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I Look At Myself More As A Storyteller Than A Screenwriter, As Pretentious As That May Sound, But That's What Really Attracts Me To Ted Talks. For Me, The Really Effective Ones Are Being Presented By Expert Storytellers.

-Damon Lindelof

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I Look At Myself

Damon Lindelof

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I Look At Myself More As A Storyteller Than A Screenwriter, As Pretentious As That May Sound, But That's What Really Attracts Me To Ted Talks. For Me, The Really Effective Ones Are Being Presented By Expert Storytellers.

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More From Damon Lindelof

The Fundamental Law Of Nature Is To Not Know Too Much About Yourself.

There Is A Reason Behind Life. There Is Some Connectivity Between Living Beings. Whether You Want To Call That 'god' Or 'the Force' Or Whatever Word You Use For It, I Do Believe In A Spiritualized Mechanism.

Anger Is Not A Real Feeling. Every Time In My Life I've Ever Been Angry, It's Because I Was Scared, Or Because I Was Sad And I Didn't Know It. Anger Doesn't Just Come Out Of A Vacuum.

I Don't Think Anybody Wants To See A Dour Star Trek Movie.

I'm Trying To Focus As Much On The Here And Now As Possible. To Live My Life In A Way That The Humans That I Know Here On The Planet Earth Feel Like They've Been Treated With Respect By Me, Whether They're People That I'm Very Close To Or The Audience Who's Watching My Work.

I'm A Huge Star Trek Fan. I've Seen All The Shows, I've Seen All The Movies, But Ultimately I Just Want A 2-hour Movie That Takes Me To Another Time And Place - Something That Entertains Me.

Suffice It To Say, There Are Some Very Big Ideas In Prometheus And, Therefore, It Covers A Very Vast Expanse Of Time.

I Love Finding New Creative Partnerships But Then Continuing The Partnerships I'm Already In.

It's Just Immensely Frustrating That Things Like Breaking Bad Get Made That Are Kind Of Perfect! There's Not Even A Bad Episode Of Breaking Bad, Let Alone A Bad Season. I Want To Be Able To Say, "hey Everybody, It's Impossible To Make A Show Where Every Episode Is Great!" No It's Not.

Sometimes We Get Frustrated Ourselves And Decide It's Time To Download A Big Chunk Of Mythology. And Then The Audience Says, 'i Find This Confusing And Alienating And Too Weird.' So Then We Pull Back, And They Say, 'you're Not Giving Us Enough'.

I Think That 'the Shield' Was A Phenomenal Series Finale.

Hopping Around Time In A Non-linear Storytelling Fashion (on 'lost') Allows You To Bring Back Characters Who Are Dead And, In Some Cases, Buried. Now That Time Travel Is The Story Itself, It Opens Up Even More Doors. So When An Actor Reads That They're Getting Killed Off On The Show, They're Basically, Like, 'okay, But Should I Still Bother To Show Up Next Week?'

I Make No Distinction Between Writing And Storytelling; I've Always Wanted To Tell Stories.

One Of The Things I've Learned Is There's No Lesson To Be Learned. You Have To Resign Yourself To The Fact That Mistakes Are Going To Be Made At Any Time In The Creative Process.

Lessons To Be Learned

I've Always Been Really Interested In The Future, And I Feel Like All Of The Movies That I've Been Exposed To, Over The Course Of The Last 20 To 30 Years, Have Shown Me A Future That I Don't Really Want To Be Living In.

If You're The Guy Who Basically Shows Up With Coal At The Locomotive, They Will Put It In The Train. Like, They Won't Even Assess Whatever Or Not It's Good Coal. Just Throw It In There.

From My Own Internal Fanboy Perspective, There's Nothing That I Hate More Than Seeing A Three Minute Trailer For A Movie Where I Feel Like It's Shown Me The Entire Movie.

I'll Never Be Immune To Criticism, And That's Okay, And I'm Very Comfortable With That.

I Felt Like If I Said Something Positive On Twitter, It Got No Play. But If I Said Something Negative On Twitter, It Was A Billion Retweets And So That Was Giving Me A Pavlovian Response To Be Mean, And I Don't Want To Be Mean. We All Have Mean Thoughts. They Should Not Be Broadcast On Twitter. You Don't Need To See Mean Things.

