LOSTblog: J.J. Abrams Praises LOST Creative Team

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

J.J. Abrams Praises LOST Creative Team

[...]Another key member of Abrams’ Trek team was Damon Lindelof, who co-created Lost with him. The basic premise for the show — castaways marooned on an island; a dramatic gloss on Gilligan’s Island that melded both Survivor and Castaway — originated with ABC. Abrams and Lindelof met when then-ABC president Lloyd Braun paired them up to take a crack fleshing out the idea. “I met Damon on a Monday,” recalls Abrams, “and over the next five days, we worked on an outline for the show with two other writers, Jesse Alexander [also an Alias vet; he’s now the creator/exec producer of NBC’s upcoming sci-fi drama Day One] and Jeff Pinkner [yet another Alias vet; he’s now the exec producer of Fringe]. By Saturday, we were working on the pilot.”

Although Abrams is so identified with Lost, he takes pains to credit the show’s success to its chief storytellers, Lindelof and executive producer Carlton Cuse, who joined the series right at the start of season one — right after Abrams decided to basically leave his just-launched enterprise to direct Mission. “Frankly, where Damon and Carlton and Jack Bender [the show’s lead director and Hawaii major domo] have taken the show could only have been hoped for back when we were first brainstorming the world and tone and characters. Whenever anyone says ’I love Lost,’ I always emphatically say that it’s all Damon and Carlton and the work their team has been doing.”