"Two drafts later somebody would say, ‘Does he have to die?’ ”

August 12, 2013 9:34 PM

Damon Lindelof uses the story of American folk hero John Henry as an illustrative example of the market pressures on blockbuster screenwriting.
posted by Uncle Ira (66 comments total)

Fuck everything, basically.
posted by Artw at 9:37 PM on August 12, 2013 [9 favorites]

He's the writer from Lost, Cowboys and Aliens, Prometheus, and ST: Into Darkness. 4 properties that "succeeded" inspite of their craptastic scripts.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:46 PM on August 12, 2013 [9 favorites]

At some point it stops being a coincidence. Apparently quite a few people like his work.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:53 PM on August 12, 2013

There are some filmmakers that, no matter what the story is about or who else is involved, I'll go see anything their name is on. For instance, I'd go see anything Michael Haneke makes, even if the cast was Harrison Ford, Robin Williams, Michelle Rodriguez, Johnny Depp, and Margaret Cho--all performers I loathe.

I have another rather large list of filmmakers whose work I will not go see as I feel I've given them enough chances over the years and, regardless of the fact that other people dig their films or they get good reviews or they make money or whatever, I just don't like them. These are people who, regardless of any other elements involved, I will never again watch something with their name on it.

Lindelof is the one-and-only screenwriter on my "never again" list.
posted by dobbs at 10:05 PM on August 12, 2013 [10 favorites]

"Story gravity" is an interesting creative concept... but at a certain point it feels more like pressure from studio requirements (to get paid).
posted by asfuller at 10:06 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Harrison Ford, Robin Williams, Michelle Rodriguez, Johnny Depp, and Margaret Cho

Indiana Jones and Patch Adams Face Off in the Caribbean Fast and Furiously.
posted by zippy at 10:11 PM on August 12, 2013 [6 favorites]

a movie, if properly executed, feels like it’s escalating.

No.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 10:11 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

a movie, if properly executed, feels like it’s escalating.

No.

In the context of the entire piece, where "a movie" means "a blockbuster summer action movie"? Uh, yes. Yes it does. Starting small and ending smaller doesn't work when there are hundreds of millions at stake.
posted by kafziel at 10:16 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

“My skill set as a writer is actually less significant than my knowledge of pop culture in general, and maybe when it comes to these movies, my ability and willingness to crib freely from the amazing comics, film, and TV I grew up on is far more important than actual talent.”

I wouldn't go so far as call him a plagiarizing talentless hack, but it sounds like he just called himself that.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:18 PM on August 12, 2013 [52 favorites]

I like Damon Lindelof.

For literally every single property Lindelof has wrote for so far, he hasn't been the sole writer. I'm constantly surprised that people blindly give him so much hate, but always -- always -- look over Orci and Kurtzmann, over Cuse, over Scott's direction and filmography in general.

Lindelof is an incredibly easy target, and to a degree, he lets himself be a target.

But literally 3 seconds of a Wikipedia sleuthing and about 10 minutes to read the article will paint a better picture of what's going on.

But we -- and by "we", I mean you -- will keep blaming him.
posted by cptcutless at 10:24 PM on August 12, 2013 [5 favorites]

God he really does come off like a hack, full of simplistic, narrow statements:

“Once we embraced the Western and all its trappings—the hero requiring redemption, the jailbreak action sequence, the Native Americans as allies—the tone naturally got more serious along the way. Maybe too serious for a movie called Cowboys & Aliens.”

The idea that there are specific trappings that had to be embraced totally is just....yech. What an awful way to think about writing a script. Yeah, he's writing for mainstream studios and mainstream audiences, with gazillion-dollar budgets, but that doesn't make what he's actually saying any less a justification for doing hackwork. It's like he's totally given up on any chance of making something even slightly outside the norm. So sad to see.
posted by mediareport at 10:44 PM on August 12, 2013 [5 favorites]

In the context of the entire piece, where "a movie" means "a blockbuster summer action movie"? Uh, yes. Yes it does. Starting small and ending smaller doesn't work when there are hundreds of millions at stake.

