Shaunessy James Quinn Blog

‘Lost’ Writers Forum

// August 3rd, 2009 // Film, Television

On July 14th, 2009 there was a forum with Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz; two of the writer/producers of ‘Lost.’

David Miller led the forum, he is a board member of ‘The Hollywood Badgers.”

His introduction went along the lines of: The two met @ U on W in Madison, WI. They then went on to write for ‘Fantasy Island.’ They also just wrote the sequel to ‘Tron.’

[Below are as much as the question and answer portion as I could write freehand, I can't put any of it in quotes as I'm not sure if I got it all verbatim, but you'll get the general idea.  Sometimes the answers jump around which means that they either jumped mid talking, which happened a lot, or I missed a section, which also happened a decent amount.  I was writing as fast as I could I promise.]

Q – Starting freshman year in Madison how did you get started in the field and in Los Angeles?

A – Well the Badgers were 1 in 10. We went there wanting to write. One started in Journalism and wrote for the Cardinal. They met in their Intro to Film class 355.  Eddy’s film was upside down and Adam flipped the film over and Eddy was like ‘I want to hitch a ride with this guy.’

Eddy was the assistant to Joel Cruver.  Andy was the post pa on ‘Tales To The Cript.’

After work they would write every day and on weekends they would shut themselves in and write.

William Morris was their agent when they were 23 years old.  They worked on ‘Fantasy Island’ after agents tried to get their film made.  They didn’t make it and they wanted to direct it.  “It would have been a disaster.”  Buy they made all kinds of cennections trying to get the film made witch led them to get the job on ‘Fantasy Island.’  After that they worked on “many bad shows.”  Then worked on ‘Popular’ (same guy who did nip/tuck) It was “The best two years of our lives.”  They worked with Carlton Cues on ‘Back Sash’ for 4 or 5 episodes.  They also worked on ‘Birds of Prey’ with Carlton and Robert Caymen who wrote Karate Kidd.  Followed by ‘Life as we know it’ on ABC.

The 1st season of lost had started, then right in the middle they needed help and brought on Eddy and Adam and there they stayed to this day.

Q – What should proper treatment look like?

A – Write a script, there is a milion ways to sell the script.  Wtire a script and show people what you can do and they may buy it or bring you on to write something else.  Studio execs don’t like risks, so if you write something…

Q – How does the dynamic of Lost writers work? Do you each have a role?

A – YEs, each member of the team have different roles and its very difficult to describe exactly what they each do specifically, but the dynamics do change but you do have a roll and all of the writers seem to jell together and make it work.

Q – What dynamic is the lost writers room?

A – It’s like a family thanksgiving.  Some days you hate each other, and some days you love each other.  The thing I love most about the Lost writers room is that it’s really creative.  If you were to sit in you wouldn’t be able to follow it because they finish each others sentences all the time and come to conclusions at the same time.

Write something your passionate about, and give agents your best stuff and always be writing something else, but if you want to write features and not TV shows just tell them.  If your sitting down with an agent you don’t have to pitch yourself because if they are sitting down with you then they probably have read your work and like it.

Q – Could you discuss your path to writing stories?

A – It varies, sometimes they start with premise, like with ‘Tron.’  They started with a basic premise but they approached it with a character and the two play off of each other.

Lost is a character show at the end of the day.  If ou have a strong character dynamic so much of the plot will be digested out of that.

Q – How do you write dialogue?

A – A lot of times if your writing a scene you do extensive outlines, then they start talking out loud, and go pass for pass making it better.  We do a lot of acting it out and I say ‘acting’ very loosely.  The last thing they do before they hand it in is read it out loud because if they stumble over it then the actors will stumble over it.

Q – Do you listen to music when you write? If so, what?

A – John Tesh? Guns and Roses, Zeplin.

Loves Bruce Springstein but doesn’t listen to him when they write.  Love Dylan but don’t listen to him when writing.  Because they love them so dearly they don’t want it to get in their head.

But a lot of times a song will inspire a scene it will get in your head and I’ll come home and write a scene and Adam will tell me if its a hit or not.  (They mimic a script being handed to him… “Not!” another script… “Shit!”… another script … “Not!”)

Q – What are the difficult aspects of writing with a partner?

A – Compromise, which is a blessing because all projects in holywood are a colaboration.

Q – Any scenes from Lost you take credit for?

A – (Jokingly) All of them! (General Laughter)

Hurley’s monologue to his mother is their favorite thing they’ve ever written.  When they wrote it they felt a huge sense of nastalgia for the show.  Carlton called him and said this is the best scene in the series.

Q – What are your favorite TV shows?

A – The office. 30 rock, Dexter, The wire, Top Chef, Big Love.

Q – Do you ever think about certain actors in your head?

A – Sure, I mean you have certain types in your head, but with quest performers they sometimes think, “Oh! So and so would be perfect for this!”

Q – In your writing process you have time constraints, but if you don’t have them, how do you know when your done?

A – They would show it , but they were always rewriting.  At a point its good to get outside eyes.  There’s a point where you feel its ready or you want outside eyes.  But it depends on the kind of work, with TV there area clearly deadlines.

Q – Whats it like having different directors, does it change the writing?

A – Not really, because Lost is Lost, they have a tone meeting and go through each scene and they will ask questions and the editor, directors, and line producers are in on it, so at that point everyone is in sync.

Q – Features vs. TV

A – Twice as long.  Whole different business.  At the end of the day tell the best story, but the role is different between tv and features.  Features are a complete story, TV can start threads and come back to them @ a later time.

Q – Cancelled themselves @ Lost?

A – Wanted to know where they would end it and cut it off.  There is a plan to the show.  Since Season 1 they were talking about what the end of the show would be.  As writers they wanted that ending point but execs want as many shows as possible.  They planned to en on Season 6 when producers met with them they agreed this is the final season.

Q – How do you determine if an idea should be a feature or TV show?

A – Its a case by case basis.  There is no formula.  Lets of people take pilots into features and vice versa.

Writers asst. at Lost is a very intense job becasue you have to write down everything they say.  Their writers asst. got promoted to a staff writer this season.

Fantasy Island first day they didn’t know what some terms meant and they went to Samuel French bookstore and picked up “how to write television” And we were already hired at this point, we were writers, we read the first page of the book and said “we are fucked.” they turned the book over and it was written by their boss.

But they were never scared to go up to a senior writer and ask for help on a specific scene.

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Click this link for the flier: HB July Panel