George R.R. Martin: Felt cheated and frustrated by the ending of “Lost”
Oh, great. A feud has just broken out online. From io9, this article about George R.R. Martin:
Now that George R.R. Martin’s long-awaited next book is coming out, and the television version of hisGame of Thrones is coming soon, he’s getting a lot more attention — including two great new profiles.
This week’s New Yorker has a terrific profile of Martin by Laura Miller — it focuses rather a lot on the fan backlash over the delay of his novel A Dance With Dragons, but manages to reveal tons of fascinating stuff along the way. And there’s also a terrific interview in today’s New York Times.
Everything hunky dory, right? Then this:
Martin felt cheated and frustrated by the ending of Lost.
According to the New Yorker article:
Martin knows what it’s like to be provoked by a serial entertainment. He experienced it himself as a faithful viewer of “Lost,” the ABC adventure series about a group of castaways trapped on a mysterious island. “I kept watching it and I was fascinated,” he recalls. “They’d introduce these things and I thought that I knew where it was going. Then they’d introduce and I’d rethink it.” Like many “Lost” fans, Martin resented the series’s mystical ending, which left dozens of narrative threads dangling. “We watched it every week trying to ?gure it out, and as it got deeper and deeper I kept saying, ‘They better have something good in mind for the end. This end better pay off here.’ And then I felt so cheated when we got to the conclusion.”
Martin says he’s terrified that he’ll “fuck it up” at the end of A Song of Ice and Fire and “do a Lost.”
To which Damon Lindelof just Tweeted:
Thank you tweeps. In but five minutes you have made me feel better. But George? You got yourself a feud, motherfucker.
Game on! Here’s your chance to rehash the ending of “Lost” one more time!
Damon Lindelof vs. George R.R. Martin. Joe Wright vs. Zack Snyder. What got in the water today?
UPDATE: I figured Lindelof was being pretty much tongue-in-cheek with his Twitter responses to Martin. Turns out that’s true… but also not. From the LAT:
But in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lindelof admitted that, as a huge Martin fan, his feelings were kinda hurt. “When he uses phrases like ‘[messing] up the ending’ or ‘I felt like someone dropped a turd on my doorstep,’ you know: Look, ‘Lost’ is my baby, and you don’t put baby in a corner. I feel duty-bound, just for my own sense of integrity, to respond publicly.”
Lindelof confessed that he and “Lost” co-show runner Carlton Cuse were surprised about all the “Lost” backlash. “We both thought it was, like, completely and totally, empirically brilliant,” he said. “We were shocked to learn that there were a lot of people who thought it was a cop-out.”
Looks like “Lost” will never be fully lost… at least in the minds of its fans or detractors.