Building a story and escalating events are two different things. No one cares about the fate of Metropolis when they watch the climax to Man of Steel. After you destroy the first 5 or 10 buildings it doesn't mean anything anymore but they just keep pouring chocolate on that sundae until the theobromine poisoning kicks in.

If you take the time to tell a story with your two hundred million dollar budget people might actually care about a character or two and enjoy the thing instead of just experiencing it. I know I would.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 10:51 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'm certainly not going to keep blaming him, cptcutless, because I'm never again going to watch anything he is involved in. Life has enough confusion and frustration already; if I watch a movie I want it to make at least a little bit of sense.
posted by Mars Saxman at 10:53 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

But we -- and by "we", I mean you -- will keep blaming him.

I'm willing to keep blaming everyone who was involved in LOST forever. I mean, I ended up liking the show, but it's still half terrible, so anyone tarred with the LOST brush will forever have some of my disdain.

So, if we're talking about Prometheus, I blame Lindelof and Cuse more than Kurtzmann and Orci and Ridley Scott. Because the last three don't have LOST stink on them and they have actually been responsible for some great work.

To be clear, everybody is to blame for Prometheus, I'm just more forgiving of people who gave me Fringe and the original Alien film.
posted by crossoverman at 11:09 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

So last year I spent a lot of time watching Thomas the Tank Engine with my little boy. Thomas the Tank Engine has been around essentially forever (in fact I had a colleague tell me that, when he was a patient in a children's hospital in 1955, all he had to look at was a book about Thomas). In the older Thomas TV episodes, such as the ones where George Carlin narrates, the visuals are of real model trains really moving around on a track, with the model train smoke coming out of their funnels and model people at the stations and camera cuts to give the trains different facial expressions and sometimes some puppetry so that the trains' eyes move a little. Charming. At some point in recent years the production switched to full-on computer-generated imagery, with voice actors for each character and dialogue-driven action. Catching up to the 1980s, perhaps, but it loses a lot of its quirkiness.

But what really struck me was the difference in the character of the plots. A typical plot for the live-action, narrated, model train Thomas might be:

Percy and James are being silly when it's time to be working. After Sir Toppemhat scolds them they are cross for the rest of the day.

For the CGI Thomas, the plots are more like

The diesel trains conspire to get Harold the Helicopter to deliver a bomb that will cause all of Sodor to sink into the ocean; only Thomas can stop them!

The thing is that, to the target audience for this show — three-year-olds — these two stories are equally exciting. When you are three, the idea that your homeland might sink into the ocean is a big fucking deal. When you are three, the idea that you might get scolded and be cross for the rest of the day is a big fucking deal. But from my perspective as a parent, the simpler scenario offers much more opportunity for creativity — not least because an eerily similar scene plays out in my house, nearly every day, and always uniquely.

This Story Gravity, making the stories always get bigger and bigger, reaches way, way down in the entertainment world. At some point watching the world get saved gets really boring.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 11:19 PM on August 12, 2013 [79 favorites]

Wait, so we're supposed to think the amended climax of World War Z was a powerful cinematic moment? I found it incredibly unsatisfying.

*spoiler*

By the final sequence, both Gerry and the audience know that having a disease is most probably a Universal Antidote for Zombies. So it's not surprising when Gerry injects himself with an (entirely curable) disease and it works just as predicted. So the final victory didn't feel like it was achieved against the odds. Nor did it feel notably brave or difficult or noble or interesting. Indeed, 10 minutes before the climactic moment when he injects himself, he'd already told everyone that's exactly what he was going to do.
posted by dontjumplarry at 11:20 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

Whatever you think of how Lost wrapped up (and I was fine with it,) there were plenty of truly awesome episodes along the way. People wouldn't have been so pissed off about the ending if they hadn't been fans of the show at some point.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 11:33 PM on August 12, 2013