When Someone Says Something In An Interview, The Beauty Of Twitter Is That It's A Platform For Instantaneous Response.

The Year That 'lost' Started And Premiered Was, Without A Doubt, The Most Miserable Year Of My Life. The Level Of Despair And Anguish That I Was Feeling; I Was Clinically Depressed, And Anyone That You Talked To Who Knew Me At The Time Will Tell You That.

One Person's Magical Thinking Is Another Person's Cynicism.

I'm Not Sitting Around Thinking Of Ideas For Tv Shows.

For Us, There's An Inherent Process When You're Ending Something To Be Thinking About The Beginning, As Writers.

I've Always Been Fascinated By Disneyland And Disney World, And My Favorite Part Of The Park Was Always Tomorrowland.

Hire People You Get Along With, And Then Let Them Do What They Do Best.

Look, We Can Definitively Agree That Cable Is Far Superior To Network. That Isn't To Say That There Can't Be A Great Network Drama Or Comedy That Makes 20-plus Episodes A Year. We Know That There Are, And There Have Been.

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 Think That We, As Writers, Get Excited By Risk. When We Are Feeling Comfortable And Familiar, I Wouldn't Say That We Get Bored, But The Energy In The Room Gets Flat. When We're Most Excited And When The Show Is The Most Fun, It's When We're Duking Things Out.

I Think One Of The Problems In Determining The Ending For A Television Series Is That You Don't Know How Long The Show Is Gonna Last. Particularly Because We Were In The Unique Position Of Adapting Tom's Perrotta Novel The Leftovers, It Always Felt Like The First Season Was Gonna End With The End Of Tom's Novel, And Then We Would Figure Things Out From There And Look Back.

You Can't Just Come Out And Do The Same Moves That You Always Do Because Someone Just Basically Came Into The Center Of The Ring And Spun Around On Their Head And Did A Back Flip.

I Remember What It Was Like To Be Doing 'lost' And How Creatively Immersive It Was. I Just Couldn't Really Engage On Anything Else, Other Than 'lost;' I Was Just Thinking About It All The Time, And Then There Was Just The Pure Workload, The 70- Or 80-hour Weeks.

In Really, Really Good Science Fiction The Line Between The Science And The Fiction Is Blurry.

We All Look At Ourselves In The Mirror And Think, 'am I Good?'

I Promised Myself I Would Never Be One Of Those People Who Complained About "oh Man, Lots Of People Are Interested In Our Movie And Now I Gotta Talk About It."

When You're A Writer And You're A Producer, Traditionally The Junkets Are Really Focused On The Beautiful People And Nobody Wants To Talk To You.

Reputation Is A Very Interesting Thing, And I Always Give People The Benefit Of The Doubt, And I Think That There's A Part Of All Of Us, Especially In A Generation Where A Lot Of The Stuff Gets Recorded.

I'm Not Glass-half-full, Glass-half-empty; I'm Like, "there's A Glass?"

My Father - Until The Day That My Dad Died - Didn't Know How Many Points You Scored In A Touchdown. He Could Say There Were Nine Innings In Baseball, But No Intricacies Of The Sport.

But I Do Think That, When You Slow The Conveyor Belt Down, The Quality Control Tends To Go Up. You Have A Lot More Time Between Seasons To Talk About What Worked And What Didn't Work, And Plan For The Future. And The Pacing Of The Storytelling, Particularly For On-going Serialized Dramas, Means That You Don't Need To Do Non-essential Episodes, Just Because You Have To Fill This Pre-existing Schedule.

In Television, I Don't Feel Constraints. I Feel A Lot Freedom To Maneuver.

Star Wars' Is A Galaxy A Long Time Ago, Far, Far Away. 'star Wars' Is Not About Our Future.

If You Do Something Awesome, You Should Be Proud Of Yourself.

As A Storyteller, You Also Don't Want To Make People Feel Like They're Left Out, Like Other People Who Have Read The Book Have An Interior Knowledge Of This Show, And The Degree Of Difficulty In Watching It Is Much Higher.

I Always Remember Liking School.

I Think The Idea That Television Has Evolved To This Place Of Real Thematic Richness And The Fact That You No Longer Have To Get 10 Million People To Watch Your Show In Order To Propagate Its Survival Are The Best Things That Have Ever Happened To Storytelling In This Medium.

