Before last night's PaleyFest “Lost” panel began, there was a red carpet where we took our chances to try to talk to some of the people who showed up for the reunion.
I'm not great on the red carpet, and last night was a reminder of all the things that drive me crazy about the process. They put you in a space that isn't big enough for one person, let alone a reporter and a cameraman, and there's a horrifying feeding frenzy mentality that kicks in once the first person starts working their way down the line. Elbows get thrown, manners disappear, and people get aggressive about everything.
Even so, it was fun to chat with these people on the tenth anniversary of the show, and we had to make sure we got some time to chat with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse about their work. Our own Dan Fienberg is out of town this week so he can get a behind-the-scenes peek at “The Strain,” which was the first thing we discussed with Cuse, who is producing the show. I'm intrigued by the idea of Guillermo Del Toro working on television because it seems almost completely backwards from the way he likes to work. Cuse seems to think that Guillermo's made the jump with his style completely intact, and it should be fun to see what they've built out of “The Strain” as a television series.
I was mainly curious about the relationship that Lindelof and Cuse have with fandom today. Very few show-runners before them had ever embraced the Internet as completely as they did, and that meant a level of communication back and forth that was unprecedented. All I do is comment on culture, and I get weary sometimes from the intensity of fandom. I can't imagine being ground zero for something that inspired the level of passion that “Lost” did, and I think it's amazing that Lindelof and Cuse are still as comfortable with fandom as they are.
We'll have a few more conversations from the “Lost” red carpet in the next few, and I'll be attending another PaleyFest event this week that has me very excited.