The Top 5 Things I Learned From LOST

BY DANI FAITH LEONARD

writer bio

I think we can skip a week without my usual Top 10 list.  It was a busy week, after all, which started out with a very sad goodbye.  My friends and colleagues all looked exhausted on Monday and I know that they had also attended the emotional farewell party.  Of course I’m talking about the end of LOST.

The thoughts on the LOST finale were mixed this week.  Some thought that the writers would never be able to write themselves out of the hole that they dug over the six years of the series.  Others, like me, loved the finale.  I was able to accept it for what it was – an emotionally satisfying ending that left many questions unanswered.

I have been hooked on the show for years – I think I never missed an episode.  LOST was ground-breaking and proved that viewers are smarter than producers and networks often give them credit for.  There is so much that can be learned from the series and so much that I’ll carry with me when I work on upcoming projects.  (This summer, I’m working on an independent, feature length mockumentary which chronicles the plight of two sex addicts traveling around the country and preaching abstinence through song and dance.  Definitely not rocket science, but still the lessons learned from LOST can be applied.)

Here are the Top 5 lessons I learned from LOST:

#5 – DON’T EVER KEEP IT SIMPLE – In college, I had an acting professor who said that the choices we made must be simple (as he pursed his lips and galloped around the room – simple choice, right?).  Every time I would get up to perform my scene in class, my acting choices were shot down – they weren’t simple enough.  “You’re too smart for your own good,” he would say.  “Keep it as simple as possible.  Actors aren’t supposed to be artists.  Just serve the story.”  I told him to go ask Meryl Streep if she makes the most simple choices possible and to call Christopher Walken and tell him to re-insert punctuation to his dialogue.  I was kicked out of class that day.

If every actor, writer, director, etc. kept their choices simple, how boring would that be?  The producers and writers of LOST never kept anything simple.  The viewers were thrown on a complicated journey and the writers never took a predictable route.   

#4 – PEOPLE WANT TO THINK – In the recent years before LOST's debut, TV had been predominantly stupid.  I think after 9/11, it was assumed that people wanted brainless entertainment.  LOST proved otherwise.  Loyal viewers debated every second of every episode on the blogs and loved the references to philosophers, authors and history.  LOST proved that viewers want to think and the emergence of more mind-bending shows (like “V”) isn’t a surprise.

Although the leading characters of LOST were played by extremely good-looking actors, the lead characters aren’t the ones that made me shudder when they were on the screen.  My personal favorite characters were Desmond and Hurley but, like most viewers, I longed to see those characters that I couldn’t understand.  Like Ben (played by Michael Emerson) – Is he good?  Is he bad?  Will an episode go by without him getting his ass kicked?  Richard (played brilliantly by Nestor Carbonell) – Why doesn’t he age?  (Of course this was answered in the most brilliant episode of the season.)  Why does a man trapped on a deserted island for hundreds of years wear so much mascara?  Or Locke (played by Terry O’Quinn) – Is he dead?  Is he alive?  If he can turn into smoke, why does he ever walk through the jungle?

#3 – ALWAYS WATCH YOUR BACK – After the final episode ended, viewers saw shots of the wreckage from the original plane crash.  This sent the blogs buzzing and viewers debating.  Does this mean they all died in the crash?  Was it all purgatory like we thought after season 2?  WTF?  Two days later, it was announced that this was just stock footage that ABC aired to ease people into the news and it was not part of the show at all.  It’s no secret that we all have to watch our back when dealing with a network, but in this case, the proof is in the picture (or stock footage).

#2 – THE $ IS IN THE MYSTERY AND WHAT VIEWERS DON’T KNOW WON’T KILL THEM – Of course, loyal LOST fans would love to have all of the answers.  There were so many questions left unanswered.  What’s the deal with childbirth on the island?  What was in the water that brought Sayid back to life?

Well, producers know this.  That’s why the DVD set of the final season will include an extensive epilogue that will explain some unanswered questions and will also follow Hurley (Jorge Garcia) and Ben (Michael Emerson) as they become the guardians of the island when Jack (Matthew Fox) dies.  The producers will be cashing in long after the series is over.  The unanswered questions didn’t kill us after all.