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.

I Don't Think It's Hubris For Me To Say I'm A Trek Fan. So, I Don't Treat Trek Fans As Somebody Who's Separate Than I Am. The Only Thing That Separates Them Is, I'm One Of The People Responsible For The Story In This Movie And They're Not. But We're All Trek Fans. I Can Hang.

Sometimes Diehard Fans Expect So Much That They're Never Happy No Matter What They Get.

Once You Spend More Than $100 Million On A Movie, You Have To Save The World.

There Is No Suspense In Inevitability.

Ultimately, I Just Felt Like Twitter Brought Out The Worst In Me. It Made Me Super Defensive When I Was Attacked, Because You're Under A Constant State Of Attack. No One Should Be Able To Check Their @ Mentions, Because Twitter Is The Equivalent Of "hey, Those Three People Over There That Are Whispering... They're Whispering About You! Do You Want To Know What They're Saying?"

When I Saw 'blade Runner,' My Understanding Was That 'blade Runner' And 'alien' Were Sequels To Each Other - Or They Were Related. They Were Set In The Same World.

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.

Lost Is A Mystery Show, So I Think That Would Be Stripping The Franchise Of Sort Of Its Essential Nature.

The Interpretive Element Of "lost," The Fact That You Immediately Need As Soon As The Episode Is Over To Seek Out A Community Of People To Express Your Own Thoughts About It, Understand What They Thought About It And Form An Opinion, That's The Bread And Butter Of The Show.

I Feel Like The Big Twist Shows Are Now Off The Table. I Think Westworld Was Probably The Last One To Trojan Horse This Idea Of The Young Man In Black. They Were Doing Non-linear Storytelling, But Disguising It. Jonah Nolan And Lisa Joy Have Spoken Openly About How They Just Didn't Think People Were Going To Figure It Out That Fast.

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.

I've Always Believed That A Good Twist Is One That, When It Is Presented To The Audience, Half Of Them Say, 'i Saw That Coming.' And Half Of Them Are Completely And Totally Shocked. Because If You Don't Have The Half That Saw It Coming, Then It Wasn't Fair: You Never Gave The Audience A Chance To Guess It.

I Look At Myself More As A Storyteller Than A Screenwriter, As Pretentious As That May Sound, But That's What Really Attracts Me To Ted Talks. For Me, The Really Effective Ones Are Being Presented By Expert Storytellers.

A Lot Of Writers Whom I Love, Admire And Call Friends Share This Feeling, Which Is This Fundamental Idea That We're Frauds. That We Will Be Pushed Out On To The Stage, And It Will Be Revealed That The Emperor Has No Clothes.

People Talk About Overnight Successes, And Ultimately, There's A Certain Amount Of, You Want To Call It Luck Or Fortune Or Good Fortune, Or Whatever, But When Your Moment Arrives, You Have To Have Been At A Point Where You Paid Your Dues, Or Done Your 10,000 Hours Or Have The Requisite Talent Or Whatever.

Essentially, There's No Scientific Evidence Whatsoever That Could Ever Be Presented To Me That Would Wipe Out My Fundamental Spiritual Beliefs.

I Was Born In 1973, So I Did Not See 'alien' When It Was Released Theatrically. I Saw 'alien' When It Was On Home Box Office. I Think I Was Probably 10.

My Gravestone Will Say,'here Lies Damon Lindelof - Or Does He?

Michael Arndt, That Guy - You're Just Supposed To Say Nice Things About Other Writers, But I Worship Michael Arndt.

As Cliched As It Sounds, If You Have An Original Voice And An Original Idea, Then No Matter What Anybody Says, You Have To Find A Way To Tell That Story.

Everything I've Ever Been A Fan Of, Whether It's Star Wars Or The New York Jets, I've Also Been Very Hard On At Times. It's Sort Of Like, I Go To A Jets Game, I Want Them To Win, But The Minute They Fumble The Ball, I Go, "i F**king Knew It! F**king Jets!" That's Part Of Loving Something. As Long As You Love It, You Have Carte Blanche To Critique It As Well, Of Course. That's Part Of Being A Fan Of Anything.

