Damon Lindelof
Damon Lindelof
Damon Laurence Lindelofis an American television writer, producer, and film screenwriter, most noted as the co-creator and showrunner of the television series Lost. He has written for and produced Crossing Jordanand wrote for Nash Bridges. Lindelof also co-wrote the science fiction films Cowboys & Aliens, Prometheus, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Tomorrowland. He co-created the TV series The Leftovers for HBO, adapted from the novel by Tom Perrotta...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Producer
Date of Birth24 April 1973
CityTeaneck, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
Damon Lindelof quotes about
I make no distinction between writing and storytelling; I've always wanted to tell stories.
Hindsight is 20/20, but the moral of the writing is that when you're feeling very scared about something and convinced that it could be a massive disaster, that's exactly the idea that you should do.
I stand by the Lost finale. It's the story that we wanted to tell, and we told it. No excuses. No apologies. I look back on it as fondly as I look back on the process of writing the whole show. And while I'll always care what you think, I can't be a slave to it anymore. Here's why: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really … I was alive.
Whenever we do a story or we show the monster or we find the hatch, that all has to be consistent with what we know the ending to be. We have a goal that we are working towards.
What's in the hatch is so intense/cool/complicated that it actually takes three full episodes to fully understand it. Fortunately, these are the first three episodes of the show, so the wait is over!
If you're constantly hamstrung by worry that people aren't going to like it, you can't do your job.
I've always been into having stories told to me. I was a voracious reader, my father was also a teller of tales; and the kind of Baron Munchausen proxy of a tall tale was much more interesting than a true tale.
I place a higher value on work ethic than talent, because, in certain areas, you just need to cast, you need to cast actors with talent, you need to hire directors with talent, but I've worked with very talented people who have a poor work ethic, and the outcome is less desirable than people who are less talented and have an incredible work ethic.
Lost is a mystery show, so I think that would be stripping the franchise of sort of its essential nature.
It's television. The reality of it is, if you go on the boards and people are saying, "I saw that coming," or "This is lame," or "I can't believe they're doing this again..." Having been one of those people myself, I know better, and try to avoid it.
At some point, you can't take a risk just to take a risk because that's a betrayal, in and of itself.
You can watch an episode of Friends or an episode of Law & Order and just drop in, but you're not going to in the middle of Season 4, Episode 5 of Lost. It's like picking up a Harry Potter book and flipping to a chapter. You have to read it from beginning to end.
For us, there's an inherent process when you're ending something to be thinking about the beginning, as writers.
Part of the fun of the movie is understanding exactly why we called it Prometheus. And also, it sounds really pretentious, like Inception, so we were just like, "Yeah, that makes the movie sound really smart!" It's so much better then my original title, Explosion. Well, there might be an explosion in the movie.