#1 – ALWAYS GO OUT WITH A BANG.

It's All in the Mind

BY JIM YOAKUM 

writer bio

The mind, unlike the brain, that otherwise useless lump between your ears, can fool you. It sometimes sees one thing while your brain is seeing another, or what you think is ‘another’. I’m talking about watching movies or, rather, re-watching them and re-evaluating your opinion, good or bad. Case in point: No Country for Old Men. When this movie first came out I thought it was a lot like casual sex: long and slow and went nowhere with a bad ending. But, after viewing it several times afterwards, I became convinced that my brain had seen one movie while my mind had seen another. What my brain had perceived as long, slow and boring, my mind had later transferred into a complex and deeply-rewarding film which can only reveal itself on repeat viewings. Unlike casual sex (which is quick, immediately gratifying and involves no emotional commitment) No Country is like sex with a French acrobat: it’s twisted, complicated and requires a visa.

The exact opposite is true of Inglorious Basterds, which I first felt was a breath of fresh air from the corpse that has become ‘the war movie’. Bad-ass Jews go on a rampage and kill Hitler – what a fantastic revenge fantasy! But the next time I watched it, I don’t know, something changed. I now saw Brad Pitt’s lantern-jawed performance as hammy as a Smithfield and, by the third viewing, I felt the entire premise was nothing more than a cartoon version of war played by cartoon cardboard cut-out characters. It was no more a breath of fresh air than any WWII movie starring Audie Murphy or John Wayne. What had happened? The movies were the same. Had the brain watched one movie and the mind another? Which opinion could be trusted?

Orson Welles once said of movies “A film is never really any good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.”  I’m not sure what that says about the Coen Brothers or Quentin Tarantino, both are considered screen poets, so maybe the difference lies in myself and what I consider to be the ‘truthiness’ of the movie once its been truly digested. But, again, maybe trying to find truth in movies is a fool’s game. After all, as Jean-Luc Godard once said, “Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.” Brain versus mind. Which do you watch with?

THE TOP 10 WORDS/PHRASES THAT SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE...or at least not included in your next script

BY DANI FAITH LEONARD

writer bio

After I posted the Top 10 last week (You can view it here), I received so many comments on Facebook and emails from my friends, who helped me realize how many extremely annoying words I forgot about.  Thanks to Alex Cirillo, Francesca Ferrara, Steve Czajkowski and others for the suggestions.
 
Here is Part II:
 
10. Dang - There are plenty of other words to express frustration.  Retire this one if you're older than 11.

9. Bunghole - Using this word will make you seem less classy than Andy Dick.

8. Gnarly - I think the only time the word gnarly is applicable when you are describing Spencer from The Hills and his scraggly facial hair.  If you're not a surfer, forget this word exists.

7. Schwing - I loved Wayne's World, but now it's just creepy.

6. Sweet - Time to retire it!  This word is meant to describe a taste, nothing else.

5. Peeps - When you say, "Let me ask my peeps" or "I'll just run it by my peeps" or "I as chillin' wit my peeps" I'M immediately aware that you don't have any friends.

4. Bodacious - Leave this word where it belongs - in 1988.

3. Popo, "the fuzz" - OK.  When upper-class white people refer to the cops as "popo" or "the fuzz," it's just strange and annoying.

2. "Hot as Balls" - I hate when someone says "it's hot as balls in here."  I am a female.  I don't have balls, so I don't know what your balls being hot must feel like for you.  I'm sure the sensation is terrible, but I don't need to know that the room feels like your sweaty balls.  Also, once this expression is used, the room immediately has a corresponding stench.

1. Flavor-savor -  I hate this term!  If you don't know what a "flavor-savor" is, it is a patch of hair that a man has awkwardly grown out on his chin and painstakingly groomed to resemble pubes (which goes unnoticed to the perpetrator of this crime).  They then refer to it as their "flavor savor," which means to me that they never get laid.  Stop using this term and stop growing pubes on your chin!!