It’s the last week of Lost, so let’s get in the wayback machine and revisit the first season, when Dominic Monaghan was the show’s breakout star–so much so that the producers pledged they would never kill off his character, Charlie! (Oops.)

I went to Hawaii to profile Monaghan in the middle of that season; I’ve put the resulting article up in the archives. This is a somewhat longer version than was printed in the magazine; most of the material that got cut dealt with the show (as opposed to Monaghan’s life), so it may be of interest to Lostologists.

An excerpt that seems relevant, although the show didn’t last as long as Monaghan predicted:

“I honestly don’t know how they make sense of where we are,” Monaghan says of the show’s creators. “They say they know. But they could say they know until September of 2011 and then go, ‘Oh fuck, you know what? We don’t know. See you later, enjoy the DVDs!’” 

A side note: At the time of this article, I was playing Lord of the Rings journalist bingo, trying to interview as many of the actors who played the nine members of the Fellowship as possible. I wrote this piece on Monaghan, and for it conducted a phone interview with fellow hobbit Billy Boyd. Similarly, when I did an article on Sean Astin, I chatted with Elijah Wood and improbably managed to get Sir Ian McKellan on the phone. I did a short profile of Viggo Mortensen. When I wrote about the TV show Revelations for TV Guide, I insisted on interviewing John Rhys-Davies (who had a supporting role), just to round out the set. That’s seven out of nine; I still haven’t wrangled Orlando Bloom or Sean Bean. I’ve also interviewed plenty of other people who worked on the trilogy, from WETA technicians right up to Peter Jackson, but they don’t qualify under the self-imposed rules of this celebrity-profile scavenger hunt.

posted 17 May 2010 in Archives, Articles. no comments yet

A photo from 2004, when I visited the Lost set in Hawaii; the show was halfway through filming its first season.

Those are prop corpses, laid out on the apron of a trailer in the parking lot nearby the location shoot. I believe they were meant to be people who didn’t survive the plane crash, although it’s possible the creators were just warming up before they started killing characters in earnest.

posted 14 May 2010 in Photos. no comments yet

I have a short article on pages 52 and 53 of the new issue of Rolling Stone, a profile of the extremely nice Will Forte: former sitcom writer, current Saturday Night Live cast member, and star of the upcoming movie MacGruber. (Which oddly enough, also includes Val Kilmer and Ryan Phillippe in the cast.) As usual with my Rolling Stone work, you can’t read it freely online. What’s new is that for $30/year, you can get an “all access” pass and read the magazine online (plus gain access to the complete archives, and get the paper magazine sent to your home).

In case you’re wondering, the 1988 countdown will resume next week. I took some time off because of a huge amount of work, and then I took a little more for reasons of good taste: the next video in the countdown is a Poison clip, and I didn’t want to be making fun of Bret Michaels if he was on his deathbed. I’m happy to hear he seems to be headed towards a full recovery.

posted 13 May 2010 in Articles, Outside. 1 comment

Spotted while walking to dinner last night.

I suppose that a swing is basically just a bench with some rigging, but that case is rarely made so starkly.

posted 7 May 2010 in Photos. no comments yet

Back in 2005, I wrote the cover story for the Rolling Stone Hot Issue, on Lost star Evangeline Lilly. I also had a sidebar with various bits of information on Lost, which was then entering its second season, including “There Are More Survivors” and “Easter Eggs Abound.”

One section was more controversial than the others:

THEY’RE MAKING IT UP AS THEY GO

The Lost creators have often claimed they know where the show is going and that everything will ultimately add up. Well, the current creators, anyway. “There was absolutely no master plan on Lost,” insists David Fury, a co-executive producer last season who wrote the series’ two best episodes and is now a writer-producer on 24. “Anybody who said that was lying.”

“On a show like Lost, it becomes a great big shaggy-dog story,” he continues cheerily. “They keep saying there’s meaning in everything, and I’m here to tell you no–a lot of things are just arbitrary. What I always tried to do was connect these random elements, to create the illusion that it was all adding up to something.”

Many plot elements were concocted on the fly, Fury says; for example, they didn’t know Hurley won the lottery until it came time to write his episode. “I don’t like to talk about when we come up with ideas,” Lindelof demurs. “It’s a magic trick. But we planned that plot. We seeded references to it in earlier episodes.” Fury disagrees. He says scenes with those references were filmed much later and inserted into earlier yet-to-air episodes: “It’s a brilliant trick to make us look smart. But doing that created a huge budget problem.”

(By Gavin Edwards. From “The Secrets of Lost,” in Rolling Stone 984 (October 6, 2005).)

Those three paragraphs led to a fair amount of discussion among the show’s fans (and some sniping at Fury by Lost writer/producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach). I reprint them now as the show enters the final stretch; we’ll see whether Lost wraps up a way that seems satisfying (or premeditated).

My personal opinion is that the show was flying by the seat of its pants in the first season, but that once they reached the summer break, the Lost brain trust came up with a roadmap, which they have sometimes followed. There’s more than one way to make good TV, and some of my favorite shows have worked just fine by improvising their way through the plotlines. But in the case of Lost, which has large central mysteries, the creators have often assured fans that not only is there a master plan, there has always been a master plan. Let’s just say I’m skeptical.

posted 3 May 2010 in Articles. 4 comments

Spotted while walking around L.A.

posted 30 April 2010 in Photos. 2 comments

Last month, I spent a lot of time in the studio with superstar pop producer Dr. Luke (no, he wasn’t putting together my blockbuster debut album). Two credits in case you’re not familiar with his work: Kelly Clarkson, “Since U Been Gone” and Miley Cyrus, “Party in the U.S.A.” Dr. Luke’s collaborated so often with Max Martin, people think he’s Swedish too. “I’m really upset I’ve set the record straight,” Luke told me. “If you want to say I’m from Sweden, that would be awesome.”

The resulting article is in the new issue (#1103) of Rolling Stone, on pages 88 and 89–as is often the case, they haven’t put it online, so if you want to read it, you’ll have to track down a glossy paper copy.

posted 20 April 2010 in Articles. 3 comments

Just a note to say that I’m currently juggling five different projects (all of which I will let you know about as they come to fruition, of course), so posting here will be less frequent for the next month or so; my apologies.

A quick pair of excerpts from The Andy Warhol Diaries:

Thursday, February 9, 1978

Cabbed down to Union Square ($3). Anselmino was calling from Italy all day, screaming hysterically about forgeries of my paintings that he was being offered.

Friday, February 10, 1978

Anselmino called to say, “They weren’t forgeries after all–they were stolen from me and cut down to a smaller size.” He must have just sold them for coke once and forgot.

posted 3 April 2010 in Excerpts. no comments yet

A mural painted on a wall in Shanghai, China, presumably intended to instill environmental values. I took the photo almost exactly five years ago, so you can judge for yourself how well it has worked.

posted 26 March 2010 in Photos. no comments yet

For a long time, releasing an album with Volume One somewhere in the title seemed like a good way to ensure there would never be a Volume Two, unless those songs were already recorded (e.g., George Michael’s Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 or in a similar vein, Hall and Oates’ Rock ’n Soul Part 1). But the tide has turned! Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs continued their 2006 Under the Covers, Vol. 1 collaboration with Vol. 2 last year, while She and Him just this week followed up their Volume One debut with Volume Two. Full marks for persistence, if not for creativity.

posted 24 March 2010 in Tasty Bits. 1 comment