It's hacky work he does, but there's a long tradition of hackery in writing popular entertainment and it's not automatically bad even at its hackiest. A lot of entertainment I love is dumb as hell. Certainly it can be problematic when he's playing in a sandbox you like, but nobody was paying for a Star Trek or Alien movie that respected that, unfortunately. I think Lost exemplifies his tic of overreaching and pretending there's a depth that isn't really earned in the story, like things that look like depth are good enough for his scripts, but I don't think he's a bad writer for what he writes, which is blockbusters. Lost and Star Trek and Prometheus and World War Z were intended to be big blockbusters first and foremost. I'm a lot more forgiving of Lost losing the plot than I am of its contemporary Huge Television Thing, Battlestar Galactica, since Ronald D. Moore set the viewer's expectations higher from the start while Lost being as good as it was (during the stretch when it really was good) was a total surprise and often happened in spite of itself.
posted by jason_steakums at 11:37 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

My expectations are so diminished that I'm happy with any resolution that doesn't consist of flying a nuke into the zombie portal. Because they all do that. "Bad guys are coming out of X. Bravely run bad guy gauntlet carrying big bomb, blow up X from inside." Literally one-half of all the Star Wars films did this. Independence Day more or less did this (though at least that one crippled the aliens first by installing Windows 95 on their defense systems). Star Trek 2009 did this. The Avengers did this. I have only seen three of the big summer blockbusters this year and two of them did this.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:37 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

I believe if you comb through Mad Magazines from the 60s, you will find that exact "Must John Henry die?" punchline.
posted by Ardiril at 11:44 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Wow, I'm pretty shocked at the invective. I mean, he's not Michael Bay.

LOST stumbled, but its problems were more about being overly ambitious than hacky. And actually, the biggest problems were caused by the period in the second and third seasons when they were spinning their wheels, creating more and more storylines because no one had a good model for a show like LOST that would last for a long time, and there was also no network model for canceling a show that was still successful. Lindelof and Cuse stood up to the network and negotiated a way to end the show. And yes, the ending was pretty annoying, but along the way, they created some really interesting, compelling characters and stories.

“My skill set as a writer is actually less significant than my knowledge of pop culture in general, and maybe when it comes to these movies, my ability and willingness to crib freely from the amazing comics, film, and TV I grew up on is far more important than actual talent.”

I wouldn't go so far as call him a plagiarizing talentless hack, but it sounds like he just called himself that.

I don't know, I found it refreshing that he's not convinced of his own genius, and I appreciated the insight as to why there are so few watchable movies out these days.
posted by lunasol at 12:00 AM on August 13, 2013 [4 favorites]

since Ronald D. Moore set the viewer's expectations higher from the start

Sorry not to derail, but the first episode of the series told us it was angels. Those people who didn't like the ending of BSG are the ones that hacks like lindelof write for. I'm not saying it was the most satisfying ending ever, but at least it was original and people didn't see it coming...especially that part about starbuck....fuck ok maybe you have a point.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 12:07 AM on August 13, 2013

I heard that Damon Lindelof was born and raised in an insane asylum and that he uses his childhood recollections of the inmates' incoherent maunderings as inspiration for his screenplays.
posted by logicpunk at 12:24 AM on August 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

I think that it would be more accurate if instead of "Gravity" they used the word "suck"
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:18 AM on August 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

At some point watching the world get saved gets really boring.

Absolutely right. I'm frankly tired of seeing the world get saved. The world must be damn fragile if it needs saving so much.
posted by JHarris at 2:06 AM on August 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

I think what I find frustrating about that article, and I'm sure (hope) Lindelof knows this, is that films get bigger because of character, not because of spectacle. Spectacle is fine, when it is informed by character. The reason we follow particular individuals during the world exploding is because thats the only reason the world exploding really matters. Anonymous people blowing up isn't really meaningful to us. In Superman, we care more about Lois than we do about San Francisco. In fact the reason we care about San Francisco at all is because if Superman can't save it, he will have failed.

The ending of Return of the Jedi is great because of that fight between Luke, Darth and the Emperor, but if you take a step back, its actually meaningless. The death star gets blown up anyway, so the conclusion of this fight doesn't really matter. But of course, it does, because it determines the fate of a character we care about, Luke.

Watchmen, the novel at least, takes the time to get us to know and like various characters in New York before dropping its conclusion (consider how stunning the ending of that novel is compared to the bloodless end of the film).

