster”?
Damon: “after cocktails after the show we’ll tell you”.
Rainn: “I just orgasmed a little bit in my pants”.- Rainn Wilson tells Darlton: “Did you know Daniel Dae Kim quit acting for awhile?”.
Darlton: No.
Rain: Tells a joke/funny story about DDK working in insurance. It was Rainn and his schoolmates (they attended same college as DDK) that encouraged him to go back to acting.
Darlton: “DDK didn’t speak any korean when he auditioned. During the pilot, Yunjin Kim went to J.J. Abrams who was directing, and said “you guys know DDK isn’t really speaking Korean. He’s basically saying ‘hamburger, hamburger, hamburger’”.
Over the course of the show, DDK prodded Darlton to let him speak english. Because it is only 30 days in the first season, he couldn’t learn immediately. Joke: “we cooked up this entire time travel thing just so DDK could speak english.”
- Audience Question: “We’ve heard that Gregg Nations’ chronology files will be published after the show ends as the Lost “Bible”. True?”
Damon: “You may think that it’s a binder with all this info in it, but in reality it exists only in an undecipherable system that really only Greg understands. it’s not in a way that you could even walk in to his office and understand it if given the chance. Greg may have to go on a lecture tour or something to explain it.
We’ve only given Greg “the things that have happened already” and not where we’re going as it would make his head explode. Many times he’s said to us “wow, I wish you had told me you were going to do that before”.
- Audience Question: Is something lost by watching LOST back to back on DVDs (an entire season over a weekend) as opposed to watching weekly?
Carlton: We’re writing the shows with the full knowledge that most people will watch this show in that way. Only our kids have the experience of running to the bookstore on the night the new Harry Potter book comes out. Future generations will just line up all 7 volumes and read them end to end.
Damon: My wife and I watched the first 9 episodes of Mad Men on a weekly basis, but then missed an episode. We watched the last 4 all at once over 2 nights, and it was a much richer experience. We miss out on that zeitgeist sometimes if you don’t take in a show as it is being broadcast. We write Lost.
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