I Have Found, Unfortunately, That If I Take On Too Many Projects At One Time, There Is A Higher Probability Of Those Projects Sucking.

Just Put Your Best Foot Forward And Hope For The Best. You Also Have To Acknowledge That You're Going To Make Mistakes.

Hoping For The Best

At Some Point, You Can't Take A Risk Just To Take A Risk Because That's A Betrayal, In And Of Itself.

People Are Disappointed When The World Doesn't End On Their Watch.

When Someone Says Something That Really Hurts Me, I Have To Retweet It To Let It Go.

If Your Friend Is Critical [of Your Work], You Have To Have A Very Thick Skin And A Thick Skin Is Something That Only Builds Up After It's Callused For Awhile.

I Love Collaborating With Different People.

Different Peoples

The Fun Thing About Doing Origin Stories Is You Are Introducing The Audience To Characters.

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.

All Great Sci-fi Is: Be Careful What You Wish For.

I Can't Live My Life Under The Sort Of "i Cannot Fail" Philosophy, Because Then Every Time I Do Fail, Which Feels More Inevitable Than Me Being Perfect All The Time, It's Going To Be Soul Crushing. And More Importantly, I'll Never Take Any Risks.

Connecting Dots Is Not That Rewarding Of An Experience.

Connecting The Dots

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.

Good Twists Are Enormously Hard To Come By, And I Think The Best Ones Are Earned Ones. The Idea That A Story Can Take A Left Turn On You, It's Easy To Do, But It Has To Be Done Very, Very Carefully, Or Else You Risk Losing The Audience's Trust.

Finding Meaning In The Relationships That We Have With One Another - That's The Only Way To Achieve Any Kind Of Fundamental True Grace And That Points To Where It All Ends Up. It's Let's Stop Being Away Some Place, Let's Be Here. It's, Let's Be In This.

I Think That At The End Of The Day I'm Drawn To A Certain Level Of Ambiguous Storytelling That Requires Hard Thought And Work In The Same Way That The New York Times Crossword Puzzle Does: Sometimes You Just Want To Put It Down Or Throw It Out The Window, But There's A Real Rewarding Sense If You Feel Like You've Cracked It.

If I Went For A Long Period In My Life Where I Was Unemployed And I Was Unable To Make A Living And The Only Way For Me To Basically Provide For My Family Was, "hey, We're Bringing Lost Back!", Then I Would Probably Consider It. But I Feel Like It Would Be A Betrayal To The Fandom, And Myself, To Do Anymore Lost, Because We Had Such An Adequate Period Of Time To End The Show.

I Would Say That My Fatal Flaw, As A Human Being, Is That I Need People To Like Me, And If They Don't Like Me, I Will Obsess Over It - And Try To Change My Personality Until They Like Me - Even If They Don't Like Me For Reasons That Have Nothing To Do With Me, And Even If They're Strangers.

The Best Jokes On The Leftovers Are The Ones That Make You Feel A Little Sick To Your Stomach.

I Feel Like Great Ted Talks Are Ones That Are A Little Bit Subject To Interpretation, That Do Provoke Further Conversation - And Potentially Controversy.

If You're Constantly Hamstrung By Worry That People Aren't Going To Like It, You Can't Do Your Job.

I Think 'the Lord Of The Rings' Trilogy Has A Very Satisfying Ending, And There's Not Really That Deep Of A Mythological Construct.

Hindsight Is 20/20, But The Moral Of The Writing For Me Is That When You're Feeling Very Scared And Nervous About Something And You're Fairly Convinced That It Could Be A Massive Disaster, That's Exactly The Idea That You Should Do.

I've Always Felt That Really Good Prequels Should Be Original Movies.

Some Of The Things I Love The Most Are When A Writer Or A Visionary Takes On Sort Of An Iconic Character And Then Spins It. Like With Frank Miller, Batman Was This One Thing For Basically Forty Years, And Then Frank Miller Came Along And Said He Can Also Be This Other Thing. And Christopher Nolan Came Along And Said He Can Also Be This Other Thing. The Idea Of Taking Iconic Comic Book Characters Or Superhero Characters Or Mythic Characters And Subverting The Genre Or Coming Up With A New Idea Is Something That's Really Interesting To Me.

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