I do think that people know this, but they often act like they've forgotten it...
posted by Cannon Fodder at 2:09 AM on August 13, 2013 [10 favorites]

Absolutely right. I'm frankly tired of seeing the world get saved.

One of the big reasons I loved Skyfall. Javier Bardem's grand plan wasn't really that grand at all.
posted by nathancaswell at 4:10 AM on August 13, 2013 [7 favorites]

At a certain point you think he's up to something really nefarious and grand but it turns out, nope, really fairly small villainous ambitions. I loved that. Old school.
posted by nathancaswell at 4:12 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

The sense I got from this article is that Lindelof is a decent screenwriter who gets himself into story trouble while writing. I also got the feeling that he's a really good script doctor who can come in and save other screenwriters who've gotten themselves into trouble. My conclusion is that there should be two Damons Lindelof, let's say he's got a twin, and the script doctor twin, let's call him David, could come in and save Damon when his story ends with half a billion people dead and no one caring.
posted by Kattullus at 4:29 AM on August 13, 2013 [6 favorites]

This Story Gravity, making the stories always get bigger and bigger, reaches way, way down in the entertainment world. At some point watching the world get saved gets really boring.

This has been my biggest complaint of the moffatt years of Who, where even companions just can't be regular people, with their own goals and hopes, they are all way more important and world shattering. Not to mention how each season (granted, the davies years were bad about this too) seems to try and up the stakes for the finale, without any real need.

Sorry not to derail, but the first episode of the series told us it was angels. Those people who didn't like the ending of BSG are the ones that hacks like lindelof write for.

Oh god, i have a friend who loathed the ending of BSG and went on rants how it "betrayed the hard sci-fi of the show." I kept trying to get him to see how wrong that is by the in show talk of gods, god, angels, and it being based on the first series which was a mormon parable. I feel the same with people who complain so much about Lost, they are projecting what they want or expect in a show, and are mad that it isn't doing what they want it to do. The same people defend Firefly, without being annoyed at how there aren't any Chinese in a universe where Chinese slang and language is everywhere.
posted by usagizero at 4:31 AM on August 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

Wait ... it can't be "world in peril" because it's period, but he's going to write a love triangle between man who used to be a slave, his "owner's" son (and thus, in some sense, his "owner") and the "owner's" white girlfriend?

John Henry's gotta die, all right.
posted by allthinky at 4:58 AM on August 13, 2013

look over Orci and Kurtzmann

Oh believe me, I've got a lifetime ban on those two pencil-dick hacks as well.
posted by Ber at 5:09 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Sorry not to derail, but the first episode of the series told us it was angels.

In retrospect, perhaps, but that does nothing to excuse the big buildup and shitty payoff. The whole "and they have plan" schtick was a marketing gimmick. You can't tell a story where a supposedly major plot development is just designed to get eyeballs and not expect people to angry at the lack of payoff in the end.

The same people defend Firefly, without being annoyed at how there aren't any Chinese in a universe where Chinese slang and language is everywhere.

Hello, River and Simon TAM. They were totally Chinese characters.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:21 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Lost had the worse finale in television history. Hell, Deadwood was cancelled a year before it was supposed to be finished and it has a more satisfying ending.

I mean, he's not Michael Bay.

No, he's worse than Michael Bay.
posted by dobbs at 5:44 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Hello, River and Simon TAM. They were totally Chinese characters.

Funny how they were played by white actors. Is that what you call colour blind casting?
posted by mooza at 5:50 AM on August 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

In the Whoniverse, I'm willing to give Moffatt more of a pass than Davies. Moffatt's been raising the stakes in regard to the character, whereas for Davies it was more "let's create a bigger disaster" year after year. But it's also true that by integrating his Big Bads into the whole season, Moffatt risks damaging the traditional flavor of Doctor Who: disconnected adventures, monster-of-the-week, if you don't like this week's story try again next week. I think overall season 7 was an improvement in this regard. It's funny how much influence a couple of small-scale series like Buffy and the X-Files have had over the whole world of entertainment.
posted by rikschell at 5:58 AM on August 13, 2013

I liked the original better.

