The Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse Backstory

A really nice interview with Lost showrunners and writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse can be read at Written By.

Damon and Carlton talk about how they first met and started working together, and they explain quite a lot about the creative process behind creating what might be the most complex show on television:

“[Being a showrunner] is not just about coming up with the episodes each week…it’s also about managing a company that has 225 people-it’s a giant enterprise. It’s a little bit like being an air traffic controller. The episodes are like the planes that you’re trying to guide into a safe landing, but at the same time you’re trying to manage the seven other planes that have their own flight patterns.”

No wonder Lindelof was about to run from the show. But ABC proposed a solution: pair him with a veteran who also happened to be among Damon’s best friends. Still, “it never even occurred to me that Carlton would want to come over.”

And Cuse did hesitate. “I had no desire to go work on someone else’s television show,” he says, looking back. But he was intrigued by the “sprawling, complex, and ambiguous storytelling,” elements that made it “incredibly compelling.” Cuse had just entered into a deal with Sony Television but managed to extricate himself and join Lindelof as co-showrunner on Lost.

Becoming a team did not quell their skepticism. Cuse remembers “the general consensus-this was going to be a meteor entering the atmosphere. It was going to burn bright and then vanish.” And so he and Lindelof felt “liberated to make a show that appealed to us.”

Read the very interesting interview at Written by.