Also, John Henry played the long game.

I think the tendency in writing that Lindelof calls "Story Gravity" is really about our culture's thirst for stories of magical redemption in the face of unstoppable calamity. Stories that keep our faith in progress intact. It's a form of denial—maybe that explains why we prefer aliens and zombies to, say, damaged biospheres.
posted by maniabug at 5:59 AM on August 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

"I do feel—even as a purveyor of it—slightly turned off by this destruction porn that has emerged"

For one thing, this destruction porn hasn't emerged out of thin air, you helped create it. Also, since porn is your word there, it's pretty clear that the porn equivalent to what you're doing is giving the men successively bigger dicks, the women successively bigger tits and wondering why no one wants to watch a football and two basketballs bouncing around together.

It's also clear with your reference to "an exercise in getting people to care about the people in the movie [so you can put] those people in jeopardy" that all you're trying to do is fill in equations in a pre-determined formula. If you write a story where the characters are three-dimensional enough to have their own feelings and desires and if they wants something bad enough, the audience will care because the characters care, and you won't need a save the cat moment to try and make them care.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:59 AM on August 13, 2013 [6 favorites]

But we -- and by "we", I mean you -- will keep blaming him.

I'm willing to keep blaming everyone who was involved in LOST forever. I mean, I ended up liking the show, but it's still half terrible, so anyone tarred with the LOST brush will forever have some of my disdain.

So, if we're talking about Prometheus, I blame Lindelof and Cuse more than Kurtzmann and Orci and Ridley Scott. Because the last three don't have LOST stink on them and they have actually been responsible for some great work.

To be clear, everybody is to blame for Prometheus, I'm just more forgiving of people who gave me Fringe and the original Alien film.

Word.

Read the original Spaight script--Prometheus before Lindelof was cohesive and, like, decent. LOST was pretty good sci-fi when Javier Grillo-Marxuach was script supervisor but quickly turned into something else without him. Fringe had its flaws, but overall, was a wonderful show which respected both its own basic premises and the intelligence of its audience. Star Trek had a much more cohesive script than Star Trek Into Darkness.

I don't think we're blaming Lindelof unfairly for the suck.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:19 AM on August 13, 2013 [6 favorites]

I know this thread isn't about this, but the problem with BSG for me at least was that I basically stopped caring about the characters. By season 4 they became profoundly unsympathetic and I just didn't see a reason why I should keep watching. The "They have a plan" thing was a bit obnoxious, but mainly because it meant the antagonists effectively motiveless, thus harder to sympathise with.

Lost's conclusion could have been better, but it wasn't the worst. It was reasonably satisfying for a lot of the characters at least, even if there were some loose ends. I think the flashes in that series were ultimately a mistake because in retrospect they completely lack drama because of spoiler reasons.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 6:21 AM on August 13, 2013

Lost was pretty close to the worst. I mean, I guess it could have been The X-files--spun so far out of control that no one cared when an incoherent conclusion came (though the movie redeemed that quite a bit for me). But the last several episodes of Lost, including the finale but with a nice star of suck on scripts like "Across the Sea", were pretty poorly written, and didn't really satisfy from a character perspective, either. Putting Sayid and Shannon together was just one of several examples of this. The show was manipulating heartstrings. But it wasn't, in any way, good.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:29 AM on August 13, 2013

For literally every single property Lindelof has wrote for so far, he hasn't been the sole writer.

When you have a single common element in a long list of bad things, it's not particularly unfair to point to that single common element as at least somewhat blameworthy.
posted by Etrigan at 6:36 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Watchmen, the novel at least, takes the time to get us to know and like various characters in New York before dropping its conclusion (consider how stunning the ending of that novel is compared to the bloodless end of the film).


The thing I always admired about this was the villain actually "saves" the world, and the heroes find out what he is trying to do and they try to stop him. It's amazing to me how Moore turns the whole thing on its head, and how each of the characters responds to the revelation.
posted by drinkcoffee at 7:30 AM on August 13, 2013

Star Trek had a much more cohesive script than Star Trek Into Darkness.

I think you'd need microscopic tools beyond current human capabilities to measure that.
posted by Artw at 7:58 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

The thing I always admired about this was the villain actually "saves" the world, and the heroes find out what he is trying to do and they try to stop him.

Well, the villain thinks he's saving the world (by murdering millions). There's no evidence presented that he's actually doing it. There's a long line of supervillains with very similar plans -- for instance, various versions of Lex Luthor have been motivated by a desire to see humanity progress without hiding behind Superman (sound familiar?).
posted by Etrigan at 7:59 AM on August 13, 2013

I think you'd need microscopic tools beyond current human capabilities to measure that.

I thought STID was really, really badly written whereas Star Trek was just . . . mehbad. Acceptably bad, for a summer popcorn movie.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 8:00 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

They dropped huge chunks of it like where the bad guy went for 20 years and everyone just rolled with it because it wasn't really a plot, just a sequence of events.
posted by Artw at 8:05 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Well, the villain thinks he's saving the world (by murdering millions).

In the end, he saved the world.

But as Jon points out, nothing ever ends.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:15 AM on August 13, 2013

OR DOES HE DOT DOT DOT?

Interestingly in The Architects of Fear, frequently cited as inspiration (or if you're Len Wein then Alan Moore just ripped it off) the scheme is a complete misfire and then there's some blab about love and the human spirit actually being the answer.

As with all SciFi tropes there's actually a ton of precedents before that with varying degrees of success.
posted by Artw at 8:20 AM on August 13, 2013

It's clear that Adrian's victory is short lived, by the mushroom cloud visible on a globe(?) as Jon says nothing ever ends.

Adrian's vision of the future was human and short term, as indicated by Jon. The former's actions don't matter in the long term.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:29 AM on August 13, 2013

Jon is a massive buzzkill and a pain in the ass by nature, mind.
posted by Artw at 8:30 AM on August 13, 2013

Len Wein on Watchmen - interesting stuff, though there's a fair amount of self-interested dumping on Moore.
posted by Artw at 8:33 AM on August 13, 2013

My thing with BSG wasn't the supernatural stuff, because they did state it directly - though it did feel like they were going to throw a curveball and go for some more sci-fi explanation for all of that, so it was kinda disappointing when they just played it straight. My big issues are: the opera house visions resolution was so dumb. So. Dumb. And the moral of the story was "Hey, maybe those luddites had it right, eh? Better keep an eye on that Asimo, don't trust his adorable little dance!" Just building and building that theme where they drive home over and over the point that mankind can't just abandon its creations and walk away and they finally learn to coexist and suddenly NOPE ROBOTS JUST WANNA KILL YOU WATCH OUT GUYS.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:51 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Lindelof's an interesting figure. He's an overrated artist -- I think he has literally nothing at all to say about being human -- but he's a very skilled Modern Entertainment Professional. If everything he ever wrote disappeared tomorrow and was replaced by a single episode of Deadwood or The Wire, we'd all be richer for it. But his story, like Abrams's, isn't about art at all. It's about their industry.

Lindelof gets a lot of attention in the press because:

* he's made a shitload of money for the people who own the press
* he's a cute youngish extremely articulate interview subject
* LOST is an interesting media hook, even for people (like me) who think it's a failed show
* his knack for self-analysis in interviews doesn't overwhelm his greater knack for saying ridiculous bullshit
* he's zestier than Carlton Cuse
* he's less transparently, hollowly cynical than JJ Abrams, his Hollywood Daddy

Technically competent writers who can talk about Star Wars will continue to draw attention when actual Greatest Ever poets like David Milch have sunk into undeserved obscurity. This is a moment for comics nerds in expensive clothes; that's Lindelof. Joss Whedon leaves him in the shade, of course. Whedon's blessed with once-in-a-generation storytelling skill and a big heart -- that said, he was a niche subject until The Avengers, and is no longer young'n'flashy. But his MUCH ADO was superb...

Look: I thought LOST was trash, but I tuned in for the finale. That is why Damon Lindelof is semi-famous. He doesn't tell stories that improve your life. He just gets you to watch.

He's the future.
posted by waxbanks at 9:36 AM on August 13, 2013 [15 favorites]

LOST was a sore needed groundbreaking, yet series in American television.

I have no particularly strong opinions of Lindelof, other than he seems like a great guy to shoot the shit with. It's easy to sit on the outside of the movie making business and say a lot of decisions were wrong or stupid, but that ignores that fact that he's a hired writer in most of the cases. The person signing the checks is approving or changing what he (or anything other writer) is doing and often it comes down to writer's salesmanship, ability to connect with the person signing the checks, money and how the person who signs the checks is thinking at that particular moment.

He's done some good stuff. He's done some not so good stuff. I hope he learned from the latter and goes on to continue writing more of the former.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:50 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

The same people defend Firefly, without being annoyed at how there aren't any Chinese in a universe where Chinese slang and language is everywhere.

The same people? Do you have evidence that they're not annoyed? Actually I've heard a lot of complaints about it from SF nerds, and Whedon's semi-explanation doesn't really fit the casting (including extras casting) decisions that were actually made. But this is a category error -- promising one thing and delivering another in terms of plot arc is a different thing from doing it in the expected racial mix; noting the latter as a flaw but continuing to like the series doesn't strike me as self-deluding.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:54 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

If I had my way Damon Lindelof would never be seen in public without wearing a shirt reading "I AM PART OF THE PROBLEM".
posted by Spatch at 10:53 AM on August 13, 2013 [4 favorites]

I mean, he's not Michael Bay.

The Rock's decent and there's at least a couple more of his films that are pretty entertaining... Everything I've seen that Lindelof's had a hand in, I've either actively hated or just given up on.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:10 PM on August 13, 2013

aren't any Chinese in a universe where Chinese slang and language is everywhere.

Two hundred years later all the Chinese people will look Chinese again and when asked about it will say "We don't talk about it with outsiders."
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:30 PM on August 13, 2013 [10 favorites]

It's like a matryoshka doll of nerd references!
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:47 PM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

" LOST was pretty good sci-fi when Javier Grillo-Marxuach was script supervisor"

Heh. He started the student theater group at my high school, and wrote a whole bunch of goofy, serialized adventure plays for it. It's always nice to see his name out there.
posted by klangklangston at 1:21 PM on August 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

For a guy who writes big and wins big—his box-office track record is pretty unassailable—Lindelof keeps his ego in check. “I am, first and foremost, a fanboy,” explains the co-creator of Lost, the series that launched him from yeoman TV writer-­producer to fantasist-in-chief J. J. Abrams’s right-hand man and the de facto tribune of all things Intergalactic and Comic-Booky.

(head explodes, but in the remnants of blood, brain and bone the brain worm that controlled my thoughts and made me watch Lost for seven excruciating seasons speaks)

There are markets for every kind of entertainment. Lindelof is basically a member of the Arby's menu development staff who photographs well and enjoys teh Twitter. Good for him if that's how he makes coin. It does not make him a chef any more than writing posts on Metafilter makes any of us authors.

Fantasist-in-chief. Good Lord. I hope the reporter was able to keep his pants on through the entire interview.

This piece is so fanboy Harry Knowles is saying "whoa, dude, a little journalistic integrity there, please"...
posted by lon_star at 1:47 PM on August 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Waxpants hit it out the park, and I have to admit that I spent more time last night grappling to the conclusion that you have to give him respect for what he's managed. Even reading about how he broke into the industry (cornering JJ Abrams into giving him a writing job at the perfect time when he needed someone to follow through all the series he was shooting out of his ass). But I say this: he has the largest case of lurking imposter syndrome ever. You *smell* it on him. All the way to the baaaank.

lunasol: "I don't know, I found it refreshing that he's not convinced of his own genius, and I appreciated the insight as to why there are so few watchable movies out these days."

But here's the thing. He grapples with huge metaphysical interesting questions that he then proceeds to provide the most awful facile, non-interesting, hand-wavy, these are not the droids you're looking for answers...

*SPOILERS*

Lost: What is life, what are our connections to the people who we live our lives with, who we fight and love for?

ANSWER? You happen to end up at some sort of elevator-church with them and fly off into the next world. But not Michael! He's still in purgatory looking for Walt. Why is Christian Shepard there? ANSWER: A SMOKE MONSTER, AND A FUCK YOU FROM DAMON LINDELOF.

Prometheus: Why do we exist? Who made us? Who are our gods? What would we say to our makers, and what would our makers say to us?

ANSWER? EHHHHHH. WHO CARES. (Nevermind the awesome Fassbinder foil opening stuff that managed to not get cut) The frat-boy scientists who are supposedly driven by these questions happen to lose ALL interest in this driving wonder once the movie starts... Apparently just like the writers.
DAMON LINDELOF: I DONT HAVE THE ANSWERS. WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME?! BE WOWED BY THE DUBSTEP SCORE, THAT WORKS FOR CHRISTOPHER NOLAN DOESN'T IT?
posted by stratastar at 1:56 PM on August 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Back in the world of John Henry, the story’s starting to coalesce: ­character-driven and complex, with familiar elements to anchor the riskier stuff. A solid mainstream entertainment, in other words. “I would say that the plantation that John Henry was a slave on was owned by the father of the guy who built the machine. ’Cause we need backstory, right?” begins Lindelof. “This white kid and this black slave were friends, but it was a secret friendship. But this white kid was always kind of looking to Europe, the seeds of the industrial revolution. He becomes an inventor. And he comes to John Henry and says, look at this wonderful thing I’ve invented. But John Henry, who has seen the evil of man firsthand, and now sees the Chinese being exploited on the railroad, says, ‘These machines—in the hands of the people I’ve witnessed? This is a very, very bad thing. I can beat your machine.’


Each paragraph of this piece I make it through is somehow more annoying than the last.

Oh yes my precious, we needs us the backstory to tell the story of John Henry. Because everything is so connected and so portentous.

Never mind arc or theme, just smear some more back story like your favorite steak sauce, obliterating a perfectly good piece of beef under the slime and odor of omniscent synchronicity.

I can only imagine your "writer's bible" on the music video for Tennessee Ernie Ford's 16 Tons - it would be like the Simarillion and you would try to film ALL of it.

Did the McKee podcast you surely listened to over and over as a young wanna-be get cut off at "back story"? Like you listened to 20 hours of McKee while blogging and thought it was just some kind of a subliminal writer hypnosis program that just repeated "back story, back story, back story".

And get off my lawn about the "successful" aspect somehow lending legitimacy - cholera and Pop Goes The Weasel have been pretty successful too and I don't see anyone giving them fan-service interviews.

The writer is just engaging in fanboy multiple nerdgasms at being in the presence of someone who knows a guy who met someone famous once.
posted by lon_star at 5:53 PM on August 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

He's the future.

Which is exactly why he's perfect for this article and this article is perfect for him.
posted by crossoverman at 9:35 PM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

fantabulous timewaster: "In the older Thomas TV episodes, such as the ones where George Carlin narrates, the visuals are of real model trains really moving around on a track, with the model train smoke coming out of their funnels and model people at the stations and camera cuts to give the trains different facial expressions and sometimes some puppetry so that the trains' eyes move a little. Charming. At some point in recent years the production switched to full-on computer-generated imagery, with voice actors for each character and dialogue-driven action. Catching up to the 1980s, perhaps, but it loses a lot of its quirkiness.

But what really struck me was the difference in the character of the plots. A typical plot for the live-action, narrated, model train Thomas might be:

Percy and James are being silly when it's time to be working. After Sir Toppemhat scolds them they are cross for the rest of the day.

For the CGI Thomas, the plots are more like

The diesel trains conspire to get Harold the Helicopter to deliver a bomb that will cause all of Sodor to sink into the ocean; only Thomas can stop them!"

You may have missed the one where the show punished a train for not wanting to get wet, possibly spoiling his pretty green paint, by entombing him forever in the dark to live an eternally silent half existence of watching other happy trains go by as his now unseen paint spoils anyway due to rot. The best part? In the show, HE DESERVED IT.
posted by Blasdelb at 6:36 PM on August 17, 2013 [1 favorite]